Author Archives: Mike

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Why Is Bank Of America Asking Clients About Their Citizenship?

The reports start­ed trick­ling in to online forums and local news, start­ing in 2017. From Reddit to The Kansas City Star, Washington to New York, the sto­ries all fol­lowed rough­ly the same pat­tern: Bank of America sent a cus­tomer a notice demand­ing details about their cit­i­zen­ship — and if they refused to answer, their accounts were prompt­ly frozen.

Outside the United States, this is a nor­mal prac­tice. Dozens of coun­tries have agreed to the Common Reporting Standard aimed at com­bat­ing tax eva­sion, and began col­lect­ing cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion as part of that effort in 2017.

But state­side, these reports have raised fears that banks could, at least the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, help the author­i­ties iden­ti­fy and tar­get immi­grants. In the UK the bank­ing indus­try has already been charged with col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on for­eign­ers as part of a big­ger plan to cre­ate a “hos­tile envi­ron­ment” for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. Immigrants and advo­cates wor­ry the United States could be next.

Bank of America explained that it was required to ask the ques­tion to com­ply with Treasury reg­u­la­tions. It’s true that American finan­cial insti­tu­tions must mon­i­tor their accounts for signs of mon­ey laun­der­ing, and com­ply with the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Iran, Cuba, and Syria. Under a sep­a­rate law, for­eign banks must col­lect cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion from Americans, osten­si­bly in order to track down poten­tial tax-dodgers.

But domes­ti­cal­ly, they are not required to col­lect cus­tomer cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion. In fact, Social Security num­bers aren’t even required to open an account. Shortly after Donald Trump’s elec­tion, in December 2016, a senior coun­sel for the American Bankers Association said that “banks don’t track whether or not some­one is legal­ly in the U.S.”

Paulina Gonzalez, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the finan­cial inclu­sion non­prof­it California Reinvestment Coalition, sug­gests that Bank of America’s pol­i­cy “rais­es ques­tions about the role banks will play in Trump’s America.” Writing in The Hill, Gonzalez spec­u­lates that “some banks are more than will­ing to car­ry out Trump’s agen­da of cre­at­ing a sys­tem where immi­grants have few­er eco­nom­ic rights than others.”

The American Bankers Association declined to com­ment on spe­cif­ic insti­tu­tions’ poli­cies, but said that “strict reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments” aimed at deter­ring illic­it activ­i­ties jus­ti­fy requests for per­son­al infor­ma­tion. “Banks of all sizes are required to col­lect a range of infor­ma­tion about their cus­tomers to com­ply with the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and ‘Know Your Customer’ stan­dards,” says spokesper­son Blair Bernstein. “Since 9⁄11, these strict reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments have steadi­ly expanded.”

Bank of America spokesper­son Christopher Feeney says the com­pa­ny does not ask for any actu­al proof of cit­i­zen­ship — just a customer’s word — and that it does not share that infor­ma­tion with any gov­ern­ment enti­ties. It insists that this pol­i­cy is not enforced selec­tive­ly with regard to what the gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers “high­er-risk cus­tomers.” Eventually, every sin­gle one of the bank’s cus­tomers will be asked for their cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion, Feeney says.

“This type of out­reach is noth­ing new — we’ve asked the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion for many years, near­ly a decade,” says Feeney. “Citizenship sta­tus is not con­sid­ered when it comes to estab­lish­ing bank accounts and cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus is not shared with any oth­er par­ty.” Immigration author­i­ties or oth­er gov­ern­ment enti­ties would require a court order to obtain it.

Still, even if the pol­i­cy isn’t new, selec­tive, or unique to Bank of America, its clum­sy appli­ca­tion at a crit­i­cal moment con­tributes to an atmos­phere of dread for nonci­t­i­zens in Trump’s America. What’s more, it com­pounds the long-stand­ing prob­lem of finan­cial exclu­sion. While the result of banks’ col­lect­ing cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion is less imme­di­ate­ly fright­en­ing than the prospect of depor­ta­tion, cit­i­zen­ship data give banks more infor­ma­tion with which to assess a customer’s creditworthiness.

In the United States immi­grants make up a sig­nif­i­cant share of poten­tial bor­row­ers and account-hold­ers. There are more than 13 mil­lion per­ma­nent res­i­dents with green cards, 2 mil­lion work­ers in the coun­try on visas, and an esti­mat­ed 11 mil­lion res­i­dents who are undoc­u­ment­ed. Denying bank­ing ser­vices to this large pop­u­la­tion — and miss­ing out on all those fees and deposits — is not a great way of max­i­miz­ing profits.

But immi­grants are not a pro­tect­ed class under fair-lend­ing laws, and face legal dis­crim­i­na­tion from finan­cial insti­tu­tions as a mat­ter of course. While finan­cial insti­tu­tions can­not dis­crim­i­nate based on “nation­al ori­gin,” they are free to dis­crim­i­nate based on immi­gra­tion sta­tus. Asking for a customer’s cit­i­zen­ship helps them do that.

Legal sta­tus isn’t an unrea­son­able fac­tor for any lender to take under con­sid­er­a­tion when look­ing to lim­it their risk. If some­one is like­ly to leave the coun­try on short notice, it can affect their abil­i­ty to pay back a loan, which, in turn, can jus­ti­fy requir­ing larg­er down pay­ments on mort­gages, high­er inter­est rates on per­son­al loans, or denials of those lines of cred­it entire­ly. Policies requir­ing clients to reveal their cit­i­zen­ship thus for­mal­ize prac­tices that pre­vi­ous­ly might have been casu­al­ly or selec­tive­ly applied.

Currently, nonci­t­i­zens are able to access tra­di­tion­al loans only at the dis­cre­tion of indi­vid­ual lenders, some of which adver­tise spe­cial advis­ers and prod­ucts for immi­grant cus­tomers, and some of which deny cer­tain ser­vices to cer­tain class­es of immigrants.

A pend­ing class-action law­suit filed with the US District Court of Northern California against Wells Fargo claims that the bank refused to accept appli­ca­tions for stu­dent loans and cred­it cards from DACA recip­i­ents, which plain­tiffs claim is a form of ille­gal dis­crim­i­na­tion under California con­sumer-pro­tec­tion law, as well as a fed­er­al civ­il-rights law orig­i­nal­ly draft­ed to pro­tect eman­ci­pat­ed slave “aliens.”

Wells Fargo doesn’t deny dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Dreamers, but con­tends that it is allowed to, because immi­gra­tion sta­tus isn’t a pro­tect­ed class. In its defense, Wells Fargo specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed President Trump’s com­ments that he would end DACA as proof that those cus­tomers were espe­cial­ly risky — after all, with depor­ta­tion loom­ing, how would the bank pos­si­bly recoup their debts?

Still, by the num­bers, immi­grants prove to be good bank cus­tomers. Since receiv­ing Social Security num­bers, tens of thou­sands of DACA recip­i­ents have tak­en out stu­dent loans and cred­it cards, and bought cars and homes — even though their mort­gages can come with high­er inter­est rates, as they’re hard­er to sell on the sec­ondary-debt mar­ket. There’s lit­tle data avail­able spe­cif­ic to nonci­t­i­zen immi­grant loans — but when immi­grants are able to become cit­i­zens, home­own­er­ship rates jump.

What’s more, fed­er­al immi­gra­tion poli­cies end up chang­ing the way banks eval­u­ate risk. The more the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment cracks down on immi­gra­tion, the more immi­grants can be jus­ti­fi­ably treat­ed as risky cus­tomers under exist­ing con­sumer-pro­tec­tion laws, and denied the same finan­cial rights as their cit­i­zen neighbors.

