#george floyd was murdered by the police for having fake money

[my-midlife-crisis]

[hesitationss]

fb+/meta or whatever is one severely unfunny joke. i know i am mostly a hater of social media, but i don't see how threads is going to be better for usability and reach. especially given how shit numbers are on IG (i get more noted "per capita" of followers on tumblr and twitter for untagged posts). i already made a small thread of zucc apps being shit which I'll copy paste here. i don't know how people are thinking threads is going to be better than any of the twitter alternatives when it's most likely the WORST option out there. anyway-

the reason why the other twit replacement apps aren't as insidious as threads (zucc/fb owned) should be obvious, but i'll list some things:

• infamously on zucc platforms you can get reported for saying "white people" which is why so many of us say yt now (a bit of poc social media history for u from the 2010s)

• private messages are sold/given to police no warrant: this could be anything used against you, could be protest info, where you've been, etc.

• right wing propaganda/misinfo is lucrative for facebook. this is something that heavily affects the global south btw.

• they lie about views and growth for business accounts to keep you on their platform. the case i know best is that they inflated college humor's analytics to compete w youtube. this resulted in so many businesses throwing money and labour at facebook w out much return.

also zucc sucks, he's pure evil... like u don't need me to get into *that* hopefully

addition:

omg 🙄 so shocked 🙄 that zucc is further propelling nazism on his latest app that has the exact same content moderation as all his other fucking apps lol 🙄 who would have guessed ?

Far-right figures, including Nazi supporters, anti-gay extremists, and white supremacists, are flocking to Threads (Media Matters)

Adding sources:

Point 1 - i can't find any formal articles that document the particular insidiousness of this, but I and many others who were in BIPOC only "leftbook" groups had either our accounts or groups we joined completely nerfed for using language against white people. hubs that had been for info dissemination, discussing theory, and organizing were marked as hate speech or reported by white reactionaries (even "leftist" ones)

Point 2 - Has been apparent since Michael Brown's murder by police in 2014 and the protests following, but was esp apparent in protest following George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests.

FBI trawled Facebook to arrest protesters for inciting riots, court records show (NBC News)

Point 3 Links - Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (NY Times) | Whistleblower: Facebook is misleading the public on progress against hate speech, violence, misinformation (CBS) | How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation (MIT Tech Review)

Link for point 4 - Adam Conover talking about College Humor's inflated FB numbers (plus many other articles have been written about this)

more on the privacy shit - sex workers who have used fb AND ig on burner emails with fake names, had their emails and real names auto linked bcuz of how much a little bit of information goes. how fucked up is that.

How Facebook Outs Sex Workers

BTW i have been preaching this for years but if you want to learn why our internet is fucked up, learn about what happened with net neutrality cases in the US, and then later, SESTA FOSTA (primarily targetting sex workers but is the reason why everything is censored now). ppl online have been warning everyone about this for years, but you are just now experiencing the consequences. but again, nobody listens to things that target primarily sex workers.

plus from a functional standpoint, if you want to delete your threads account, your instagram is deleted as well. like it really doesn't seem worth it for people who are desperate to find the social media that will stick. i don't have anything nice to say about any of the other social medias except that some Mastodon instances do a great job at keeping nazi's out and using alt text, but the bar is extremely low and everybody else is even lower ^_^

[moomeecore]

Currently in Minneapolis/St Paul there are very few actual protests anymore, because the cities have gotten so unsafe. Undercover police started most of the more violent actions, and police have escalated them. The corporations like Target being destroyed is fine, and the police station being burned was great - but at this point people have been coming from out of town, and out of state, and using the riots as an excuse to steal and destroy stuff. This includes white supremacists who are using this as a chance to destory the property of minorities as well as make a bad name for protesters. The KKK has litterally been spotted

This is a list of donation links for small buisnesses, libraries, and museums that have been looted or burnt. But first I will give you the GoFundMe for George Floyd's memorial because we should ALWAYS remember, that while peoples livelihoods in the twin cities are being threatened right now because of the damage, buildings being destoryed will never be as important as someones life being taken.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd

And here is District Attorney Mike Freeman's number: (612) 348 5550 Tell him you want Derek Chavin on 2nd or 1st degree murder charges and the other 3 officers arrested as well. You can also try contacting the Hennipin Auturney's Office Facebook page here since the phones are known not to work.

Feel free to correct me if any of these links don't work or are fakes, or add on! As someone from MN I know for a fact that more small businesses (+ libraries, museums) where hurt than just these. Also if you dont live here, do remember that even the for the small businesses being destroyed, most of the owners have stated they 100% side with the protesters still.

Under the cut there are donation links for 9 specific buildings as well as some extra links at the end. PLEASE CLICK THROUGH. EVEN A 1 DOLLAR DONATION IS BETTER THAN NOTHING! If you feel bad about not being able to donate- not to worry. Calling the number and contacting the Facebook page above is free, do that !

Now, here's the donation link for Migizi, it is a Native American history museum that was burt down. They have surpassed their original goal, but you should still heavily consider donating. Most of the items in the museum where saved, but some where still lost, and the building itself honestly might have suffered the worst damage of any you'll see on this list.

This doesn't fit into the description of small business or library or museum, but here is a donation link to help fund rebuilding the Tawfiq Mousque, which was burt down as well

This is the donation link for SacDelux, a home-owned consigmnet store owned by two black women that was looted and destroyed, all the windows smashed. It is one store, a small business, and is fairly new, being opened in 2014 I think, making it's destruction extra sad. As of this post, they have only reached about a third of their goal.

This is the GoFundMe for El Sabor Chuchi, a Ecuadorian family-owned restaurant, which was looted and had all it's windows broken. The GoFunMe has only only made a small portion of it's goal, and the owners have small children.

This is the facebook donation group for Ghandi Mahal, a family-run Indian Restaurant that was burnt down. The owner has stated his full support of the protesters, and in fact was helping provide resources for protesters before his building was burned. All of these where obviously not done by actual protesters, but this one especially since the building was used as a space to support protesters. The owner is a very wonderful person, who pledged his support publically to the protests after his building was burned, still stating it was worth it in the hope of positive change!

Here's the GoFundMe for Emily's Eatery, it is a small breakfast diner owned by a family of Italian immigrants. It is a lovley place, honestly, and is not meeting it's donation goal, unfortunatley.

Here's the GoFundMe for Lloy'd Pharmacy, it was a beautiful, independently owned pharmacy in an old historical building and was considered real important to people here in MN, and was burnt down almost completely! It has thankfully reached most of it's goal, but still consider dropping a donation if you can, it's sort of a cultural loss as well as an being an independent store.

Here's the GoFundMe for Midori's Floating World Cafe, it is a cafe owned by a family of Japanese immigrants, and they have shown their full support of the protesters! Unfortunately the store has suffered vandalism and looting.

Here's the GoFundMe for Town Talk Diner. It is a home-owned diner that got looted and completely smashed up and destroyed with vandalism. The owner was actually participating in protests elsewhere when it was destroyed.

OTHER

Here's the donation link for a program called "We Love Lakestreet". All the money is going 100% to community efforts to clean up and repair small businesses on Lake Street, which is in Minneapolis.

Here is the GoFundMe set up by a newfound group called MN teens, which is a community-led group of St Paul and Minneapolis families who plan to split all funds between small businesses in their areas

Also check out the website for Moon Palace Books. It's is a small cafe/bookstore that is owned by LGBT people and considered an LGBT space. They have been using their space to help protesters, and while they haven't got much vandalism, if you plan on buying a book online, consider purchasing from their website to thank them for their support! It is on a block of small buisnesses, most of which are minority owned, a lot of which have not been spared as much as Moon Palace has, and I'd like to think Moon Palace would help the other businesses out, since I can't find donation sources for any right now.

[arcticdementor]

Part III of my series about the changing face of L.A. Click for Parts I and II.

I ended Part II with a look at how L.A. County’s Hispanics are habitual nonvoters. Let’s pick up seamlessly from there, in Compton. Compton used to be so black (over 85%) that at my high school we had a litany of “Compton so black” jokes.

…

Today, the birthplace of “gangsta rap” be not black at all. At last count (prior to the 2020 census), it was 68% Hispanic and 27% black, and I’d bet my house that the new figures will show that the Hispanic number has risen beyond 70% and the black has dropped below 25%.

Compton so Mexican its city hall’s a Home Depot parking lot.

Now dig this: In a city that’s roughly one-quarter black and almost three-quarters Mexican, of the eight elected officials (mayor, city attorney, city clerk, treasurer, and four councilpeople), only one is Hispanic. All the rest are black. And it gets better. That one Hispanic councilman won his election by just one vote, and our Soros-backed DA is prosecuting the guy for fabricating the one vote that put him over the top. Turns out the bean only ran because a black guy who’d lost his primary made a deal with him to run in his stead in exchange for giving the failed black candidate a lucrative city commissioner position if he won, and together they faked the winning vote.

Can you wrap your brain around that? The city is 70% Hispanic, and the only Hispanic council member, who only ran because a black dude made him, won by just one vote, and that vote had to be faked.

Get my point now about Hispanics not voting?

I mean, imagine a city that’s 70% black, but only one out of eight city officials is black. And then the county DA tries to nullify the vote that got that one black elected. There’d be riots! Neighborhoods would be burned to ash. Don Lemon would be screaming about “equity,” and the Biden Justice Department would be investigating the DA.

But Mexicans don’t care. They’re fine with letting the black minority pretend to be da Emperor Jones. That’s how little participatory democracy matters to them. And Dems have no desire to “enfranchise” Compton Mexicans because blacks are their most reliable and manipulatable minions. Never trade a slave for an independent contractor. Plus, as I discussed last week, when Mexicans do vote, it’s all over the map. As Newsweek contributor Richard Hanania pointed out regarding polls that show California Hispanics divided 50/50 on the Newsom recall (blacks are 65/35 against it), “I feel like it’s fun living in a state with many Mexicans because you get a wildcard aspect to politics. Keeps things exciting.”

…

So what we know is that Mexi voting ambivalence is resilient. Would it be equally resilient to rightist coercion? Who knows; no rightists out here are testing the waters. The Hispanic rejection of affirmative action was due in large part to a general dislike of blacks. And in February when the black- and Jew-run L.A. school board defunded all campus police and redirected the $25 million LAUSD security budget to a program to fund the education of only black students, the discontent among L.A. Hispanics was palpable. Blacks make up barely 8% of LAUSD students (Hispanics comprise over 70%). Hispanic Twitter exploded with fury over the “black-only” payday coming at the expense of campus security, and the L.A. Times was forced to admit that Hispanic support for campus cops was massive, especially compared with support from non-Hispanic whites (a whopping 67% to 54%).

So did our local “Republicans” try to make hay out of that? Of course not, because to do so would risk offending blacks, and the GOP establishment has sworn a blood oath that it shall never allow itself any forward motion that might jeopardize its (zero) chance of “winning the black vote.”

There could literally be one black man left in L.A., and the GOP would sacrifice everything for his favor.

…

So, our Mexicans are untested, and our rapidly decreasing blacks, our gradually increasing Asians, and our moneyed and influential secular Jews are a lost cause. What about our non-Jewish non-Hispanic whites?

Ay yi yi, they’re the woist of all. The leftist ones represent the bottom of the barrel of self-hating “please genocide me before I enslave again,” “I hope my son goes tranny so that my foul DNA might dead-end with my progeny’s amputated penis” wastes of space. The mostly non-Jewish white upscale deep-blue city of Manhattan Beach, for example, is filled with self-flagellating WASPs who spend their time trying to make their safe city less safe by “giving land back” to blacks who were supposedly racisted out of town in the 1920s.

