From the Department of Justice: ‘Attorney General Sessions Delivers Remarks at the 63rd Biennial Conference of the National Fraternal Order of Police‘, Nashville, TN, United States, Monday, August 28, 2017
Blah, blah, yada, yada, yer great, we’re great, love ya all, you need all our help to keep Amerika safe!, and tra la la.
“You are the thin blue line that stands between law-abiding people and criminals—-between sanctity and lawlessness. You protect our families, our communities, and secure our country from drugs and violence. The vast majority of our country appreciates what you do. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Gallup released their annual poll, which showed that overall confidence in the police has risen to 57 percent this year. That is a testament to the work you do every day.
But some would undermine this support by portraying law enforcement officers as the enemy. Instead of recognizing that the Justice Department vigorously prosecutes officers in the cases when they violate the civil rights of our citizens, they choose to slander all of the honorable men and women in law enforcement who serve every day with professionalism, integrity, and selflessness.
Their divisive rhetoric treats police officers like the problem, instead of the crucial allies that you all are. So it can come as no surprise when we see rising levels of violence against law enforcement.”
He ends:
“President Trump is serious about this mission. He is doing all he can to restore law and order and support our police across America. And that is why, today, I am here to announce that President Trump is issuing an executive order that will make it easier to protect yourselves and your communities. He is rescinding restrictions from the prior administration that limited your agencies’ ability to get equipment through federal programs, including life saving gear like Kevlar vests and helmets and first responder and rescue equipment like what they’re using in Texas right now.
Some of these programs, like the Department of Defense’s 1033 program that Congress signed into law more than 25 years ago, have recycled more than $5.4 billion in used gear and equipment that taxpayers had already purchased, and made it available for your agencies to repurpose it in the fight against terrorism, crime, and disaster relief. Equipment like helicopters and armored vehicles are also vitally important to emergency and disaster response efforts.
One sheriff told me earlier this year about how, due to the prior administration’s restrictions, the federal government made his department return an armored vehicle that can change the dynamics of an active shooter situation. These are the types of helmets and gear that stopped a bullet and saved the life of an officer during the Orlando nightclub shooting. This is the type of equipment officers needed when they pursued and ultimately killed terrorists in San Bernardino. Studies have shown this equipment reduces crime rates, reduces the number of assaults against police officers, and reduces the number of complaints against police officers.
Those restrictions went too far. We will not put superficial concerns above public safety. The executive order the President will sign today will ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal activity, violence, and lawlessness to become the new normal. And we will save taxpayer money in the meantime.
Roughly translated, the FOP’s motto means “Law is a Safeguard of Freedom.” I would go one step further by saying that rule of law is the safeguard of freedom. The law secures our God-given rights, and you – the officers who enforce it – ensure that all Americans enjoy those rights.
The Department of Justice and the Trump Administration are proud to stand with you as you continue to do this honorable work. We have your back and you have our thanks. Thank you, and God bless you.”
Usatoday.com had the story this way in part:
“The new plan takes effect immediately and fully rolls back an Obama administration executive order that blocked armored vehicles, large-caliber weapons, ammunition and other heavy equipment from being re-purposed from foreign battlefields to America’s streets.
The administration’s action, first disclosed by USA TODAY, would restore “the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,” according to a administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.
The FOP and some other law enforcement groups have long been pressing for a reversal of the Obama administration policy, arguing that access to such equipment was needed, especially in cash-strapped communities, to better respond to local unrest.
Civil rights advocates, however, warned that the program’s reinstatement threatened to inflame tensions in minority communities where such equipment has been deployed in the past.” [snip]
“Local access to the high-powered gear was put on national display in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., where armored vehicles and heavily-armed police clashed with protesters for days following the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man by a white officer.
The deployment of such equipment, President Obama argued at the time, cast the police as an “occupying force,” deepening a divide between law enforcement and a wary community.”
The Task Force on 21st Century Policing bullshit was referenced, ‘avoid the appearance of a military occupation’, etc. But dig it:
“The previously-banned equipment also included tracked armored vehicles, bayonets and grenade launchers. The Obama order did allow for the limited use of other surplus — aircraft, wheeled tactical vehicles, mobile command units, battering rams and riot gear — on the condition that such equipment was approved by the federal government.”
Oh, yeah; the gummit would block it…on a cold day in hell. But hold the phone; from Aug. 2, 2016’s ‘Police ‘merikan Citizens without Grenade Launchers and Tracked Tanks? Unthinkable!’