Asking for cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus pro­vokes anoth­er, more imme­di­ate effect: fear.

Some of the under­banked avoid tra­di­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions because of a lack of trust. They aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly forced into the more expen­sive alter­na­tive finan­cial-ser­vices mar­ket — they often just feel it’s their best, safest option. This Article was fist pub­lished here. https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​w​h​y​-​i​s​-​b​a​n​k​-​o​f​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​a​s​k​i​n​g​-​c​l​i​e​n​t​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​c​i​t​i​z​e​n​s​h​ip/

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The World Will Be Feeling Trump Long After He Is Gone

Writer’s block a few friends asked me?
Nah, I replied!
There is just so much going on that a sense of numb­ness has come over me. Not numb­ness which is equiv­a­lent to a sur­ren­der, just a kind of, “where do we begin in all of this”?

Is that what was intend­ed by the dai­ly bar­rage of real­ly bad stuff which just seems to come at us inces­sant­ly, is it part of a long game or is it just the result of a deranged, imbe­cil­ic, lunatic?
Is it hard to tell right?
Political lead­ers come and go, some are well-inten­tioned, oth­ers not so much. Nevertheless, there has always been a kind of con­sen­sus that each and every per­son who steps for­ward to offer him or her­self for ser­vice has some sort of appeal and may pro­duce some degree of good to some peo­ple depend­ing on who you ask?

Who is served by rolling back envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards which gov­ern mass pol­lu­tion of the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat?
Is any­one that dense to is Obama derange­ment syn­drome that real that any­one in their right mind would be blind to this?
After we destroy the plan­et and stack up zeroes on the bal­ance sheets, what then?
Is this what the space force is all about?

Why lie to low infor­ma­tion peo­ple that there is some­thing called clean-cole?
I mean, who is stu­pid enough to believe there is actu­al­ly some­thing called clean cole any­way? Who is daft to the extent that they believe coal is com­ing back?

Coal production up in southern West Virginia, down nationwidehttp://​www​.reg​is​ter​-her​ald​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​c​o​a​l​-​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​u​p​-​i​n​-​s​o​u​t​h​e​r​n​-​w​e​s​t​-​v​i​r​g​i​n​i​a​-​d​o​w​n​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​w​i​d​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​6​5​2​6​7​f​8​f​-​d​6​a​2​-​5​c​d​4​-​b​7​2​2​-​d​5​c​c​4​4​5​0​3​4​0​e​.​h​tml

Donal Trump will be in Charleston, West Virginia, for a polit­i­cal ral­ly on Tuesday to tout his admin­is­tra­tion’s pro­pos­al to give states the right to set their own emis­sions stan­dards for coal-fueled pow­er plants.
This is essen­tial­ly a roll­back of President Obama’s efforts to com­bat cli­mate change.
Additionally, the EPA the agency tasked with pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, on Tuesday for­mal­ly unveiled the details of its new plan to devolve reg­u­la­tion of coal-fired pow­er plants back to the states, one that is expect­ed to give a boost to the coal indus­try and increase car­bon emis­sions nationwide.

According to the web­site (https://​qz​.com/​1​1​9​1​7​8​5​/​e​v​e​n​-​c​o​a​l​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​-​k​n​o​w​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​c​a​n​t​-​s​a​v​e​-​it/)

Promising to bring coal jobs back and repeal­ing envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions at the nation­al lev­el is only harm­ful to these com­mu­ni­ties, because it gives them a sense of false hope and it would set them back,” said Sanya Carley, a pro­fes­sor of ener­gy pol­i­cy at Indiana University and lead author of a new study that exam­ines how Appalachians are cop­ing with coal’s decline.

SOURCE: PLAZAK Coal min­ing jobs.
One would imag­ine that the peo­ple who have stakes in mega-cor­po­ra­tions would be clear-eyed about this lit­tle plan­et on which we all have to live.
I have long stopped ask­ing “just how much mon­ey is enough”, instead I have con­clud­ed instead, that the amoral rapa­cious­ness of the mega-rich is well rep­re­sent­ed in the present occu­pant of the white house.
That greed will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our plan­et, even if the harm was to end today. In the mean­time, the rest of us will have to suf­fer the con­se­quences as the sloven glut­tons gouge them­selves at the trough at our expense.
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Christian Fealty To A State Whose Religion And Actions Are Not Christ-like

As a child raised in what we like to char­ac­ter­ize as a Christian home we were led to believe that there was a holi­ness to the land of Israel. Christians today are still rev­er­en­tial to Israel as a spe­cial place sanc­tioned by God.
Pastors like John Hagee preach about a com­ing Armageddon in which the forces of good and evil will meet and Israel will defeat the forces of evil arrayed against her.
Hagee him­self would be advised to stay away from that bat­tle based on his own philosophy.

As a Christian myself I had a hard time rec­on­cil­ing the nar­ra­tive of the west­ern Christian Church, includ­ing the white evan­gel­i­cals who demon­strate an undy­ing feal­ty to Israel.
So I start­ed dig­ging with a view to find­ing out for myself what was it about Israel which makes it so near and dear to America. You know out­side of the fact that the state of Israel nev­er exist­ed before 1948.

It also struck me that the peo­ple who pop­u­lat­ed the Palestinian’s land were actu­al­ly white Europeans flee­ing Hitler’s rage.
Never mind that as far as Judaism is con­cerned, the prac­ti­tion­ers of that faith does not believe that Jesus, the dark-skinned Nazarene was the son of God. In fact, so angry were the Jews with Yeshua that they offered him up to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor for exe­cu­tion, once they real­ized he was­n’t going to lead them into a war to top­ple the Roman occupiers.

But let us not get caught up in the weeds about Jews in the Bible at the time of Jesus Christ, because con­trary to what you hear now, Hebrew-Jews and Gentiles lived side by side in Palestine for thou­sands of years before Jesus Christ arrived, much less just 70-years ago when the Americans and Brits con­fis­cat­ed huge swaths of land from the Palestinians and gave it to white peo­ple who adopt­ed the ide­ol­o­gy (Zionism) which is essen­tial­ly a move­ment which pur­ports to ensure the safe­ty of those prac­tic­ing the Jewish faith.
Zionism, Jewish nation­al­ist move­ment that has had as its goal the cre­ation and sup­port of a Jewish nation­al state in Palestine.
Zionism is priv­i­leg­ing one group of peo­ple (Israelis) over anoth­er the(Palestinians.
By that very mea­sure the very essence of a Zionist state of Israel is by it’s own def­i­n­i­tion, an apartheid state.

The cre­ation of the state of Israel and the strate­gic place­ment of the so-called Jewish state, can­not be ful­ly under­stood unless its geo­graph­ic-place­ment, arma­ment, and main­te­nance are viewed against the strate­gic vital inter­ests of the west­ern world.
On the table for dis­cus­sion is the ques­tion of a dif­fer­ent set of rules for Israel than that which obtains for oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly African nations.

The strat­e­gy of label­ing any­one who crit­i­cizes Israel’s crimes, “anti-Semitic” also has its roots in the pre­ferred nation sta­tus bestowed upon her by America. It is a strat­e­gy designed to take full advan­tage of the empa­thy derived from the Holocaust by silenc­ing any­one who dares to speak out against Israel’s crimes against humanity.
A strat­e­gy which insu­lates and inoc­u­lates the apartheid state regard­less of its myr­i­ad trans­gres­sions of inter­na­tion­al law.
If you believe the con­cept of a pie-in-the-sky white God who has favorites, then it is easy to ignore the mass slaugh­ter of Palestinian civil­ians by Isreali defense force soldiers.
It is easy to ignore chil­dren picked off like flies while sol­diers of one of the best trained, best-equipped mil­i­tary in the world hoops it up like they are shoot­ing at inan­i­mate objects, not human beings.