And now Manhattan Beach is regularly visited by black criminals, from serial rapists to boardwalk thieves to a home-invasion attempted murder just a week ago. I’m sure the guilt-ridden Robin DiAngelos of Manhattan Beach excuse these crimes as justified reparations owed to noble negroes.

…

Worse still, our “rightist” whites—those who choose to be activists—are just plain batshit crazy. Our MAGAs are violent, self-destructive, foolish, and dim-witted (I’ve covered this before, and I’ll be revisiting it next week in a column that’ll post on the eve of the gubernatorial recall).

…

In largely red Beverly Hills (and surrounding Westside areas), the Persian, Israeli, and Orthodox Jews, who are not suicidal, are holding the line against the violent crime and property crime that still disproportionately come from blacks (ironically, as the county’s black community shrinks, the thugs are forced to venture beyond their comfort zone in search of victims, rather like how bears become more bold as their natural habitat shrinks). But what of the areas that are largely Hispanic? Well, our Hispanics (as the Times pointed out) have a more positive view of police than our whites. That’s something often overlooked by those who claim to study criminality in racial or ethnic groups. It’s never just about criminality; it’s also about acceptance of policing. Whites who dismantle the criminal justice apparatus are as much to blame for rampant criminality as low-IQ thugs. Portland is an example of how poisonous such whites can be; violent crime in that city isn’t the result of a huge population of blacks but a huge population of self-hating anti-cop whites.

…

Our Hispanics occupy a middle ground: between black and white on the criminality scale (not as high as the former, not as low as the latter), but better than both groups on acceptance of policing. Half of L.A.’s cops and sheriff’s deputies are Hispanic, and our sheriff, Alex Villanueva—an unapologetic kick-ass crime fighter—survived the George Floyd purge last summer because his fellow Hispanics backed him against the blacks and whites who sought his ouster.

A county can weather criminality if it allows rigorous enforcement. L.A. had a lower murder rate than it does today back when there were more blacks but also more enforcement. Now that blacks, leftist whites, and secular Jews have decided that enforcement equals genocide, the last hope for the county lies with the Westside Persian/Israeli/Orthodox Jews and the Eastside beans.

There’s a logic to this, as those groups mingle more than you might think. Be it as nannies, gardeners, construction workers, warehouse personnel, or restaurant staff, the Westside is where many Mexicans go to work every day.

As one of those Westside Jews (though an outlier, as I’m “red” without being Persian, Israeli, or Orthodox), I would absolutely throw in with the beans as opposed to the leftist whites or the MAGA whites. Both groups, like blacks, have become suicidal. And suicidal people are dangerous.

Yes, Mexis have gangs, and you don’t want to walk down certain Eastside streets at night. Big shit; no one has reason to except those who live there. In the 1970s those areas were worse when they were black.

But Mexicans do the scut work around here, they don’t riot when one of their own is arrested (indeed they arrest their own), and they aren’t dangerously self-destructive.

I’ll take it.

Not that I have a choice; it’s the way it’s gonna be, demographically, whether I like it or not.

But it’s not the worst-case scenario, or even the second-to-worst. And these days that’s good enough.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 2, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

I spent all day writing only to emerge tonight to a flood of news.

Some of it is tragic but seems random: a man apparently drove a car into a barricade near the White House, injuring two Capitol Police officers before hitting the barrier. He got out of the car with a knife, and police officers shot him when he did not respond to their commands. He died. So did one of the Capitol Police officers, an 18-year veteran of the force, Officer William “Billy” Evans. The assailant has been identified as 25-year-old Noah Green of Indiana, and he appears to have feared that the CIA and the FBI were targeting him with mind control.

Other news seems to be about rebuilding the nation from the troubles of the previous administration: President Joe Biden had a 30-40 minute phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which Biden reaffirmed U.S. support for Ukraine’s burgeoning democracy as Russia builds up troops in the region. Former president Trump soured the U.S. relationship with Ukraine when he tried to get Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, to discredit the man he expected—correctly—to be his main rival in the 2020 presidential election, before Trump would release money Ukraine needed to defend itself against Russia.

Also today, the U.S. and Iran agreed to talk again about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal that Trump abandoned, to limit Iran’s program of enriching uranium that could be used for a nuclear weapon. With our abandonment of JCPOA, Iran resumed elements of its enrichment program. Both sides are hoping to make headway on a new deal before Iran’s presidential election in June.

The United States has also lifted sanctions the Trump administration had imposed on the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, after she began an investigation into U.S. forces in Afghanistan for alleged war crimes. The U.S. is not a member of the court, and the Biden administration says it disagrees strongly with the court’s actions but wants to address those concerns through engagement rather than sanctions.

In a new indictment yesterday, prosecutors revealed that the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, his deputy, and three members of the far-right group who acted as guards for Trump loyalist Roger Stone exchanged 19 phone calls over three hours during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The indictment indicates that federal officials have a very clear timeline of the events of that day.

The trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, continues. Today Lt. Richard Zimmerman, the head of the Minneapolis police department’s homicide division, testified that kneeling on Floyd’s neck while he was handcuffed, as Chavin did, was “totally unnecessary,” and that the officers should “absolutely” have stopped restraining Floyd once he was in handcuffs, as that position on its own makes it hard to breathe.

And then there are the ways in which the country appears to be roaring back from the low point of the past year. Today U.S. healthcare professionals put almost 4 million shots into arms, bringing our daily average for the past week to almost 3 million. Nearly 40% of all adults in the U.S. have had at least one dose of the vaccine. And yet, coronavirus infections are rising again, spurred by new, highly contagious variants of the virus into areas where safety precautions have been relaxed. The seven-day average of new cases is more than 62,000 cases a day, with just below 900 deaths a day.

The Labor Department today said that the U.S. added 916,000 jobs in March, the best job growth since last August, dropping the unemployment rate to 6%. This is excellent news, but we still have 8.4 million fewer jobs than we had in February 2020, before the pandemic.

And then there is Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is at the center of a scandal which includes pretty much everything: women, girls, state lines, drugs, cash, fake IDs, and so on. Where it will all end up is entirely unclear, but it is notable that the Fox News Channel, where Gaetz has been a regular, made a point of stating that it has “no interest” in hiring Gaetz. Only Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have spoken out to defend Gaetz, and both of them have troubles in their own backgrounds.

But the lasting story today is the one that will hang over everything until it is resolved: the attempt of Republican legislators in 43 states to suppress voting with what are now 361 voter suppression bills across the country.

Today Major League Baseball announced it was pulling the 2021 All-Star Game and the MLB draft from Georgia in response to the state’s new voter suppression law, passed last week. The announcement drew fury from Republican officials.

They attacked MLB’s move by as a product of “cancel culture and woke political activists.” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston released a statement blaming “this attack on our state” on President Biden and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and insisting that the bill in fact expands, rather than contracts, the right to vote. Ralston said that “Stacey Abrams’ leftist lies have stolen the All-Star Game from Georgia…. But Georgia will not be bullied by socialists and their sympathizers.”

Republican politicians also piled on at the national level. Representative Buddy Carter (R-GA) tweeted that MLB was “[t]otally caving to the lies of the Left” and called for a baseball boycott. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) called it “a cowardly boycott based on a lie.” Then Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) called for Congress to retaliate against MLB with a law to remove MLB’s antitrust exception. The former president urged his supporters to “boycott baseball” and the companies that do not support Georgia’s new voter suppression bill.

But journalists Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein of the New York Times today reviewed the new 98-page Georgia voting law and had one primary takeaway: “The Republican legislature and governor have made a breathtaking assertion of partisan power in elections, making absentee voting harder and creating restrictions and complications in the wake of narrow losses to Democrats.” Sixteen key provisions hamper the right to vote, especially in the urban and suburban counties that vote Democratic, or take power away from state and local election officials—like the secretary of state, who refused to throw the election to Trump in 2020—and give it to partisan legislators.

If it’s true that the Georgia law is no big deal, Democracy Docket founder and election law defender Marc Elias asked, “why are three separate Republican Party Committees spending money intervening in court to defend it—claiming that if the law is struck down it will disadvantage the [Republicans] in elections?”

MLB’s decision was actually not prompted by Stacey Abrams, who rejected calls for a boycott and urged companies not to leave the state but to stay and fight for voting rights. She tweeted that she was “disappointed” that MLB would move the All-Star Game “but proud of their stance on voting rights.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner, who presided over the House during the Republican wave of 2010, published a preview of his forthcoming book that makes some sense of the Republican attempt to divert attention to Abrams. He says that the rise of the internet meant that by 2010, Republican lawmakers were taking their orders from internet media websites and the Fox News Channel, their only aim to keep viewers engaged and cash flowing.

The Republican focus on media, rather than policy, has mushroomed until lawmakers are now reduced to talking about Dr. Seuss and the Potato Head clan rather than answering the needs of voters, with no policy besides “owning the libs.”

And now they are trying to pin the decisions of MLB on the “socialist” Stacey Abrams, a voting-rights advocate, rather than on the Georgia Republican legislature’s open attempt to undermine democracy.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[reading-writing-revolution]

September 2, 2020 (Wednesday)

As I wade through the flood of news today, all of it trying to tilt the playing field toward Trump in the upcoming election, it strikes me there is an elephant in the room that we really need to identify: why is Trump so hell-bent on reelection? He has made it clear he doesn’t particularly like the job. He has no real goals for a second term. He feels victimized by the media and his opponents. He prefers Florida to Washington, D.C., and he really likes to golf. He claims to be wealthy enough to do whatever he wants. So why on earth is he apparently determined to bend our democracy to the point of breaking in order to win reelection to a job he doesn’t seem to want to do?

According to today’s news, Trump's acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, recently buried the release of a bulletin from the Intelligence Community warning that Russians were trying to undermine Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by saying he is deteriorating mentally. The bulletin was produced for federal, state, and local law enforcement, but DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis stopped the distribution of the bulletin and referred it to Wolf. It disappeared. Congress will not be able to ask about what happened because on Saturday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced it would no longer brief Congress in person on election security.

A DHS spokesperson said the bulletin had been pulled because it had not met the agency’s standards, but analysts who produced it said they had determined with “high confidence” that the disinformation effort was taking place. Trump, of course, has tried repeatedly to establish the idea that Biden, who stutters, is slipping mentally.

Although the administration tried to bury this intelligence committee report about actual Russian interference in the election, today Attorney General William Barr told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer a fake story. He said that hostile foreign powers could send thousands of mail-in ballots to this year’s election, creating massive voter fraud. When pressed, Barr admitted there was no evidence for such a claim. The U.S. Intelligence Community has no evidence that foreign countries are trying to manipulate mail-in ballots.

Trump is also continuing his attacks on mail-in votes, insisting they will usher in voter fraud despite their widespread previous use that showed no evidence of fraud, and despite the fact that the president himself votes by mail. Today, in North Carolina, he urged people to vote twice in the November election, once by mail and once in person, to test the validity of the election. Voting twice is illegal under federal law. Under North Carolina state law, it is also illegal to induce someone to vote twice.

On Monday, we learned that Barr has recently replaced the head of the Office of Law and Policy, a Justice Department office that oversees the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities. Barr has removed Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a 23-year career public servant, and replaced him with 36-year-old Kellen Dwyer, a prosecutor who made headlines two years ago when he accidentally revealed that the U.S. government had indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The timing of this replacement, just before the election, might reflect Barr's planned release of a report of his own on the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Barr has dispatched his own investigator to counter the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Senate established that the investigation was legitimate, and that Russia did, in fact, intervene in the 2016 election to bolster Trump.

Remember, that while world leaders are condemning Russia for the recent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Trump has still not commented on it. Neither has he addressed the story that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to kill U.S. and allied soldiers in Afghanistan, nor the growing Russian aggression toward U.S. troops in Syria.

