April 28, 2015

Baltimore: Nonviolence as Compliance, Ta-Nehisi Coates

The case against the Baltimore police, and the society that superintends them, is easily made:

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson ....

And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims—if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him—a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

April 27, 2015

85 replies to my post on Cornell West v Eric dyson, none to my post on urban policing

One article by a venerated scholar, extremely significant take on current police issues -
0 replies.
did anyone even read it?
Is it too intellectual?

Cornell vs Dyson-
personalities,
I guess that is something DU'ers can get into.

LOL

April 26, 2015

Gerald Horne on the origins of policing in the institution of slavery

The origins of urban police department lies precisely in the era of slavery. That is to say, slave patrols, which were designated to interrogate, to investigate the enslaved Africans who were out and about without any kind of investigation. If you fast-forward to 2015, you still see more than remnants of that particular system. It's still rather questionable to some if they see a black person, particularly a black male walking in a certain neighborhood, and therefore they will be asked to produce identification.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13720

April 26, 2015

Fear of a Black Prophet: The Lowdown on the Takedown of Cornel West

Glenn Ford says, with eloquent heat, exactly what I was thinking: that Michael Dyson's brutal character assassination of Cornel West in the historically racist pages of the New Republic was, above all else, an application for a job in the upcoming Hillary Clinton administration. Ford writes:

But, of course, there is method to Dyson’s meanness. The true purpose of his elongated smear of Dr. West is to demonstrate to Hillary Clinton’s camp that Dyson remains a loyal Democratic Party operative who is available for service to the new regime. Having observed how hugely Al Sharpton prospered as President Obama’s pit bull against Black dissent, Dyson offers unto Caesarius Hillarius (“We came, we saw, he died,” as she said of Gaddafi) the iconic head of the nation’s best known Black dissident. …

Dyson has resorted to icon assassination because West’s highly visible critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy is an embarrassment to the administration, to the Democratic Party as an institution, and to the sycophantic Black Misleadership Class that has been more loyal to Obama than to Black people as a group.

http://www.new.chris-floyd.com/Articles/2494-fear-of-a-black-prophet-the-lowdown-on-the-takedown-of-cornel-west.html

April 23, 2015

Elizabeth Warren takes care of defense industry at home

Elizabeth Warren’s standing as a liberal warrior immune to the influence of Big Business hasn’t stopped her from pushing the interests of major defense contractors back home.

Warren has fought to stop the Army from shifting funds away from a Massachusetts-built communications network to pay for unanticipated costs associated with the war in Afghanistan. She’s lobbied for problem-plagued General Dynamics-made tactical radios. And she’s pledged to protect Westover Air Reserve Base from the budget ax — all while saying she supports “targeted” cuts elsewhere.

It’s a delicate dance in a state where defense giant Raytheon is one of the largest employers and brings in billions of dollars each year in federal contracts.

The freshman Democrat from Massachusetts insists she’s not running for president, despite a movement to draft her. But if she did — and took on front-runner Hillary Clinton — she’d likely face scrutiny over the way she’s balanced her populist views with her sometimes-penchant for pursuing the well-worn practice of pork-barrel politics.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/elizabeth-warren-defense-massachusetts-115157.html#ixzz3Y8yX5yUs

April 19, 2015

The Ascent of Hillary, the $.2.5 Billion “People’s” Candidate

"Hillary Clinton would represent the third Clinton presidency {Bill, Barack} – which, for Wall Street, is just as good as the two George Bush presidencies.

Labor and Blacks and that fuzzy cohort called liberals will all think they won the election, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Rank and file Democrats will see the fait accompli of Hillary’s nomination as a sign of unity among Democrats, when in fact it is the triumph of filthy rich campaign contributors.
The rich have shown great solidarity in uniting behind a Democratic presidential candidate. Later on, they will unite around a Republican candidate, too. After that, it won’t matter who wins."

http://blackagendareport.com/ford-hillary-%242.5billion-dollar-peoples-candidate

April 5, 2015

Hamas holds Gaza march for besieged Yarmuk refugees

Source: AFP

Khan Yunis (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hundreds rallied Saturday in the Gaza Strip in support of thousands of fellow Palestinians trapped in Syria's Yarmuk camp, which has been largely overrun by jihadist fighters.

Hundreds, many waving Hamas flags, took to the streets in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis in a march organised by the militant Islamic movement, the de facto power in the coastal enclave.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, a senior official in Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's West Bank-based administration, decried in a statement "the persecution and slaughtering of Palestinian refugees... in a conflict that isn’t theirs."

"Reports of kidnappings, beheadings and mass killings are coming out from Yarmuk, which is under a brutal campaign of murder and occupation at the hands of the terrorist group of Daesh and its allies," he said.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/hamas-holds-gaza-march-besieged-yarmuk-refugees-200819487.html