As long as you are com­fort­able with the blan­ket state­ments that every Palestinian mur­dered are ter­ror­ists then you are good because their lives were already deval­ued by the Apartheid state and its supporters.
But if you are not a star­ry-eyed Christian brain­washed by those who enslaved our ances­tors, you will read­i­ly appre­ci­ate that a God who is tout­ed to be “just”, could under no cir­cum­stances have (cho­sen peo­ple).

You could under no cir­cum­stances believe that-that God signs off on the wan­ton and reck­less mur­der of inno­cent men, women, and chil­dren with the ratio­nal­iza­tion that they posed an exis­ten­tial threat to the state of Israel.
But the lead­ers of the Apartheid state is no longer try­ing to con­vince the entire world it is wrong and they are right.
They are engaged in sys­tem­at­ic harass­ment and deten­tion of some peo­ple who enter the apartheid state and may have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed dis­sent­ing opin­ions on whether we should all agree it is not okay to have snipers killing unarmed protest­ing men women and children.

Peter Beinart, a lead­ing Jewish-American jour­nal­ist, was detained for ques­tion­ing at the Ben-Gurion International Airport while enter­ing Israel. According to Haaretz​.com Beinart who is him­self of Jewish her­itage and a well-known journalist.
Beinart has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict for years. He has pub­licly expressed sup­port for boy­cotting prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured in Israeli set­tle­ments in the West Bank. His ques­tion­ing this week­end, he report­ed, did­n’t focus on that issue, but includ­ed a broad list of ques­tions about his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and his ties to groups in Israel that oppose the set­tle­ments and the poli­cies of the cur­rent right-wing gov­ern­ment in Jerusalem.

The coun­try’s right-wing prime min­is­ter Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a half-heart­ed apol­o­gy to Beinart but the dam­age was already done. Clearly, Shin Bet the Israeli secu­ri­ty ser­vice felt suf­fi­cient­ly empow­ered to harass peo­ple who have dif­fer­ent views than they do.
In a state­ment released to the press, Netanyahu said that he “heard of Mr. Beinart’s ques­tion­ing at Ben Gurion air­port and imme­di­ate­ly spoke with Israel’s secu­ri­ty forces to inquire how this hap­pened. He was told it was an admin­is­tra­tive mis­take. Israel is an open soci­ety which wel­comes all – crit­ics and sup­port­ers alike.
Keep in mind that this very same Netanyahu has brand­ed African Jews and oth­er immi­grants to the state of Israel “inter­lop­ers”.
Netanyahu and oth­ers in his right-wing gov­ern­ment insist if they allow Africans to stay they will change the char­ac­ter of the Jewish state.
Never mind that by 2019 Israel is expect­ed to receive $3.3 bil­lion in American aid much of that, mon­ey comes from the tax­es of African Americans people.

According to Haaretz, Beinart’s inter­ro­ga­tion is the lat­est in a series of inci­dents at Israel’s bor­der entry and exit points that involved polit­i­cal ques­tion­ing of Jewish Americans..
Jewish American phil­an­thropist who donat­ed mil­lions to Israeli hos­pi­tals and schools was inter­ro­gat­ed because secu­ri­ty at Ben Gurion found a book­let about Palestine in his suit­case. Last week, two left-wing Jewish American activists were detained for three hours at the bor­der cross­ing between Israel and Egypt. One of the activists, Simone Zimmerman- who is one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Jewish anti-occu­pa­tion IfNotNow- claimed she was inter­ro­gat­ed about her polit­i­cal opin­ions.

How long will the world ignore Israel’s crime and spe­cial treat­ment made pos­si­ble by America’s sup­port and arma­ment, while oth­er Nations are inces­sant­ly maligned and forced to bear bru­tal sanctions?
Why International laws are not applic­a­ble to Israel is a ques­tion the world will have to con­front soon­er or later.

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One Year After Charlottesville Lets Remember Heather Heyer

A young woman gave everything she had so that all people may live in peace, with dignity and respect.
She gave her life.
She was white!

Who did­n’t see this coming?
What did you think the demo­niz­ing of col­ored immi­grants was about? What did you think pack­ing the courts with white male right-wing judges from the Heritage Foundation was about? The purg­ing of vot­er rolls which sum­mar­i­ly removed black vot­ers who may have exer­cised their right not to vote in every elec­tion? Redistricting. Lies about ille­gal vot­ing, restric­tive vot­ing rules, to include the mas­sive less­en­ing of ear­ly vot­ing days, mass incer­a­tion, and the resul­tant laws which take away the right of felons to vote?
Ask your­selves, what use­ful pur­pose is served by tak­ing the vot­ing right of peo­ple who have already paid their debt to society?

Yet these and the many oth­er glar­ing red flags have either been missed or large­ly ignored by the black community.
For its part, the brown com­mu­ni­ty has done it’s lev­el best to ignore the signs which ought to have informed it to align itself with the black struggle.
Instead, the brown com­mu­ni­ty hid in the back­ground con­vinc­ing itself it is safe, they are only after the blacks, look at me I am almost white.
All of that, how­ev­er, was before that June 16th, 2015 esca­la­tor ride in which Donald Trump announced his can­di­da­cy for the American Presidency.

Jonathan Capehart opin­ion writer for the Washington Post wrote.
The night­mare began on June 16, 2015. Donald Trump descend­ed on an esca­la­tor to the gild­ed lob­by of his epony­mous tow­er on Fifth Avenue to announce his can­di­da­cy for the Republican Party’s nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent. Little did we know that that open­ing scene would be the per­fect metaphor for what was to come: A low and ugly cam­paign that defined devian­cy down in pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics by play­ing on fear, racism, xeno­pho­bia, misog­y­ny and a gen­er­al dis­dain for any­one not white, straight, Christian, able-bod­ied and male. 

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Ah, Jonathan.….Little did we know that that open­ing scene would be the per­fect metaphor for what was to come?
How could you not have known?
No, Jonathan, the night­mare did not begin on June 16th, 2015, the night­mare has been in exis­tence since the begin­ning of this repub­lic, you sim­ply chose to close your eyes to it.
As I laid out in the first para­graph, and so much more that I left out, the signs have always been there. The pre­tense is not a work­able strat­e­gy. Black peo­ple are not that sil­ly, they may be resigned to the blud­geon­ing, after all, its dif­fi­cult to with­stand four hun­dred years of what we have with­stood with­out dis­play­ing some degree of wear and tear.
But what is the sto­ry of the brown peo­ple, what is their excuse?
We could ask Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, we could ask Nikki Haley or Bobby Jindal.
Nah they are too busy pre­tend­ing to be white.

Image result for nazis march in charlottesville

And so now the Browns are forced to deal with their own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in a coun­try which has a minor­i­ty of the major­i­ty so inse­cure it can­not exist out­side of ven­omous hatred.
It is from that group that Donald Trump emerged. It is on that dis­con­tent, resent­ment, and per­pet­u­al vic­tim­hood on which Donald Trump rode into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Browns nev­er both­ered to find com­mon cause with the strug­gles of African Americans. Their lighter shades con­vinced them that hey would even­tu­al­ly be assim­i­lat­ed into white soci­ety like the Irish, and Italians and the Catholics even some lighter skinned Arabs have.

Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Arabs, Muslims, and every­one not in that group Jonathan Capeheart so elo­quent­ly spoke about now find them­selves in the crosshairs of a new era of American fascism.
In oth­er words, there is a whole slew of new n*****s now.
Decades and decades of march­es and mil­i­tan­cy is the trade­mark of the Black American exis­tence, yet for the most part that exis­ten­tial strug­gle has seen far more white Americans strug­gling and dying with their black broth­ers and sis­ters for the sim­ple right to live lives of dig­ni­ty and respect than it has attract­ed brown people.

Heather Heyer, the vic­tim of Charlottesville white neo-nazi rage.

As white nazis get ready to march on Washington tomor­row to com­mem­o­rate the one year anniver­sary of their infa­mous Chorletsville tiki-torch march, we must nev­er for­get the life of Heather Heyer.
A young woman who could eas­i­ly have stayed home con­fi­dent in the built-in pro­tec­tions guar­an­teed by her white skin. She chose to stand up to big­otry and racism, ful­ly con­ver­sant that we rise togeth­er or we die together.
Her life was snuffed out by a worth­less piece of trash who lacked the basic under­stand­ing of the val­ues she so brave­ly stood for.

There is much going on in America which may pro­vide glee to some. To those, I sug­gest a lit­tle research and read­ing up on Adolph Hitler’s rise and the inevitable fall of Nazi Germany.
It is incon­ceiv­able that sol­diers of all col­ors, includ­ing American sol­diers, gave their lives on the beach­es of Normandy in 1944 to defeat Naziism and to pre­vent the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews just so that Nazis can con­tin­ue to kill as they did last year right here in America.

The storm clouds are ris­ing. The dem­a­goguery about foot­ball play­ers, Mexicans, Muslims, Immigrants and every­one not white male are in no way dis­sim­i­lar to the dem­a­goguery and depor­ta­tions which pre­ced­ed the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
We ignore them at our peril.

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Amidst Talk Of Prison Reform, Courts Continue To Oppress The Poorest Americans

Chris works on a farm by day and works for a secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny at nights, two jobs to make ends meet. Today he came in to see me, he also pro­vides some basic ser­vices through my busi­ness to the Jamaica men and women who do sea­son­al work on farms in Dutchess and Ulster Counties New York.

Chris was unable to do much of any­thing to earn a liv­ing today, though he came in wear­ing farm clothes, he was on his way to traf­fic court in the Town of Poughkeepsie right here in Dutchess County.
He asked me jok­ing­ly, what would hap­pen to him if he is late for court, I told him they would like­ly issue a war­rant for his arrest, he laughed and hur­ried left.

I thought about his chances as walked briskly away, I con­clud­ed to myself that he is in for a rough time in that court, which for all intents and pur­pose is a cash fac­to­ry for the coun­ty. The Town of Poughkeepsie court churns out mil­lions from large­ly the poor­est res­i­dents of the coun­ty who can least afford to pay the humungous fines met­ed out for the slight­est traf­fic infractions.

The Town’s offi­cers are large­ly dis­cour­te­ous, arro­gant and are almost 100% white-male. They use the route 9 cor­ri­dor as a feed­ing tree for writ­ing tick­ets, but they are to be found hid­ing in bush­es on lit­er­al­ly every lit­tle road­way which snake their ways through­out the town.
Main street runs through the city to the Town where it forks into Routes 44 and 55, both arter­ies run through the town.
Many of their traf­fic stops end up in the city. Other stops begin in the city because they fol­low motorists into the city from the town before ini­ti­at­ing traf­fic stops. As you may well imag­ine their vic­tims are usu­al­ly black and brown motorists, who make up the bulk of the city’s res­i­dents, In oth­er words, peo­ple who look like Chris.

For years peo­ple have com­plained about this police depart­ment. This includ­ing a 2014 Essay pub­lished by Gawker and writ­ten by Kiese Laymon, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of English and a con­tribut­ing edi­tor at Gawker. It began with the author at a traf­fic stop, being chas­tised by a white offi­cer from the department.

“After tak­ing my license and ID back to his car, he came to me with a tick­et and two lessons,” Laymon wrote. “ ‘Looks like you got a good thing going on over there at Vassar College,’ he said. ‘You don’t wan­na ruin it by rolling through stop signs, do you?’ ”
Laymon says that was the fourth time a local police offi­cer had told him his job made every­thing “O.K.,” a phrase that inspired the essay’s title, “My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK.”

About an hour and a half lat­er Chris walked in, he con­ced­ed he was­n’t wear­ing his seat­belt. Then he told me that the pros­e­cu­tor told him he had reduced the seat-belt vio­la­tion to a non-mov­ing vio­la­tion. He was encour­aged to plead to a park­ing vio­la­tion for which he was forced to pay $175.
That’s in addi­tion to los­ing a whole day of work.

There is no legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for break­ing the laws. However, when a poor per­son who makes such a small mis­take is forced to pay such a high price and the sys­tem uses the guise of a reduced charge, one has to rea­son­ably con­clude that he was spared the mov­ing vio­la­tion just so that he could go make more mon­ey for them to steal.

Trump meets with Black pastors

All across America, the poor­est peo­ple who can least afford it are being used as cash cows to feed city and town cof­fers and fund­ing budgets.
At a time when mis­guid­ed black apos­tates mas­querad­ing as pas­tors are meet­ing with Trump about prison reform, these are the real issues affect­ing the poor­est Americans.

Unfortunately, these pas­tors make a mock­ery of them­selves, they do not speak for the black com­mu­ni­ty and gen­er­al­ly have no influ­ence in the black community.
In essence, these pho­to-ops with Trump have zero to do with the com­mu­ni­ty and every­thing to do with the egos of these dis­gust­ing opportunists.

If Donald Trump want­ed to have mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions about prison reform he would have picked up the phone and speak to Reverend William Barber. He could call Congressman John Lewis over to the White House. He is free to call Michelle Alexander and many oth­ers who can engage him in sub­stan­tive con­sul­ta­tions on this press­ing issue. Instead, he choos­es to con­sult with lack­eys and stool pigeons who have no influ­ence and are only engaged in it for themselves.

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Zimbabweans Voted For Change, Received Bullets And A Cleverly Disguised Coup D’état

The polit­i­cal par­ties which emerged out of the Colonial era in Africa the Caribbean, South and Latin America all but squan­dered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish their respec­tive nations on the sol­id foot­ings of demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly trans­par­ent governance.
Instead, those who fought in the actu­al lib­er­a­tion wars across those geo­graph­ic areas and even those in the Caribbean who led the post­colo­nial strug­gles chose to devel­op patron­age sys­tems to ben­e­fit them­selves and those who sup­port them.

Political lead­ers and by exten­sion their polit­i­cal par­ties devel­oped a sense of own­er­ship for their respec­tive coun­tries even 50 years and more after those lib­er­a­tion strug­gles ended.
The pre­vail­ing sense is that those who did not live through and par­tic­i­pate in those strug­gles have no right to polit­i­cal power.

Nowhere is this sense of enti­tle­ment more evi­dent in my esti­ma­tion and the resul­tant dam­age it has caused more trans­par­ent­ly mea­sur­able, than in Zimbabwe which two Mondays ago held nation­al elections.
President Robert Mugabe’s rul­ing ZANU-PF par­ty has basi­cal­ly ruled Zimbabwe since white minor­i­ty rule end­ed in 1980.
until he was oust­ed from pow­er by the mil­i­tary last November.