There is yet another possible attempt to skew the election on the horizon. Led by Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), federal health officials have told states to get ready to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by November. Vaccine-makers say this timing is impossible, and that they will not know by then if their vaccines, which are currently in development, are safe and effective. The chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Stephen Hahn, insists that the agency won’t approve a vaccine simply to help Trump get reelected, but the FDA’s recent authorization of emergency use of convalescent plasma despite concerns about its effectiveness has worried public health experts. In any case, Redfield’s letter suggests the CDC might authorize a vaccine itself through its emergency powers.

Trump is also pushing hard on the idea that Democrats have created a crisis of violence in the country and he is the one advocating “Law & Order,” as he keeps tweeting.

On CNN today, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley blamed Democrats for the shooting a week ago in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that took two lives and wounded a third person. Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly crossed state lines with an AR-15-style gun that was illegally in his possession and, after scuffling with some people, opened fire. Gidley insisted that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. He blamed Democrats for restraining the police, leading citizens to have to step in. “If you don’t allow police to do their job then the American people have to defend themselves in some way.” While Gidley said he was not defending vigilantes, it sure sounded like he was inciting violence. He noted that “we have a Second Amendment in this country” and warned that Democrats were stripping “cops” of their ability to protect us, leaving American families “in grave danger.”

Of course, protests against police have been driven not by a general disregard for law enforcement, but rather by such horrors as the murder of George Floyd by Milwaukee police officer Derek Chauvin, who casually knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died; the murder of Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky, shot in her bed by police looking for her ex-boyfriend; and, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times in the back as he reached for his car door. Leading Democrats, including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, have called not for getting rid of police departments, but rather for addressing what appears to be deadly racism within some of them. Biden has actually called for increasing funding to help law enforcement officers handle functions outside the normal expectations of a police force.

The suggestion that Democrats are responsible for a young man’s deadly decision to carry a friend’s weapon to a city in another state is a campaign ploy, and today the president made another such ploy when he signed a memo that sets out to restrict federal money from going to what the White House calls “anarchist jurisdictions.” It orders the Office of Management and Budget to examine what federal funding goes to cities where Trump insists—despite their adamant denials—that Democrats want to “defund” police. The memo leaves Trump loyalist Attorney General William Barr in charge of determining which cities fall into this category according to “any… factors the Attorney General deems appropriate.” The memo does spell out certain parameters. A so-called “anarchist jurisdiction” is defined as one that “disempowers or defunds police departments” or one that “unreasonably refuses to accept offers of law enforcement assistance from the Federal Government.” The memo specifically lists Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and New York City as “anarchist jurisdictions.”

The memo says: “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones…. It is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.” “This is a campaign document coming out of the White House,” said Sam Berger, a former OMB official. “Any actual restriction on funding in court will immediately be sued and almost certainly struck down.”

Trump's effort to convince Americans that he is defending law and order does not appear to be working. In Politico, JR Ross, an expert on Wisconsin Politics, noted that Trump’s fearmongering isn’t working because “after such a tense, violent summer, the protesters might look bad, but Trump, and his law-and-order supporters, don’t look much better.”

According to pollster Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, when asked which candidate would “make you feel more safe or less safe,” 35% of those polled said Trump made them feel more safe, while 50% said less safe. Forty-two percent said Biden made them feel more safe while 40% said he made them feel less safe.

[itsana004]

It's devastating the news of police brutality against black people, which has been over for a long time but the situations heightened and intesified over the past few months, following the murders of several innocent black citizens across America, including

- Ahmud Arbery - killed whilst jogging on 23rd February 2020. He was unarmed. The two perpetrators were finally arrested on 7th of May.

- Breonna Taylor - a 26 year old medical worker who was fatally shot by police on 13th March 2020. It was in the middle of the night and the police entered unnanounced during a 'no-knock' raid

- George Floyd - on 25th May 2020, police responded to a call about counterfeit $20 bill. The man was accused over a fake note. Using excessive force and ignoring Floyd's pleas that he could not breath, the police restrained him and one officer knelt on his neck. He died of asphyxia (a lack of oxygen)

America has a very long and difficult history with race relations. First slavery, then mass incarceration and Black genocide, and now police brutality, what else then?

Police brutality need to stop! It's been notorious for over a century and there has been various movements for it, and I don't want BML (Black Lives Matter) just to be another one and then completely left out in the air, although the community should be proud to know how far the news reached globally. The victims of police brutality just doesn't seem to receive enough justice unless it's broadcasted into online, it shouldn't be like this, this series of injustice needs to stop now and every single victims receiving proper justice!

And I am very dissapointed by the media of US, even at a time like this where we need unity, and togetherness, the media only highlights the protests when there is violence and are not showing the individuals who are wearing masks, taking good precautions, social distancing, finding creative ways to protests and being peaceful!

Black communities and many other peope from all backgrounds are out there showing support, protesting, putting their lives at risk not just from the police injustice but the virus itself, this is the time we are now, this how fucked up 2020 got to. None of the victims of police brutality could have ever imagined that in that day, it would be their last day, protest is a need now, for justice and fairness, for what should the BASIC civil right for a human being, and they need to put their life at risk for it again and again!

I am not a black person and I am not from America, but I am a woman of colour in Britain and I and all the different people from all the backgrounds in different countries need to support the protest, need to join them and raise their voice, for who lost their lives and who is risking it, because black lives matter! And as John Boyega said, it has always mattered and it always will matter!

Here are some of the articles that might give you enough information about the history of racism:

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-milestones

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/01/trump-vicious-dogs-protesters-civil-rights-slavery/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-nightmare/612457/

https://scroll.in/article/963417/the-history-of-police-brutality-in-the-us-goes-back-to-slave-patrols-of-the-1700s

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/02/america-isnt-breaking-it-was-already-broken-and-these-are-just-the-symptoms

https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/31/21276084/tulsa-race-massacre-black-wall-street-protests-george-floyd

https://enfntsterribles.com/how-to-educate-yourself-about-racism-and-white-privilege/

https://time.com/5846732/books-to-read-about-anti-racism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/books/review-walter-johnson-broken-heart-of-america-st-louis.html

Talking and not being racist isn't enough, we need to raise our voices and need more action, there are tons of things we can do (I'll share the links in a min). Here are many suggestions of things you can do: sign to petitions, donate and if you can't donate there are tons of other things you do such as educate others, share resources with them, add more resources into the comment section or reblog, post on social media after it stopped trending, even making drawings and posters, follow #blacklivesmatter hashtag on social media and find resources, diversify your social media so you are surrounded by voices from all backgrounds, to challege racism from the people around you - challenge and educate them!

Sign petitions links:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/petitions/

http://chng.it/LWf8B5JVSt

http://chng.it/F5PrVyPwvb

http://chng.it/5mC5XXsHCD

http://chng.it/ydv69bpj64

http://chng.it/2LSd4v7PG8

http://chng.it/bVyhZrvg95

http://chng.it/LqbrjrymPC

http://chng.it/NFCKbFqx6b

http://chng.it/Mcx7mZ4HpG

http://chng.it/k2MqrYSBxL

Donate:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd

https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unknown&utm_campaign=comms_h4hk+ukblm-fund

https://www.stophateuk.org/donate-to-stop-hate-uk/

https://www.stephenlawrence.org.uk/support-us/donate/

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

If you can’t afford to donate:

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/49442/1/support-black-lives-matter-if-money-is-tight-george-floyd-protest-zoe-amira

[youknowme-iamyou-blog]

Black Lives Murder

When I saw Nancy Pelosi leading these Democrats, pandering to the Black Lives Matter (BLM), wearing African Kente scarfs, kneeling in worship, I almost suffered an aneurysm. It was at that point I had to stop working and write this article.

Democrats will weaponize any incident for votes, preach victimhood, and demonize all police officers for the behavior of a few rouge cops. The more ignorant among us, drink their politically correct kool-aid and kneel to blacks for being white.

I was thinking of another title for this piece: “Dear White People, Stop Apologizing for Being White.” I never owned slaves and I haven’t done anything to suppress or hurt blacks, and I’m sure you haven’t either.

Let’s end this Democrat, BLM and Antifa charade by analyzing race in crime statistics.

Blacks are responsible for committing 90% of the interracial crimes between whites and blacks, despite blacks being only 13.4% of the population.

Table 14 shows that the majority of interracial violence is perpetrated by blacks.

If we start plugging the numbers in we find that blacks committed 547,948 violent crimes against whites. On the hand whites committed 59,777 violent crimes against blacks.

Statistically blacks are responsible for committing 90% of all the interracial crimes between whites and blacks in America.

Violent Crimes in General

We are not finished. We still can tease out another statistic from our table. Blacks are responsible for 22% of all violent crime in America, again only being 13.4% of the population. But that’s not a fair estimate. Most violent crime is being perpetrated by males. So we can use that information and say with a high degree of confidence that roughly 6% of the population, comprising of black males, are responsible for 22% of violent crime in America.

Homicides -Black on White & White on Black

The situation is similar for homicides.

Blacks killed 514 whites in 2018 Whites killed 234 blacks in 2018

Again, despite being only 13.4% of the population blacks are responsible for 69% of interracial homicides between whites and blacks.

Black on Black Homicides

Blacks killing blacks are 11 times greater (2600) than whites killing blacks (234). Yet, if you listen to the Mainstream Media (MSM), BLM and Antifa, whites killing blacks are running rampant in our country. Black children are afraid to return home from school for fear of being shot by a white policeman. What nonsense.

The fact that black on black homicides are 11 times greater than whites killing blacks are not reported because it can not be racially exploited, so it is not reported by the MSM, BLM or Antifa.

If you are white, you are statistically at greater risk for being killed while in police custody than if you’re black.

More whites are killed in police custody than blacks. If you are white you are 1.7 times more likely to be killed in police custody than a black.

Math used for chart in reference section.

George Floyd Riots

No one excuses the abuse of those police officers Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Kueng and Thomas Lane. Who kept George Floyd on the ground while police officer Derek Chauvin leaned on his neck, killing him.

People are allowed to peacefully protest. However, the wrongful death of George Floyd does not give the right for protests to erupted into lawless rioting, looting, the beating and killing of innocent people. This criminal behavior is not for the memory of this man. I’ve seen the videos where BLM dragged people out of their cars and beat them up. What was their crime, being white?

The smiling faces of looters carrying their stolen goods certainly didn’t look to me like they were in mourning for George Floyd.

You are not absolved of your criminal behavior because of your supposedly “outrage” and skin color.

The mainstream media doesn’t portrays George Floyd, for the career criminal he was. I am not condoning the horrible treatment he received from police, and he certainly did not deserve to die in the manner he did. But let’s not eulogize him as a national hero.

The day Floyd was killed, he was high on fentanyl and according the medical examiner recent used methamphetamine. He has used a counterfeit 20.00 dollar bill to purchase goods, which is why the store owner called the police. He did not deserve to die the way he did. The police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with his murder.

George Floyd did five stints in prison:

1998: 10 months in prison for thief with an firearm. 2002: 8 months for cocaine 2004: 10 months for cocaine 2005: 10 months for cocaine 2007: Home invasion. Held a firearm to a pregnant woman’s stomach while accomplices robbed and ransacked the place. He did 5 years for this crime. You can view a more detail account of his arrests here.

I’d venture to say that a non-racist person would look at this incident as a bad cop killing an innocent man.

While those trying to inflame racism, see a white cop killing a black man. The mainstream media, BLM and Antifa are trying to use this incident to paint all cops as racist. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Black Lives Matter only when the black life taken is by a white person.