“…just after the sniper shot five police in Dallas, Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations told Reuters that they and six other heads of police associations met with Obama at the White House. He agreed to review their requests for reinstating those ever-so-crucial military items to the 1033 program. For one thing, in certain situations, like Dallas, the po-po just couldn’t protect the police state protestors from…the sniper adequately. In some wars on citizens, wheeled tanks just won’t cut it:
Now to be fair, what Reuters reported was that they couldn’t protect themselves adequately, but some reports had claimed the former silliness. Three days later, three cops were killed in Baton Rouge. What do you think his administration will decide?
While speaking to the three authors at Reuters:
“The White House thought this kind of gear was intimidating to people, but they didn’t know the purpose it serves,” said Pasco, noting a grenade launcher can also launch tear gas for crowd control.”
So, see? As a bit of extra enticement, Pasco showed the Prez that grenade launchers are actually not just for launching grenades, but can serve dual purposes. Whew; I’m glad to know that, aren’t you? My tax dollars have more breadth and depth than I’d realized. Reuters made no mention of Obomba’s having curtailed the weaponized drones formerly given to police, however.
“At Obama’s request, White House chief legal counsel Neil Eggleston will review the ban, Pasco and Johnson said.”
And from Glen Ford:
“A recent study shows that, under the Pentagon’s 1033 program, enacted in 1997, the value of military weapons, gear and equipment transferred to local cops did not exceed $34 million annually until 2010, the second year of the Obama administration, when it nearly tripled to more than $91 million. By 2014, the year that Michael Brown was shot down – and when the full Congress, including 32 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rejected a bill that would have shut down the 1033 program – Obama was sending three quarters of a billion dollars, more than $787 million a year, in battlefield weaponry to local police departments. In other words, President Obama oversaw a 24-fold (2,400%) increase in the militarization of local police between 2008 and 2014. Even with the scale-back announced in 2015, Obama still managed to transfer a $459 million arsenal to the cops – 14 times as much weapons of terror and death than President Bush gifted to the local police at his high point year of 2008.
The Obama administration marks a new stage in the street war against Black and brown people – a war he escalated before the emergence of a new Black movement, rather than in response to it. Activists should dismiss, out of hand, the Obama administration’s propaganda about “community policing,” a catch-all for finessing an ever deeper police presence in Black communities. When Obama was earmarking $163 million for U.S. Justice Department “community policing” projects in 2015, he was simultaneously budgeting more than half a billion dollars for militarization of the police. Conclusion: Obama is willing to invest limited funds in cultivating more snitches, but he’s really gung-ho about outfitting the cops with tanks, machine guns and grenade launchers.”
Killed by Police on Facebook is reporting that 800 amerikan citizens have been killed by police since Jan. 1, 2017, according to corporate news reports.
So yeah, this from Beauregard Sessions and Old Yeller Hair is shite, but so was militarized police under the Comprador-in-Chief Obomba. The war on black, brown, Muslim, citizens of the underclass and of course, dissidents of all stripes, may just double, treble, who knows, as will incarceration rates into for-profit prisons run by GEO Group and their ilk. At least this administration lays it out for us; no pretenses.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
I thought you’d grab this slam at Antifa. PO doesn’t realize that the process of doing that transforms your mindset into worship of authority and confidence in your own authority. You become what you are trying to restrain. There is the danger that groups like Antifa become just another competing gang without restraint. As the quote goes, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don’t care; hand me the football. And let me tweet in peace.”
love the ‘repurposed’ quote, thd. what an unbearable sod he is. guess he didn’t mean the neo-nazis in ukraine his money has helped to buy, though, did he?
i dunno; i’ve read so many essays pro and con on antifa, but noam chomsky’s eldest daughter aviva, iirc, had the best take to me. wish i had time to go hunt it up (quite different fro her daddy’s, bless her heart), but alas. when or if i do, i will; it’s on one of the last several word docs.
From what I saw in Chicago, antifa is primarily multiple affinity groups, some of whom do media under Antifa. It is a role, sorta like black bloc is a tactic. The thinking connects to mutual aid anarchism; it is the “punch a Nazi” role; there are street medic roles; there are jail support roles. The effectiveness depends on mutual respect of what other people out of their political analysis are also doing. The failures come out of trying to manipulate people into certain roles, tactics, and political decisions without their consent. The disasters are punching the cops when innocents are withing retaliation distance. They have become the object of media concern and of liberal gaslighting because they have become effective in this eruption of neo-Nazism and white supremacy that comes armed. And are showing where and how some cops are allies of the neo-Nazis and compromise their official oaths of service.
Sadly awareness doesn’t happen among white liberals until there is the death of a photogenic white woman. A Rachel Cory or a Heather Heyer. Those who benefit from non-awareness get a little bit threatened.
