OMG. The US has chartered a cruiseship to rescue Americans Israelis who want to come home. Where is a corresponding rescue ship for the beseiged Gazans? Isn’t anyone horrified by our racist inhumanitarianism? Truly Israeli Apartheid is being asserted internationally.
There will no doubt be takers among Israelis who want to escape whatever the dying Palestinians have left to throw at them, though the prospect of more incursions are about as unprobable and fantastical as the first one.
Reading between the headlines, the US paid six billion dollars to ransom five American spies imprisoned by Iran. Three of those deny they were spying. The other two decline to identify themselves. That’s right. Although that’s 1.2 Billion a head, the press refuses to investigate. Both the US and Iran are colluding to keep the secret. What could that be about?
To clarify, it was a prisoner swap: five Iranian sanctions-violators plus six billion in frozen Iranian assets, in exchange for the release of five American spies.
The five sanctions-breakers are Mehrdad Moin-Ansari, Kambiz Attar-Kashani, Reza Sarhangpour-Kafrani, Amin Hassanzadeh and Kaveh Afrasiabi, from among a dozen held by the US for “breaking US sanctions against Iran.” Former vice president Dick Cheney broke those sanctions but wasn’t detained.
The three named US spies are Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, and Emad Shargi. All three insist their activities were not espionage. There’s little reason to doubt Tehran, a deeply religious and moral society. We also have the hilariously telling example of the famous embassy hostages detained by the Islamic Revolution whom subsequent accounts have dropped all efforts to disguise as other than intelligence officers.
Strangely enough both the press and the Iranian government itself are okay with keeping Washington’s secret. Six billion dollars is a lot of payola.
The pretext is that the two unnamed spies want their privacy. Perhaps they have years to go before retirement, so wish to remain assets to the US intelligence complex. Right. Perhaps their covers, the NGOs which employed them, are not commonly associated with CIA fronts, and networks of similarly inserted operatives would thus be exposed. Is that worth six billion? More likely the two incognitos would be recognized if their faces were seen by earlier dupes than the Iranians. More likely, international figureheads would roll. Iran has probably known this all along and knew that the strength of its bargaining chips lay in concealing their identity.
War Party voices across the media are decrying Candidate Trump’s windfall from merchandizing his jail selfie. They’re convinced that a city and county jail should own the right to exploit the mugshots of its booking victims. Wait what?
Out of spite for the Trumpster, the antipopulist pundits would prefer that a justice system profit from spreading the likenesses of its detainees, innocent-until-proven-guilty be damned? What an unpopular opinion indeed.
Booking officers would have to mandate that arrestees sign releases for the public display of their mugs. That’s an interesting civil illiberty.
I’m sure intellectual property brokers love the idea because those rights could be contracted to IP horders like Getty Images for further control over what the public sees and can’t see. Next would be surveillance footage, doorbell videos, and traffic cams. To my mind the mugshot is overreach enough. If anyone has earned that image it’s the perp themself.
Trump elected to scowl for his jail portrait, apparently peeved at the injustice of his indictment. It seems a rather petty posture considering the theatricality at play. Maybe the Edward G. Robinson menace is his best look, but I always tried to smile for the occasion.
In my experience jailors wouldn’t let you smile. Apprehendees are expected to look glum. and you certainly feel it, being shouted at to stop smiling. I think Tom Delay’s famous car dealer smile mugshot broke the precedent, I told them as much, but wardens have different tools now to snap the expression they prefer. They don’t tell you when they’ve clicked the shutter, or they pretend they have until you stop mugging. With digital equipment they simply record a video and choose the frame of their liking. If you want to effect joviality you have to wear a smile through the entire booking process. For newcomers to our ugly penal system that’s not an easy thing to do.