Soft on Crime Democrats

The soft on crime Democrats allowed the rioting to continue in their cities across the country. Most notably in NYC and Minneapolis. Minneapolis is a city led by Democrats for over 50 years. Their Mayor Jacob Frey, had his police evacuate the Third Precinct station, giving it up to the rioters who burned it to the ground.

If In Trouble, Just Blame Trump, Scream & Shout

To pass the buck on the fail Democrat policies in Minnesota, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison proclaimed the outside agitators in Minneapolis’ riots were “white supremacists” Trump supporters.

This is the same Keith Ellison who in January 2018 tweeted a selfie of himself at a bookstore holding the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” and wrote “I just found the book that strikes fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump”

Sounds more Saul Alinski to me, but the point is, these Democrats are sympathizers and enablers for Antifa and BLM thugs and criminals to riot.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Mayor Rudy Giuliani said it best. While being interviewed on Fox new said, “Don’t Elect progressive Democrats if you want to be safe.”

Democrat Mayors Bill DeBlaiso (D) NYC and and Mayor Jacob Frey (D),Minneapolis allowed the BLM and Antifa thugs to riot, to destroy business and buildings, to assault innocent people in their cities. They are useless and cowardly and should resign.

BLM and Antifa Militarily Commandeer a Section of Seattle

Weak Democratic mayor of Seattle Washington Jenny Durkan, has allowed a six block section of Seattle to be commandeered by domestic terrorists; BLM and Antifa thugs. They have arm guards shaking down businesses for money in their newly formed “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”

Fox News Tucker Carlson had a reporter Dan Springer, in the area, that reported, “Yeah, this is the third night of what can only be described as a complete takeover of a seven-block area of a Seattle neighborhood, and we don’t see a single police officer or city official anywhere,”

He also reported that the Seattle police relinquished control of the area, and I quote, “They did not say how cutting and running makes it safe here.”

Springer also read the BLM and Antifa demands, “abolish the Seattle Police Department and the court system, disarm all cops until they are all fired, and abolish youth jails.”

Another Mainstream Media Blackout

This is happening now and has been going on for days, do you see any of the mainstream media covering this? No. They are too busy reporting on “defunding the police”, and doing their best to make these radical protests and rioting appear reasonable.

Could you imagine if armed Trump supporters took control over seven blocks of Seattle Washington, chased the police out, starting shaking down businesses for money and goods, the MSM would lose their collective minds.

You can read the complete story here along with the radical demands from BLM and Antifa.

15 People Died in the Riots — I Have Questions

The riots are well coordinated and global. Why are there riots outside Minneapolis, Minnesota? How did protests and riots expand into other states? Why are there protests in Europe for an incident that happened in the United States? Who is funding all these protests? Who is organizing these riots? Why were pallets of bricks strategically placed where people would be rioting? There was no construction in the area. Who placed the bricks there? Why isn’t law enforcement looking into this? Who is funding and inciting this violence?

Conclusion

Despite the narrative of the mainstream media, BLM and Antifa, statistically, whites are more likely to be killed by the police than blacks. They take any incident to create a false narrative to promote their agenda.

A few rouge cops are not a reflection on all the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Or a reflection of police in every police department, in every state of the US. Just as white people don’t paint all blacks for the racist rioting animals that burned buildings down, beat up and killed innocent people.

For all the companies, like Amazon, Netflix, Etsy, etc., who are pandering and openly support the BLM movement, you are condoning the rioting and rioters and the damage and destruction they have done. Your pandering support will not buy you protection from thugs, it will not exonerate your companies from being burned down in a riot. The rioters burned down black owned business in black neighborhoods. If they can do that, you haven’t a chance.

To the Democrats pandering to the BLM and Antifa rioting thugs to rent the black vote in this November. Intelligent people see right through you.

Dear White People

Don’t let these race baiting lies and fake “outrage” to condone the criminal actions of thugs to riot. Please study the crime statistics in this article and stop apologizing for being white. You have nothing to be sorry for and no reason to kneel.

Cancel Culture

This article has been deleted from both Medium.Com and HubPages. HubPage declared the article “Hate Speech”.

What these leftist cancel culturists don’t understand is that calling something hate speech doesn’t make it hate speech. You’re only voicing your opinion, that is a biased opinion, and imposing you biased opinion on others.

This is the opposite of free speech it is called censorship.

...

Reference:

Homicide data by race chart — the math

It wouldn’t be accurate to compare total numbers of homicides without taking into effect the size of the populations. For instance, whites have a total homicide of whites killing whites of 2677. Blacks have a total homicide of blacks killing blacks of 2600. It wouldn’t be fair to say blacks kill just as many of their own race as whites, because the populations are not equal. White population is 249 million, and the Black population is 32 million. To put the numbers into proper perspective, we adjust the numbers to the population.

There is 1 white killed by white for every 93,187 of whites. There is 1 black killed by black for every 12,553 blacks. There is 1 white killed by blacks for every 63,449 blacks. There is 1 black killed by whites for every 1,060,075 whites.

To graph this information in a chart, we divide 1 by the population in each of the above instances. So for white on white homicide it is 1/93187 that equals 1.07E-5. For black on black homicide 1/12553 = 7.96E-5. Black on white is 1/63449 = 1.57E-5 and finally white on black 1/1,060,075 = 0.09E-5

[theworldaccordingtotimmycap]

The United States of America is burning.

We are literally living through a text book chapter right now, and it is a very scary one. The entirety of 2020 has been an apocalypse from the threat of WWIII in early January, to a global pandemic which has forced billions of people inside and massively hurt the world economy. Add murder Hornets to the mix and the year has been crazy and we are only half way through it. But that is a mute point now. Racism has unfortunately reared its ugly head again.

With the murder of an other unarmed African American man, George Floyd, by a police officer, we can see all the anger bubbling to the surface. People were locked inside for three months and then this tragedy happened. Of course people are going to protest, of course people are going to riot. We should! The system is broken, the system is rigged, the fucking system has a systemic problem and is built to keep the disenfranchised disenfranchised. The "war on drugs" was literally met to keep anti-war hippies and young black people in jail. The system is designed to keep criminals criminals. The system only works for people like me unfortunately.

But of course it does. Why wouldn't it work for people in power. And that esasterbates the problem. The leads of this country are disconnected from the people. They are disconnected from the issues and will never truly understand what is happening. They can't understand because they are too busy campaigning for their next election or going to fundraisers or doing whatever Congressman and Senators do that isn't their job. And they fund the police for "the protection of the people." But they use the military industrial complex to fund the police. Why do police departments need tanks and automatic weapons? Do they really need to be dressed like soldiers? For our protection? Fuck no. But the money has to go somewhere and it's not going to go to social programs.

Which leads to my main point. Our president is trying to create an authoritarian state. How else do you explain declaring war on protesters? You do not use armed forces to put down riots and protests. This is literally one of the reasons we fought a war in 1776. Like how fucking ignorant of history do you have to be to not see how threatening to kill unarmed civilians for protesting or rioting. The only rulers who've done it were not known for their diplomatic skills, they were known for killing their own people. And that is what fucking scares me.

It scares me that the system will stay broken, it scares me that the president is so far disconnected from reality that he will suspend elections in November, it scares me that martial law was declared in several cities and that corrupt police will use a 7pm curfew as an excuse to kill or arrest someone for the color of their skin. It scares me that the country I live is in chaos right now and I feel like the only way I might have to stop it is to revolt against the government that has supposed to be for me, by me. It is why we have the laws we do, to try and limit the possibility of a dictatorship, to do what our forefathers did and take up arms against our oppressors if need be, and I very much hope it will never come to that.

We need to vote in November for any but the incumbent. We need someone who will actually change the system. But since the best we got is Biden then I guess he'll do for now.

In 2008 when Obama won, I truly thought this nation had started to change. Like "cool, finally someone who'll fucking not be passive when this shit happens, fucking finally the US is going to change." And then the current president rolls back all the progress. "Fuck the environment, fuck the birds, fuck illegals, fuck black lives, fuck anyone who is not a white Christian male." "Making America great again," meant keeping power where it's been since 1784. It meant screwing anyone who disagrees and calling it "fake news." It meant using twitter as a propaganda tool for a war against the disenfranchised, and that it fucked.

The United States of America is burning because we fucked up real bad and allowed a bigoted, Twitter obsessed, 5th grade level reading, sentient carrot into office, and he gets to choose who we send nukes at...

I stand with BLM, I know that I'll never understand what any of you have been through and currently go through on a daily basis, and I'll never know because of who I was born as. But I'll support your right to not be part of the genocide perpetuated by your government.

I am sorry that 200+ years of prejudices has kept you down and I will use my privilege to try and fix the broken system.

[nobodyn01]

Viewpoints of EVERYONE on the 2020 riots

Average People: George Floyd was a normal man like you and me, and he was killed by a man that thought he could get away with murder just because he was a member of the law. We all made sure he got what he deserved, and made an example across the nation that we would not simply let go of what happened and to strike fear into anyone else who would think their power would keep them safe from the consequences of their actions!

Police: this is why we can't put our knees on peoples necks anymore. So if you're trying to arrest someone trying to hurt you whatever you do you must make sure they do not get hurt or die as we are mere servents of the people.

Rich People: a poor person tried to cheat an honest business and got what they deserved.

Chinese Government: an American tried to cheat their own government and got what they deserved. Just like what's coming for you Hong Kong! Gonna make you all disappear, won't even be in history books!

American Government: people think they have the power to try and scare us into rewriting some rules but if we pay some people enough we can get them to fight off the other people for us so we can continue living off their taxes moneys.

Statistics: most of the arrested rioters were black and believed that it was their natural born right to steal to survive. As being born in a free market economy where white males are more frequently hired into high paying jobs often thanks to their connections of friends in high places and rich supervisor daddy's giving them cakewalk jobs they didn't work for.

Religions: God sent us a sign in the form of George Floyd to help us see the errors of our ways and to test our faith in the almighty God! We will forever hold him as a martyr for he died for our sins. We look forward to whatever trials God lays down afore us in the future to further fuck us in the ass because we like it just like fucking all of your children in the ass as we ask you for generous donations to the local charities of us!

Refugees still in Mexico: *looks at smoke and fire over border* guess America wasn't all that better.

Canadians:*looks over border at America on fire* those Americans sure do love their Barbeque eh?

Minimum Wage Worker: we don't get paid enough to care who lives or dies, we don't even really care if one of our Coworkers goes missing, he was still a recovering drug addict but he had it coming anyway. Atleast I make just enough to buy my drugs and alcohol.

ANTIFA and Sovereign Citizens: this is why all governments need to fuck off!!!

Actual Racists: our race is obviously superior and there will not be any world Peace until we have killed off all the other races and the world belongs to a race of one color!

All lives matter people: there's no such thing as minorities! what happens to you is your own fault, I follow the laws like a normal law abiding citizen and I am completely satisfied with my life and privileges, all of you are just opportunists trying to take as much advantage of this thing as you can to do whatever you want and put lives in danger! I don't understand why being black makes you so special.

Disney World: no one died within the walls of Disney Land and no one can prove it and so it has nothing to do with us at all.

Celebrities: Remember we are all in this together! *eats diamond encrusted sandwich surrounded by body guards*

Liberals: George Floyd was an average man that wouldn't have needed to use a fake $20 for food if the oppression of school and job systems didn't make him a victim of poverty and student loans are to blame!

Democrats: Welfare Willy got the Billy.

Republicans(old white conservatives): if the police actually did their job to kill off all the useless people living off our taxes the world would be a better place.

Porn Community: we love black people as we work with them everyday and some of our husbands are black and they are very caring when our fathers were not. They can never be racist since they are already black, sometimes they worry about us and don't want us to work with our fellow black co-workers as they are afraid to lose us but I am my own woman and that's why I'm still going on a date with Daquan tonight and smoke all of his weed.

