Jamaica Set to Seek Billions from Britain for Unjust Enrichment Over Slave Trade

From [HERE] Jamaica is preparing to request compensation from Britain over its role in the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries — when at least 600,000 Africans were shipped to the Caribbean as enslaved people — Jamaican officials told Reuters. The country, a former British colony independent since 1962, is set to seek billions of pounds in reparations.

The petition, with approval from Jamaica's National Council on Reparations, will be filed pending advice from the attorney general and three legal teams, Grange said. The attorney general will then send it to Britain's Queen Elizabeth, she added.

The initiative follows growing acknowledgement in some quarters of the role played by slavery in generating wealth in Britain, with businesses and seats of learning pledging financial contributions in compensation.

They include insurance market Lloyd's of London, pub owner Greene King and the University of Glasgow.

The petition also coincides with increasing efforts by some in Jamaica to sever formal ties with the United Kingdom.

Jamaica long served as a key node in a slave trade network that spanned continents, driven by Spain and then Britain.

Olivia Grange, [in photo above] Jamaica’s minister of sports, youth and culture, told Reuters her government would seek “reparatory justice in all forms” to “repair the damages that our ancestors experienced.”

“Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labor to the benefit of the British Empire,” she said, but did not divulge the exact sum to be sought.

The petition, Reuters reported, is connected to a motion filed by Jamaican lawmaker Mike Henry to seek more than $10 billion, his estimate of how much enslavers received in compensation after Britain abolished slavery, freeing an estimated 800,000 enslaved Black people in 1834. Britain made those disbursements after taking out a mammoth loan, the interest on which it finished paying only in 2015.

Enslaved people transported to the Caribbean were forced to work in dire conditions on sugar and crop plantations, where deadly diseases were rife. As many as 20 million African men, women and children were enslaved during this period, according to estimates.

Many plantation owners resided in England, with established slave-based industries across the Caribbean, funneling wealth to the British Empire.

“I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanized human life,” Henry told Reuters.

Like many countries that were once part of the British Empire, Jamaica is part of the Commonwealth, an association of nations, which Elizabeth heads.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept much of the world last summer, many countries have seen renewed impetus to confront their own dark and violent histories of racism and inequality.

In Britain, as in the United States, debates have unfolded about how the history of slavery is taught in schools.

In the English city of Bristol, which was once at the heart of mass sugar importations, a statue of British politician Edward Colston was toppled during protests that erupted following the death of George Floyd last year. Colston was responsible for enslaving tens of thousands of people.

Cornel West Resigns. Says Harvard is in “decline" [part of the military industrial academic complex, producing "academented drones and conforming clones for the marketplace" - Dr. Blynd]

From [HERE] Cornel West, considered one of the most prominent Black philosophers and progressive activists in the country, announced Monday that he has resigned from his position at Harvard University’s Divinity School, saying the institution is in a state of “decline and decay” and “spiritual rot.”

In a resignation letter dated June 30 and posted to Twitter, West suggested that discrimination at the university drove him to leave the Divinity School. The 68-year-old scholar said in March that he was abandoning his quest for tenure at Harvard to return to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he first taught more than four decades earlier.

“How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,” he wrote. “The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large.”

West, who added that Harvard has become “market-driven,” tweeted, “Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot!”

“The School has no comment on Dr. West’s letter,” Jonathan Beasley, a spokesman for the Divinity School, said Tuesday morning.

The release of what West described as his “candid” resignation letter came after journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones announced last week that she had accepted a faculty position at Howard University and turned down an offer to teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because of a long and remarkably contentious back-and-forth over tenure. Although trustees for UNC-Chapel Hill voted to award tenure to Hannah-Jones, the vote came after the public university hired her as a professor without the job-protection status, which caused faculty members and students to protest that she had been mistreated.

At Harvard, many students were sharing West’s letter on social media, said Noah Harris, the student body president, “because it’s really bringing to light a lot of the treatment of professors of color. … We have to do a better job as a university, as a culture.”

As 2 Wash Cops Dragged a White Man Down a Flight of Steps He Yelled "Call Your Supervisor!" But the Force Continuum has No Oversight. Same Cops Participated in the Murder of a Black Man (Manuel Ellis)

From [HERE] and [HERE] Two Tacoma police officers involved in the death of Manuel Ellis have been accused of wrongfully arresting and using excessive force in an unrelated incident three months before their fatal encounter with Ellis.

Timothy “Timmy” Rankine, 32, and Masyih Ford, 29, are named in a new tort claim against the city of Tacoma, stemming from the Dec. 14, 2019 arrest of Dustin Dean, the Seattle Times reported.

A cellphone video of the incident shows the officers dragging Dean down a flight of stairs before Rankine kneels on his back as he lies prone, complaining that the officers are hurting him.

On the night of Dean’s arrest, he and his girlfriend, Vanessa Henriquez-Ray, say, they were having a loud argument in their apartment after coming from a holiday party. In an interview, they insisted it was lighthearted: He adored the crab cakes served at the party; she wasn’t fond of them.

Rankine and Ford responded after two neighbors called 911 just after midnight. The officers (both caught lying in Ellis’ case) claim they heard Henriquez-Ray yelling, leading them to believe she “was in distress and immediate police intervention was necessary,” according to Ford’s report. Ford noted that the officers announced themselves and didn’t get an answer, so they opened the slightly ajar front door and let themselves in. Dean came down the hall, confused about why the officers were there.

Dean was “displaying threat indicators” in the way he stood and held his hands, so officers tried to handcuff him and said they were investigating a domestic disturbance, according to Ford’s report.

In an interview, Dean said the officers did not explain themselves, which is why he passively resisted their attempts to cuff him by keeping his arms out of the officers’ reach.

The tort claim, a precursor to filing a lawsuit, seeks $500,000 in damages, according to Dean’s lawyer, James Bible.

In May, Rankine was charged with manslaughter and two other Tacoma officers were charged with murder and manslaughter in Ellis’ death. Ford was not charged.

Was the court aware of the dragging a white man down a flight of steps incident when it granted Rankine’s release? Tacoma police officers Masyih Ford, left, and Timothy Rankine, were suspended while under investigation for their roles in the death of Manuel Ellis. In setting release conditions, courts usually consider: the nature and circumstances of the charge; the weight of the evidence; the person’s family ties, employment, financial resources, character, physical and mental condition, past conduct, length of residence in the community, prior convictions, and record of appearance in court; flight to avoid prosecution;or failure to appear at court proceedings.

Manuel Ellis was a 33-year-old black man who died on March 3, 2020, during an arrest by police officers in Tacoma, Washington. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department initially claimed that Ellis had attacked a police car and then attacked officers, leading to the arrest. State prosecutors quoted civilian witnesses as saying that Ellis did not attack the police car or officers; they also said it was the officers who initiated the use of physical force on Ellis after a conversation. Video of the incident showed officers repeatedly punching Ellis, choking him, using a Taser, and kneeling on him. State prosecutors stated that "Ellis was not fighting back", citing witness statements and video evidence. A police radio recording showed that Ellis said he "can’t breathe". Ellis told officers "can't breathe, sir" multiple times, according to prosecutors.Ellis was hogtied, face-down, with an officer on him, for at least six minutes, and a spit hood was placed on his head in this position, stated prosecutors.[10] Ellis died at the scene while receiving medical aid from paramedics. [MORE]

In early June 2020, Ellis's death was ruled by county medical examiner Thomas Clark as a homicide due to "hypoxia due to physical restraint", and with "contributing conditions of methamphetamine intoxication and a dilated heart".[2][11] Prosecutors, in May 2021 documents, quoted Clark as saying that additional evidence that emerged after the autopsy concluded indicated that "Ellis's death was not likely caused by methamphetamine intoxication", and further indicated that restraint caused the death.