I’ve lost count, how many times now has Tiger Woods been pulled from the driver’s seat of a wrecked car and not been held accountable for endangering public safety? The laws which restrict driving while impared are reasonable enough, but if the consequences seem too draconian for a cultural role model, then a relaxed enforcement ought to apply to every substance-abuser. especially one unlucky enough to roll his car while speeding through a residential neighborhood.
Uncelebrated schmos are instead hauled through courts, for-profit rehabs, traffic classes and the SR22 insurance scam. If social workers are leaning toward a less punative remediation for drunk drivers, that ought to apply to all victims of drug and drink, not just stars like Tiger Woods and Kevin Hart. Hart, you may remember, crashed his hot rod but had one of his injured passengers climb into the driver’s seat to take the blame, according the eyewitness first on the scene, who pulled Hart out of the crashed car.
I’m for leniency all around, celebrities are too evidently. Of course the kid glove treatment hasn’t curbed Tiger’s recurring impared driving…
Speaking as a street activist, I can assure you that any protester who has traveled to a demonstration in Washington DC would have stormed the Capital Building if the opportunity arose instead of being ignored outside it. Especially if the customary paramilitary posts were unattended and police undercover provocateurs were breaking the windows and doors to ease your access to an edifice that belongs to the people more than any other. Obviously the game plan was to let Trump supporters have their brief moment of unsuppressed anger, then let a “riot” discredit the outgoing party.
What a sham to accuse Trump’s would be rescuers of trespass! How dare law enforcement charge nonviolent demonstrators for the damage which their MAGA-clad plainclothes officers coordinated if not perpetrated?! An unarmed female Air Force veteran was shot dead trying to climb through a window – and who are we calling terrorists?!
Now the FBI is circulating photos of their top 37 persons of interests, wanted for violating a curfew and treading on the sanctity of our congressional den of thieves. The curfew was a blatant breach of the First Amendment and Congress is the People’s House. The demonstrators wanted to confront their pretend representatives and they did it. Trump expressed his gratitude and they earned it.
Whatever their politics, they are heroes and genuine patriots. They look funny because the FBI and the media shitshowrunners selected for cross-eyes and cro-magnon brows, but such alleged freaks showed initiative, restraint, a sense of humor, and an audacious love of their country. They braved COVID to save Democracy, they accused Congress of betraying the people and they’re not wrong. Their critics don’t have a clue, and the smarter among those let Bernie and Elizabeth Warren deliver them hook line and sinker into the fold of the Democratic Party, where status quo reigns at its ugliest. As a Biden presidency sinks in, their skin will crawl once more, and the cycle of impotent “resistance” will begin again at square one.
WHO stole the 2020 presidential election? I think the evidence was in our faces every day on the telly. And the perpetrators pulled it off fair and square, just as the kleptocrats among our founding fathers intended. The corporate media pundits were unanimous about who Americans should vote for and enough of the country believed them. In the final stretch they even blacked out a story that would have been widely damaging to the Biden plunderbund and blocked the president’s Tweets, deciding for themselves which news was “real” and which “fake”. Which is their prerogative of course, as costodians of a universally false narrative. Early in his term Trump declared the media to be the American People’s most dangerous enemy. But only the MAGA crowd believed him. Blue America is still making fun of red but who are the bigger fools really?
As a South Korean court decides that Japan owes more compensation to the Korean women it abducted during WWII to serve as “Comfort Women” for the Japanese troops, Americans should own up to the reality that all militaries rely on involuntary prostitution and gang rape to motivate their soldiers.
From antiquity through the Napoleonic Wars, through America’s Civil War to its imperial conquests westward and abroad, and until World War One immobilized warfare, “comfort women” were called “camp followers.” US servicemen in Vietnam established a sex industry in Southeast Asia that is fertilized still today by veterans of all nationalities. But while America’s Defense Department outsources more and more of its functions to contractor profiteers, it has moved the sexual services in-house. This shifts the customary impact on victim populations unto another consumable pool of sexual prey called FELLOW SOLDIERS.