Feminists: we just gotta wait til all the men kill each other off and then we can move in and steal their girlfriends and wives.

Thanos: I used the people to kill off half the people.

NEWS: THERE IS FIRE EVERYWHERE! EVERYONE IS DYING! EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! EVERYONE IS SHAKING THEIR ASSES AT EACHOTHER! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Jesus Like Being: none of this would be happening if you actually took the time to get to know one another and talk about your life problems and came to an understanding how someone can help you or you help yourself. If you feel afraid to talk to others and feel like you can't trust them and use any social anxiety excuse you have why you shouldn't talk to them, think about how that makes them feel, everyone inside tells themselves "they don't want to pay attention to me, fine ignore me" when really they'd like you to say hello too. Learn more about yourself, learn about the others around you, understand your place, take a step back to look at it all and realize being alive in this world is a privilege and it's all on you to make the most of it without hurting others. That being said with what precious time you have left here don't waste it praying or going to church and following dead end beliefs none of it matters in the end. As a human living in this world you can do whatever you want, believe whatever you want to find yourself. just remember it's natural for us to make societies and instead of fighting this nature we'll have to find a way to work around it til we find peace.

[xrprainmaker]

The Significance of Being Insignificant

What is the value of one life? Do you know? Is it measured in how many people's lives we affect while we're alive, is it quantified by how much money we leave to our loved ones when we eventually all at one point or another die? Is it merely the number of loved ones we know or who knows us? Is it measured by how many likes and retweets and shares we get accumulatively on all social media platforms and when we get to the pearly gates of heaven or in some cases the rusted gates of hell going to be just yet another algorithm of the universe held over our head as either a badge of honor or Scarlett letter of failure in which even in the afterlife we will still be either praised or shunned for all the things we've either done wrong or right.. and God or the Devil Themselves will take turns choosing teams in purgatory & just like in middle school we'll either be chosen first with the "cool kids" or be picked last like the outcasts some of us already feel & we'll spend another eternity pondering the effects and affects of our decisions and thoughts and actions until we literally just become dust underneath their nails? These are the questions I ask myself in a world where killing has now become an open sport and done by people that swore an oath to protect our lives and the lives of the ones we love & the ones we don't. But for George Floyd he's life was no more meaningful for those cops that day, than the ants they probably crushed under their boots on the way to go put their knees in his throat and his head. The watched and continued draining the life from his body like a smartphone addict who just watches his or her phone drain to zero battery but is too lazy to get up and plug it into the wall. Did that police officer think he was playing a level in Grand Theft Auto? Did the surrounding policers officers who also complacently just "followed" orders and also held down & pinned him by the legs and arms and allowed this act to be committed without thought or hesitation did they also think they were "doing a good job " or were they just not thinking at all. You see you might be confused right now why I'm talking so much about the "Evil Cops" and why I'm not raving about "defund the police " or talking in a way that I have lost compassion for the cops, instead of just shooting from the hips and calling them Murderers ( which don't worry, I do believe all of them are and should go to jail, as I believe all of them are 100% guilty) . Because let's be clear - to watch and do nothing for 8 minutes straight while somebody begs and pleas " I can't breath", " I can't breath" " I can't breath" and is not putting up a fight or intoxicated or belligerent or on drugs but is just one human being begging for another human being to take notice & show compassion & acknowledge that that person is seen and heard and valued and to watch that for eight whole minutes is almost an eternity of time for those cops to have done the right thing or as Spike Lee would've said in Public Enemy " Dooo Thaaa Right Thang" and they failed, they failed with flying colors. I don't know what they got on their test scores to get into the Police Academy but to get out of it, they went out with a Bang of F's that's for sure. But I digress, the real reason I'm so interested in why NOBODY did ANYTHING even though they were in the middle of the street, broad daylight and with hundreds if not thousands of people walking by and NOT ONE, NOT A SINGLE ONE except One girl who filmed the whole thing and put it up on Youtube - tried to save this man's life or question the cops that were so nonchalantly breaking the law in plain sight, right in front of everyone's nose and the reason why it happened It's because the value of someone's life in Real life - not the after school special you watched growing up or on the multiple motivational videos you can binge-watch on Youtube or "feel good" movies on Netflix where you watch a movie with 1 black actor in it in a cast of 500 white people and pat yourself on the back because you're not a racist. Or because you don't actually call black people the N-word to their face but lowkey wonder what it would feel like if you did. Like would it be laughs and high fives like on the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" or would you get knocked the FUD out like if you were in the ring with Mike Tyson and he's biting off your ear. You see racism never went away or stopped, it just got brushed underneath the rug or the fabric of humanity we like to refer to as the "Human Existence". People like to use the word " I didn't Know" a lot in society - ever notice that - it's like the fewer fuds you give about life or the people around you the more accepted you are. Our world or simulation, whichever way you want to spin it, is built on the combined premise that showing emotion or compassion or crying is something that only "Weak" people do or a sign of weakness. But I call BS, I think that if that's the type of world you want to live in - then DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT, be walking in marches, with your fists up in the air, pretending that you have any type of allegiance with those who have lost their lives from racism or police brutality or any type of abuse for that matter where one party was "Stronger" and abused of the situation on somebody they deemed to be weak either because of gender or skin color or because they grew up on the wrong side of the tracks - Do not think that your 1 white fist in the air publically can magically erase the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of other unknown fists that took that same symbol but in private and in the horizontal position & punched through the walls of the heads or the walls of the ribs of so many other innocent and unsuspecting lives of both young and old, white & black. That so many don't even know about and that, we'll most likely never know about because they did not have the money in their wallets or the special contacts in their phone or special certifications on their walls saying that they were somebody to be respected and thus the fight for their lives and struggle to share the truth will be buried among so many others that " lead quiet lives of desperation" as Thoreau's once said. You see what I'm getting at here is until we stop shaking our hands in frustration and anger and hatred and hostility at this police officer who did this, we will never truly understand what drives a man or men to this point of no return. Where their souls have left their bodies long before they'll ever be declared dead and how they were allowed to not just roam the streets but to rule the streets with a clad iron fist and destroy anything and everything they touched because they themselves, can no longer feel. You see this to me is the even scarier part. I'm not happy that George Floyd is dead or that he had to die this way, but in reality, if those cops hadn't killed him, how they did George Floyd would just be another African American Man that led a quiet life of mediocrity instead and now his face and his name is known all over the world and his legacy that he will leave to his family in some un-ironic, ironic way because of all of this will be of nobility and peace even though he was caught trying to buy things with fake money and that's what led the cops there, to begin with. To me, this just goes to highlight every relevant rule of life of Yin and Yang and that even in the best people there is bad and even in the badest people there is good. To me is this right or is this wrong to say, that's not up to me to decide, but it's the truth and the truth is hard to digest for many because it's not like a placebo, laced in sugar and will slowly rot your teeth and your brain. It's like a shot of Tequila either your system can handle it or it can't but either way, you'll only find out once you try. Try to see things from different angles, try to listen to a different perspective and try to understand, that no one is born 100% evil, I believe that evilness is learned and that even though the absolute last human beings on the face of the earth that you or many others would deem worthy or deserving of compassion right now or a voice or somebody to listen to them, I would say, it's that cop/cops that killed him. Why? Because as heinous as it is what they did, is that I also envision those same cops as young kids, running and playing and laughing and waiting for the weekend to play "Cops and Robbers" and how do you go from that level of innocence to this? Was it a gradual chipping away at their souls like water drop Chinese societal torture device, or did something cataclysmic in their youth or adult years happen like their father or uncle showed them how to hunt a deer when they were just 8 or or or... You see to me " an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" or in this case and many, many, many other unsolved cases- it's worth a literal pound of flesh and until we as humans and society start truly asking these hard questions, of ourselves and all other people who make up this world, we're just fooling ourselves into believing change is happening or that #BlackLivesMatter - because black lives won't matter until #ALLLivesMatter - including the lives of these horrible - soulless police. Rest In Power Mr. George Floyd

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G_GyEL-R_Q8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> N.B - I've never met you but I can tell you your life even after you're gone has and will continue sending Ripples throughout the world. Martin Luther King Stood Up To Fight Bigotry - Rosa Parks sat down to fight against segregation and I'm sorry you had to roll over and die to fight against racism 15 - 20 years later - You deserved better and so does this world & hopefully one day in the future it will be considered "cool" to have & heart and show compassion - but the now jaded adult inside of me says " don't hold your breath"

[hiredassault]

Insp::   CAREER. 

Age 1-5:   Floyd Lawton is born and brought up in a rich family. His father George Lawton is a real estate businessman across the country && his mother Genevieve Pitt belongs to a family of wealthy bankers. Floyd has a brother named Edward Lawton whom he adored more than himself && idolizes him. The family even owns their own railway platform along with a town including the local police station. 

Age 5-7:  Floyd excels in school like Edward (but Ed is better) at both academics and sports. The kid loves the idle sports (the rich kind of sports) tennis, horse riding or skeet shooting. The house butler, Bartholomew, maintains their daily schedules. 

Age 7:  Floyd wins 11 trophies for marksmanship already and the boy is climbing the ladder in shooting sport. As too is Edward. 

Age 8-9: They start receiving abuses from their drunk father on a daily basis, even the elder man abuses their mother. Hatred for George begins.

Age 10: Hunting is another idle sport, they are now being dragged into woods by George to kill animals and he abuses them if failure occurs. After several attempts, Edward and Floyd murders an innocent deer for the first time in their life.

Age 11: The hunting scares Edward but encourages Floyd to walk into darkness. Thoughts of shooting George crosses but they doesn’t do anything. The hunting and abuses continue.

Age 12: Their mother Genevieve masters a plan of eliminating her husband, she brainwashes Edward to shoot the rifle at their father’s chest but Floyd stops him from killing George. Their father soon figures && starts beating Edward and despite all the protests angry little Floyd picks up the rifle and runs outside to climb up the tree. The aim was perfect. The crosshair targets George. Time to eliminate the evil man. He pulls the trigger but the branch breaks due to overloading and bullet misses the evil man. Edward Lawton is spot dead as the bullet finds his head. Floyd is devastated and broken into pieces. He kills his own brother whom he loved most. Genevieve fails too. 

Age 13: The murder of Edward is covered up by George, because they have tremendous influences across the town. Floyd is given a two month break from school && is severely damaged (emotionally) from Edward’s death.

Age 14-17: Normal school life, normal sport activities continue while Floyd promises that he will never miss a shot in his life. 

Age 18-19: The U.S. Marine Corps. initiates an internship program from where Floyd is selected for a month training. Immediate absorb to the Sniper Division happens when the authority recognizes that the boy has broken the record of shooting (over 4000 meters for the under 20s). 

Age 20: Returns to town in order to complete school. Trains under the professional assassin David Cain, who teaches him his marksmanship abilities.   

Age 21-23: Hears about the vigilante named Batman catching robbers and stopping crime. Floyd becomes enthusiastic to become a vigilante and selects a costume (which looks like the old west movies with a zorro mask) && names himself as ‘Dead-Shot ’. Just like Batsignal, he installs Bullseye shaped/Deadshot signal to his town and listens to the police radio to stop criminals. Catching criminals is extremely easy for the man since he uses his revolver to aim and shoot (only to disarm the criminal). But Floyd kills some because he considers of making a permanent solution because what Batman does is temporary && they come back again. Starts working with Commissioner Gordon when Batman is absent.