After Ellis's death, four Tacoma police officers were placed on paid administrative leave; they returned to work two weeks later, with the Tacoma police department stating "there were no known departmental violations". [MORE]

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department conducted a three-month investigation into Ellis's death before disclosing that a Pierce County deputy was present during Ellis's arrest. As a result, in mid-June 2020, Governor of Washington Jay Inslee ordered a new investigation by the Washington State Patrol, while the Washington Attorney General would decide potential criminal charges.

In May 2021, Washington prosecutors charged two Tacoma police officers, Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins, with second degree murder for the killing of Ellis, and charged another Tacoma police officer, Timothy Rankine, with first degree manslaughter.

 The three officers were taken into custody that day. The officers continued to receive salary in spite of the charges.

The next day, the trio left jail after making bail at $100,000 each. A Tacoma construction company owner said he posted the officers' bail, despite not knowing the officers; he expressed a belief that the officers "were doing their job" and would be acquitted in the trial.

Judge Will Allow LA Sheriff to Contest Inspector General’s Subpoena Over his Knowledge of “Deputy Gangs" Within the Department

From [HERE] Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva may still face a subpoena from the county’s inspector general over his knowledge of “deputy gangs” within his department, but a judge ruled Tuesday he can first challenge it on grounds of legitimacy or overbreadth.

Villanueva had asked the court to step in and block the subpoena because sitting for an interview would take away too much time from his duties as an elected official. But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant wrote in a tentative ruling that sitting for interviews with the inspector general is part of the sheriff's job.

The current legal scuffle between Villanueva and the Office of the Inspector General stems from the sheriff's refusal to honor a subpoena over rogue gangs within the department’s ranks. In a petition filed this year, Villanueva called the subpoena “too broad, harassing” and said as the head of a government agency he’s not subject to depositions.

But on Tuesday, Chalfant ruled the California Legislature grants “the inspector general broad discretion to issue subpoenas whenever he ‘deems’ it ‘necessary or important’ without requiring any showing of good cause or a compelling reason.” Villanueva in turn has the right to challenge the subpoena in court before contempt proceedings can occur.

Villanueva had argued LA County Inspector General Max Huntsman’s tactics to secure the interview are intrusive and he is “leap-frogging right to the top” by threatening the sheriff with the subpoena.

In December 2020, Villanueva appeared before LA County’s Civilian Oversight Commission for a little over an hour where he answered questions about deputy gangs, and did so again in January 2021. Villanueva answered questions about policies and procedures he implemented since taking office in December 2018 and also provided a video on “deputy secret societies” and sought feedback from the civilian commission.

Huntsman emailed Villanueva in January 2021 to set up an interview time, but Villanueva said it was short notice. He asked the inspector general’s office to send over their questions. On March 2, 2021, Huntsman hit Villanueva with a subpoena to submit to a 90-minute interview under oath.

Villanueva says he’s been up front about what he knows about deputy gangs and Huntsman’s need to interview him is unclear. He also asked the court to block all future subpoenas.

But Chalfant wrote that as an elected official, the sheriff is co-equal to the LA County Board of Supervisors which created the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to assist supervising the sheriff.

“The sheriff refused to meet with the inspector general voluntarily and his desire for an order protecting him from all future subpoenas reflects his disdain for OIG oversight,” wrote Chalfant.

Villanueva argued Huntsman was looking for a “gotcha” moment where he would catch the sheriff on a minute detail. And while Huntsman offered Villanueva the opportunity to bring an assistant to help during the interview, Villanueva declined and said Huntsman issued a subpoena with no “compelling reasons” and should use “lesser intrusive means” to get his answers.

Chalfant found that's not how the Legislature intended an inspector general to function.

“The sheriff is not permitted to thwart the inspector general’s mandate by directing the manner in which the OIG conducts oversight,” wrote Chalfant. “A contrary rule would permit the sheriff to evade interview and obstruct oversight by demanding written questions or by requiring an interview of a lower-level official he designates.”

He added: “Contrary to the sheriff’s claim that an appearance before the inspector general would ‘tak[e] the sheriff away from his duties', one of the sheriff’s responsibilities is to submit to the OIG’s oversight.”

From the bench Tuesday afternoon, Chalfant said enforcement of the subpoena would follow a two-step process where the court would first hear any challenge to it raised by Villanueva. Contempt proceedings would follow only if Villanueva's challenge is unsuccessful and he continues to refuse to sit for the interview.

“Therefore, I believe the sheriff will be able to raise defense whether the subpoena are legitimate or overly broad,” Chalfant said from the bench. “Most of which cannot be raised in a contempt hearing. The sheriff is entitled to that two-step process that is available to him.”

Villanueva’s attorney, Linda Savitt with Ballard Rosenberg Golper asked for leave to amend the petition, because the court’s ruling puts Villanueva on the defensive.

“There should be a way to you know object at least without being dragged into court,” said Savitt.

Chalfant said he would entertain allowing Villanueva to amend his petition, but only after the parties met and conferred. Savitt said she will research the court’s ruling.

In a statement, the sheriff's department said the court provided guidance for both the county and Villanueva to use under new statutory subpoena power since the issue has never been addressed by any court. Chalfant made clear that the sheriff has due process rights in this matter, the department said.

"In addition, the court determined today that if the sheriff were not to appear pursuant to a subpoena, there would have to be a hearing on the propriety of the subpoena first, and the court would then need to decide whether the sheriff would have to appear, before any contempt proceeding could occur," the department said in its statement.

No Charges After MD Cops Stopped Black Man for No Reason, Threw Him in the Street and Put a Knee on His Neck. Disciplinary Hearing to be Semi-Secret; Citizens May Only View Virtually @ Police Station

From [HERE] Daniel Jarrells said he was driving to his mother’s house when he was pulled over by an unmarked police car in February 2019.

Jarrells, a Black man who lives in Anne Arundel County, was thrown into the street and video taken by his mother’s neighbor shows him under Anne Arundel County Police Officer Daniel Reynolds’ knee on a cold day in February of 2019. The other two police officers present during this incident were Joshua Shapiro and Brian Ranck.

It is important to note that this case started with a traffic stop that Jarrells alleges did not have probable cause and that he might also assert quickly escalated to a felony stop when Officer Reynolds brandished his gun at Jarrells’ head. During this incident, Reynolds’ also threatened Jarrells with a taser. Jarrells is suing the Anne Arundel County Police Department and three detectives. [MORE]

The Capital Gazette editorial board commented that; '‘What should not be missed is that by peeling back the layers of alleged corruption or dishonesty within Anne Arundel County law enforcement, one can quickly see how the “system” bends over backward to support police officers even when they reportedly violate the law and/or departmental policy and procedure resulting in the dehumanization of the Black and brown members of our community.

The corruption can be seen by the existence of two reports of this incident. One report was completed contemporaneous to the incident and then another one was generated two months later with further rationalizations of why the police officers behaved so egregiously. The second report surfaced after the video taken by a bystander was released and that many believe clearly demonstrated that the police officers lied about the incident. The State’s Attorney’s Office dropped all the charges against Jarrells.”

The video of this incident helped community advocates argue for support of body cameras, which is in the process of being implemented across the county police department.’

Officer Reynolds opted for a police trial board to decide his fate rather than accept his termination. The problem is the lack of transparency in the trial board process. Police Chief Amad Awad (a probotic, Black strawboss) decided not to livestream the trial board. Anyone interested in watching the trial board may go to the western, southern or eastern district police stations, the Anne Arundel County Henry L. Hein Building or Heritage Complex Chesapeake Room on Wednesday, July 14, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Capital Gazette editrial board stated “[It] has over 50 years of combined experience in law enforcement and believe that the Jarrells case raises many unanswered questions:

1. Why have the other two police officers, Shapiro and Ranck, not been recommended for termination?

2. Why did police command sanction two police reports for the same incident? This is counter to accepted police practice and raises Brady/Giglio integrity violations because of the untruths in these reports. And,

3. Why hasn’t the supervisory staff been disciplined for allowing and approving what appear to be untruthful police reports?