In brief the scheme is simple: Recruit young women, let male soldiers to rape them, replenish as needed. Mission Accomplished as they say. Among your female grunts, purge would-be careerists to ensure you are trafficking in only the age of vulnerability suited to your comfort-seekers. That perverse finess is of course the giveaway.
In the US military, 100% of women are sexually harassed or raped. Officials say the figure is 70%, or they discount attacks as cases of harassment and not rape. This allows service women who chose not to report their rapes to save face, and it ameleorates the stigma which otherwise would fall on every woman in uniform. Like the single blank bullet issued to firing squads to ease the conscience of every member allowing them to believe their gun did not chamber a live and fatal bullet. The confidential medical records say the frequency of sexual victimhood is actually 90%, but that suggestes an improbable paucity of unreported cases. In the civilian world, it’s believed that half of all rapes go unreported. Assuming a correlation, how can you have twice as many as 90%?
Besides addressing the rape culture endemic to professioonal soldiering, a remedy suggests itself in at least pretending to care about the well being of female soldiers. For a start, America’s military branches could easily relax the basic training requirements for women. The current standards, which pander to a feminist insistance on a physical equality of the genders, quickly destroy all female recruits. The same backpack weight loads of boot camp, which eventually debilitate men’s backs and knees by the time they’re 40, cripple women before they’re 25. An obscenely high percentage of women have to be med-boarded out of active duty with destroyed backs, ankles and wrists. And the female re-enlistment rate is abysmal. You’d think the army, navy, air force and marines would want to retain trained soldiers. Unless women are more valuable to them young, untrained, and uninitiated.
Comfort Women and Camp followers suffered attrition from the natural consequences of communicable disease and abuse, allowing for a regular turnover of fresh stock. Pretending your soldiers don’t consume comfort women means having to be duplicitous about where you are dumping your bodies.
The New York Times’ woke campaign “1619 Project” offers restitution for slavery with typical newspaperman philanthropy: the in-kind contribution! Thus “all the news that’s fit to print” gets trimmed by what isn’t centric to the African American experience, not for news in real-time but retroactively! The Grey Lady of Yellow Journalism is courting younger audiences fresh from history courses featuring personages created in their diverse image. As if the past is a pageant of participation awards, purged of the characters whose relevance used to be the making of history. Never mind how you got here, the study of history is now a showcase of what insignificant role you might aspire to when it’s your turn to play a part.
A study now indicates that people who’ve tested positive for COVID can have reduced cognative abilities as compared to an average population sample. Thus is consistent with the concern that some who are hopitalized for Covid-19 will emerge with permanent brain damage, among the myriad of other heartbreaking secondary outcomes. HOWEVER, without having tested the same group before infection, it is difficult to deny the probability that the virus is selecting for stupid. Not in the hospital emergency rooms I imagine, but maybe where it chooses between masked and unmasked…
Would you rather a dick who can’t grab a pussy without making an ass of himself, or the establishment favorate who chaired the Anita Hill witch trial?
The US media is sparing no effort to unseat President Trump by projecting landslide support for a return to a normal state of affairs, you know: wars, covert wars, and financial supremacy. Admitedly Trump is a constant and tiresome embarassment, but alas the Tump circus has also sidelined war and brought world peace. Try as the media might to restart the Cold War, our Clown-in-Chief befriends our supposed-to-be enemies and de-escalates the jingoist propaganda. And his baffoon act makes it impossible for career diplomats to pretend Capitalist America hasn’t always been a bullying asshole. Trump was the indictment which Ugly America deserved, yet deniers still RESIST, claiming he doesn’t represent them. Look in the mirror you mal-educated narcissists. Do you owe your vitality to infusions of Third World blood? Karma created Trump in your goddamn image. Now you’re hoping to enlist the Clinton-Bush-Obama good-times political machine to restore domestic calm so that warmongers, exploiters and profiteers can get the imperialist juggernaut back to cruising speed. Selfish Americans, you can’t even figure out that Team Biden is the uglier American by far.