Emmerson Mnangagwa a 75-year-old for­mer lieu­tenant of Mugabe and a vet­er­an of the mil­i­tary-installed him­self as inter­im pres­i­dent and a new elec­tion was called. Unfortunately, the removal of Mugabe did noth­ing to dis­man­tle the intri­cate ves­tiges of ZANU-PF which have been insti­tut­ed under Mugabe’s rule.

Mugabe

Mugabe a for­mer school teacher turned rev­o­lu­tion­ary in Ian Smith’s minor­i­ty-ruled Rhodesia rose to lead Zimbabwe after white minor­i­ty rule was dis­man­tled and elec­tions were held in 1980. Mugabe, like many rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers who fought white oppres­sion and col­o­niza­tion, did not escape unscathed. After mak­ing anti-gov­ern­ment com­ments, he was con­vict­ed of sedi­tion and impris­oned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, estab­lished his lead­er­ship of ZANU and over­saw ZANU’s role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fight­ing Ian Smith’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly white government.[wiki]

He reluc­tant­ly took part in the peace nego­ti­a­tions bro­kered by the United Kingdom that result­ed in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agree­ment dis­man­tled white minor­i­ty rule and result­ed in the 1980 gen­er­al elec­tion, at which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to vic­to­ry. Mugabe’s admin­is­tra­tion expand­ed health care and edu­ca­tion and — despite his Marxist rhetoric and pro­fessed desire for a social­ist soci­ety—adhered large­ly to main­stream, con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nom­ic policies.

Some of Mugabe’s poli­cies, most notably his land reform poli­cies which appro­pri­at­ed lands held by whites and gave them to blacks angered tra­di­tion­al pow­ers like the United States. The resul­tant eco­nom­ic sanc­tions were soon to fol­low, help­ing to make life dif­fi­cult for Zimbabweans.

Nelson-Chamisa leader of the NDC Alliance

Fidel Castro led Cuba in its own lib­er­a­tion strug­gle against Fulgencio Batista a cor­rupt dic­ta­tor who allowed the Island Nation to become a hedo­nis­tic den for gang­sters large­ly sup­port­ed by the United States. After top­pling Batista in January 1st, 1959 Castro, in turn, led Cuba down the road of com­mu­nist dictatorship.
Fifty-eight years lat­er despite the death of Fidel Castro Cuba remains immersed in a vice­like grip of dic­ta­tor­ship, still super­vised by some­one named Castro.

Zimbabweans had a chance to vote for a new direc­tion, [or so we thought ] for the very first time since 1980. The oppo­si­tion MDC Alliance led by forty-year-old Nelson Chamisa offered that chance to Zimbabweans.
It is incon­ceiv­able to imag­ine that despite the report­ed peace­ful nature of the vote on elec­tion day that the peo­ple went into the vot­ing booths and again vot­ed for ZANU-PF for anoth­er five years to the tune of a two-thirds major­i­ty in the legislature.

Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa

It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble the lev­el of greed and hunger for pow­er which dri­ves these peo­ple to the extent that they are inca­pable of putting coun­try of their most base instincts.
Our own Jamaica is no different.
All to often in both polit­i­cal par­ties we see black lead­er­ship treat­ing state pow­er as their own per­son­al fief­doms to be passed down to their children.

YouTube player

The nation of Zimbabwe was done a ter­ri­ble dis­ser­vice last week by ZANY-PF and all of the agen­cies of state includ­ing the Military , Police and (ZEC) the Zimbabwe elec­toral com­mis­sion. The ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of the peo­ple cer­tain­ly was not on the side of ZANU-PF. The peo­ple vot­ed for change but what they received were bul­lets and a clev­er­ly dis­guised Coup d’état

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One Man Builds School For Kids The Other Places Kids In Cages Away From Their Parents

I have always been of the opin­ion that finan­cial inde­pen­dence was one of the best tools that black Americans could use to effec­tive­ly counter white racism.
You know you don’t have to like me but you bet­ter damn well respect my finan­cial prowess? Okay, I am nev­er­the­less clear-eyed that pover­ty in black com­mu­ni­ties is tied to myr­i­ad issues some of which are out of the con­trol of the people.

In the absence of eco­nom­ic pow­er, the next best thing it seems to me is edu­ca­tion and skills train­ing, not that edu­ca­tion or spe­cif­ic skills train­ing are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive to wealth. I am not sug­gest­ing that every black per­son should go to col­lege, I am painful­ly aware that-that is utopi­an, even though it would be nice.
What I am say­ing is that where pos­si­ble our peo­ple need to get trained in crit­i­cal skills which are read­i­ly marketable.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant at this time, not only because of how our pol­i­tics have devolved but because of the changes in the mar­ket­place. Innovation has tak­en a hatch­et to cer­tain dis­ci­plines on the one hand and glob­al­iza­tion on the oth­er have been remov­ing oth­er jobs from the economy.
Librarians, toll-col­lec­tors, fac­to­ry work­ers, bank-tellers, super­mar­ket cashiers, typ­ists, sec­re­taries, stenog­ra­phers, cal­lig­ra­phers, Photographers and the list goes on and on. Jobs are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly removed from the econ­o­my even as we fawn over the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal innovations.

The choic­es we face are not option­al they are exis­ten­tial, adapt and sur­vive, fail and suf­fer the con­se­quences. The mar­ket­place of the future is high tech, this econ­o­my will require high­ly skilled work­ers to make the econ­o­my func­tion. Silicone Valley has no short­age of jobs, in fact, the tech indus­try is des­per­ate for the US State Department to grant enough work­ers visas to fill exist­ing posi­tions in that sec­tor. These are high-tech jobs which are avail­able but there is a short­age of soft­ware engi­neers and oth­er spe­cial­ists to fill these jobs.

Lebron James

The attack on Basketball phe­nom Lebron James by the occu­pant of the white house is telling on sev­er­al lev­els. As Lebron talks about build­ing a school for at-risk young peo­ple in one Ohio Town and is being cas­ti­gat­ed by Trump it is impor­tant to note the stead­fast­ness and laser-like focus with which James has set out on his life’s journey.
On the one had Lebron is build­ing schools to edu­cate young peo­ple Donald Trump is lock­ing chil­dren in cages to ful­fill his sick agen­da. James seeks to use sports to build bridges, to peace and under­stand­ing, Trump dem­a­gogues, malign, demean and dis­re­spect sports stars who use their plat­forms to draw atten­tion to social and soci­etal ills.

On Sunday, August 5th I could not help notic­ing that through­out the day lit­er­al­ly, all the net­works out­side of the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the GOP were talk­ing about the sharp con­trast between James and Trump.
I remarked to my wife, “They don’t have to love you but they damn sure bet­ter respect your body of work”, she agreed.

Trump

I am not sug­gest­ing that every­one will have access to the finan­cial resources and fame of Lebron James, far from it. In fact, the oppo­site is guar­an­teed. As such we must do the next best thing and get the edu­ca­tion required, the best vehi­cle out of pover­ty and the best bet for wealth retention.

Neither am I say­ing that all of us can have the plat­form of James, Curry or even Kaepernick. Nevertheless, if we make bet­ter life deci­sions and go to col­lege, trade schools find jobs and cre­ate star­tups and spend our mon­ey in our com­mu­ni­ties we become the mas­ters of our own destiny.

If our young men can see val­ue in them­selves enough to stay out of jail they have a chance of mak­ing some­thing of themselves.
Those who invest in jails are cer­tain­ly free to do so, our young peo­ple can choose to become lawyers, doc­tors, nurs­es and sci­en­tists, elec­tri­cians and refrig­er­a­tion tech­ni­cians and yes coders. If we stick to that game plan pret­ty soon those who invest in prison stocks will have to find oth­er stocks to purchase.