Structurally the politics of anarchist action of any kind has scaling and accountability issues. Go do. That need not include the critical question “for whom?” Surprisingly, there seems to be enough internal clarity on that issue that at this scale the political effects have overshadowed some of the rough edges.
my attention is still quite diverted, both w/ next lazarus and friends next door, and aid to them, including meals. also, houston and environs, as in what news will come as soon as the rain stops, the surge stops, bodies are found…and what the effects the shut-downs of refineries and rigs will bring. also,of course, to the gulf itself again. ‘heck of a job, brownie’ redux.
“They have become the object of media concern and of liberal gaslighting because they have become effective in this eruption of neo-Nazism and white supremacy that comes armed. And are showing where and how some cops are allies of the neo-Nazis and compromise their official oaths of service.” agreed, especially in numbers, but my chich has long been ‘with scant awareness of the underlying white supremacy’, as you know. let me paste in a couple points of view at the bottom soon (more width that way).
as for the the antifa thread, i’d like to offer that the news coverage was sheesh, major media, and that it’s likely that there were concerted plans then. also re: the sit-ins, including some violence:: “it worked.”? that’s what brought the civil rights act? oh, well.
and 30 minutes later…mr. wd and i had to compare some long notes on plans for lazarus. i’m kinda outta time for now, so i’ll try to add those other essays when i can.
Photogenic white woman. Yes, you nailed it. Sad. ( as dee tee might but wouldn’t say, about this anyway).
Yay! I can comment again – been locked out for two days due to password issues. Although I somehow managed to change all my photos to negatives, including ones on websites like the one above. I put it in my pocket and it was fine, took it out and my home screen is all changed, everything is white on black background. Tried to change it to no avail. Trip to phone store tomorrow.
Condolences about lazarus. You do some compassionate things. I try. My new homeless friend is finally leaving for ny state. I’m gonna miss her. But already have a replacement. I’m gonna keep my house as de facto homeless shelter until times are better (hah!) or E and family and i get a house together.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/29/drug-a29.html
“The indictment on August 25 of France’s top anti-drug police officer casts a sharp light on the police forces, who have had virtually unchecked powers since the imposition of the state of emergency by the Socialist Party (PS) government of former President François Hollande in November 2015.
François Thierry—the former head of the Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Drug Trafficking (OCRTIS), already placed in preventive detention this March in the context of an investigation of the General Inspection of the National Police (IGPN)—was indicted on charges of “complicity in the holding, transport, and acquisition of narcotics and complicity in the exportation of narcotics in an organized gang.””
————–
just in case you missed it. only dumbass NPR listeners don’t know that a person who is a cop or other carceral official (prison guard) is by far the most likely in this country to: shoot you, shoot your dog, rob you, rape you, taze you, beat you up, falsify evidence, & lie in a judicial proceeding. if you want some nice old Roman style gladiatorial combat, check out some of our finer prisons.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/27/san-francisco-prison-guards-forced-inmates-game-of-thrones-style-fights
and I forget the women’s prison in Florida that was essentially a sex farm for the guards. “Honey, you can have this Bear Claw if you, you know…” and let’s not forget the few bad apples at Homan Sq, or the thousands and thousands in solitary confinement on “administrative punishment.” Abu Ghraib style treatment is the Amerikan norm.
sorry, gotta go. Amazon is calling:
ack, if you read ‘cop watch’, you’ll be soooo sick at what the po-po collectively get away with. odd that that story got featured on the guardian, and good on them. maybe now some of them will get prosecuted? or is that: file under: dream on?
as far as thierry, a cop’s gotta make a decent livin’ somehow right? and some mug’s gonna sell em drugs, right? or will the story widen to something iran-contra-esque? and mmmmm, mmmm; thanks for the sam cook, tfeos. that song rawks. i forget which FL prison, too; so many evil stories out of that incarceration system.
This is why I can’t do criminal law, mr/ms trump for emperor ( love your moniker btw). The few times I’ve represented friends for traffic violations alone made me want to do an al pacino “you’re all out of order!” meltdown so i know better than to tempt fate…..let alone serious stuff like you mentioned.
I have managed to restrain myself thus far (though fighting banks is almost as bad)
Come to think of it, $787 million could have bought one hell of a lot of rescue boats for flood rescue. Only military and law enforcement are legimitate expenses of government say the current politicians. (Except for the salaries and perks of the current politicians.)
gadzukes, yes on the rescue boats. but fancy how many of the undocumented might think thrice about asking for help, given that they might just be deported.
dunno when i’ll be back. i’m cooking a lot of pre-bereavement food. remember the other day id said some guests of our 50-year friend and neighbor brought us an epic conundrum? our friend was in harsh physical shape, but would not be taken to the ER. so they kinda did what they could, but he got worse. with the help of yet another friend, they finally called the ambulance. turns out a brain aneurysm burst, and as the bleeding got worse, they are now just giving him ‘comfort care’ until he dies transitions, crosses over.