SO “WOKE” America is protesting the racist brutality of capitalism’s hired thugs. What are the cops supposed to stop doing exactly? Are they supposed to let poor blacks breathe? Or stop killing poor blacks in such vivid disproportion? What an aimless message these riots bring! Of course the mainstream media is on board. Their theme is domestic unrest with an eye on regime change. It’s what they incite everywhere else. I’m surprised they haven’t labeled this a “color” revolution –except the color is already chosen and it’s their least favorite.
The only result of the visibility which the Black Lives Matter movement has brought to police lynchings is that now you hear regret that poor white criminals aren’t dished out the beatings reserved for blacks. Do we want more police brutality so long as it is equally distributed? Cops aren’t going to stop beating people. It’s their job. In an unequal, predatory economic system, cruelty is a cop’s function.
I also laugh at the celebrity blow-back at unfortunate white protesters who take up the chant “All Lives Matter” usually in earnest because their marches, reflecting their local populations, are mainly white. Their chants don’t negate “Black Lives Matter,” they broaden it. Face it, the BLM slogan is pedantic. Of course Black Lives Matter. The protesters are not illiterate and neither are the police, the supposed audience.
And BLM is such an inarticulate ask. Try “Drone Victims Matter!” Uh, agreed, but the US drone terror program is not going to stand down.
And “hands up” and “taking a knee” are demonstrations of submission. Ugh.
If the issue is in-the-line-of-duty lynchings, I’m sorry but there are unfortunates a rung below African Americans. Per capita, Native Americans die more often at the hand of law enforcement, and below them, the homeless. Constables have been “rolling” poor bums since antiquity. Vulnerable homeless are killed, white and black, in dark alleys, without witnesses sober enough to record it with charged cell phones and Youtube accounts at home. And without faith leaders to rouse their congregations, or order churchgoers to heel once the fundraising was done.
If the George Floyd protests are made to be about discrimination against African Americans in general, and not Floyd’s tragic death-by-cop, then who is co-opting the message really?
Fortunately these riots will prove a difficult genie to ride. Images of civil discord make Trump look bad, but the more violent they become, the more activated will be the middle Americans who cheer for order to be restored.
That same white middle class wants their landscapers and household help to be hispanic who won’t expect to be treated as equals. Immigrant labor is preferred for the same reason. The upper class don’t have to discriminate by skin color. If you are underclass, YOU Do Not Matter.
Supposedly all of America is expected to suppress its racism. That’ll happen when you cease showing deference to family members over strangers, or when you quit disabusing sports fans for rooting against your home team. Clans, schools, ethnicity, and nationality are natural constructs where people feel communal bonds. They are also the only instinctive means by which people find their strength in numbers. Strange we’re all being told to disavow those instincts.
Meanwhile ethnocentrism relating to religious affiliation, if you’ve got one, is still encouraged. Nationalism, when it comes to kicking other religious ass overseas is still applauded. What of that racism?
When cops start beating bank chairmen, when the international brotherhood of man includes the bosses who deploy the cops and not simply the dupes more easily oppressed with racist state terrorism, then we can consider integrating the role of police into our vision of a desirable community. In other words, it ain’t going to happen. Calls to disband or defund the police are great, but until people wield the political power to do it, the calls will be easily refused.
Focusing on race doesn’t unite people, and it doesn’t only divide black and white, it attempts to efface everyone’s chief means to draw individuals together in united fronts against their common foe. Once we’re all free we can talk about equality.
Now addressing the systemic repression of blacks is another matter. African Americans were not immigrants. They alone came to these shores without the promise of the American dream of making a better life for themselves. REPARATIONS and affirmative action, that’s the only recourse to attempt to redress such inequality of footing.