McDonald’s Owners Offer Tuition and Child Care to Lure Back McWorkers Struggling to Pay Yurugu’s Rent on $11 an Hour

From [HERE] McDonald’s Corp. MCD -0.03% owners are adding emergency child care and other benefits, as many U.S. restaurants are struggling to hire enough workers to run their businesses.

U.S. franchisees of the burger giant aim to boost hourly pay, give workers paid time off and help cover tuition costs to draw enough workers and improve the Golden Arches’ image as an employer. McDonald’s corporate parent said it is making a multimillion-dollar investment to back the franchisee efforts. Franchisees own 95% of the chain’s roughly 13,450 U.S. stores.

Labor has emerged as one of the biggest challenges to the U.S. economy’s post-pandemic rebound, particularly in service-heavy businesses that depend on large numbers of workers to prepare meals or make beds.

Restaurants last year made some of the largest layoffs, as Covid-19 prompted shutdowns and restrictions, and the industry now is struggling to bring back workers and find new ones. Restaurant and bar employment remains 1.3 million workers lower than since the pandemic began spreading in the U.S., while other sectors have nearly returned to full employment.

Many restaurant workers left the industry last year for other jobs, and the sector currently has one of the highest rates of employees quitting. The rate of U.S. restaurant and hotel workers leaving their jobs hit a two-decade high in April and remained there in May, according to the Labor Department.

McDonald’s, one of the largest U.S. private employers with around 800,000 people working in the chain’s restaurants, is closely watched by others in the industry for its moves on pay. McDonald’s in May said it would bump up starting pay in its corporate-owned restaurants to $11 to $17 an hour and said it would keep assessing wages to be competitive. 

McDonald’s franchisees last year began evaluating the pay and benefits that operators currently provide workers to figure out what may need improvement. Owners surveyed current McDonald’s restaurant employees about what they’d like to see in compensation. More than 5,000 McDonald’s workers and managers participated, according to the presentation.

U.S. Sending Senior FBI, DHS Officers “to Assist" Haiti in Aftermath of Moïse Assassination

From [HERE] Senior officials with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will go to the nation as soon as possible after receiving a request from Haitian authorities for security and investigative assistance.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the objective of the delegation is to support law enforcement efforts on the ground and provide resources in terms of womanpower and manpower, in addition to financial assistance.

Moïse was shot dead in his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince around 1 a.m. Wednesday. The attack also wounded his wife, Martine Moïse, who was transported to a hospital in Florida for treatment.

Four people suspected of being involved in Moïse's assassination were killed by police in a shootout. Haitian authorities have arrested 17 suspects and are searching for eight more believed to be involved in the slaying.

"We are going to bring them to justice," National Police Chief Léon Charles said at a news conference Thursday. During the briefing, the 17 suspects sat handcuffed on the floor.

Two U.S. citizens of Haitian descent were among those arrested, investigative Judge Clément Noël told French newspaper Le Nouvelliste. Noël said the two Haitian Americans were acting as translators for a group of attackers that originally planned to arrest, not kill, Moïse.

The American suspects have been identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55.

Psaki said Friday that the ongoing investigation into the assassination, including the arrest of two U.S. citizens, is "not going to impact the assistance we are providing to the people of Haiti."

"Our assistance is to help the people of Haiti and to help them get through what is a very challenging time and has long been, even before the assassination of the president," Psaki told reporters.

Newsweek reached out to the FBI and DHS for comment on the law enforcement delegation but didn't receive a response before publication.

The White House also announced Friday that Haiti is one of the countries that will receive COVID-19 vaccines from the United States. Psaki didn't provide the number of vaccines that will be shipped but said the administration is preparing to deliver them as early as next week. [MORE]

[Plantation Less Restrictive Under New Master] ICE will No Longer Routinely Detain Non-White Pregnant and Nursing Women, Angering Angry Neuropeons

From [HERE] In a reversal of a Trump administration rule, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will limit the detention of pregnant women. 

According to the July 1 directive, which was announced Friday, ICE will not detain, arrest or take into custody women who are pregnant, nursing or have given birth in the past year unless “release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.” The agency said only individuals who pose a threat to national security or an imminent threat of death, violence or physical harm to others will fall under this category.

The Associated Press, CNN and Courthouse News Service have coverage.

While ICE said the directive does not address whether removal proceedings should be initiated against pregnant and nursing women, it requires the agency to monitor individuals who are detained “for general health and well-being, including regular custody and medical reevaluation, to ensure appropriate pre- and/or post-natal and other medical and mental health care.” The directive also said individuals must be detained in facilities that are “suitable for their medical and mental health needs.”

“ICE is committed to safeguarding the integrity of our immigration system and preserving the health and safety of pregnant, postpartum and nursing individuals,” Acting ICE Director Tae D. Johnson said Friday.

This latest guidance from ICE is part of a broader move by the Biden administration to return to immigration policies put in place by President Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press. In August 2016, the agency adopted a policy that permitted pregnant women to be eligible for release pending the outcome of their cases.

President Donald Trump ended that policy the following year as part of his administration’s immigration enforcement measures.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the number of pregnant women detained by ICE increased from 1,380 in 2016 to 2,098 in 2018, according to its 2019 report.

Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement Friday that the shift in policy is a “welcome step in the right direction.”

“This move brings us closer to more humane treatment by ICE of people who are pregnant, postpartum or nursing,” Cho added. “ICE should stop detaining or arresting people who would be at particular risk in detention, must implement robust oversight of detention facilities and ensure the release of all people who would be particularly vulnerable in detention.”

ICE’s new directive also restricts the use of restraints on women who are pregnant or in post-delivery recuperation and prohibits their use on women who are in active labor or delivery.

[if the vaccines were unsafe would the privately owned, profit-making, White elite-controlled Dependent Media let us know?] FDA Gives Warning of Rare Nerve Syndrome to J&J Vaccine

From [HERE] The Food and Drug Administration warned Monday that Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine can lead to an increased risk of a rare neurological condition known as Guillain–Barré syndrome, another setback for a vaccine that has largely been sidelined in the United States.

Although regulators have found that the chances of developing the condition are low, they appear to be three to five times higher among recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine than among the general population in the United States, according to people familiar with the decision. The warning was attached to fact sheetsabout the vaccine for providers and patients.

Federal officials have identified 100 suspected cases of Guillain-Barré disease among recipients of the one-dose shot through a federal monitoring system that relies on patients and health care providers to report adverse effects of vaccines. Ninety five percent of those cases were considered serious and required hospitalization, the F.D.A. said. The reports are preliminary.

In a statement, the agency said that while “the available evidence suggests an association” between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and increased risk of Guillain–Barré syndrome, “it is insufficient to establish a causal relationship.” [MORE]

Suspected “Well Financed" Assassins of Haitian President Moïse Trained by US, Linked to Pro-Coup Oligarchy

From [HERE] As shock grips the Caribbean island nation of Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the Haitian government has carried out a campaign to arrest suspects it alleges are responsible for the murder.

Haitian Director of National Police Leon Charles announced at a press conference that the assassination squad that killed Moise is comprised of 28 foreigners, including two Haitian-Americans and 26 Colombian nationals. Fifteen of those Colombians have been detained while three were killed in a gun battle and eight remain fugitives. Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano has admitted that some of the Colombians are retired military personnel. Among them are at least one highly decorated soldier who received training from the United States and another who has been implicated in the murder of Colombian civilians.

Ties to oligarchs

The Haitian-Americans have been identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55. Solages lives in Fort Lauderdale where he is the CEO of EJS Maintenance & Repair and runs a nonprofit group, the website of which has since been scrubbed of information. Prior to relocating to Florida, he lived in the southern Haitian coastal city of Jacmel.