his sister just flew in from seattle and will decide ‘what’s next’. luckily she has power of attorney, so maybe it was she who’d chosen not to have him air-lifted to GJ for maybe even surgical treatment. anyway, yep: death lives just out of sight over our left shoulders, doesn’t it?
remember the scene in ‘moonstruck’ when johnny (donny aiello) called cher from his mother’s death vigil in palermo? “loretta! it’s a miracle! my mother must have heard the prayers of her assembled friends! she opened her eyes, got out of bed…and started cooking for everyone!”
prelude, of course, to what’s coming. our friend (shall i call him ‘lazarus’?) did the same thing yesterday about noon. he even got out of bed, walked a bit (with aid), talked, and expressed a great desire to go home. his sister and other friends in his room did manage to convince him to get checked out by the horsepital staff. he could drink, swallow a bite of fruit, and got checked out on using a walker. someone would even come to his house to do some PT. his sister and the blessed visiting couple will stay as long as they can, and as long as he’ll allow them to. yesterday, of course, he said he wanted them gone…today. not gonna happen.
but the questions about the doctors’ diagnosis and prognosis are epic.
trump for emperor of space will most certainly love this witless’:
Sorta explains why the Pentagon (Army War College analysis actually) considers that there needs to be contingency planning for being a “post-primacy empire.”
thanks for the chuckle; i needed one. ;-)
Tom Friedman lol! Reads like a list of deplorables.
let’s see, when did zbig brznski trot off this mortal coil? still in the top 15, I see. though dead, he yet vomits. 11 ivy leaguers on the list, oops, 12, can’t forget UPenn. if you ever needed an argument against education, there it is. look kids! you can be Charles Hammer of the Krauts too! oh wait, he went to lowly McGill. Aim higher, aim to Kissingerian heights.
hope you are hanging in there w.d.
i reckoned you’d love it, t4eos. yer fave nick kristoph,, as well. ah, i’m hangin’ in okay, better ‘n mr. wd, but then he’s doing chores that caused him to take another day off today. and he has sooo much to do on the homestead, yanno? but lazarus’s sister and the angels of mercy couple have been runnin’ on little sleep for days now.
weird situation altogether, but in the end, after 45 years, he’s by way of family, so…ya show love actively even when…liking might not be the case. odd-bodkins. but 11 flower arrangements are keepin’ my spirits up. a cornucopia of gorgeous flowers in every color and texture imaginable. let us know now and then whassup in your world, okay?
yes c seeker, tom the fried man. but i’d also reference ‘fareed’ the most sought after for deecee cocktail parties, esp. of the embassy sort, as a contender. ooooh, ‘the ladies luvs him!’ (yes, not ‘women’, see?)
An interesting thread on antifa:
Also wanted to tell you wd, caity johnstone over at medium wrote an article on antifa which mirrored a lot of your concerns about deep state/msm machinations. I like caity, she’s a fresh new voice on the left, a little over the top sometimes like debbie lusignan.
So of course counterpunch and jeffery st. Clair have done a zillion hit pieces on her for advocating the same thing alex cockburn did for years – a limited left-right alliance. I lost a lot of respect for cp after that but i still read them; lots of good people on there. Ypu shd really check her out. She’s imo one of us. And she’s not shy about correcting herself when proven wrong. She started out as a bernie sis but her illusions about bernie are shattered.
?
here’s aviva chomsky’s ‘How (Not) to Challenge Racist Violence’, Protesters are eager to expend extraordinary energy denouncing small-scale racist actors. But what about the large-scale racist actors?”
“Over the years I have come to see more and more of what Adolph Reed calls “posing as politics.” Rather than organizing for change, individuals seek to enact a statement about their own righteousness. They may boycott certain products, refuse to eat certain foods, or they may show up to marches or rallies whose only purpose is to demonstrate the moral superiority of the participants. White people may loudly claim that they recognize their privilege or declare themselves allies of people of color or other marginalized groups. People may declare their communities “no place for hate.” Or they may show up at counter-marches to “stand up” to white nationalists or neo-Nazis. All of these types of “activism” emphasize self-improvement or self-expression rather than seeking concrete change in society or policy. They are deeply, and deliberately, apolitical in the sense that they do not seek to address issues of power, resources, decisionmaking, or how to bring about change.” [snip]
“Let us be very clear. The white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, hate-filled and repugnant as their goals may be, are not the ones responsible for the U.S. wars on Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. They are not responsible for turning our public school system over to private corporations. They are not responsible for our separate and unequal health care system that consigns people of color to ill health and early death. They are not the ones foreclosing and evicting people of color from their homes. They are not the authors of neoliberal capitalism with its devastating effects on the poor around the planet. They are not the ones militarizing the borders to enforce global apartheid. They are not behind the extraction and burning of fossil fuels that is destroying the planet, with the poor and people of color the first to lose their homes and livelihoods. If we truly want to challenge racism, oppression, and inequality, we should turn our attention away from the few hundred marchers in Charlottesville and towards the real sources and enforcers of our unjust global order. They are not hard to find.”