Age 24: Floyd gets addicted into this job && takes money from mafia rivals to eliminate opponents in their territory. He even sets up criminals where he disarms them to show citizens how successful he is than Batman. Batman has competition now. Realizes Dead-Shot is doing these jobs in exchange of money and killing criminals who could be changed into the path of light since their families depend on their work. Batman does a trick on Dead-Shot’s revolver when he broke into his manor and when they encountered each other Dead-Shot fired a perfect shot. Batman would be dead but the bullet misses him. After years, Dead-Shot misses && it shatters the marksman’s ego. He is taken into prison.

Age 25: His lawyer apparently saves him and Floyd Lawton was out. He thought of changing by marrying Susan. Floyd and Susan has a son then, names the baby after his brother Edward:  Eddie. But unfortunate events led him to prison again. Events like murdering criminals again. His lawyer fails to save him now. 

Age 26: While in prison, an unknown person visits Lawton and introduces himself as Colonel Rick Flag Jr. and offers him freedom in exchange of suicide missions. Lawton accepts promptly. Floyd Lawton is introduced into the Task Force Team A and to their Commander Amanda Waller. A highly upgraded suit with a red scope attached in the electronic mask is given. Meets Count Vertigo, Bronze Tiger and Captain Boomerang. Also other members. Floyd is officially a Government asset.

Age 27-29: Several Missions are finished and still going on. Gets admitted to Belle Reeve Prison along with the Task Force and receives the news that his son Eddie being kidnapped. During debriefing of a mission by Waller, Lawton leaves the room not caring whether she would detonate the neck bomb or not. She did not (perhaps she knew why he was leaving). Tracks down the kidnappers and ultimately reaches Eddie but the five year little kid is found sexually assaulted and murdered. How more can he break down? 

Age 30: Angry Floyd turns rogue. Killing every one who stands in his way or anyone linked with his son’s murder. Nothing can stop him. Dead-Shot is more scarier than Batman now. Every criminal, every thug in dark alleys && even dirty cops were frightened. Is this a revenge? Is this avenging? Dead-Shot is killing and killing and killing to find the murderer. Eventually found the murderer and before even thinking shoots the murderer planting thousands of bullet holes. The murderer is dead but with more self investigation Floyd realizes that it was his mother  Genevieve Pitt who is the master-planner of kidnapping her grandson. Time to kill his own mother. But Floyd’s therapist (assigned by Waller; Mernie Herrs) saves Pitt’s life by informing Floyd that this is what his mother wanted. To be killed by him && frame him---- eventually Floyd shoots but letting his mother suffer from the bullet wound to what she has done to her own grandson. Floyd escapes before cops arrive.

Age 31: Susan commits suicide.

Age 32: Floyd Lawton has nothing to live for. Suicidal tendencies comes into his mind. He even shot himself but finds himself to be alive as the bullet missed his heart. After several resurrections, he decides to stay with the Suicide Squad hoping he would die suddenly. (A peculiar relation is developed between Harley Quinn and him.)

Age 33: Standing at the graveyard thinking about his son Eddie one day, his lawyer appears with documents informing the death of George and Genevieve Lawton && it is Floyd’s responsibility regarding all the fortunes. Inside Lawton manor, as he is reading legal documents he finds a letter from a woman named Michelle Torres (whom he remembers---- from a random strip club 7 or 8 years ago) informing George that he has a granddaughter named Zoe.  Floyd Lawton was a father of an eight year old girl. Without wasting time he meets them and offers the money (fortune) as protection but gets rejected. Soon the war between Mafia gangs in the Triangle (the neighborhood where Zoe and Michelle lived) is stopped by Dead-Shot when Lawton encountered Green Arrow (again). Arrow promises him to look after the Triangle and Lawton decides to make a fake death so that all the fortune goes to his daughter Zoe and she can then able to go to school.

Age 34: Leaves Suicide Squad and joins a covert operative team called Secret Six. With Catman, Bane, Ragdoll, Scandal, Knockout and Banshee they complete several missions.

Age 35-36: The Secret Six continues and Floyd Lawton looks after his daughter time to time in disguise. 

Age 37:   Sets up a private security organization of his own (mostly military contracting) and travels to other countries (usually war torn) where his employees are deployed. Also works as a professional hitman.

Age 38: Unfortunate events against the Justice League and he is again back to prison where Waller once again recruits him making sure there is no charges against him. The End to Secret Six officially. 

Age 39: In and out of Suicide Squad like a yo-yo. Working as hitman when not in Waller’s radar. 

Age 40: (Current age of the character. Roleplay verses depends on plot. This career post is comic based and a small extension of canon.)

[dispatchesfrom2020]

2020

Week 43: October 19-October 25

19: Trump is beefing with Anthony Fauci, the grandfatherly epidemiologist who has become a media-stay amid coronavirus coverage. As the United States’ leading infectious disease expert, he has become the de-facto voice for public health in America. Fauci drew the president’s ire after he denounced a pro-Trump political ad for misquoting him and using his words out of context to mislead voters into thinking that the president enjoys his support. Trump calls the infectious disease expert “a disaster” on call with campaign staff and reports, and complains: “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him”. And, in voting news, the Supreme court deadlocked over a decisions, ultimately enabling Pennsylvania election officials to extend the deadline for mail-in voting, allowing ballots received up to three days after the election to be counted. As mail deliveries lag under the leadership of the Trump loyalist he appointed to head up the postal service, many worry that Republicans are effectively trying to sabotage mail-in-ballots. This is a decision that will come back time and again during Trump’s prolonged ‘stop the steal’ campaign.

An October protest in Lagos, Nigeria - Temilade Adelaja/Reuters

20: Nigerians are calling for the end of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a branch of the national police notorious for brutalizing residents. Their long list of alleged abuses include conducting illegal searches, unlawful detention, brutally beatings, torturing detainees using stress positions, raping women, and committing extralegal executions. They often target young Nigerians with luxury products like exotic cars and iPhones and extort them for money or steal their belongings. Though the country has seen periodic protests agains SARS since 2016, momentum was sparked again in October by a brutal video of police shooting a young motorist before driving off in his vehicle. Police claimed the video is faked and arrest the man who posted it to twitter - which only further incised their opponents. On Tuesday, though, violence escalates as the Nigerian army opens fire on a group of peaceful protesters gathered at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos. At least 12 people are killed - witnesses claim the military blocked ambulances from attending to the wounded or removing the bodies of the dead. DJ Switch, a popular figure in the Nigeria’s local music scene, livestreams the shootings. Her videos counter the government’s denial of the event, and eventually force the military to acknowledge the massacre. By November, she will have fled the country after threats on her life, and will be successfully granted asylum in Canada.

Matt Slocum/AP

21: Obama joins the Biden campaign, delivering a blistering rebuke of the sitting President. Pointing to Trump’s fumbled handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Obama says: “Donald Trump isn't suddenly going to protect all of us. He can't even take the basic steps to protect himself.” In Oklahoma, archaeologists searching for graves of the victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre uncover a mass burial containing ten sets of remains. And, in gay news, Pope Francis gives an interview in which he vocalizes support for same-sex civil unions and backs legal protections for homosexual couples. 

22: A Polish tribunal rules that abortion in the case of fetal defects is unconstitutional. When the ban comes into place, terminations will be restricted solely to instances of rape or incest, or where carrying the pregnancy to term will gravely endanger the life of the expectant mother. Poland has been slowly introducing more and more restrictions since the 1990s.  And it’s the night of the second presidential debate. It’s a more subdued and even-keeled event than the previous match-up. Trump’s answer to his plan to combat coronavirus is more self-congratulatory boasting about closing the borders with China and wishful thinking about the not-yet-developed vaccines. He claims the virus will “go away” and argues that the United States is “rounding the turn”. They’re not. Numbers are growing rapidly - and everywhere.

In San Francisco, motorists partake in a drive-in watch party to view the second and final Presidential debate - Jim Wilson/The New York Times

23: The President of Poland becomes the world’s latest leader to test positive for the coronavirus. In the United States a record-setting 85,000 new cases are reported and a study, published in Nature Magazine indicates that over 500,000 people could die of the virus in the United States by March 2021 [February 2021 hindsight says: yep]. The study projects that if just 85% of the population participated in mask-wearing, nearly 100,000 deaths could be prevented [February 2021 hindsight says: they wont]. And the FBI release a sworn affadavit by a member of the right-wing “Boogaloo Bois” militia stating that right-wing extremists infiltrated the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis in June. Posing as Black Lives Matter protesters, 26-year-old Ivan Hunter shot at police, looted the station, and helped set it on fire.

Department of Agriculture workers wear thick protective suits while they dismantle a Giant Asian Hornet nest containing approximately 500 live samples - Elaine Thompson/AP

24: You know what’s back? Murder hornets. Officials near Blaine, Washington announce they have successfully removed a nest of Giant Asian hornets - the first of its kind located in the United States. A handful of worker hornets and queens have been spotted in the region throughout 2020, although scientists had been unable to pin-point the hive’s location until earlier this week. Scientists predict there are likely other colonies still active in the Pacific Northwest. The recently-released Borat sequel has stirred up controversy after it dupes Giuliani into unwittingly appearing in its film by posing as a news crew. The young actress playing Borat teenaged daughter pretends to be a reporter and brings Giuliani to her hotel room for an interview. The former mayor of New York and present-day personal lawyer to the President, gets drunk and flirty. Giuliani untucks his shirt, and appears to touch himself through his trousers. If Sasha Baron Cohen and an unknown Bulgarian actress can pull one over on ol’ Rudy, many wonder what highly-trained foreign operatives could get...

25: Pope Francis names thirteen new cardinals... including the United States’ first Black cardinal, 72-year-old Wilton Gregory. The State Department reports that is has halted diversity and inclusion training programs following an executive order from the president calling such programs “divisive” and “fundamentally racist and sexist”.

[xtruss]

Lukashenko Stands in the Way of Fire Sale of Belarusian Industries

The last country in Europe where 80 percent of its industries are publicly owned

— Israel Shamir | Enti-Empire.Com | Russia Insider | The Unz Review

It’s not over yet, but can Lukashenko survive the storm? Ever since the presidential elections of 8/9/2020, Belarus has experienced fitful waves of protests. The protesters claim the elections were rigged, just as the pussy-hat ladies accused Trump in 2016. The protests are presented to the world through the magnifying glass of the global fake news machine. There are dozens of media channels, all elaborating on the theme of election rigging and protest suppression.

But Belarusian suppression is not something to write home about. The crowds aren’t big, for Belarusians are quite civil and obedient folk, they even wait for the green light (a rare quality in the East). Despite provocateurs and Soros-trained revolutionaries, there are few wounded, much less than your average confrontation between globalist protesters and local police, whether they be called Gilets Jaunes or Black Lives Matter.

One protester tried to throw a hand grenade into police ranks; by his own miscalculation the grenade exploded in his hand and he died of his wounds. This incident is already being presented by the mass media as “mass murder” and even “genocide”. EU ambassadors came to place flowers at the place of his martyrdom. This latest media hero is being turned into the new George Floyd, an apt comparison because the unfortunate Belarusian Bomber also had a rich criminal record. They are now producing a BLM sticker where the B is for Belarus. Should this be called “cultural misappropriation” or is this a “violation of terms of use”? Youtube would give it an automatic copyright strike.

The presidents of Poland and Lithuania offered their mediation implying that Lukashenko should step down. It is hardly a tempting offer. In 2014, the then Ukrainian president accepted the European offer of mediation and in a few days he was forced to flee to Russia.

Lukashenko is made of sterner stuff; his policemen succeeded in putting the protests down, and the protests weren’t that strong anyway. It is still too early to bet whether the colour revolution will definitely fail or win. What is the cause of the protests, beyond complaints that life is unfair? Who is financing and organizing these demonstrations?