Colin Kaepernick

Donald Trump seeks to demo­nize James, as he does NFL play­ers because he is a pathet­ic bul­ly. Bullies will not stop until some­one stand up to them. James has the resources and the chops to do so. In every cat­e­go­ry, Lebron James has out­paced Donald Trump though he nev­er inher­it­ed any mon­ey from his daddy.
Donald Trump is ter­ri­fied of suc­cess­ful black men, his lying defam­a­to­ry cam­paign against the first African-American pres­i­dent was only one exam­ple of that fear. There is a long his­to­ry of that fear and inse­cu­ri­ty dat­ing back to the Central Park five and even fur­ther back than that embar­rass­ing débâ­cle for which he has still not apologized.
He only con­ced­ed that President Barack Obama was a legit­i­mate American when he thought it was in his best inter­est to do so in his quest to attain the presidency.
Predictably, as a soon as he was installed in the pres­i­den­cy he went right back to his Obama derange­ment syndrome.

Trump is not alone, he is the mega­phone for the deep-seat­ed ani­mus which exists against peo­ple of col­or and black men in par­tic­u­lar. Trump is con­ver­sant with this, hence his “I could shoot any­one on 5th avenue and I would­n’t lose a sin­gle sup­port­er” comment.
In fact, his base of sup­port may have expand­ed as a result of his out­right racism. Many peo­ple who har­bor racist, xeno­pho­bic views are now embold­ened to act out those tendencies.
When NFL play­ers kneel to bring atten­tion to police abuse and exe­cu­tion of black peo­ple, white peo­ple know damn well it has noth­ing to do with a flag or mil­i­tary (as if the flag and mil­i­tary are to be wor­shiped as a God).
Creating a false nar­ra­tive serves to dis­tract from the issue, argu­ing that it is unpa­tri­ot­ic is dem­a­gog­ic, it brings hatred to the ath­letes and that’s exact­ly what they want to accomplish.

T

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Zimbabwe Election: Mnangagwa Narrowly Wins Presidential Poll

Zanu-PF leader takes 50.8% of vote as elec­toral com­mis­sion chair urges nation to ‘move on’

 in Harare

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Emmerson Mnangagwa wins his­toric Zimbabwe pres­i­den­tial elec­tions – video

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s pres­i­dent and leader of the rul­ing Zanu-PF par­ty, has won the country’s his­toric and hot­ly con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial election.

Officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced ear­ly on Friday that Mnangagwa had received 2.46m votes, or 50.8% of the 4.8m votes cast. Nelson Chamisa, the can­di­date of the oppo­si­tion Movement for Democratic Change par­ty (MDC), won 2.14m votes or 44.3%, the ZEC said. Mnangagwa need­ed to win by more than 50% to avoid a runoff vote.

Mnangagwa, 75, was a close aide of Robert Mugabe, the 94-year-old auto­crat who ruled for 37 years and was oust­ed by the army nine months ago, and was impli­cat­ed in atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted under his rule. Chamisa, 40, is a for­mer lawyer and pastor.

Priscilla Chigumba, the chair of the ZEC, urged the coun­try to “move on” with the hope­ful spir­it of elec­tion day and beyond the “blem­ish­es” of Wednesday’s “chaos”, when the army opened fire on pro­test­ers in Harare, killing six peo­ple. “May God bless this nation and its peo­ple,” she said.

Mnangagwa tweet­ed that he was “hum­bled” by the result. “This is a new begin­ning. Let us join hands, in peace, uni­ty & love, & togeth­er build a new Zimbabwe for all!” he said.

President of Zimbabwe

✔@edmnangagwa

Thank you Zimbabwe!

I am hum­bled to be elect­ed President of the Second Republic of Zimbabwe.

Though we may have been divid­ed at the polls, we are unit­ed in our dreams.

This is a new begin­ning. Let us join hands, in peace, uni­ty & love, & togeth­er build a new Zimbabwe for all!

On Friday morn­ing Chamisa called the results “fake” and said the elec­toral com­mis­sion should release “prop­er and ver­i­fied” num­bers. “The lev­el of opaque­ness, truth defi­cien­cy, moral decay & val­ues deficit is baf­fling,” he said on Twitter.

The MDC had reject­ed the results even before they had been announced in full. Minutes before the final result, the MDC’s chair­man, Morgan Komichi, made an impromp­tu tele­vised state­ment at the com­mis­sion, say­ing the elec­tion was “fraud­u­lent” and that the par­ty would chal­lenge the results in court. He was then removed from the stage by police.

A few Mnangagwa sup­port­ers cel­e­brat­ed near the entrance to the con­fer­ence cen­tre where the results were declared but there was lit­tle in the way of pub­lic cel­e­bra­tions in Harare oth­er than some car horns.

Charity Manyeruke, who teach­es polit­i­cal sci­ence at the University of Zimbabwe, said she was delight­ed. “There is con­ti­nu­ity, sta­bil­i­ty,” she said at the con­fer­ence cen­tre. “Zimbabwe is poised for nation-building.”

The Zimbabwean cap­i­tal was calm on Friday morn­ing, the pave­ments filled with peo­ple going to work. Many also gath­ered around news­pa­per stands. The army, a vis­i­ble pres­ence this week, had with­drawn by 7am. A police pres­ence remained, with two vehi­cles equipped with water can­non out­side the MDC head­quar­ters and an armoured vehi­cle full of riot police.

Most MDC sup­port­ers appeared resigned to the result and unwill­ing to take to the streets to protest. “We are just accept­ing what­ev­er is there for the sake of peace, for the sake of busi­ness and calm. Life goes on. I wouldn’t sup­port a protest. Check what hap­pened this week when peo­ple tried it,” said Shepherd Warikandwe, a 38-year-old chef.

Hazel Moyo, a 25-year-old super­mar­ket cashier who had vot­ed for the first time, said that protest­ing would make no dif­fer­ence. “We will just have to put up with it. We need change but will have to wait some more,” she said.

The count took more than three days, lead­ing to grow­ing ten­sions and calls from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for a swift resolution.

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Tensions rise after Zimbabwe elec­tion as police and pro­test­ers clash – video

Although the cam­paign has been free of the sys­tem­at­ic vio­lence that marred pre­vi­ous polls, the MDC repeat­ed­ly claimed it was hin­dered by a flawed elec­toral roll, bal­lot paper mal­prac­tice, vot­er intim­i­da­tion, bias in the elec­toral com­mis­sion and hand­outs to vot­ers from the rul­ing par­ty. Several of its com­plaints have been upheld by mon­i­tors’ reports.

Eighteen oppo­si­tion offi­cials were detained by police dur­ing a raid on the MDC’s head­quar­ters in Harare on Thursday afternoon.

Prof Stephen Chan, an expert in African pol­i­tics at the University of London, said the elec­tion could be judged “plau­si­ble to cred­i­ble” but could not be called “free and fair”.

Chan, who is in Zimbabwe, said he believed the prob­lems with the count were down to incom­pe­tence rather than con­spir­a­cy but that the alleged irreg­u­lar­i­ties before the poll could have been sig­nif­i­cant, espe­cial­ly in avoid­ing a runoff.

“The nar­row­ness of the result sug­gests that Mnangagwa is the last of the Zanu-PF giants and that at the next elec­tion the oppo­si­tion will have every­thing to play for,” he said.

Mnangagwa’s share of the vote was low­er than some expect­ed. Zanu-PF had swept to a two-thirds major­i­ty in simul­ta­ne­ous par­lia­men­tary elec­tions and was broad­ly con­sid­ered the favourite by ana­lysts. But the oppo­si­tion cam­paign gath­ered sig­nif­i­cant momen­tum in the last days of campaigning.