According to The Washington Post, Solages’ Facebook profile, which has since been removed, listed him as the chief commander of bodyguards for the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. The Canadaian Embassy confirmed that Solages previously worked as a security guard. While in Florida, Solages was an “avid and vocal supporter of former President Michel Martelly,” the founder of Moïse’s Haitian Baldheaded Party (PHTK), according to Tony Jean-Thénor, leader of the Veye Yo popular organization in Miami, founded by the late Father Gérard Jean-Juste.

The Haitian Times reported Solages also used to work as a security guard for both Reginald Boulos and Dimitri Vorbe, two prominent members of Haiti’s tiny bourgeoisie. Although initially friendly to him, they both became bitter opponents of Moïse. Boulos was also a prominent supporter of previous coups in 1991 and 2004 against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Boulos family is one of the wealthiest in Haiti and owns a pharmaceutical company that, in 1996, was responsible for poisoning scores of children with its tainted fever medicine, some fatally. Since the July 6-8, 2018 national uprising against the IMF-dictated hike of fuel prices, Boulos has attempted to recast himself as a popular and progressive figure (after one of his stores was burned and looted), heading a political party called the Third Way Movement (MTV).

Vorbe is the executive director and vice president of Société Générale d’Énergie SA, one of the largest private energy companies in Haiti which had a sweet-heart deal providing power to the energy grid that Moïse sought to renegotiate after the collapse of the PetroCaribe program, under which Venezuela provided Haiti with cheap oil and credit from 2008 to 2018.

Many believe Boulos is the intellectual author and financial backer of Moïse’s murder.

“Solage’s employment by Boulos and centrality to the operation appears to confirm the growing popular consensus in Haiti that this controversial merchant-turned-politician was the principal backer of Moïse’s assassination,” explained journalist Kim Ives, continuing:

A lot of factors have been pointing to his involvement: The arrival of the mercenaries in nine brand new Nissan Patrol vehicles without license plates suggests that they were vehicles coming from the Nissan dealership owned by Reginald Boulos. The Haitian people have already concluded that Boulous was behind the assassination and have dechoukéed [uprooted] the dealership, Automeca, that he owned.” While the Haitian-Americans reportedly served as translators, the muscle of the assassination squad came from Colombia, the U.S.’s top regional ally, which serves as a platform for destabilization and regime change plots in the region, from Venezuela to Ecuador – and now apparently Haiti.

The most prominent member of the hit squad is Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, a 41-year-old former special operations commando who retired from the military as a member of the Simón Bolívar No. 1 infantry battalion on December 31, 2019. According to the Colombian newspaper La Semana, Grosso “had several special combat courses, had been a member of the special forces and anti-guerrilla squads, and was known for being a skilled paratrooper who flew through the air without fear.”[MORE]

Parollercoaster: TX AG Charges Black Man w/Illegal Voting to Please the Dying GOP Votary who Must Rig Elections to Survive [voting w/o economic rights/control of substantive rights is real voter fraud

From [HERE] A 62-year-old Black man who waited hours to cast a ballot in last year’s presidential primary was arrested this week on charges that he had voted illegally.

The man, Hervis Earl Rogers of Houston, waited seven hours outside Texas Southern University to vote in the state’s presidential primary in March 2020. On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with two counts of illegal voting, a felony. According to court documents, the charges stem from ballots that Mr. Rogers cast on March 3, 2020, and on Nov. 6, 2018, while he was still on parole and not legally permitted to vote.

Tommy Buser-Clancy, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and one of the lawyers representing Mr. Rogers, said that Mr. Rogers thought that he could vote during the primary.

“Mr. Rogers’s prosecution really shows the danger of overcriminalizing the election code and the process of participating in a democratic society,” he said. “In particular, it raises the danger that criminal statutes in the election code are being used to go after individuals who at worst have made an innocent mistake. That’s not what any laws should be doing.”

Texas election code states that a person convicted of a felony can register to vote and participate in elections only once his or her sentence — including parole — is fully completed. Texas’ election laws also stipulate that a person must knowingly vote illegally to be guilty of a crime.

Apparently, the government must prove that Rogers knew he was on parole and knew that voting while on parole was unlawful.

The Sentencing Project, a criminal-justice nonprofit, estimates that 5.2 million Americans remain disenfranchised because of felony convictions, a disproportionate number of them Black. According to a report the group released last year, over 6.2 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised, compared with 1.7 percent of the non-African American population. In Texas, 2.8 percent of voters cannot vote because of felony convictions. [MORE]

Felony disenfranchisement laws are a legacy of our nation’s history of racial injustice, enacted to prevent African Americans from voting and ensure white supremacy. Millions of Americans are barred from voting today because of state felony disenfranchisement laws that disproportionately affect Black citizens.

Experts say that disparities in sentencing can make felony voting laws inherently discriminatory against minorities and people with low incomes. And the process for former felons to return to the voter rolls can be confusing, with muddled and frequently changing rules, making it difficult for people trying to vote legally to know what to do.

Mr. Rogers’s story ricocheted around social media after he was identified as the very last person in line to vote at his polling place. Houston Public Media reported at the time that Mr. Rogers arrived at the polls just before 7 p.m. and waited roughly six hours to vote, long after the polls had closed and many others had left the line.

“It is insane, but it’s worth it,” Mr. Rogers told Houston Public Media while waiting in line.

Mr. Rogers had been held at the Montgomery County Jail with bail set at $100,000. The Bail Project, a national nonprofit that offers free bail help and pretrial support for low-income people, bailed him out.

He could face upward of 40 years in prison — 20 years for each charge, according to Mr. Buser-Clancy, who added that Mr. Rogers’s past criminal record meant that the sentence could be even higher.

“He’s facing the possibility of an extremely harsh sentence,” he said. “Second-degree felonies are normally reserved for aggravated assault, and to apply it to Mr. Rogers’s case, it just shows how unjust that is.”

Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is under investigation for professional misconduct after he challenged President Biden’s win in court, brought the charges against Mr. Rogers. He has made it a mission of his office to prosecute voter-fraud cases, which are very rare in the United States and tend to be minor mistakes when they do happen.

“Hervis is a felon rightly barred from voting under TX law,” Mr. Paxton wrote on Twitter. “I prosecute voter fraud everywhere we find it!”

Republicans in Texas and other battleground states have been pushing aggressively to restrict voting laws since former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. On Thursday, Republicans in the Texas Legislature presented plans to overhaul the state’s election apparatus for a second time this year. They outlined a raft of proposed new restrictions on voting access that would be among the most far-reaching election laws passed this year.

THE REAL FRAUD. in 2020 Mr. Rogers’s story ricocheted around social media after he was identified as the very last person in line to vote at his polling place. Houston Public Media reported at the time that Mr. Rogers arrived at the polls just before 7 p.m. and waited roughly six hours to vote, long after the polls had closed and many others had left the line.

“It is insane, but it’s worth it,” Mr. Rogers told Houston Public Media while waiting in line.