‘Noam Chomsky: AntiFa Is ‘A Major Gift To The Right’ (a rebuttal from e.penny)
“Chomsky, who recently left his post as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become a laureate professor at the University of Arizona, has prompted criticism for his assessment of Antifa.
Eleanor Penny, who has written extensively on fascism and the far-right, told The Independent: “Chomsky treats the battle against fascism as a battle for moral purity than can be won when the left remain respectful, polite, and deferent.”
She added: “But fascists have no interest in winning that battle. They don’t care about respecting free speech or the right to a fair trial; they’ve openly declared their murderous intent towards people of colour (and other undesirables) and they’ll pursue that goal by any means necessary. In this context, physical resistance is a duty, an act of self-defence, not an unsightly outpost of leftist moral decline.”
“What’s more – it works.” (illustrations from the 1930s, etc.)
““Let us be very clear. The white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, hate-filled and repugnant as their goals may be, are not the ones responsible for …”
An important point, all of it. We should not forget that at all. That is the strategic reality that must not be lost from focus.
The immediate reality is much simpler. The people who seek to intimidate through torchlight parades are the institutional organizations that randomly murdered people of color and so intimidated their neighbors that jury nullification was routine. Antifa’s sole point, no matter how ham-handedly acted out it is on occasion is that that intimidation does not go away through non-violence unless there is a population with a conscience willing to crack down on it. Some of the people criticizing antifa are in fact staking out a tentative position of conscience that gives those who find confrontation distasteful an option other than capitulation. That makes sense only if that position actively focuses on the strategic level and is not just a hectoring about tactics.
We will see who all can occupy that position, but at the moment my sense is that Rev. William Barber is already there. There is a march through the countryside between Charlottesville and Washington, DC that Barber and a bunch of other clergy organized. Another part of the movement that opens up just a little more space as these people talk with the locals at convenience stores and restaurants along the way. The locals are all about bad tactics too. Marching on their public roads is too in-your-face in those intervening highly-Republican counties along US 29.
Clarity on the institutional strategy around peace and justice. A little more tolerance of a diversity of tactics in time and space. Chomsky doesn’t march against Ann Coulter and Co. in Berkeley. Antifa doesn’t try to act as protectors of the CVillle2DC march.
Too much of this tactical discussion has to do with what the mainstream media will portray. The mainstream media will suck off the action and suppress the ideas just like they did with the civil rights movement. That is why they screwed up so mightily telling the story of what happened in Watts, Detroit, and Newark after the civil rights bills were passed.
Meanwhile Scott Ritter takes apart the DNC narrative about the leaks of DNC documents and focuses on CrowdStrike. It is getting clearer that information war is mostly Bernays-style marketing and motives matter, especially if you are a hot cybersecurity company on the make moving toward an IPO. Emphasizes how CrowdStrike held information about the break-ins that never got to the deep state but played to their assumptions and prejudices.
thanks for the analysis, thd. yes, we’d been calling the naacp and friends walk ‘from boulder to birmingham’ (joan baez) cuz it was easier to remember. in haste, cuz needs must, i like this a hella lot: ‘Challenging the “White Ally” Model: To Defeat Racism, We All Need to Dismantle Racial Capitalism’; White people must stand alongside us on the front lines, Rafael Diaz, inthesetimes.com
“Though it has largely remained on the margins of both academia and activism since its inception, racial capitalism—a term initially put forth by Black radical political theorist Cedric J. Robinson in the 1980s—offers a helpful lens for understanding systemic oppression. At its core, this concept holds that racism and colonialism were built into the heart of feudalism and continued to permeate western civilization as it transitioned into capitalism. Rather than operating independently of one another, racial capitalism teaches that economics and racism are inseparable. Capitalism intentionally organizes society through economic inequality and racial divisions, working hand-in-hand with white supremacy to oppress the many while empowering the few.”
and a big Yes to this: ‘This Land Is Whose Land?; Understanding the forces deforming our cities today requires more than a class analysis of capitalist land speculation. We have to talk about race’, matt hern, roar magazine
“Today we are witnessing new urban articulations of much older stories of white supremacy. The great cities of the world have always been funded by pillage: built on stolen Indigenous land, funded by the colonial theft of wealth, constructed by slave labor, financed by ongoing speculation and profiteering. Every city in the world is defined by accumulation: the aggregation of wealth and resources in centers of power and control. In the midst of an era of unprecedented urbanization, that accumulation insists on displacement: capital rushes in and the rest of us can get the hell out of the way.
and good on scott ritter; buncha rot in those lying repetitions. say it enough times and people simply…believe, esp. when it serves their confirmation biases.
max blumenthal is on trnn claiming it was his investigations that outed the whit helmets. bet that’s news to eva bartlett and vanessa beeley. ;-)
via email i’d seen: “In reply to cynicalseeker.