Join the protests if you want, but know they’re serving only the corporate agenda of international liberalism. If you’re all about that, do your best to pull the demonstrations toward the peaceful, lest our president benefit from the gesture of saving middle America from anarchy. But know that team .gov holds all the cards when it comes to inciting and even instigating the violence. They are both ANTI and FA.
COMMERCIAL AIRPORTS take great care to exclude weapons and explosives from their passengers’ bags and accessories. Why bother when authoritarians can bypass security regulations and restricted airspace with armed drones? US officials brag that they killed the world’s Number One Bad Guy, an Iranian major general named Qassem Soleimani, who they claim was responsible for American casualties. Naturally the precision airstrike killed Soleimani’s entourage as well, including Brigadier General Hussein Jafari Nia, Major-General Hadi Taremi, Colonel of the Guards Shahroud Mozaffari Nia, Captain Waheed Zamanian, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy-commander of the Iraq’s People’s Mobilization Forces, and Mohammad al-Shibani, Muhandis’s son-in-law. No word yet on what their crimes are alleged to have been, had charges been brought and the group been summoned to a court of law, as would be done in any self respecting international law abiding society. Anyhow NBD, the U.S. of Assholes has traded its nocturn Seal Team raid Death Squads for MQ-9 Reaper drones guided by War Room extrajudicial assassins. And Yanks no longer shy away from Death’s Head nomenclature. We’ve gone from Predator drones to Reaper. Ha ha “Grim Reaper” get it? America Fuck Yeah! No, you dumbfuck blimpnecks, that drone is actually a sower. Of a grim harvest.
A gunman goes into a church –have you heard this one? Essentially the latest headline goes: Texas church gunman kills two armed churchgoers before being killed by yet another. That’s a lot of Texas church gunmen. Apparently when the shooting stopped even more worshipers pulled out their guns. Let’s see, the lesson about needing a gun to defend oneself doesn’t add up so well in this example. In Texas totting a gun to church means you have a one in three chance of surviving an attack by a fellow gun believer. Sunday’s two victims were armed after all and it didn’t save them. And if we think about this charitably, as we ought to because the first gunman, the troubled one, was a churchgoer himself, having a gun didn’t save him either, the actual odds become one survivor out of every four church gunmen. God rest everybody’s piece. So the lesson here is, don’t go to church! And especially not if you are packing. If a fellow troubled soul doesn’t shoot you, security will.
JOE BIDEN thinks he can sway voters by saying he’d consider a Republican as his vice-presidential pick. Then he explained about choosing a running mate: “Whomever I would pick, were I fortunate enough to be your nominee, I’d pick someone who was simpatico with me, who knew… what my priorities were and knew what I wanted to do. We could disagree on tactic, but strategically we’d have to be on the exact same page.â€
How’s that for truth in advertising? Biden thinks he might be on the exact same page as what’s supposed to be the other party. HA.
Local news reporter Alex Bozarjian felt “violated, objectified, and embarrassed” when a passing marathon runner grabbed her butt on live TV. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of that! Corporate media INDULGES in disrespect and objectification, shouldn’t their representatives be braced for the consequence? Was it a sexual assault? Not of Bozarjian! The grinning runner did that FOR THE CAMERA! It was a slap aimed to denigrate and disrespect the media, and should forewarn every mainstream news hack who presumes their victimized public cannot strike back. Bozarjian’s station says “No woman should have to endure that abuse simply for doing her job.” Doing THAT job — how about ALL of them? Male AND female! Whether fool or knave, unknowing or mendacious, media whores deserve a slap whenever they surface in public. Granted, that slap will probably be more effective delivered in the face. Bozarjian got off easy.
The US Air Force flew one of its intelligence workers’ wives out of the UK after she committed vehicular homicide, then claimed diplomatic immunity. The British press reports that the whereabouts of Anne Sacoolas are being concealed from journalists and investigators. The US media is conspiring to keep all personal details being made public. Freedom the the Press does not protect your freedom to know.
