A blog about a criminal enterprise
By Dave Lindorff
The new call to “defund the police departments” is a brilliant idea whose time has come.
As an activist eloquently put the case in a hearing before the Minneapolis City Council, “The police are a 19th-century creation that is inappropriate for a 21st-century society.”
Absolutely correct. As we have written on this site earlier, police forces in the US were actually created for chasing down, capturing and returning escaping slaves. Their role
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By Dave Lindorff President Trump really went a bridge too far with his bizarre Bible photo op and his order for federal troops to attack peaceful White House protesters to allow him to exit his white house bunker and walk unimpeded across the street to a church to have his photo taken holding it up (after having it pointed out that he was holding the sacred book, hasily borrowed from the church behind him, upside down!). In separate letters to all US troops, both Defense (sic) Secretary Mark Esper and Four-Star Gen. Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top general, told all people in uniform that their loyalty is to the US Constitution, not to any political leader. Milley, in his memo, added an additional note jotted in pen to stress his point further writing: We all committed our lives to the idea that is America — We will stay true to that oath and the American People.” Here are the two letters, both well worth reading in full. Both make it clear that the obligation of federal troops is to defend the right to free speech and peaceful assembly — a direct rebuke of President Trump’s call for violent attacks on protester and for “dominating the streets” of the nation’s cities… For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF, and copies of the two remarkable memos to US troops by the military’s two top leaders, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/in-astonishing-move-both-defense-secretary-esper-and-joint-chiefs-chair-milley-tell-troops-to-defend-constitution-not-president/ |
Fascism on the march: Is Trump Using the Nation’s Capital as a Test Site for Scrapping Constitutional Government and Establishing Martial Law?By Dave Lindorff It’s been less than two weeks since the murder by cop of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and in that short time, an astonishing rebellion has sprung up from the angry grass roots. It began among a black population for whom this vicious videotaped slow and casual killing of a non-violent black suspect of a minor alleged crime by a calm and clearly unthreatened white police officer was the last straw. In no time, the protests spread across the country We are all George Floyd in police-state America: Cop Pushes Old White Man Over Backwards, Leaves Victim Bleeding and Unconscious After Head Hits Sidewalk HardBy Dave Lindorff Watching the police response to the nationwide uprising against police brutality is by turns infuriating and depressing. It hardly matters whether or not it’s a minority of police officer who are behaving as the “pigs” we used to call them back in the 1960s and ‘70s, because if they can do the kinds Calling Trump ‘Brave’ for Ordering Soldiers to Attack Peaceful Protesters so he Can Do a Photo Op is PatheticBy Dave Lindorff The wretched and ignorant former governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has praised President Trump for his “courage” in supposedly “braving” protesters in the nation’s capital to walk across Lafayette Park from the White House and stand, Bible in hand, in front of a small chapel. The sycophantic Walker, who never graduated college and so might be excused for lacking awareness of things that happened before he was Our Disaster by Kathy Kelly An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people in that nation’s ongoing war, with an additional Beating Swords to Plowshares by Kathy Kelly Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares I’ve stood with activists in front of that same wall singing Down by the Riverside, a song Enough with docile permit-granted park protests! Eruptions of Rage in Minneapolis and across the US over the Cop Murder of George Floyd are Uprisings, Not ‘Riots’By Dave Lindorff America’s cities are burning again. In Minneapolis, after an unarmed and unresisting George Floyd, 46 and black, was killed by a white cop after being arrested for the non-violent alleged crime of trying to pass a fake $20 bill, protests immediately erupted. Minneapolis cops, with a reputation for violence, responded to the initial protest with tear gas, rubber bullets and physical violence. After that the protests became more determined, leading US Wants Release of Two Special Forces Vets Who Led Failed Coup Attempt in VenezuelaBy Dave Lindorff Imperial over-reach was on full display this week as the US government demanded that a pair of US citizens — former Special Forces soldiers leading a 60-man invasion of Venezuela with the goal of fomenting a coup and/or capturing or killing that country’s elected president — be released from arrest and returned to the US. Bad enough that the US almost certainly knew in advance about this invasion which involved multiple simultaneous border crossings This is what American democracy has sunk to: Two Mentally Challenged Candidates to Choose Between for US President?By Dave Lindorff The US is heading into uncharted waters as a polity, with the two likely candidates for president this November both clearly suffering from significant cognitive impairment and evidence of continuing mental decline. Back in 1980, the American voters elected a man, Ronald Reagan, who unbeknownst to them already had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s dementia. By 1984 and his campaign for a second term of office, his White House staff and his wife Nancy |