Thursday, June 11, 2020

"This Country Was Infinitely More Prepared To Go To War Against Its Own People Than Defend Its People From A Pandemic"

Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch, June 5, 2020
Roaming Charges: Mad Bull, Lost Its Way

+ Ali Abunimah: "The president of the United States is threatening to invade the United States."

+ As Trump threatens to send US troops to smash civilian protests in American cities, it's cold comfort to recall that the US military hasn't won a war since the Soviets beat the Nazis for us ...

+ A couple of weeks ago, Trump orchestrated Blue Angel flybys as militaristic salutes to medical personnel. Then on Monday night, Trump's Luftwaffe used medical helicopters to terrorize protesters in the nation's capital. The next day, Asheville police raided medical stations, smashing medical supplies, destroying food, slashing water bottles and harassing medics and doctors treating civilians who'd been brutalized by the police. These are war crimes.
+ In 2015 the ACLU put out a report showing that black people in Minneapolis are 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for low-level offenses. Racist and violent policing has been a problem in Minnesota for decades.

+ Minneapolis police, for example, rendered 44 people unconscious with neck restraints in five years.

+ Over the last 20 years, Minneapolis police have killed black people at a rate 13 times higher than white people – a larger racial disparity than almost anywhere else in the nation.

+ There were only 27 days in 2019 when police in the USA didn't kill anyone (that we know of).
+ This LAPD cop is leaning out the window, shooting at kids in the back as they run away.
+ According to the LA Times, no LAPD officers have been suspended or disciplined since the beginning of the protests. Department spokesman Joshua Rubenstein said they are currently investigating complaints and "that takes some time to do."

+ Perhaps protesters should start dressing up as coronavirus, then Trump maybe will stop trying to suppress them.

+ Apparently, people are finally beginning to believe what they see with their own eyes: New poll says 57 percent of Americans believe police are more likely to use excessive force against black people. That's 20 points higher than polls from 2014 and 2016.

+ Arash Kolahi: "This country was infinitely more prepared to go to war against its own people than defend its people from a pandemic."

+ Does the War Powers Act apply when the President declares war against his own country? Or has Congress given up that authority, too?

+ How are the Democrats who voted to give Trump expanded domestic spying powers and record military budgets sleeping tonight?

+ "Soul of America", Joe? You just finished a speech where you urged police to shoot unarmed protesters in the knee. You made those remarks in a CHURCH!

+ This is our choice. Trump: shoot unarmed protesters in the heart. Biden: shoot unarmed protesters in the knee (and make 'em pay their own medical bills.) Leadership!

+ In New York City, a reporter for the Associated Press is heard on video explaining the press are considered "essential workers" under New York's curfew orders and are allowed to be on the streets. An officer responds: "I don't give a shit." Another cop tells the journalist to "get the fuck out of here, you piece of shit."

+ Just 10 days ago, the Trump administration was describing the American people as "human capitalstock ", now we're "the battlespace" to be "dominated." Either way, we're expendable.

+ Remember when almost everyone in the US political establishment, conservative and liberal, got very irate about Saddam gassing his own people (even though he did it with Rummy's knowledge)? Now, the US president is gassing his own people in the nation's capital to demonstrate he wasn't a coward for hiding in his bunker over the weekend.

+ It was only two weeks ago when Trump scolded the Governor of Michigan for not having a face-to-face meeting with the armed goons who took over the Michigan statehouse. Same man who scrambled to his Trumpbunker when unarmed protesters gathered outside the White House wanting to chat.

+ The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked by a US president, it was George HW Bush, who sent US Marines into Los Angeles to crush the Rodney King protests. His AG at the time was Bill Barr. Bush was praised this week as model presidential "healer in chief" by a Bible-wielding Nancy Pelosi.

+ When Pat Robertson makes more sense than Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, you know the Democrats have reached a dead end as any kind of political force.

+ Biden emerged from his own basement bunker this week to deliver this platitude: "Amid the violence and fear, Dr. King persevered. He was driven by his dream of a nation where justice runs down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream."

+ King didn't "persevere". He got more and more radical until finally they shot him, much to the delight of some of the same segregationists in the Senate you later befriended and co-authored racist legislation with.

+ Remember when Gen. John Kelly, now desperately trying to rehab his reputation and distance himself from the despotism emanating from the White House he once ran, told Trump he should use a sword against the press? Or the lies and bigoted insults he spewed at black congresswoman? Or the kids he locked in cages?

+ Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein said that "every American should be outraged at the police conduct which led to George Floyd's death." Nice to know. But what about your attack helicopters terrorizing US citizens expressing their outrage at police misconduct last night, General? How should we feel about that?

+ Class, instead of a pop quiz this morning on the assigned readings from Kierkegaard's "Either/Or", please write a 500 word essay on the semantic difference between between these statements from Attorney General Bill Barr on the violent clearing of Lafayette Park so that Trump could lumber across it to St. John's Church : "I said, Get it done." and "I didn't say, Go do it."

+ Law enforcement agencies deployed on the streets of DC:
US Secret Service
US Park Police
Arlington PD
DC National Guard + other states
Bureau of Prisons
FBI
DEA
DHS
ICE
CBP
TSA
US Marshals
Pentagon Force Protection
Ft Bragg/Fort Drum active duty troops
Metropolitan Police Dept (DC)

+ National Guard: 32,400 troops now mobilized in 32 states and Washington D.C. to respond to protests.

+ There was an all-out revolt among NYT staffers on Wednesday night against the decision to run a disgusting column (Send in the Troops) by Sen. Tom Cotton on its Op-Ed pages. Yet, the NYT's own editorials in the past have been just as blood-curdling, such as its repeated calls for coups in Venezuela.