Anne Sacoolas, 42, wife of US “diplomat” Jonathan Sacoolas (reportedly an intelligence officer with the NSA), fled the UK after killing Harry Dunn, 19, when her Volvo collided with his motorbike while she was driving on wrong side of road. Sacoolas had just exited the RAF Croughton base in Northamptonshire, which is leased to the US and called the Joint Intelligence Analysis Centre (JIAC). Sacoolas’ eldest of three children was in the car at the time of the accident. Usually diplomatic immunity only covers diplomats in London, but a special deal signed as early at 1994 includes this particular base. US media is reporting the story, without mentioning her name, or that her “diplomatic immunity” is a cover for intelligence work.
Curious things, these media moratoriums.
Even petty blackmailer extortionists know to warn “if anything happens to me, incriminating evidence will be released to the media.” Billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is already fading from the news and not one manila envelope has dropped. What does that tell you about what “happened” to Jeffrey Epstein? It didn’t. You might think his suicide was really a murder, but let’s remember he counted the most powerful pervs among his friends. Fat chance any of them wanted their friend and primo procurer killed. Before his suicide, Jeffrey Epstein signed a will, his last legal opportunity to do so, then he did El Chapo one better. With allegedly dozing guards (one of them a temp with a shorter personnel record, maybe more easily impersonated), and under faulty surveillance cameras, El Epstein disappeared from federal custody into his own self-financed witness protection plan. What’s it take? An anesthetic cocktail for the short gurney ride, not that many parties to pay off or knock off later, your body is released to an unnamed “Epstein Associate,” and it’s party time again at your Virgin Island! Pretty damn obvious.
What’s behind the current wave of Churchill-mania? I’m inclined to think it’s about rebooting pan-nationalism. Churchill was a hero of WWII, propping up the supposition that WWII was a just war where Churchill led the defense against Fascism. The victors have been embellishing that history since before that capitalist scam began.
The latest movie, DARKEST HOUR, presumes to glorify Winston Churchill BE MOFO SOB as England’s savior, begging to presume there’s no argument it was her darkest hour. Aimed to pull the wool back of the eyes after Britain’s improbable moment of clarity about their opportunity to make a BREXIT from the talons of their banker overlords.
Churchill was an adventurer and glory-seeker whose every move supported colonialism and imperialism. His first taste of war was on the side of the Spanish as they suppressed independence movement in Cuba. Next he fought the Boers in South Africa. Next opposed labor struggles. He ordered the immolation of Anarchists. He sent death squads to Ireland. He disparaged Indian attempts at sovereignty, suggesting Gandhi should be bound hand and foot and crushed beneath an elephant. He bombed Dresden. He gave Palestine over to Zionists. He held rebellious Kenyan tribes in concentration camps.
This was a warmonger war criminal we’re praising as one of History’s greatest leaders, probably because these are times of war and today’s sadists need affirmation their actions will be similarly lionized.
Mondoweiss has the goods on Nas Daily, but they’re wise enough to let readers connect the dots. Let’s do it shall we? Nas Daily is a viral sensation on Youtube. It presumes to trot the globe presenting a sixty second travelogue for a new location everyday, minus the travel time, location scouting, casting, shooting, editing, seeking permissions, and marketing. Admittedly the inanity of the content must write itself.
At best, Nas segments are compilations of travel agency footage, woven with drone-shot videos of the 25-yr-old “Nas” spazzing out with troops of multiracial peri-pubertals around whatever tourist attraction or cultural distinction Nas thinks will blow your mind. The high production costs, the innocuous feel-good themes, and the obvious PR services, leave no doubt the “viral” load is engineered. But by whom?
Nas, aka Nuseir Yassin, is also dishonest because he’s not globe-hopping with abandon, as the videos suggest. That part is already in the can. While viewers think they’re supporting his search for new exotic destinations, he’s home binging on Taurine and Final Cut Pro.