Well-endowed Belarus has a few suitors. The NATO enemies of Russia want to move their tanks within shooting range of Smolensk; Poland wants to regain its old dependency (Belarus was under the Poles for hundreds of years). Russia wants to swallow Belarus, and Papa Lukashenko is too tough for them to chew.

An additional hazard to Belarus sovereignty is the murky and mighty body that has organized the worldwide over-reaction to coronavirus and forced billions of people into detention. Lukashenko is the hero who reject all demands for lockdown; Belarus remained calm and free in the midst of global hysteria. Belarusians enjoyed football games while the rest of the world ducked and covered. Easter time, Belarus churches remained open and mass was celebrated. On May 9, VE day, Belarusians had their Victory Parade, while even the steely-eyed Putin was forced to cancel. Such disobedience to the global regime had to be punished.

Like Fidel Castro, Papa Lukashenko has ruled his country for generations now. He has been re-elected every five years since 1994 when he, the youngest politician in Europe, defeated the incumbent Prime Minister in open election. Even now, at a spritely 65, his stature remains uneclipsed. His results in Minsk, the capital city, were over 60%; his main competitor received 15%, while for the whole country he received about 80% of the vote, an impressive result. Too impressive, his enemies say. In any case, there is no doubt he carried the majority of his countrymen.

Belarus is a mono-ethnic state, with very little diversity; there are no strong political parties, no powerful and independent media, no oligarchs, no super-rich. It is still very Soviet-like, but a very neat, clean, modern, well repaired version (the USSR was quite shabby). Another difference: no party politics. While the Soviets were always ruled by the official Communist party, Lukashenko has no party. He doesn’t like parties because they separate people. He wants people to be united – and it works. There is no significant opposition party. The opposition says, “AGL [Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko] go away, you ruled for too long time, we are tired of you”. A sane citizen will not vote for people who have no agenda beyond power lust. Being tired of a president is not really a good argument.

After the first exit poll, “rigged elections” became the battle cry of the opposition. Like the Clintonites, who could not believe that anybody would vote for Trump, the opposition in Belarus could not imagine why people would vote for this ancient (65 yo) fossil. Indeed such claims are the staple food of modern politics; there is hardly a country on the globe where election results are not disputed. The claims are always that the results were falsified, or the people misled, or the elected president didn’t deserve being elected; or he was voted in by racist rednecks; or Russia swung the polls. The reasons why election results should not be recognised is limited only by the human imagination.

AGL’s latest election victory was officially recognised by countries around the world. He was congratulated by the presidents of China, Russia, Turkey as well as by the Moscow Patriarch Kyril (Belarus Church is an integral part of Russian Orthodox Church). The opposition is trying to stimulate interest in regime change by following Gene Sharp’s textbooks: heat it up with attacks on police, then cool it down with girls dressed in white sharing flowers and posing with those same cops. It is the carrot and the stick. Point and counterpoint. Freedom Fighter and Martyr. The technique has worked successfully in many countries, and probably will be tried this November in the US.

Belarus shows us what “foreign meddling in elections” really looks like. It is not placing a few ads on Facebook. It is training hundreds of young men in the arcane arts of inner-city warfare: how to mix Molotov cocktails; car-ramming 101; cross-border infiltration; how to smuggle cash; recruiting and paying merceneries; how to run a 24-hour crisis centre from abroad; where and how to assault police; how to prepare and run a scripted colour revolution – this is how foreign interference influences Belarus elections.

What do the protesters want beyond the removal of AGL? It turns out they do have an agenda: they want to make it easy to hire and fire workers, to end trade union protection and state labour laws; to end price regulation. These are the usual neoliberal ideas, but here is the most important: they plan to privatise and sell the country’s assets. But here their unified front collapses: the Pro-Western opposition wants to sell Belarus to Western investors, while the Pro-Russian opposition wants it to be sold to the Russian oligarchs. These assets are rich and plentiful. 80 per cent of all industry and agriculture remain in public property, more than in any other European state.

Belarus is the last surviving remnant of the Soviet Union, the last Soviet Socialist republic. The USSR was based on state ownership of the means of production; that is, factories, research, industry and agriculture. In the Russian Federation, these national heirlooms were privatised by Boris Yeltsin and given away to a few oligarchs. Not so in Belarus. Their industry is still publically owned; their farms still belong to local farmer cooperatives and not to globalist agro holdings.

Belarus is still quite wealthy; its industry has been modernised, and so has their agriculture. They produce and export a lot of everything, mainly to neighbouring Russia. Europe has little interest in Belarusian lorries and sausages because they have their own lorries and sausages to sell, but Russia buys them because they prefer them and know they are a good value for the money. Belarus’ dairy, furniture and fashion continue to be popular in Russia.

Belarus inherited two huge refineries, one in Mozyr and another in Novopolotsk, capable of turning raw oil and gas into ready products. Russia produces raw oil and gas, Belarus refines it; they should be able to make a good profit working together. But the Russian oligarchs behind Gazprom weren’t satisfied with their usual take, so they created an intermediary company based in Lithuania; the company “buys” Russian gas and then “sells” it to Belarus. The Belarusian payments are redirected offshore to the oligarchs’ bank accounts. Some of it eventually reaches Russian state coffers, but much goes astray.

Gazprom kept raising the price of oil delivered to Belarus refineries until this ostensible ally was being charged more than the hostile states of Ukraine and Germany. In response, Belarus switched to refining Norwegian and Saudi oil: it was cheaper than Russian oil. Now they refine American oil. Belarus has since decided to cut off Gazprom’s intermediary company, and Belarusian police are now investigating the siphoning-off of Russian state funds to offshore accounts. The Russian oligarchs are very unhappy about all this; they are now bankrolling the Belarus protests and funding a shrill campaign against AGL in Russian media and social networks.

President Putin has a different game in mind. He would like to see Belarus joining Russia as its constituent republic. He does not care much for AGL (who stood up to the corona hysteria even better than himself), but neither does he want to be led by his oligarchs. That’s why he expressed his support during the elections and congratulated AGL with his victory. But Russian media continues to play against Lukashenko, whether it is by the media lords’ demand or because of their desire to echo their Western brethren.

All oligarchs, East and West, would like to destroy the last remnant of the USSR and erase all possibility of learning from it. This is what the elections and the attempted regime change is all about at the bottom line. They are annoyed by the successes of AGL’s Belarus. If you think socialism is not a successful strategy in economics, consider Belarus and think again.

For a time, at least until 2015, the Belarus economy was the fastest growing one in Europe; its GDP grew 10% a year. After the terrible collapse of 1991, Belarus was the first to rebound (by 2002), while Russia lagged behind until 2006. Just look at the evidence: (1) the totally unnecessary destruction of the USSR resulted in a complete economic recovery in just 16 years for partially-privatised Russia; (2) state-owned Belorus was able to bounce back within 12 years; (3) the totally privatized Ukraine was never able to recover. Even now their economy is 65% of what it was in the last Soviet year of 1990.

You can see in the below graph of the Russian (light grey) and Belarus GDP (solid line) between 1990 and 2018, that good old Belarus has managed quite well under AGL. There, salaries grew faster than labour productivity (as opposed to, say, the US or UK where labour productivity grew while salaries stagnated); there was (and is) practically no unemployment in Belarus.

After 2015 Belarus stagnated, and this was closely connected to the stagnating Russian economy, but still they managed fine.

One of Belarus’ secrets of success is that Belarus has practically no corruption. I was told by a friendly Russian businessmen that it is almost impossible to bribe a Belarusian official (as opposed to Russia where officials are legendarily corrupt). They told me that the Belarus KGB (they retained the brand name) is always vigilant, always fighting corruption. They have a transparent banking system, and the average Belarusian citizens’ support of the anti-corruption ethos makes a Belarusian official very, very reluctant to accept a bribe. (It has to be paid into a European bank in another country, and it is not an easy thing to arrange in the present climate).

As a post-Soviet state, Belarus is quite strict. The country is so clean because AGL is known for prowling the streets personally. If he discovers some garbage lying around, he calls out the local mayor and forces him to clean it right away. He has more than a touch of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), the legendary Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. Perhaps AGL will also serve as long as LKY (31 years!), meanwhile he has 26 years under his belt.

Another mark of strictness is a special tax that non-working persons are obliged to pay. It is heir to the Soviet Parasite Tax. A non-working person can be even tried and sentenced. Belarusian socialism is not a haven for welfare abusers.

The average tax in Belarus is 30%, unless one works remotely in the IT industry. Computer-savvy Belarus has 75,000 IT consultants, engineers and technicians who work for companies located in the EU, Russia and the US. If the average salary in Belarus is about $500 per month, the IT specialists earn over $2500 and pay only 7% tax. I suspect that AGL wants to make it cheaper to pay the tax than to evade it. One would think these guys would be happy, but they are not. Many of them joined the protests. They want a more liberal society, and this is natural.

The US wants to bring Lukashenko over to its side; and wily AGL is ready to play along. Now he processes American oil in his refineries. AGL wants to stay friendly with everybody, and his new close friend is China. In Belarus, the men in power say their country will become the Chinese hub in Europe. Belarus is very, very close to Russia, but it is also afraid of being engulfed and devoured by this friendly giant. If the pressure upon AGL keeps increasing he may have to decide to get off the fence and join Russia. The US knows this and tries not to push him too far, but Russians are smart enough to encourage the protests with exactly this goal in mind.

Will Lukashenko liberalise his state? Is it possible at all, without surrendering all their hard-won social achievements? I am not so sure. Perhaps as long as imperialist powers ply their trade there may be no way to create a liberal socialist state. That was the conclusion of Vladimir Lenin: he wrote that the liberal stage would be reached when there are no predators laying in wait. He was quick to smash the Kronstadt revolt.

The workers of Belarus must understand what will happen to them if the rebels achieve victory. Their industries will be sold and dismantled so it can’t compete against the globalists’ preferred vendors, as has already happened in Russia, Poland and Latvia. The terrible example of the Ukraine should keep them out of the revolt. But will it?

Such differences may have to be solved by force, if protesters will not accept the democratic vote. If it is only force that neoliberals will accept, then force it must be. Force may have to decide whether or not Belarusian socialism will survive. After all, colour revolutions are not doomed to succeed – they have failed in many countries. In case of a pro-Western coup, Russia is likely to intervene, as she is permitted by the CSTO treaty. But Russia is not in favour of socialism, in Minsk or elsewhere.

My advice to the US administration is to capitalize on their success in Venezuela. When the US wasn’t happy with Venezuela’s president, Mr Maduro, they didn’t bother with elections but instead they chose (“recognised”) a certain Mr Juan Guaido, a rather junior member of the opposition. They assigned to him the assets of Venezuela, including all the gold the country carelessly kept in the Bank of England; they took over the Venezuelan embassies and gave them to Mr Guaido, and the man gratefully signed a contract promising millions to US-based mercenaries for kidnapping the actual president and enthroning Guaido.

Now the West is dissatisfied with the Belarus presidential elections. The Belarusians stubbornly reconfirmed their president Mr Alexander G Lukashenko (AGL) into his position, and he is himself a stubborn guy who refuses to sell his country’s assets and invite in the NATO tanks. My advice to US leaders is to re-use Mr Guaido; recognise him as the new President of Belarus, and have it done with. Why pretend that sellouts are different because they sell different countries? Guaido has proven his devotion to Uncle Sam; he already has experience at being a “recognised” un-elected president. Long live President Guaido of Belarus!

P.S. Re Beirut. Some people suggest “mini-nukes”. I doubt it, for Israel and the US do not possess the required technology, as I’ve been told by a Russian physicist. Only the USSR had the mini-nuke technology; Russia inherited a few; new ones weren’t manufactured for years.