+ Meanwhile, more than 30 black staffers at the Philadelphia Inquirer walked out or called in sick to work after the paper ran a story titled: "Buildings Matter Too".

+ The latest proof the war on drugs was not about drugs: the DEA has been given the authority to spy on and infiltrate the anti-police brutality protesters.

+ When most of the anti-police brutality movement is uniting around a call to "defund the police," Bernie Sanders, who voted for Biden's 94 crime bill, has just introduced an 8-point "reform" plan that would increase wages for police.

+ Here's the highest paid cop in Atlanta telling all the other cops that charges against killer cops are "political." Do you think that's going to make them swing their clubs a little harder tonight? (I don't think paying cops more is going to solve the problem, Bernie.)

+ Portion of CDC budget dedicated to protecting Americans from Infectious Diseases: $2.25 billion; NYPD budget: $6 billion.

+ I'm getting the sense that Andrew Cuomo is Trump with about 300 more words in his vocabulary When questioned by reporters about emerging video evidence of police using batons to beat peaceful protesters in New York, Governor Coumo denies its happening and calls the journalist's question "a little offensive;" "incendiary rhetoric," and a "hyper-partisan rhetorical attack."

+ Then there's de Blasio, uttering what should be his own political epitaph: "I have been in the mansion hearing the protests."

+ Bill de Blasio showed up at a big George Floyd rally in Cadman Park, Brooklyn on Thursday—his first face-to-face encounter with the protesters—and hundreds booed him, chanting "Resign!" and "Fuck your curfew!"

+ Court officials say that NYPD filing paperwork "glacially" in order to keep people arrested in the George Floyd protests locked up for more than 24 hours. Is NYPD intentionally trying to spread COVID-19 among police brutality protesters? Biological warfare by proxy?

+ Justice James Burke ruled on Thursday that people arrested by NYPD can be held for more than 24 hours before being arraigned, contrary to state law, because we are "experiencing a crisis within a crisis."

+ How the cops celebrated the beginning of Pride Month in Raleigh, North Carolina: by shooting up a gay bar because they were sheltering protesters and giving them water.

+ Bob Kroll, the Minneapolis police union chief who hasn't responded to calls and messages seeking comment, called the cops on a reporter who knocked on his door.

+ Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old black man, called out the words "I can't breathe" before dying in Tacoma police custody in March. According to the medical examiner's report released Wednesday, the police used a physical restraint to deprive him of oxygen, killing him.

+ Steven Pohorence, the Fort Lauderdale cop who forcefully shoved a kneeling woman at a protest on Sunday, has been reviewed by internal affairs for using force 79 times in just three and a half years. Officer Pohorence has drawn his firearm more than once a month on average since he was hired in October 2016.

+ What'll it be, gas or bullets? Portland (Oregon) Police Deputy Chief Chris Davis on tear gas: "As far as a ban on CS gas, what that would do for us would have us having to figure out a different way to accomplish our objective. The alternative would be higher levels of force that we'd like to be able to avoid." (Tear gas is considered a chemical weapon under the terms of the Geneva Conventions and is banned in war zones.)

+ U.S. cities where law enforcement deployed tear gas on protestors (an incomplete list):
Minneapolis/St. Paul
Los Angeles
New York City
Washington DC
Atlanta
Pittsburgh
Seattle
Kansas City
Miami
San Diego
Dallas
Rochester
Louisville
Albany
Cincinnati
Austin
Reno
Grand Rapids
Toledo
Fort Wayne
Omaha

+ Tara Houska, Ojibwe, lawyer: "I was point-blank maced in the face walking down a street with friends here in Minneapolis. As we were cuffed, cops shot rubber bullets at passing cars. One of the vehicles they hit went off the street & ran into a porch. They laughed, 'that's gonna leave a mark.' Who's peaceful?"

+ A whistleblower cop in Mt Vernon, New York makes recordings of his superiors and fellow cops framing innocent people. The DA was informed, but continued prosecuting the cases. In the end, the only person punished was the whistleblower himself

+ Very Fine People Alert, US Military Edition: A group of Army reservists, along with Navy and Air Force veterans, were arrested this week, after plotting to terrorize protesters in Las Vegas.

+ Nazis Walk Among Us. A Mississippi prosecutor named Pamela Hancock had this to say about the George Floyd protests: "We can only hope the deadly [coronavirus] strain spreads in riots!"

+ Jeff Bercovici: "You'd think that a country that could outfit every cop like a soldier could outfit every doctor like a doctor."

+ Tim Eyman, one the men running in the GOP primary to replace Jay Inslee in Washington State, says the state's COVID-19 restrictions are a "knee on the neck" of workers just like George Floyd.

+ Bill Barr warned ominously this week about the prospect of foreign governments stuffing mail-in ballots in US elections. Barr, a resident of Fairfax County, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, voted by mail in 2019 and 2012.

+ Meanwhile, his boss, Donald Trump, originally tried to register to vote in Florida while claiming his "legal residence" was in another part of the country: Washington, D.C. ... [H]e appears to have committed "felony voter fraud," a crime punishable by five years in prison. Black voters have been jailed for far less.

+ Enemy of the People (and all other living creatures): Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest U.S. meat processor, will return to its pre-COVID-19 absentee policy, which includes punishing workers for missing work due to illness.

+ One farm in Tennessee distributed COVID-19 tests to all of its workers after an employee came down with the virus, only to discover that every one of its roughly 200 employees had been infected.
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