Nas Daily doesn’t warrant mention, actually, until the interspersed episodes seeking to depoliticize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then Nuseir’s being a Muslim Palestinian Israeli, happy genocide denier, makes it absolutely clear who is behind these videos. This is Hasbara product focused on legitimizing the Israel colonial project. No wonder Nas doesn’t like BDS.
Borat was Zionist blackface slapstick which smeared Islamic stereotypes with excrement. This collaborator Borat may be an authentic Muslim, promoting tolerance for all cultural differences, but his secular apolitical whitewash is equally vile.
Wind energy seems practically free, but what a cost! Gone is the scenic farmland of the American plain, raked for ethanol, fracked for gas, pumped of oil, then plumbed for air, to power transportation. As if leaving the mess was the be-and-end-all of why the pioneers settled the west.
Kimya Dawson not only nailed the essence of protests for #BlackLivesMatter. She knew in which direction the protest marches needed to push. Toward our system’s seams. If you are having trouble finding the lyrics of her song about HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT I CAN’T BREATH, it’s because it’s called At the Seams.
I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Dawson’s brilliant lyrics to unpack her references and simulate her cadence.
AT THE SEAMS by Kimya Dawson
1.
Left hands hold the leashes
and the right hands hold the torches,
And Grandpas holding shotguns
swing on porch swings hung on porches,
And the Grandmas in their gardens
plant more seeds to cut their losses,
And the poachers,
with the pooches
and the nooses,
preheat crosses.And the pooches see the Grandpas
and they bare their teeth and growl,
While their owners turn their noses up
like they smell something foul,
And they fumble with their crosses
and they start to mumble curses,
And they plot ways
to get Grandpas
off of porches
into hearses.But the Grandpas on the porches
are just scarecrows holding toys,
And the Grandmas in the gardens
are papier-mâché decoys,
While the real Grandmas and Grandpas
are with all the girls and boys
Marching downtown to the City Hall
to make a lot of noise,
Saying:Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.2.
Sometimes it seems like
we’ve reached the end of the road
We’ve seen cops and judges sleep together
wearing long white robes.
And they put their white hoods up,
Try to take the black hoods down,
And they don’t plan on stopping
til we’re all in the ground.Til we’re dead in the ground
or we’re incarcerated
‘Cause prison’s
a big business form
of enslavement
Plantations that profit
on black folks in cages
They’ll break our backs
and keep the wages.It’s outrageous that there’s no place
we can feel safe in this nation
Not in our cars, Not at the park,
Not in subway stations,
Not at church, The pool, The store,
Not asking for help,
Not walking down the street,
So we’ve gotta scream and yell:Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.3.
You tweet me my own lyrics,
Tell me to stop
Letting a few bad apples
ruin the bunch.
Don’t minimize the fight
comparing apples to cops
This is about the orchard’s poisoned roots,
not loose fruits in a box.Once the soil’s been spoiled,
the whole crop’s corrupt.
That’s why we need the grassroots
working from the ground up.
And we look to Black Twitter,
to stay woke and get some truth,
‘Stead of smiling cops
and black mugshots
from biased corporate news.‘Cause if you steal cigarillos,
or you sell loose cigarettes,
Or you forget your turn signal,
will they see your skin as a threat?
Will they KILL you, And then SMEAR you,
And COVER IT UP and LIE?
Will they call it “self defense”?
Will they call it “suicide”?Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.4.
Decades of cultivation start
from tiny seeds that were once planted.
And we mustn’t take the gardens that
our elders grew for granted,
Though it is up to our youth
how new rows sown are organized,
Because movements can’t keep moving
if old and unsharpened eyes
Can’t see the need to hear
what those on the ground hafta say,
In Ferguson and Cleveland,
Staten Island, The East Bay,
Charleston, Phoenix,
Detroit, Sanford Waller,
Seattle, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Baltimore.Climbing flagpoles, Taking bridges,
Locked together to the BART,
Speaking up about injustice
in our music and our art,
Storming stages to ask candidates
when they’re gonna start
Really DIRECTLY addressing issues
BREAKING OUR HEARTS.Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.5.