The problem is that mini-nukes are made of californium and suchlike isotopes, and can be produced only in the course of large-scale military-grade plutonium production as its byproduct. Israel never produced that much plutonium, and the US uses a different process altogether. So I advise taking the “mini-nuke” revelations with a grain of salt.

— Source: The Unz Review

[floridaprelaw-blog]

George Floyd And Police Brutality: No Justice, No Peace

By Matthew Ginsberg, University of South Florida, Class of 2021

June 2, 2020

George Floyd was born and raised in Houston, Texas. He moved to Minneapolis in 2014, at the age of 40, hoping to“find work and start a new life.” said Floyd’s lifelong friend Christopher Harris. Floyd quickly embraced the opportunity to hit the reset button and found a full-time job as a bouncer. “George worked 40+ hour weeks and loved the social interactions every time he went to work.” said Harris. “He was a man of integrity, one with the community, someone I could always depend on.” Harris continued. Like 1 in 4 Americans, Floyd lost his job after the Coronavirus pandemic forced the Minnesota governor to issue a stay-at-home order on March 28th, 2020. But less than two months later, Mr. Floyd went from looking for a job to fighting for his life against four police officers, who failed to honor their duty to protect citizens by any means necessary.  

On Monday, May 25th, an employee at a local grocery store called the police after a suspect allegedly bought $20 worth of groceries with counterfeit money. Floyd, matching the description of the suspect, was approached by four officers who initially claimed that “Mr. Floyd was physically resistant and failed to cooperate.” But video surveillance from a nearby restaurant does not support any indications that Floyd was physically resistant. On the contrary, the footage released shows the officers handcuffing Floyd, who appeared to be suffering from medical distress. After the suspect was given a moment to regroup, the footage shows the four cops throwing Mr. Floyd into a squad car, where they physically ambushed the suspect-turned-victim, before pinning him to the ground outside the car. At no point does the footage show any physical resistance by Mr. Floyd. 

Once Mr. Floyd was pinned to the ground, video footage from a witness at the scene shows Officer Derek Chauvin engaging in abuse of power, jabbing his knee into the victim's neck. After pleading to the officer, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” The officer responded, “What are you on right now?” Mr. Floyd quickly answered, “My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. I can’t move!” After nearly three minutes of Officer Chauvin jabbing his knee into the victim's neck, Mr. Floyd’s nose began bleeding uncontrollably. Nearly 60 seconds thereafter, Floyd lost consciousness. Witnesses surrounding the scene were heard screaming at the officers, “He’s not resisting arrest! Let him go!” But the four officers appeared unfazed by the pleas of desperation, begging for Floyd’s pulse to be checked and life to be saved. For nearly 9 minutes, Officer Chauvin continued jabbing his knee into the victim's neck, even after the EMT’s had arrived. Mr. Floyd, an unarmed suspect of forgery for $20 worth of groceries, lay powerless, at the mercy of four traders, who chose to act violently when a desperate civilian begged for medical assistance.

The phone call between the cashier and operator after the alleged forgery took place reveals Floyd may have been under the influence. When explaining what had occurred, the caller claimed that Floyd had “used fake bills” and “was also drunk.” The caller went on to say that “the suspect proceeded to sit in his car right outside the grocery store and refused to return the items he had stolen. He is not in control of himself.” The operator asked for a physical description of the suspect and let the caller know that “Help is on the way.” In a matter of minutes, a routine situation that was supposed to be handled responsibly by law enforcement escalated into a cold- blooded murder scene. 

Based on the rule of law and assertions made directly in the Constitution, all four cops deserve to be arrested and charged. So far, all four cops have been fired and Derek Chauvin, the officer who jabbed his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes, has been arrested and accused of third-degree murder and manslaughter. Third degree murder and manslaughter can be defined as “the act of killing a person with no previous intent, no initial intent, and no afterthought of hiding the act of murder.” His three accomplices remain free and currently face no legal consequences. 

All four cops involved in Mr. Floyd’s death failed to honor the 5th amendment. The 5th amendment is supposed to guarantee all criminals equal rights of protection from undignified proceedings. The Constitution, which is considered the “supreme law of the land,” outlines the freedoms granted for every American citizen. In the case of Mr. Floyd, the cops failed to abide by the 5th amendment because the amendment clearly states, “no criminal shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law.”Every cop involved deprived the victim of life, without due process of the law, by allowing violent tactics to ensue over an alleged $20 forgery. Failing to act decisively and defend a helpless man struggling to take his final breaths suggests none of the officers called to the scene prioritized the health and well-being of the suspect-turned-victim. As a cop, it is your responsibility to ensure the preservation of life is of utmost priority, prior to detaining suspects. Failure to adhere to the demands of the 5th amendment reinforce the notion that the three cops, who acted as bystanders, are just as responsible for the death of Mr. Floyd as the killer himself.

The three cops that have not been charged deserve to be arrested for committing criminal negligence. Criminal negligence means that “the accused was under a duty of care recognized by the law, such that his or her deliberate act of omission constituted as a breach of duty, falling short of the standard of care a responsible person is obligated to follow.” Based on the footage of Mr. Floyd moments before and during his killing, the three officers that allowed Officer Chauvin to continuously jab his knee into Floyd’s neck neglected their duty to come to the aid of a victim, who was shrieking for help and on the brink of death. Because all cops have a “duty of care recognized by the law,” Mr. Floyd’s death footage shows clear indications that criminal negligence was committed by the three bystander officers, who protected Officer Chauvin instead of the victim. 

The protests that continue to escalate each day because of George Floyd’s undignified murder symbolize that American citizens are demanding politicians to pay attention. To accept that some cops are “bad cops” will no longer be tolerated. Through technological advancements, like video cameras on cell phones and social media, the black community has a platform of opportunity to show the world that racism continues to plague them. George Floyd represents one of thousands of African American victims, who have been racially targeted and killed by racist cops failing to do their jobs. With such a tragic death comes an opportunity to stand up against racial injustice, so that future lives are spared from inhumane action. To stay neutral is to accept a system that allows cops exemption from the law. As the great Malcolm X once said, “You can’t separate peace from freedom. No one can be at peace, until they have freedom.” Based on the mass protests that have been ongoing and expanding around the country since Floyd was killed, it’s clear that Americans demand equal freedom and treatment for all citizens, before peace can be restored. 

________________________________________________________________

Alcindor, Yamiche, and Amna Nawaz. “What We Know about George Floyd's Death in Minneapolis Police Custody.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 26 May 2020, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-we-know-about-george-floyds-death-in-minneapolis-police-custody.

Cleary, Tom. “George Floyd: Minnesota Man Who Died in Minneapolis Police Custody Is Identified.” Heavy.com, 28 May 2020, heavy.com/news/2020/05/george-floyd-minneapolis-minnesota-video/.

Dakss, Brian. “Video Shows Minneapolis Cop with Knee on Neck of Motionless, Moaning Man Who Later Died.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 29 May 2020, www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-police-george-floyd-fatal-arrest-officer-kneeling-neck/.

Hauser, Christine, and Derrick Bryson Taylor. “'I Can't Breathe': 4 Minneapolis Officers Fired After Black Man Dies in Custody.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 May 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/us/minneapolis-police-man-died.html.

Li, David K., and Tom Winter. “Ex-Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin Charged with Murder in George Floyd Case.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 30 May 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minneapolis-police-officers-derek-chauvin-arrested-george-floyd-case-n1216011.

Madani, Doha. “Officers Involved in Death of Black Man Detained in Minneapolis Have Been Fired.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 29 May 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/officers-involved-deadly-arrest-black-man-minneapolis-have-been-fired-n1215046.

Photo Credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-death.html 

https://apnews.com/0eeb28e505231ce153c60559c921f5d3

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/28/george-floyd-video-sparks-outrage-police-records-detail-even-more/5275079002/

https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/27/identities-four-cops-involved-george-floyds-death-released-12767694/

Sullivan, Tim, et al. “George Floyd Death: Minneapolis Police Station Torched amid Protest.” ABC7 San Francisco, 29 May 2020, abc7news.com/george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-killed-i-cant-breathe-black-man/6218926/.

Wagner, Jeff. “'It's Real Ugly': Protesters Clash with Minneapolis Police After George Floyd's Death.” WCCO | CBS Minnesota, WCCO | CBS Minnesota, 26 May 2020, minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/26/hundreds-of-protesters-march-in-minneapolis-after-george-floyds-deadly-encounter-with-police/.

Wright, Bruce C.T. “Minneapolis Police Officer Who 'Killed' George Floyd Is Reportedly Identified.” NewsOne, NewsOne, 27 May 2020, newsone.com/3948347/derek-chauvin-minneapolis-police-officer-george-floyd-death/.

[progressiveparty]

Trump attacks D.C. mayor for refusing police brutality in response to George Floyd protests

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is defending herself against the problematic Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump after he accused her of failing to respond adequately to protests outside the White House Friday night. “On the bad side, the D.C. Mayor, @MurielBowser , who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved,” Trump said in a tweet Saturday. “‘Not their job.’ Nice!” Bowser responded during a news conference Saturday. “No one needed to ask the Metropolitan Police Department to get involved because we were already involved,” she said. “Our police were doing their jobs from the start.” Bowser went on to ask the nation to exercise “great restraint even while the president tries to divide us.” "Our nation is grieving the murder of George Floyd and every Black person who has been killed by an unjust and unfair system," she said. "We are grieving hundreds of years of institutional racism, systems that require Black Americans to prove our humanity just for it to be disregarded." Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis cop, kneeled on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes while the unarmed Black man told the officer he couldn't breathe, according to multiple news outlets. Floyd, a forgery suspect, ended up dying in the incident that other officers either watched or assisted Chauvin in, viral video shows . Bowser called for “leaders who recognize this pain and in times of great turmoil and despair, can provide us a sense of calm and a sense of hope.” “Instead what we’ve got in the last two days from the White House is the glorification of violence against American citizens,” she said. Despite Attorney General William Barr's confidence that "justice will be served" in the "deeply disturbing" Floyd case, years of inaction on police brutality doesn't exactly instill confidence in Trump's administration, according to The New York Times . The administration has figuratively bound the hands of federal law enforcement officials looking to use court agreements to address police brutality. “Our confidence in a federal intervention in cases like this is wholly dependent on the track record of the administration that is stepping in,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson told The New York Times . “This administration lacks credibility when it comes to addressing issues of justice, fairness and race.” After a weekend of applauding a mass showing of police force and even threatening that dogs would be unleashed on protesters, Trump has refrained from publicly addressing the nation and instead tweeted anti-media sentiment Sunday. “The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy,” the president tweeted . “As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!” Video after video was circulated on social media of police violently responding to protestors, bystanders, and journalists alike, but Trump failed to condemn police action on Twitter. “Other Democrat run Cities and States should look at the total shutdown of Radical Left Anarchists in Minneapolis last night,” he tweeted . “The National Guard did a great job, and should be used in other States before it is too late!” About 5,000 National Guard troops have been deployed in 15 states and the District of Columbia in response to protests over Floyd’s death, The Washington Post reported Sunday. It’s hard to believe the numerous nonviolent protestors, journalists, and bystanders already targeted by police with tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray would consider National Guard involvement a positive response. MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi described on camera the violence he was subjected to in Minneapolis at the hands of authorities. "We yelled, 'We're media,'” he said. “They responded, 'We don't care!' and they opened fire a second time." RELATED: 'I am permanently blind in my left eye': Police target reporters covering George Floyd protests RELATED: Trump threatens protesters with dogs, says Secret Service eager to attack, calls on MAGA supporters This Piece Originally Appeared in m.dailykos.com Read the full article