Racist suspect Dems used Rogers’ story and others like it to propagendize the Black votary into voting for Black, Latino and friendly White Dem puppeticians and to falsely pump up the value of voting and voting power. However, Black voting power is illusory. As explained by Amos Wilson very few, if any, of the major political, economic and social goals achieved by Black America, including the Voting Rights Act, were accomplished through Black voting prowess. The ballot box has been a relatively impotent weapon in the achievement of major victories by the Black community.” [MORE] In reality Blacks residing in jurisdictions dominated by Dems constitute a powerless class who control no resources and are unable to even freely walk or drive down the street w/o being stopped or murdered by cops in broad daylight or able to neutralize any of the other problems caused by racism white supremacy and government authority. As explained by FUNKTIONARY, “Voting without having economic rights and control of substantive rights is voting fraud—you get what you got laid for—a royal screwing (Phillips or Flathead) and it's your own undoing.” [MORE]

Now the racist GOP hopes the arrest and petty prosecution of Rogers will have a chilling effect on the majority non-white Texas population and elsewhere. Woke persons understand that the white “race” is in decline. As made plain by Dr. Blynd the racist’s “worst and most basic fear still remains genetic annihilation in the form of the fear of the impending black planet. (see: weiteko disease, yurungu, western civilization, recessive genes, colored people, melanin & mutant). The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that by 2047 non-white persons will be the majority of the US population. The declining white population is not a new or reversible trend - the decline has only quickened in recent decades. Over the past decade Texas has become majority 58% non-white and is expected to be majority Latino by the end of this year. The white population also remains behind the Black population in growth. Thus, the GOP, which is a racial identity party designed solely to appeal to whites (particularly overt racists) and nearly an all-white institution that depends upon whites for fully 90 percent of their votes in presidential elections, is literally dying while the Democratic base of Black, Latino and Asian populations is growing inexorably. A decade ago racist Patrick Buchanan observed, “Already, California, Illinois and New York are lost. When Texas – where whites are a minority and a declining share of the population – tips, how does the GOP put together an electoral majority?” The answer is anything goes in yurugu’s perceived survival game with non-whites.

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing called racists' fear of a Black planet "numerical inadequacy."  The "fear of replacement" or fear of losing control over non-whites fuels the system of white supremacy/racism and causes racists to act genocidally towards non-whites in a perceived "survival game" they are engaged in with "us." Welsing’s color confrontation theory explained that the more the white population shrinks, the worse its conduct toward non-whites will get. 

Welsing stated, ‘Within the historic framework of Western civilization and culture (the civilization and culture organized to prevent white genetic annihilation), all racists have the spoken or unspoken mandate to participate actively in their collective struggle for global white genetic survival.’ Such genocidal and genthanasiastic conduct or behavioral system is carried in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labour, law, politics, religion, sex and war). For example, in the area of “law” police and prosecutors must incarcerate or kill Blacks or place them in greater confinement. Similarly, in the area of “politics” the shrinking racist votary must rig elections through suppression and purge or jim crow tactics to survive. [MORE] As explained by election guru Greg Palast the GOP's nationwide white votary was not large enough to elect Donald Trump. That is, he never legitimately won the election in 2016. Going back to the scene of the original crime:

Peer Reviewed Study in Medical Journal Removed from the Internet says COVID Vaccines are More Risky than Advertised and Should Be Used Sparingly b/c They Cause Death and Serious Side Effects

From [HERE] A medical study that appeared on the National Library of Medicine website called "The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations — We Should Rethink the Policy" explained that the COVID vaccines are effective but carry significant risk of death and serious side effects. The doctors who authored the study, Harald Walach Rainer (Poznan University of the Medical Sciences, Pediatric Hospital in Poland ) J. Klement (Department of Radiation Oncology, Leopoldina Hospital, Germany) and Wouter Aukem (Independent Data and Pattern Scientist, Brinkenbergweg, The Netherlands), explain that ‘governments should rethink their vaccination policies in light of the deadly risks involved.’

The study was removed from the internet last week and replaced with a version that has “retracted” stamped across it. The original is posted here. The abstract states:

COVID-19 vaccines have had expedited reviews without sufficient safety data. We wanted to compare risks and benefits. Method: We calculated the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV) from a large Israeli field study to prevent one death. We accessed the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) database of the European Medicines Agency and of the Dutch National Register (lareb.nl) to extract the number of cases reporting severe side effects and the number of cases with fatal side effects. Result: The NNTV is between 200–700 to prevent one case of COVID-19 for the mRNA vaccine marketed by Pfizer, while the NNTV to prevent one death is between 9000 and 50,000 (95% confidence interval), with 16,000 as a point estimate. The number of cases experiencing adverse reactions has been reported to be 700 per 100,000 vaccinations. Currently, we see 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations, and the number of fatal side effects is at 4.11/100,000 vaccinations. For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination. Conclusions: This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.

The conclusion states:

Conclusions.

The present assessment raises the question whether it would be necessary to rethink policies and use COVID-19 vaccines more sparingly and with some discretion only in those that are willing to accept the risk because they feel more at risk from the true infection than the mock infection. Perhaps it might be necessary to dampen the enthusiasm by sober facts? In our view, the EMA and national authorities should instigate a safety review into the safety database of COVID-19 vaccines and governments should carefully consider their policies in light of these data. Ideally, independent scientists should carry out thorough case reviews of the very severe cases, so that there can be evidence-based recommendations on who is likely to benefit from a SARS-CoV2 vaccination and who is in danger of suffering from side effects. Currently, our estimates show that we have to accept four fatal and 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations in order to save the lives of 2–11 individuals per 100,000 vaccinations, placing risks and benefits on the same order of magnitude.

Kamala Harris Slips in Polls but Maintains Strong Approval from Black Voters. Is She a Token Puppetician, Misunderstood or Set Up for Failure or All the Above?

Noah Bierman asks, Is the Biden administration setting Vice President Kamala Harris up for failure? Is she a historic figure but “not that interesting” as a politician? Are white liberals, despite their rhetoric, “gun-shy” in elevating women and women of color?

As Harris enters what may be a turbulent period of her vice presidency, we are beginning to see some thoughtful and fairly provocative analyses of both her record and her standing as the first woman and first Black and Asian American person to hold her post.

Now that Harris is having some trouble in polls and public perception, there are growing concerns among Democrats about her political ability. The question many have, even if they agree she is a good politician, is whether she is a great one — capable of leading the ticket when Biden leaves the stage. Biden, 78, has said he plans to run for reelection, though he has not quelled speculation that he could decide otherwise.

The speculation about Harris is especially urgent for Democrats who worry that former President Trump will run again and further threaten democratic institutions.

Some of Harris’ supporters argue, as Greer does, that Harris is being hamstrung by the White House. They point to her biggest solo assignments — curbing immigration from Central America and expanding voting rights against restrictive state GOP bills and a filibuster in the U.S. Senate — as unwinnable.

“She was far from a diversity hire for Mr. Biden, and she has clear potential as a national leader, but she needs the time, support and right combination of goals to learn and grow,” Greer writes.

Greer says that even if Harris wins on immigration by deterring people from coming, she loses, because liberal Democrats in the party’s base will see her efforts as a betrayal. And if she fails to discourage people from coming, others will claim she’s ineffective.

Harris is definitely catching heat from progressives over her warnings, issued last month from Guatemala, that migrants should stay home and will be turned away if they complete the dangerous journey to the border. But I’m not sure heat from the left on that issue is as big a long-term political danger as Greer outlines. 

Most of Harris’ efforts in Central America involve seeding economic development and aid, in hopes of giving people a reason to stay in their countries. If those efforts pay off, they will garner praise from all wings of the Democratic Party and could dent Republican attacks on the administration’s performance at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Greer’s bigger point is hard to argue. The immigration issue is tough, and Harris, who went to the border last month under political pressure, has now been dragged more deeply into other controversies, including conditions at a tent city for migrant children set up at the Fort Bliss Army Base.

The administration is also facing complaints from the left about its use of a public health law to turn migrants away and from the right about the large increase of children and families coming to the border, among other challenges.

Biden’s aides say they are not setting a trap for Harris, pointing out that he had a similar assignment when he served as President Obama’s vice president. 

But the stakes were different. Biden got the job at the tail end of the administration, after defining himself on the national stage for decades. And, as we now know, Biden’s efforts failed to yield long-term results.

Greer’s second major point cuts deeper for many in her party. She writes that while “Republicans tend to say the quiet part loud,” many Democrats “would never be able to vote for a Black woman at the top of the ticket, no matter how qualified.”

In polling, Democrats tend to rate Biden higher than they do Harris, though the difference is fairly small. Many of Harris’ allies, while agreeing that race and gender affect her poll numbers, say they also believe she fares worse than Biden simply because she is the vice president — the same reason many of her predecessors did worse in public opinion surveys.