And if the altars are torn down,
we’ll just keep on placing flowers
For the boy whose body was in the road
FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS.
We will honor the dead
of every age and every gender
‘Cause we can’t just have it be
the brothers’ names that we remember.Oh black boys with skateboards,
and black boys with hoodies,
And little black girls who
are on the couch sleeping,
And all of the black trans
women massacred,
Too many black folks killed and brutalized,
And there’s no justice served.After the lynchings of our people
by the murderous police,
Who stand like hunters ’round their prey
gasping helpless in the street,
Feet from the TEEN SISTER they tackled
and locked handcuffed in the car,
Feet from her TWELVE YEAR OLD BROTHER DYING —WHILE NO ONE DID CPR…
6.
And we’ll keep on planting flowers,
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.
Yeah we’ll keep planting flowers
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.
FREE AHED TAMIMI. Israeli occupation authorities have arrested 16-yr-old Ahed and her mother, for posting a video of Ahed slapping an IDF soldier deployed outside the Tamimi home in the Occupied Territories. That act of defiance was apparently too much.
DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver veteran Corey Donahue was released from county jail on Thursday, thwarting two surprise court filings to keep the activist in custody for additional months. Donahue had negotiated a global plea deal to serve concurrent sentences for his outstanding charges of inciting public protests in 2011 and 2012.
Yeah, those aren’t crimes, but when you’re an involuntary guest of the Denver jail, your stamina for disputing bogus accusations wanes with every bogus meal. Municipal court judges are as vindictive and perfunctory as the petty officials pressing the original charges. Engaging that crowd is not reciprocal, so it’s especially unrewarding if it means enduring protracted incarceration.
Having cleared his cases and completed the good-behavior obligations of a 9-month sentence for the nut-tap crime, Donahue was due to be released Thursday. But that morning, the Lindsey-Flanagan justice center activated an additional 2012 case which lawyers had been prevented from negotiating because the Division-3D judge withheld it from the docket. Neither private attorneys nor public defenders had been able to compel 3D to address that lingering case number. On Thursday the case mysteriously engaged…
As a result, on Thursday Denver sheriffs demanded a large cash bond and they scheduled Corey for an in-custody court appearance the next day. When funds were rushed to the bonding office, an even larger bond was imposed for a 2011 case specifically stipulated to have been dismissed by the terms of Donahue’s global plea.
Can they fucking do that? No. And yes, everyday. Municipal court despots are not accountable even to their consciences. We’ve seen Lindsey-Flanagan chief justice Martinez confabulate on the witness stand in federal court to suit his duplicitous machinations, and his minions embellished on his lead. Usually their victims, locked in the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center across the plaza, are powerless to decline their sadism.
Clearing up this clerical error would take until after Christmas, so it seemed more in the holiday spirit to give Denver their blood money and take the courthouse to task afterward, from the relative comfort of being out of custody. WTF.
Forget planned obsolescence, the digital age means manufacturers can trigger killer apps like a remote switch for the hangman’s trap door. Just poke a hole in your customer’s canteen if you want to bring them back to your watering hole.
Was Apple’s throttling of late model iPhones mentioned in the fine print which users approve every time they authorize a software update? I doubt it. First the suspicious timing of the dumbing of smart phones was dismissed as urban myth. Next sleuths learned that googles of “iPhone slow” spiked before launches of new models. Then someone benchmarked the IQ drops of the transformed dumb phones. Now Apple has been forced to admit it programed the slowdowns.
Apple says they had to hobble your phone to go easy on its aging battery. Imagine a car dealership progressively disabling cylinders in your car engine, to secretly save you on gas.
Essentially Apple is retiring your phone on a fixed income of energy while you consider its functionality still under contract to you, under your employ. Whose iPhone is it?