Also wanted to tell you wd, caity johnstone over at medium wrote an article on antifa which mirrored a lot of your concerns about deep state/msm machinations. I like caity, she’s a fresh new voice on the left, a little over the top sometimes like debbie lusignan.
So of course counterpunch and jeffery st. Clair have done a zillion hit pieces on her for advocating the same thing alex cockburn did for years – a limited left-right alliance. I lost a lot of respect for cp after that but i still read them; lots of good people on there. Ypu shd really check her out. She’s imo one of us. And she’s not shy about correcting herself when proven wrong. She started out as a bernie sis but her illusions about bernie are shattered.”
by cynical seeker, but i can’t find it on the comment thread. my answer:
sorry, darlin’; she may be one of you, but she’s not one of…me. ;-) and yes, i’d watched the ‘discussions’ in close to real time.
i’m past exhausted and a bit dispirited. well, anyway, a good night song, cuz ideally, it’s in the shelter of each other that the people live (would it were more often so.) :
for any who are interested, here’s jeffrey st. clair’s ‘red state, blue state, green state, deep state’. i disagree with some of it, but it has a boatload of internal links on ‘the kerfuffle’, one to yoav litvin, whose piece made me chuckle when he’d listed “established left-wing/progressive/radical journalists with on-the-ground investigative journalism experience such as Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald and Abby Martin”, the exception to me being abby martin. jacobin by and large ain’t anti-imperialist, so…pfft.
this is ‘johnstone and cobb respond o counterpunch’, july 20 at medium, but my, my, she loves her some tulsi gabbard! again: only anti-imperialist on syria; the rest of the time…forget it.
as to deep state, from where i sit there are competing versions, and even those ‘actors’ seem to evolve, devolve, here and there; kinda hard to keep up. given that you come at night, it gives me a bit of time to answer you later; got a lotta chores to complete.
best heart, wd
As best I can tell, Johnstone got conned by a master con-artist. So did a lot of the “give Trump a chance” folks. The “boss” on the Apprentice, the braggart in the “pussy-grabbing” video, and the Tweeter-in-Chief seem to be his consistent, compulsive, and obsessive inner self(ves). It’s the litmus-testing propensity of Johnstone’s fans that perpetuate the illusion that the narcissist-in-chief will smash the state now that “L’etat, c’est moi” is the stance of enough of the mainstream media. Yes, he is Hitler as farce. The deep state, at least the part that rushed to Clinton for protection in 2016, are suddenly relieved to discover that. Mueller will do the housecleaning. Pence will satisfy the MAGAites. My current take.
The consequences of 70 years this year of institutions of permanent secrecy. Secrecy undermine democratic processes; indeed, that is their intention domestically. Repeal of the National Security Act of 1947 and all empowering subsequent legislation of classification, secrecy, and its secret legislation, accounting standards, and operational methods is now, what, 40 years overdue?
Redo the national defense legislation from scratch. Allow visibility for accountability. Allow all of Congress to see all of the inner workings.
Start figuring out what this looks like because the collapse will come. The GOP will not idly let the Clintonista deep state go without exposure. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. And a fascinating one, if I am correct in my intuition.
your take on johnstone might be right, thd. oddly, i don’t think i’d read comments under her ‘rogue journalist’ op-eds, so i dunno who her fan-boys are. but she sure does ♥ her own face being featured yuuuugely, doesn’t she? but hell, i reckoned i’d wait until he actually did something (or attempted to) before attacking him. my thing, as you know, was to note which fascist totalitarian rubbish was obomba, not drumpf.
as a side note, it’s been too evident that headlines are screeching about trump militarizing police, few noting that under obomba… but that the team sport of biased journalism, isn’t it?
good prescription above, but ‘redoing defense legislation from scratch’ w/ transparency to congress…fascinates me cuz of the a) non-public expenditures almost equaling the public ones when scrutinized, and b) the strength of the shadow military machine, i suppose by way of think tanks, NGOs, and the non-profit industrial complex.
my sense of the coming collapse is such a murky, chimerical half-image, so your spidey senses here actually envision: “Start figuring out what this looks like because the collapse will come. The GOP will not idly let the Clintonista deep state go without exposure”. but when i read treatises on the many grounds on which to impeach and remove T, most contain close to ‘yeah, pense; i know, but…’.