“You can’t try to outdo No. 1 when you’re No. 2,” Donna Brazile, a friend of Harris’ who ran former vice president Al Gore’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, told me.

The pollster Cornell Belcher agrees with Brazile. And though he believes it is too early to look too closely at polls, he points to some positives for Harris, including strong approval from Black voters. 

The electorate that decides the Democratic primary and general elections in 2024 and 2028 — when Harris may run for the top job — will be more diverse than the one that elected Donald Trump in 2016 or the one that elected Biden in 2020. And, at least for now, South Carolina — where African American voters play a decisive role in the Democratic primary, including reviving Biden’s flagging candidacy last year — is arguably the most important state in the process of selecting a nominee.

“Be careful about trying to read too much in this far out,” said Belcher, who polled for Obama.

But all of this is contingent on whether Harris is seen as growing into the job, how well she does on her current and future assignments and how the Biden administration as a whole is viewed. And one thing is almost certain at this point: She is not likely to win a Democratic nominating contest without a fight.

Like “Attaching an Ankle Monitor to Every [Black] Person" Baltimore Cops Continuously Recorded and Kept Track of All Residents Movements, Violating Their Rights. CT Grounds Aerial Surveillance Program

From [HERE] The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that Baltimore’s use of aerial surveillance that could track the movements of the entire city violated the Fourth Amendment right’s of the city’s mostly Black residents.

The case, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, challenged the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) use of an aerial surveillance program that continuously captured an estimated 12 hours of day time coverage of 90 percent of the city each day for a six-month pilot period. The police also could enhance the process by integrating BPD systems—like its CitiWatch camera network, license plate readers, and gunshot detectors—into its “iView software,” “mak[ing] all the systems work together.”

EFF, joined by the Brennan Center for Justice, Electronic Privacy Information Center, FreedomWorks, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Rutherford Institute, filed an amicus brief arguing that the two previous court decisions upholding the constitutionality of the program misapplied Supreme Court precedent and failed to recognize the disproportionate impact of surveillance, like Baltimore’s program, on communities of color. 

In its decision, the full Fourth Circuit found that BPD’s use and analysis of its Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) data was a warrantless search that violated the Fourth Amendment. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Jones and United States v. Carpenter, the Fourth Circuit held that Carpenter—which ruled that cell-site location information was protected under the Fourth Amendment and thus may only be obtained with a warrant—applied “squarely” to this case. The Fourth Circuit explained that the district court had misapprehended the extent of what the AIR program could do. The district court believed that the program only engaged in short-term tracking.

However, the Fourth Circuit clarified that, like the cell-site location information tracking in Carpenter, the AIR program’s detailed data collection and 45-day retention period gave BPD the ability to chronicle all the people’s public movements in a “detailed, encyclopedic” record, akin to “attaching an ankle monitor to every person in the city.”

That ability to deduce an individual’s movements over time violated Baltimore residents’ reasonable expectation of privacy. In making that determination, the court underscored the importance of considering not only the raw data that was gathered but also “what that data could reveal.” Contrary to the BPD’s claims that the aerial surveillance data was anonymous, the court pointed to studies that demonstrated the ease with which people could be identified by just a few points of their location history because of the unique and habitual way we all move. Moreover, the court stated that when this data was combined with Baltimore’s wide array of existing surveillance tools, deducing an individual’s identity became even simpler.

The court explained that a detailed log of everyones movements constituted essentially a “general search” violative of basic 4th Amendment principles. The court explained that “allowing the police to wield this power unchecked is anathema to the values enshrined in our Fourth Amendment.”

Importantly the court acknowledged the fact that the 4th Amendment had essentially become meaningless in the lives of many Black people and ‘merely an inconvenience to be somehow ‘weighed’ against the claims of police efficiency.’ The court stated;

Baltimore is a thoroughly surveilled city. [citations omitted here [BW]] “[Mass surveillance] touches everyone, but its hand is heaviest in communities already disadvantaged by their poverty, race, religion, ethnicity, and immigration status.” While technology “allow[s] government watchers to remain unobtrusive,” the impact of surveillance “[is] conspicuous in the lives of those least empowered to object.” Id. Because those communities are over-surveilled, they tend to be over-policed, resulting in inflated arrest rates and increased exposure to incidents of police violence. ..

The Fourth Amendment must remain a bastion of liberty in a digitizing world. Too often today, liberty from governmental intrusion can be taken for granted in some neighborhoods, while others “experience the Fourth Amendment as a system of surveillance, social control, and violence, not as a constitutional boundary that protects them from unreasonable searches and seizures.” The AIR program is like a 21st century general search, enabling the police to collect all movements, both innocent and suspected, without any burden to “articulate an adequate reason to search for specific items related to specific crimes.” Because that collection enables Defendants to deduce information from the whole of individuals’ movements, this case is not “far from Carpenter”; indeed, it is controlled by it.

In a concurring opinion, Chief Judge Gregory dug deeper into this issue. Countering the dissent’s assumption that limiting police authority leads to more violence, the concurrence pointed out that Baltimore spends more per capita on policing than any comparable city, with disproportionate policing of Black neighborhoods. However, policing like the AIR program did not make the city safer; rather, it ignored the root issues that perpetuated violence in the city, including a long history of racial segregation, redlining, and wildly unequal distribution of resources.

FBI says Crime is Down [Racists Obsess Over Crime to Quantify Myths of Innate Black Criminality, Make Destruction of Black Communities Appear Self-Imposed and Big-Up Their Imaginary "White" Identity]

RACIAL PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME IN A SYSTEM OF RACISM WHITE SUPREMACY. According to a Sentencing Project Study:

* White Americans are more punitive than people of color.

* Whites misjudge how much crime is committed by African Americans and Latinos.

* Whites who more strongly associate crime with racial minorities are more supportive of punitive policies.
* Media crime coverage fuels racial perceptions of crime.

* Racial perceptions of crime have undermined public safety. [MORE]

From [HERE] There’s been a wave of media coverage this summer about an increase in homicides and crime across the United States. However according to FBI data crime is actually down and while murders are up, much of the coverage is overblown and exaggerated relative to crime rates in the 1990’s.

After decades of a primarily downward trend in the overall number of people killed, crime experts say they expect 2020 will mark the biggest single-year national jump in homicides since national crime statistics began to be released in the 1960s.

A preliminary government estimate shows a 25% single-year increase in killings in 2020. In some larger cities, the number of homicides has remained higher than usual through the early months of 2021.

While official national FBI crime data will not be released for months, some trends are clear. The rise in homicides likely translated into an additional 4,000 to 5,000 people killed across the country compared with the year before, according to early estimates.

And yet, even after an estimated 25% single-year increase in homicides, Americans overall are much less likely to be killed today than they were in the 1990s, and the homicide rate across big cities is still close to half what it was a quarter century ago.

New York City saw more than 2,200 killings in a single year in 1990, compared with 468 last year, according to city data. In the bigger picture, that’s a nearly 80% decrease.

Los Angeles saw more than 1,000 homicides a year in the early 1990s, compared with fewer than 350 last year.

But what’s happening with homicides is not part of some broader “crime wave.” In fact, many crimes, from larcenies to robberies to rape, dropped during the pandemic, and continued to fall during the first few months of 2021.

“Crime” is not surging. Even the broader category of “violent crime” only increased about 3% last year, according to the preliminary FBI data from a large subset of cities. It’s homicide in particular that has increased, even as other crimes fell.

Some police officials and their allies have asserted that last summer’s big, volatile protests against police violence diverted police resources and attention away from their normal patrols, and have suggested that demoralized, angry police officers might be less proactive or effective in dealing with violent crime.

But Jeff Asher, a crime analyst who writes extensively about homicide trends, examined 60 cities and found no correlation between the number of Black Lives Matter protests, and the size of a city’s homicide increase.

Rosenfeld cautioned that any policing-focused explanation for the homicide increase needed to explain why the change would have only affected serious and deadly violence.