The announce­ment of the result was delayed while fig­ures for Mashonaland West, a major province and Zanu-PF strong­hold, were finalised, and was dis­rupt­ed by an MDC spokesman who said the par­ty reject­ed the results because they had not been ver­i­fied by polling agents.

All polling sta­tion data would be made avail­able to the media and par­ty offi­cials, the ZEC said.

Zimbabwe now faces new uncer­tain­ty and a poten­tial peri­od of insta­bil­i­ty. The coun­try si hop­ing to rein­te­grate into the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty after years of iso­la­tion. Foreign pow­ers will have to decide whether the elec­tions give Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF the legit­i­ma­cy need­ed to seek to rejoin insti­tu­tions such as the Commonwealth.

Without a mas­sive and rapid infu­sion of for­eign aid, the coun­try is also fac­ing total eco­nom­ic breakdown.

Polls had ear­li­er giv­en Mnangagwa, a dour for­mer spy chief known as “the Crocodile” for his rep­u­ta­tion for ruth­less cun­ning, a slim lead over Chamisa, a bril­liant if some­times way­ward orator.

Support for Zanu-PF has his­tor­i­cal­ly been strongest in rur­al areas, where more than two-thirds of vot­ers live. The par­ty dom­i­nat­ed its tra­di­tion­al heart­land provinces of Mashonaland Central and East, while the MDC won the major cities of Harare and Bulawayo convincingly.

Police raid the MDC in Harare, Zimbabwe.
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Police raid the MDC in Harare, Zimbabwe. Photograph: Yeshiel Panchia/​EPA
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Zimbabwe’s Political Crisis Deepens After Disputed Election

  • By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA AND FARAI MUTSAKA, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The rul­ing par­ty and the main oppo­si­tion group both declared Thursday they won Zimbabwe’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion ahead of an immi­nent announce­ment of the offi­cial result, deep­en­ing a polit­i­cal cri­sis that was wors­ened by dead­ly riot­ing in the capital.

The death toll from street clash­es Wednesday rose to six, with 14 injured, police said, and 18 peo­ple were arrest­ed at the offices of the main oppo­si­tion par­ty amid ten­sions over a vote that was sup­posed to restore trust in Zimbabwe after decades of rule by Robert Mugabe.

There were con­flict­ing accounts of who was respon­si­ble for the blood­shed in the cap­i­tal of Harare, which fol­lowed oppo­si­tion protests of alleged vote-rig­ging. Police tried to dis­perse angry crowds with tear gas and water can­nons, and then sol­diers fired live rounds.

While the mil­i­tary has been crit­i­cized for the crack­down, police spokes­woman Charity Charamba blamed riot­ers, say­ing some were drunk and that they destroyed eight cars and 22 shops. About 4,000 oppo­si­tion sup­port­ers, some car­ry­ing iron bars and stones, were “besieg­ing” down­town Harare, she said.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his rul­ing ZANU-PF par­ty also accused the oppo­si­tion of incit­ing the vio­lence. The oppo­si­tion, human rights activists and inter­na­tion­al elec­tion observers con­demned the “exces­sive” force used against pro­test­ers and appealed to all sides to exer­cise restraint.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said it will start announc­ing results of Monday’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT, 4 p.m. EDT), though by law it has five days to deliv­er the final tal­ly. It has some­times giv­en con­flict­ing state­ments about when it is releas­ing information.

International elec­tion observers urged the com­mis­sion to reveal the pres­i­den­tial results as soon as pos­si­ble, say­ing delays will increase spec­u­la­tion about vote-rigging.

Meanwhile, police raid­ed the Movement for Democratic Change par­ty head­quar­ters of the main oppo­si­tion can­di­date, Nelson Chamisa. A lawyers’ group said he was being inves­ti­gat­ed by police for alleged­ly incit­ing violence.

Chamisa, oppo­si­tion politi­cian Tendai Biti and sev­er­al oth­ers are sus­pect­ed of the crimes of “pos­ses­sion of dan­ger­ous weapons” and “pub­lic vio­lence,” accord­ing to a copy of a search war­rant, which was seen by The Associated Press. The war­rant autho­rizes police to search for and con­fis­cate any evi­dence as part of their investigation.

The authen­tic­i­ty of the war­rant was con­firmed by Kumbirai Mafunda, a spokesman for Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

Chamisa, how­ev­er, said the police who raid­ed his head­quar­ters and seized com­put­ers were look­ing for what he called evi­dence of vote-rig­ging. The evi­dence already had been moved to a “safe house,” he said.

Opposition demon­stra­tions had bro­ken out after elec­toral offi­cials said the rul­ing par­ty had won a par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty in the elec­tions, and Paul Mangwana, a ZANU-PF spokesman, told a news con­fer­ence he antic­i­pat­ed sim­i­lar suc­cess in the pres­i­den­tial race.

Elsewhere in Harare, Chamisa said he was con­fi­dent that his MDC par­ty would be form­ing the next government.

As the rival camps sparred over the out­come, they also appealed for calm. Mnangagwa said his gov­ern­ment was in touch with Chamisa to try to ease ten­sions, although the oppo­si­tion leader said he had not received any communication.

During the 37-year rule by Mugabe, who resigned in November under mil­i­tary pres­sure, elec­tions were marked by vio­lence against the oppo­si­tion and alleged fraud, and inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions were imposed on Zimbabwe as a result. A cred­i­ble vote is cru­cial to the lift­ing of the sanc­tions so that the col­lapsed econ­o­my can recover.

Monday’s bal­lot­ing was called free and fair by the elec­toral commission.

The European Union observ­er mis­sion expressed “seri­ous con­cerns” as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Western and oth­er groups gave their first assess­ments of the election.

Former Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the lead observ­er of a U.S. mon­i­tor­ing mis­sion, also had expressed con­cern about delays in announc­ing results, say­ing that the longer it went on, “the more it calls into ques­tion the pop­u­la­tion’s con­fi­dence in the elec­tion process.”

Mnangagwa, who is close to the mil­i­tary, called for an “inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion” into the riots, say­ing those respon­si­ble “should be iden­ti­fied and brought to justice.”

The mil­i­tary deploy­ment was the first time that sol­diers had appeared in the streets of the cap­i­tal since Mugabe’s res­ig­na­tion. At that time, thou­sands of jubi­lant res­i­dents wel­comed their presence.

Some Harare res­i­dents expressed frus­tra­tion and exhaus­tion at the violence.

“We are a peace­ful nation,” said 29-year-old Sifas Gavanga. “We don’t deserve the death we saw.” https://​abc​news​.go​.com/​I​n​t​e​r​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​/​w​i​r​e​S​t​o​r​y​/​z​i​m​b​a​b​w​e​a​n​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​-​a​p​p​e​a​l​s​-​c​a​l​m​-​e​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​5​6​9​8​2​920

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Incident Involving Moronic Sprinter Highlights Huge Gaps In Basic Policing Protocols.…

The recent inci­dent involv­ing a Jamaican sprint­er (who shall remain name­less out­side the video tag, because he does not deserve to have his name men­tioned, at least in this medi­um), and police offi­cers, con­tin­ue to high­light the huge gaps in basic polic­ing protocols.
This is not about the lit­tle lout who clear­ly believes that own­ing a car and being able to run makes him some­thing special.
That kind of igno­rance is larg­er than the indi­vid­ual sprint­er, it is a cul­tur­al malig­nan­cy which will only be fixed through pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paigns, prop­er train­ing and best prac­tice adher­ence by officers.