I know she’s currently a fan of tulsi….but as she did with bernie, i think she’ll eventually understand. I have seen her political views evolve…..her four letter word in-your-face style is not the way i write, I’m all about peace and love and civility…..but to me it’s refreshing that someone speaks their mind in that way, given the dire nature of our situation.
yes, her views may ‘evolve’, c seeker, but yanno what? i don’t give a goddam fuck. ;-) (peace and love, lol.) yeah, i read her stuff, and find her…not worth it. i did note her defense of assange, and may have even posted it w/ a few caveats about her general…craptastic writing.
What exactly do you dislike about her writing?
I don’t know why that comment appeared as an e-mail. My phone did weird things yesterday and i got a new password for wordpress. That process was confusing.
Btw, can you send me your email address since i cant find it on any version of your site, I’m teady to send you some things….i wrote a song about mad dog mattis over the weekend. Thanks.
Never mind, i found it. Amazing what the big screen will do. And the beauty of it is breathtaking.
eeeep; i’d emailed you so you’d have my address. if you didn’t see one, ya might check your junk mail, or maybe i’d gotten it wrong?
and may i bail on the johnstone stuff? fine if you like/admire her. i just read this one again, but i will say nothing provides fame faster than a white woman being ‘attacked’. ‘medium’ essays seem to largely be ‘who bleeping cares?’, arrggh. but for me, berners were people who may have cared deeply about wealth inequality, but were able to ignore the fact that he’s a militarist an imperialist at heart. to me, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism will always be my litmus test, yes, i’m a ‘purist’, as war contains the seeds of all other evils of the empire. ;-)
What bothered me most about the cp incident is they mischaracterized her as advocating for a left alliance with white nationalists, when all she was saying is to work with non-racist trump supporters who are antiwar. She explicitly excluded white nationalists as suitable allies. I don’t agree with cher choice of cernovich, who has been all over the map and a rather loathsome character – but the caitlyn/ white nationalist meme has been repeated so much it’s the same big lie effect as russiagate, and i don’t expect this from the likes of cp. To their credit, they did allow rebuttals but my take is they’re jealous of her sudden rise in popularity.pp
jealous is three bridges too fr for me, but it’s fine if you admire her, just don’t expect me to. and i’d thunk i’d said that my email was in the ‘categories’ list on the right sidebar under ‘registration and contact me’ second from the top o’ the list. i get all the comments on my diaries via email, but it took me some time to grasp that i don’t for other author’s diaries. but here, no registration, no password are required.
also via email, i’d seen you post your e-address, i grabbed it, but should i delete when i find where you’d put it? i’ll send mine soon as i’m able.
Of course we don’t have to discuss Johnstone. I wasn’t trying to be contrarian or derail the thread, I was just genuinely curious as to why you don’t like her. People either seem to love her or hate her, I love her myself. I think she and D. Lusignan are exactly the kind of voices we need right now. But I never think any less of someone for disagreeing with me, unless you are a Nazi or liberal democrat or something. :)
My e-mail address is yulbluka1@ gmail.com. Please discard the yahoo, that account is overrun by spam and haven’t used it in years. Ypu don’t require a password but WordPress does; hence the problems. I think the yahoo account is on there because I signed up for another WordPress blog years ago. And if my other comment didn’t post, I couldn’t find your email because I’m confined to my phone. When i accessed ypur site at work on the laptop i found it right away. It was the first time i viewed the cafe on a real computer. Your graphics are breathtakingly beautiful.
Hopefully I can e-mail you this weekend. I’m recovering from the week. E and i had our second fight (not teally a fight) resolved now, mostly due to communication problems due to her phone dying….but my fault, i let some of my stress get on her and that wasn’t right.
i don’t love her or hate her, but i sure don’t care for her proposed ‘left’ (whatever that means these days)/right alliances, nor her writing style (perhaps her astrology book was a tad better?) she’d claimed ‘alt-lite’ or whatever, hadn’t she?
but your propensity for loving her, tulsi gabbard, (mebbe jimmy dore?) causes me to think you’re not nearly…cynical enough, seeker.
i’d swear that was the address i’d put into my address book for you, so i cannae think why my mail didn’t zip to at least your junk box. but i love the organic beauty of the café myself. all the banner photos are mine from ‘our backyard’, arguably a largish ‘yard’.
i dunno; fights can be very healthy…as long as both ‘fight fair’. sometimes it’s even good to establish some basic ground rules ahead of the next kerfuffle, yanno?
oh, and peek upthread for thd’s musings on johnstone, see if it resonates.
more op-eds on antifa:
‘Why is the media promoting Antifa?’, gabriel black, august 28, wsws.org
“The prominent and sympathetic coverage for Antifa from the Times, the Post and NBC is politically sinister. The Times has a policy of excluding any genuinely left-wing opinion, while “Meet the Press,” the most widely-watched Sunday news program, never interviews or features in its panel discussions anyone outside what is considered acceptable by the political establishment.