“Most crime is down, including most felony, serious crime,” he said. “If the de-policing argument is correct, why did it only affect an uptick in violence and not other street crime?”

Attempting to link changes in how police operated to the political protests after George Floyd’s murder also made less sense than looking at the sweeping disruptions in operations due to Covid-19, he argued.

“If there has been substantial de-policing, suspect number one is the pandemic,” he said. While elevated homicide rates had continued into early 2021 in some cities, Rosenfeld added, the increase already appeared to be slowing.

“I do not expect homicide rates to reach the levels this coming summer that they were at last summer,” he said.

The great phreedom fighter Dr. Amos Wilson explained “The American Dilemma

In its oppression of Black America, White America faces a major dilemma. The White ruling class seeks to project a self-image and public image which are liberal and nonviolent. It wishes to assume the appearance of being faithfully committed to protecting the constitutional and civil rights guarantees of all residents — regardless of race, color, creed, or condition of previous servitude — and to be perceived by them as inherently humane. At the same time the ruling class wishes to retain its power to rule, to maintain its tremendous wealth, power, hegemony and privileges. Thus it is confronted with a major contradiction: it cannot actualize its projected image and commitments without destroying the bases of its identity and power. Since this class is not committed to its own destruction we must logically infer that its projected self-image, public image, and sociopolitical commitments are false and hypocritical. Social equality and privilege across classes and ethnocultural groups cannot exist simultaneous with White American sociopolitical and economic dominance. Class privilege and advantage require the subordination of other classes and groups. For these reasons, American institutions operate in opposition to their publicized missions when dealing with the underclasses and subordinated groups. Consequently, the major social institutions which seek to project an image of objectivity and neutrality, in actuality operate in the oppressive interests of the society's ruling groups and against the interests of its subordinate groups.

In sum, the ruling groups cannot maintain their hegemony and sustain socioeconomic inequality, which are the foundations of their regency, without perverting the ostensible missions of the society's sociopolitical institutions and utilizing them as instruments of oppression. In America this perversion must take place while the ruling groups hide their oppressive faces behind the seductive facade of democracy, liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

Hence, when we look at major American institutions relative to African Americans, we observe the following reversals: the economic system keeps them poor; the criminal justice system mediates injustice; the educational establishment creates ignorance and intellectual incompetence; the family institution breeds broken homes and "illegitimate" children; the health and welfare system catalyzes sickness and administers health-care neglect (the life-span of African Americans is actually decreasing); and the religious institutions support the immorality of racial injustice. These institutions are designed to deceive, fashioned to seem ameliorative while actually aiding and abetting the injurious exploitation of the populations they are supposedly commissioned to help. Paradoxically, they must appear to uplift while in reality maintain, and if necessary, intensify suppression.

In fact, their apparent uplifting efforts must in actuality be disguised forms of oppression and annihilation. Their ameliorative ideology and practice must be endemically opposed to the interests of the subordinate classes and groups while appearing otherwise.

In the context of the American dilemma the socioeconomic immobilization and destruction of the African American population must occur most intensely at the very time when a minuscule segment of that population appears to be garnering increased social and political status, and when a very substantial percentage of African Americans are deceived into thinking that such increasing status is indicative of "Black progress." Racist agendas must be pressed while the dominant White groups for the most part, appear to be less overtly racist in attitude and behavior. Thus, if necessary, African American genocide must occur during the time the ruling segments of the White American citizenry seem to be relatively most committed to African American survival, upliftment, complete social, political and economic assimilation into the mythical "American mainstream."

Hence the American ruling class dilemma: How must the required oppression, and if need be, genocidal elimination of African Americans and African peoples, be accomplished by the ruling class without it appearing to have instigated and perpetuated their oppression and elimination? How can African Americans be made to suffer negation of their political, economic, social, and albeit, their biological existence, without that negation appearing to be the work of the collective White community and its allied hosts?

Practical answers to these questions require that the continuing oppression and/or genocidal annihilation of the African American population by White America be accomplished through deliberate psychopolitical subterfuge, or through use of the collective ego defensive method of unconsciously programming and executing African American oppression and annihilation while consciously appearing not to do otherwise. In actuality, the collective White ego complex utilizes both methods.

Through the use of projection, reaction formation, rationalization and other collective ego defenses, White America magically makes its genocidal destruction of the African American community appear to be the result of African American self-destruction. In reaction formation the individual, and in this instance, a collectivity, represses and retains in the subconscious undesirable impulses and attitudes, and assumes personally conscious and public attitudes and behaviors diametrically opposed to those unconscious orientations. In the practice of rationalization the individual or the collectivity, in order to prevent the conscious and public revelation and the taking of responsibility for unacceptable motives, concocts reasons which superficially appear to be "true" while not indeed being so. Rationalization is perhaps the most frequently used psycho-dynamic mechanism of reality distortion. Through these collective ego defense mechanisms the social, political, economic, moral and physical demise of Black America is made to appear in the collective mind of White America to be the suicidal result of alleged African American predispositions, innate inabilities, disabilities, incompetencies, venalities, and a host of other personality and collective flaws that have nothing to do with White American oppression. [MORE]

California Hate Crime up 31%, Led by Anti-Black Bias as Nuropeons, who Fear Losing Control of the 6.5% Black Population in CA, Act Genocidally in the Presence of Color

FUNKTIONARY EXPLAINS:

Racism White Supremacy - psychopathic degeneracy. 2) "The local and global power system and dynamic, structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined, which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labour, law, politics, religion, sex and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet earth—a planet upon which the vast majority of people are classified as non-white (Black, Brown, Red and Yellow) by white skinned people, and all of the nonwhite people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white skin people." -Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, MD. [MORE]

From [HERE] Hate crime in California surged 31% in 2020, fueled mainly by a big jump in crimes targeting Black people during a year that saw the worst racial strife in decades, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the state's attorney general.

Overall hate crimes increased from 1,015 to 1,330 last year, while the number of victims increased 23%, from 1,247 to 1,536. Black people account for 6.5% of the state's population of nearly 40 million people but were victims in 30% of all hate crimes — 456 overall, up 87% from the previous year.

What we see from these reports is what we have seen and felt all year — we are in the midst of a racial justice reckoning in this country. It’s multi-faceted, and it cannot be solved overnight.” Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

California saw some of the largest protests following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. And it also saw a surge in attacks on people of Asian descent following the emergence of the coronavirus in China.

Last year's hate crime reports were the most since 2008, when there were 1,397. That in turn was topped several times in prior years, including 2001, when there were 2,261 hate crimes reported.

While the overall numbers of hate crimes targeting Asians was low — 89 — that was more than double the number in 2019. The most events during 2020 were reported in March and April, just as the statewide shutdown and other pandemic restrictions took hold.

“For too many, 2020 wasn’t just about a deadly virus, it was about an epidemic of hate as well,” Bonta said while speaking in Oakland’s Chinatown..

While the pandemic is easing, that fear still resides in the Asian American community, said Bonta, the state’s first Filipino American attorney general. He related that he feared even for his mother going alone into an urban area.

“There was a surge in anti-Asian violence correlated with the words of leaders who sought to divide us when we were at our most vulnerable,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in an apparent reference to former President Donald Trump.

Violent crime incidents driven by anti-Asian hate increased from 32 in 2019 to 72 in 2020, according to a companion report that aims to put that violence into modern and historical context dating to Gold Rush days of the mid-19th century and a history of harmful Asian stereotypes in the United States.

California defines hate crimes as those targeting victims because of their race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender or a disability. The definitions have been expanded at various times in recent years. Each hate crime event can include more than one related offense against more than one victim by more than one offender.

Such crimes targeting Latinos increased from 110 in 2019 to 152 last year, while those against white people rose from 39 to 82.

