May 7, 2022

Investigation Shows Hundreds of US Cops Being Trained by Far-Right Extremists

Police officers pepper spray a woman next to the Colorado State Capitol as protests against the killing of George Floyd continue on May 30, 2020 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)


"Bad training is instilling bad behavior," said one criminal justice reform advocate.

KENNY STANCIL

May 6, 2022

Hundreds of cops across the United States have been taught by individuals who espouse far-right extremist views, according to a new investigation that was published Friday to sound the alarm on a burgeoning and unregulated private training industry.

Reuters identified five law enforcement trainers who have been hired by police and sheriffs' departments nationwide despite their support for right-wing militia groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters; the QAnon conspiracy, which baselessly claims that Democrats and Hollywood stars belong to a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals; and former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen.

Some use bigoted instructional materials that promote racism, misogyny, and transphobia, and many endorse the constitutional sheriff philosophy, which maintains that county sheriffs should refuse to uphold any law they find unconstitutional.

"Adherents to the constitutional sheriff movement consider the federal government a grave threat to U.S. citizens," Reuters reported. "They argue that local law enforcement is a higher authority, with the power to countermand the decisions of legislatures, courts, and presidents."

Richard Whitehead, one of dozens of active and retired police officers or trainers who were listed in a database of members of the Oath Keepers, "has called for public executions of government officials he sees as disloyal" to Trump, Reuters reported. In a 2020 social media post, he urged cops "to disobey Covid-19 public-health orders from 'tyrannical governors,' adding: 'We are on the brink of civil war.'"

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/investigation-shows-hundreds-us-cops-being-trained-far-right-extremists

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May 7, 2022

'Enforced childbirth is slavery': Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

The US supreme court draft ruling on abortion is an assault on fundamental individual freedoms. The Handmaid’s Tale author reflects on the issues at stake

Sat 7 May 2022 02.00 EDT

Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It’s not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions either. What to do?

Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?

Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army. In both cases there is risk to the individual’s life, but an army conscript is at least provided with food, clothing, and lodging. Even criminals in prisons have a right to those things. If the state is mandating enforced childbirth, why should it not pay for prenatal care, for the birth itself, for postnatal care, and – for babies who are not sold off to richer families – for the cost of bringing up the child?

And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty? If women are providing a needed service to the state – albeit against their wills – surely they should be paid for their labour. If the goal is more babies, I am sure many women would oblige if properly recompensed. Otherwise, they are inclined to follow the natural law: placental mammals will abort in the face of resource scarcity.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/enforced-childbirth-is-slavery-margaret-atwood-on-the-right-to-abortion

May 6, 2022

Why the US War on Cuba?

MAY 6, 2022

BY JACOB G. HORNBERGER

. . .

Oh, sure, one can argue that a brutally enforced economic embargo by the most powerful regime in history against one of the smallest, most impoverished nations in the world isn’t aggression, but you’d have a hard time convincing the Cuban people of that. Ever since the U.S. embargo was imposed on Cuba more than sixty years ago, the Cuban people have suffered severe economic privation because of it.

Yes, I know, Cuba’s socialist economic system has also been a factor in the impoverishment of Cuba. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the U.S. embargo hasn’t also been a major factor in their impoverishment. The fact is that for more than six decades, the Cuban people have been squeezed between an evil vise, with one side of the vise being socialism and the other side of the vise being the U.S. economic embargo, which, ironically, are both based on the same principle: government control over people’s economic activity.

Make no mistake about it: the purpose of the U.S. embargo is to kill Cuban citizens by depriving them of items essential for survival. Absent killing them, the goal is to make them as poor as possible. The idea is that if Cubans are dying or suffering extreme poverty, they will rise up, oust their ruling regime, and replace it with a pro-U.S. dictatorship, one that would be absorbed into the U.S. Empire and do the bidding of the Pentagon and the CIA.

The big question — the question that every single American should be asking — is: Why? What have the Cuban government and the Cuban people ever done to the United States to warrant this brutal U.S. aggression?

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/06/why-the-us-war-on-cuba/

May 2, 2022

THE TIME THE CIA OVERTHREW THE GOVERNMENT IN GUATEMALA

BY CHANDLER STARK/MAY 1, 2022 5:39 PM EDT

The CIA has a much maligned reputation in 2022. Between revelations about secret torture files, unauthorized spying on American citizens, secret mind control experiments, and their shady involvement in the JFK assassination, the CIA has seemingly been associated with an endless stream of scandals. President Harry S. Truman originally created the CIA in September 1947 as part of the National Security Act, in order to coordinate intelligence efforts among all U.S. government agencies (per the Truman Library). The CIA was the final successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a secret intelligence and covert operations agency that functioned in Europe during WWII.

The agency, however, quickly morphed from just intelligence gathering and espionage to full blown participation in revolutions and regime changes. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and in 1960 they aided Congolese militants in the execution of Patrice Lumumba (via ForeignPolicy.org).

Sandwiched between these coups was the forced regime change in Guatemala, where in 1954, the CIA played a pivotal role in the ousting of President Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The American role in the bloody coup was suppressed from American audiences for years, and even today the full story is probably not completely known. A depressing and embarrassing moment in American foreign policy, this is the time the CIA overthrew the Guatemalan government.

THE 1945 GUATEMALAN REVOLUTION

A decade before the coup, and before the CIA even existed as an organization, the 1945 Guatemalan Revolution occurred. According to Walter LaFeber in "Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America," in the 1930s and early 1940s, the dictator Jorge Ubico ruled Guatemala through a corrupt and repressive system. Elections were rigged and there was little done for the social and economic welfare of the majority of the nation's impoverished citizens. The revolution was led by college students and younger army officers, and they immediately held free elections which brought former teacher Juan José Arévalo to the presidency. Arévalo considered himself a "spiritual socialist," and he considered both Marxism and capitalism to be flawed.

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/849295/the-time-the-cia-overthrew-the-government-in-guatemala/?utm_campaign=clip

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dictator Jorge Ubico

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Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán

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The Guatemalan Government’s Apology for the 1954 Coup
WIRTZ AND KARA ANDRADE | NOVEMBER 1, 2011

On October 20, the day of Guatemala’s revolution, the country’s government formally apologized to the family of former President Juan Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who was deposed in a coup in 57 years ago.

“I want to apologize to the family for the great crime committed on June 27, 1954,” said President Alvaro Colom at the National Palace in Guatemala City. “A crime committed against the former president, his wife, his family. It was a historic crime for Guatemala—that day changed Guatemala and we have not recuperated from it since.”

It was a small ceremony held on a national public holiday to celebrate Revolution Day and only a few weeks before the second round of the election this weekend. In attendance were Jacobo Arbenz Vilanova, son of the ex-president, the government’s cabinet, diplomats, national institutions, and, the list of people presented by the family.



Jacobo Arbenz Vilanova, son of the former president, receives the book
Mi Esposo el Señor Presidente, a biography written by his mother, María
Vilanova. Photo courtesy of Kara Andrade.

“There was no intentionality election-wise or because it’s the end of the government,” said Dora Ruth del Valle Cóbar, president of Centro de Comunicación y Prensa Alternativa para el Desarrollo Humano (COPADEH). “It’s our responsibility and since it’s the first 20th of October that we have after signing the agreement with the victims.”

More:
https://www.americasquarterly.org/blog/the-guatemalan-governments-apology-for-the-1954-coup/