The promotion of Antifa serves several interrelated functions. First, the physical violence of a handful of protesters in any large demonstration is regularly used as a pretext for police provocation. This is true not only in the US, but in Europe and around the world. Police give the “anti-fascist” and anarchist groups a free hand to carry out provocations, which are then exploited to carry out a violent crackdown.
The groups themselves are easily infiltrated by police provocateurs, who encourage violent acts for the desired end.”
chris hedges’ (old sourpuss rides again! (‘the cancer in occupy’)
How ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’, aug 27, 2017, truthdig.com
‘The two opposing groups, largely made up of people who have been cast aside by the cruelty of corporate capitalism, have embraced holy war. Their lives, battered by economic misery and social marginalization, have suddenly been filled with meaning. They hold themselves up as the vanguard of the oppressed. They arrogate to themselves the right to use force to silence those they define as the enemy. They sanctify anger. They are infected with the dark, adrenaline-driven urge for confrontation that arises among the disenfranchised when a democracy ceases to function.’
Set up to knock down. The same media did the same thing with Occupy Wall Street.
Anarchist movements by their nature are subject to infiltration by police informants. But so are more organized movements. Organized movement by their nature are easier to decapitate. There are no perfect ways of doing politics that are being suppressed.
Chris Hedges and the other worriers see themselves as protectors and guiders of the movement. They fundamentally are documenters of what has already happened, however. Yes, one can see how black bloc in Occupy looks like (older and wiser) the same folks in the current antifa actions.
The issue is that democracy has ceased to function and politics is spiraling towards “other means” (to use Clausewitz’s description of war). What is needed is those who are not naive enough to think that force will be restrained by conscience nor so brutalized as to think that confrontation is devoid of politics and becomes a game-like test of force. The alt-right did not turn either Charlottesville or Berkeley into alt-right bastions (cough, like Hanover NH?). The presence of arms and the difference in outfit between the alt-right and antifa was noticed. For all the hand-wringing, no one is talking about antifa’s AR-15s.
In the current information war, despite all the antifa-centered articles, antifa won the the position for now. The alt-right broke discipline and killed someone in Charlottesville; the big name conservative hangers-on of the alt-right strategically cancelled their use of the University of California campus in an attempt to claim their freedom of speech was shut down. The Berkeley post-action hand-wringing about antifa’s actions (some broken discipline there as well, but mostly not notice a guy with a camera) is all to do with spinning that as not a big retreat from the “lefty campus”. The information war at the moment is all on what is perceived as lefty turf. What scared the po-po’s with Occupy was all of those encampment not on supposed “lefty” turf. Why there were two folks in Mancos CO occupyin’.
When 20,000-30,000 or more people of color march in dignified procession through the streets of Oklahoma City or Tulsa or Dallas or Houston or Knoxville TN or Little Rock with AR-15s at shoulder arms as if that basic training really did take, the turf shifts to that of those who support institutionalized discrimination. And the information war is joined in earnest. If the US passes through that scenario and keeps a grip, we might see political movement in the institutions again.
For all the online yakking, in the field the movement is still moving. And as in Sandy, it is likely that the anarchists and other lefties in Texas will run circles around the Red Cross and the federal and state governments in getting relief to the poorer communities of the Houston region. And what the Proud Boys will be doing is marching with their AR-15s and Confederate flags preventing “looting”.
‘set up to knock down’ is brilliant shorthand. the other thing that scared the ptb was that many occupies were creating intentional communities, and ya can’t have that, can ya?
yes, ‘the cajun navy’ rescues and other dedicated humanitarians are shaming the official ‘help’, although perhaps the national guard finally got with the program. how many other guardspeople could have been mobilized has been estimated at 30,000, dunno about the logistics. why do you say they’re anarchists and lefties, though?
another chich i have in the ‘hedges report after the fact’ was a hit piece he’d written on the uselessness of the social movements of the 60s, and for me it was sincerely a wtf? diatribe. but as well, at least according to his bio, he wasn’t even in the country, but working as a war correspondent. but think how many ‘movements’ were afoot in so many directions, including the birth of ecological awareness.
and yep, already in houston have come headlines of “arrests for looting” which prompted blackwater and other mercenaries to shoot to kill, sort it out later in n’awleans. the price gouging for commodities is sick as all giddy-up, esp. water.
“If the US passes through that scenario and keeps a grip, we might see political movement in the institutions again.” from your mouth to the gods’ ears… ;-)