While hate crimes based on race increased, those prompted by religion dropped 13.5%. Anti-Jewish events fell from 141 in 2019 to 115 in 2020 and anti-Islamic events decreased from 25 to 15.

Those involving sexual orientation fell from 233 to 205. However, those with a gender bias increased, led by a jump in anti-transgender events from 29 in 2019 to 54 last year.

Though Bonta said more than half of hate crimes are believed to go unreported, he said he has confidence in local investigators and prosecutors to address the problem.

He nonetheless distributed a new law enforcement bulletin and guidance for prosecutors intended to help them to help them identify and investigate hate crimes, increase immediate and consistent contact with victims their communities and promote alternative forms of sentencing and restorative justice approaches when dealing with hate crimes.

Carl Chan, president of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, praised Bonta's office for also releasing updated brochures in 25 languages advising victims how to report hate crimes and seek assistance.

Chan, who was attacked from behind and knocked to the ground in April, said the brochures will help spur more reporting of such incidents.

The Chinatown has seen a decrease in traffic amid anti-Asian rhetoric, said Oakland City Councilwoman Sheng Thao. "People are fearful of walking the street.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he is seeking $300 million to address hate crimes, with one-third going to support victims and the remainder for community-based responses.

Historical Marker in Opelika Memorializes Four Racial Terror Lynchings

From [HERE] Hundreds of people joined the Lee County Remembrance Project on June 12 for a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of a historical marker in historic downtown Opelika’s Courthouse Square. The marker memorializes the lynching of four Black people—John Moss, George Hart, Charles Humphries, and Samuel Harris. LCRP also plans to memorialize Charles Miller, the county’s fifth documented lynching victim.

The ceremony took place at First United Methodist Church and included remarks from coalition members, community members, the local NAACP chapter, and local officials. To conclude the program, attendees walked to the square, where coalition members Ashley Brown, Olivia Nichols, Patricia Butts, Jean Madden, and Harriette Huggins unveiled the marker.

The Lynchings of John Moss, George Hart, Charles Humphries, and Samuel Harris

Between 1877 and 1950, white mobs lynched at least 361 African Americans in Alabama. At least five Black people were lynched in Lee County.

During this era, Black people faced a presumption of guilt that made them vulnerable to accusations of crime and mob violence, often without investigation. In 1886, cousins John Moss and George Hart were part of a search party that found the body of a missing white man in Waverly. Rather than being celebrated for their efforts to locate the missing man, race-based suspicion soon turned to John Moss and George Hart. Hearing that a lynch mob accused them of the murder, the cousins attempted to get to safety. On November 3, the white mob kidnapped Mr. Moss. Despite his pleas of innocence, the mob tortured him, hanged him, and burned his body.

Mr. Hart was seized in a “citizen’s arrest” and taken to the Montgomery jail to avoid mob violence. On November 1, 1887, he was returned to Opelika for trial. News soon broke that the evidence against Mr. Hart was not strong enough for a conviction. On November 5, over 60 armed white men kidnapped him from the Opelika jail.

Although legally required to protect people in their custody, police were often indifferent to or ineffective at protecting Black people. The white mob hanged Mr. Hart from the same tree as John Moss and pinned a placard to his back. It read: “This negro was hung by 100 determined men; whoever cuts him down will suffer his fate.”

Local officials, including local law enforcement, were complicit in each of these lynchings. No one was ever held accountable.

On November 3, 1902, an armed white mob seized Samuel Harris, a Black man who was picking cotton in a field when two white women reported a robbery and assault nearby in Salem. Hours later, despite having no evidence that implicated Mr. Harris in the crime, over 125 men shot him to death. His pregnant wife, Beatrice, was arrested as an accomplice. Newspapers did not report what happened to Mrs. Harris after her arrest.

On March 18, 1900, a white mob lynched Charles Humphries. The previous day, a white teenager reported being startled when she saw Mr. Humphries, a young Black employee of her father, in her room. The mob went to Mr. Humphries’s home near Phenix City and shot him more than 40 times.

During this era, white people’s fears of interracial sex extended to any action by a Black man that could be interpreted as seeking contact with a white woman.

White communities were often supportive of violence against Black people, and the lynchings of many victims were not recorded and remain unknown. Lynching inflicted lasting traumatic wounds for Black people in the South and thousands fled the region as refugees from racial terrorism.

A Black Man Wrongfully Convicted for Murdering 2 White Cops, who spent 40 yrs in jail, Says Chicago Cops, DA's and Officials [all white] Conspired to Cover Up Police Torture Leading to his Confession

DOGGY’S TORTURE MACHINE. WHITE COPS TORTURED BLACKS AS POLICY IN DEMOCRATIC CHICAGO.

From [HERE] A man who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of two Chicago police officers and spent decades in prison is suing a host of current and former police, state’s attorneys and city officials, alleging they conspired to convict him for crimes they knew he did not commit and to cover up the acts of torture that lead to his confession.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley, notorious police Commander Jon Burge and two former Chicago police superintendents are among those named in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by Jackie Wilson, who wrongfully spent more than three decades behind bars for the 1982 murders of police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien.

“After 39 years, it is time for Defendants to be held civilly accountable for their egregious misconduct that caused (Wilson) to nearly die imprisoned for crimes he did not commit,” Wilson’s attorneys from Loevy & Loevy and the People’s Law Firm wrote in a 67-page complaint.

The lawsuit alleges a conspiracy took place to cover up the torture of Wilson by Burge and detectives under his command at the Area 2 station following Wilson’s arrest for the murders of Fahey and O’Brien.

According to the complaint, Wilson was repeatedly beaten and electroshocked by Burge and others as they demanded a confession. Wilson eventually relented and falsely confessed because, according to the complaint, he believed “the only way he would leave Area 2 alive was if he gave a statement.”

That statement was taken by an assistant Cook County state’s attorney and a court reporter, who allegedly knew that Wilson had been tortured into confessing.

Wilson was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 1983. But that conviction was overturned by the state Appellate Court in 1987, and a second trial took place two years later.

The complaint states that during the 1989 trial, prosecutors and police continued “fabricating additional false evidence and withholding exculpatory evidence.” That included former Assistant State’s Attorney Nicholas Trutenko, who allegedly conspired with a jailhouse informant, William David Coleman, to “fabricate a false story that falsely implicated” Wilson.

This led to a second conviction in O’Brien’s murder, but an acquittal for the killing of Fahey. Even so, Wilson was again sentenced to life in prison, where he remained for the next 29 years until 2018.

That’s when Cook County Judge William Hooks ruled that Wilson’s confession had been coerced out of him.

“There is more than enough to surmise what happened in the investigation and interrogation of Jackie Wilson was not good — instead, very bad and ugly,” Hooks said, according to the complaint. “The conduct of those involved in this most serious of investigations, which involved attempting to discover and ethically prosecute the murderer or murderers of two Chicago police officers, required more. Much more was required of the Chicago Police Department, the Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney, our courts, the private and public defense bar, and indeed, our federal government.”

Hooks tossed out Wilson’s conviction and granted him yet another trial, but this time, his false confession could not be used against him.

Special prosecutors brought in to handle this third trial again relied on Coleman’s story implicating Wilson. But after two weeks, those prosecutors abruptly dropped all charges against Wilson after it was revealed that Trutenko had allegedly lied on the witness stand by suppressing the fact that he had an ongoing “illicit relationship” with Coleman.

Hooks has since granted Wilson a certificate of innocence.

Just this month, Cook County Judge Alfredo Maldonado ordered a special prosecutor to investigate the state’s attorney’s office, Trutenko, Coleman and others for alleged misconduct.

“The unparalleled nearly 39 years of unconstitutional misconduct was not an isolated occurrence,” Wilson’s attorney wrote in the complaint. “Rather, it was part of several interrelated patterns and practices of systemic torture and physical abuse of African American suspects at the Area 2 and, later, at the Area 3 Police Headquarters under Defendant Jon Burge’s command and supervision.”