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The inci­dent in ques­tion began with a vehic­u­lar stop in which the occu­pants, includ­ing the sprint­er, was asked to leave the vehi­cle so that an ad-hoc vehic­u­lar search could be executed.
As the Corporal con­duct­ed the search and seemed to have a legit­i­mate desire for trans­paren­cy, a‑la the film­ing by one con­sta­ble, the entire episode was painful­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a skit from the the­atri­cal circuit.

See the source image
A Florida traf­fic stop

The behav­ior of the imbe­cil­ic sprint­er, who has since offered an apol­o­gy to the police, is to be expect­ed, after all, this is Jamaica a coun­ty in which every moron is above the law, or so they feel.
This cor­po­ral and his team clear­ly could be good offi­cers in a police depart­ment which has com­pe­tent lead­er­ship. However, this JCF con­tin­ues to be a lead­er­less the­atri­cal car­i­ca­ture of actu­al polic­ing, clear­ly inca­pable of offer­ing the men and women on the streets the focused lead­er­ship they need and deserve.

See the source image
Washington state traf­fic stop

As a con­se­quence, the pub­lic, includ­ing the men in this video, believe they have a right to be hyped when deal­ing with officers.
I can­not recall ever hear­ing the police high com­mand reg­is­ter sup­port for the actions of its offi­cers on the streets, out­side of this instance.
This time the small team of three had a video which forced a response from the high com­mand, bra­vo to the offi­cers on that.
Unfortunately, the grudg­ing sup­port of the brain dead high com­mand must be processed in the con­text of what was wrong with the entire cin­e­mat­ic episode and not some nugget of what may have been right from this pantomime.

See the source image

NYPD traf­fic stop.

Jamaica’s ter­rain is con­ducive to motorists remain­ing in their vehi­cles when they are pulled over by police.
(1) There are decades, and a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of instances in which motorists alight from vehi­cles, shoot at police and sim­ply dis­ap­pear in bush­es and gullies.
In the instances in which police are able to respond with force, they are often­times left with­out evi­dence to jus­ti­fy the use of lethal force because the cul­prits have in fact escaped with their weapons.
This par­tic­u­lar trend helped to cre­ate mis­trust of the police and has helped to fos­ter the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try, some­thing the incom­pe­tent high com­mand has done noth­ing to remedy.

See the source image
You get the picture .

(2) The unavail­abil­i­ty of ade­quate back­up in a time­ly man­ner as well as the short­age of resources and lack of prop­er train­ing of offi­cers also mil­i­tate against motorists being allowed to leave their vehi­cles when stopped by police.
There is no data which sup­ports allow­ing motorists leav­ing their vehi­cles when pulled over by police, cer­tain­ly noth­ing which would come close to ade­quate­ly coun­ter­ing the need for them to remain in their vehicles.
That is the rea­son why police depart­ments across the devel­oped world adhere to these best prac­tices. In Jamaica, the need to adhere and adapt is far more pressing.
Despite this, the police high-com­mand does noth­ing to change this practice!

The attempt of the offi­cers in this video to police them­selves through the use of cell phone and oth­er cam­eras is com­mend­able, even as it left the team vul­ner­a­ble to being exploit­ed in this instance. In one instance the offi­cer doing the film­ing had his back turned to one occu­pant of the vehi­cle. If these men want­ed to exact cost on those offi­cers we would be hav­ing a whole dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion about this traf­fic stop.
Mind you, I won’t both­er to delve into the whole painful episode of the cor­po­ral’s inane “Jamaican ambas­sador”. state­ments, It was just too painful to watch. Maybe its time to stop hero-wor­ship­ing those who run fast.
If this débâ­cle is wor­thy of praise, we must expect that Jamaica will con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence the lev­els of crime it has been expe­ri­enc­ing with the same and esca­lat­ed impuni­ty going forward.

See the source image

Then there are the Jamaican cops.

An inte­gral part of polic­ing is the author­i­ty offi­cers exude through the exe­cu­tion of prop­er pro­to­cols. Many Jamaicans have trav­eled over­seas and have seen how it is done. Others have been deport­ed hav­ing expe­ri­enced effec­tive polic­ing, whether one agrees or not. Then there are social media plat­forms which are rife with citizen/​police encoun­ters, those wish­ing to show out or break the laws are con­stant­ly prob­ing for laps­es and ways to breach police defenses.
It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty and indeed the duty of police lead­er­ship, not just to keep abreast, but be steps ahead of those who would trans­gress the nation’s laws.
On this issue, the police hier­ar­chy has been woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate and incompetent.

Despite the protes­ta­tions of sup­port for these glar­ing­ly regres­sive prac­tices, what is abun­dant­ly clear, is that inso­far as effec­tive respectable and pro­fes­sion­al polic­ing is con­cerned, the JCF is light years away from where it ought to be.
If we are cel­e­brat­ing the fact that these offi­cers did not ask for a bribe, then we need to say so, because this encounter cer­tain­ly is befit­ting a times­lot on the car­toon network.

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After The Polls Zimbabweans Wait

After assum­ing office sev­er­al months ago, the for­mer deputy President of the ZANU par­ty Emmerson Mnangagwa seeks legit­i­ma­cy from new elec­tions held July 30th, and sanc­tions put in place by some west­ern pow­ers in response to Mugabe’s land reform poli­cies in that country.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa gives a speech at the ZANU-PF ral­ly at the White City Stadium in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Saturday. Shortly after his speech end­ed, there was an explo­sion. Claire Harbage/​NPR

Mnangagwa came into pow­er last November after divi­sions in the ZANU-PF par­ty caused mas­sive upheaval. Weeks of polit­i­cal chaos led for­mer President Robert Mugabe to resign after 37 years in office.
The results of the elec­tions may not be known for days yet even though the leader of the

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On the oth­er side of the coin the head of the largest oppo­si­tion par­ty, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party,40-year-old Nelson Chamisa has tweet­ed that he has already won the elec­tions, though the Zimbabwe Election Commission(ZEC) has not announced a win­ner and has cau­tioned can­di­dates in the elec­tions not to make any announce­ments until (ZEC) has cer­ti­fied the elec­tion results.

The next three days should be a tense wait as Zimbwebians hun­gry for a dif­fer­ent approach wait to see whether their vote will tru­ly reflect their inten­tions when they entered the polling booths.
Let’s hear what young Nelson Camisa has to say about his vision for Zimbabwe post-Robert Mugabe.

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Zimbabwe Vote For The First Time Post Mugabe(video)

Polls have closed in Zimbabwe’s his­toric elec­tion, the first since the fall of long­time leader Robert Mugabe.

Polls have closed in Zimbabwe’s his­toric elec­tion, the first since the fall of long­time leader Robert Mugabe.

Millions have vot­ed, turnout was high and the day was free of the vio­lence that marked pre­vi­ous elections.The 75-year-old President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a for­mer Mugabe con­fi­dante, is in a close race with main oppo­si­tion leader Nelson Chamisa.

The 40-year-old Chamisa has called the elec­tion a choice between Zimbabwe’s past and future​.Final elec­tion results are expect­ed with­in five days.

The state-owned Herald news­pa­per is report­ing that vot­ing has offi­cial­ly end­ed in the south­ern African coun­try, with most polling sta­tions shut­ting their doors.

Polling offi­cers will take a 15-minute break before vote count­ing starts, the report says.

It’s the final min­utes of vot­ing in Zimbabwe’s his­toric elec­tion, with turnout high and free of the vio­lence that marked pre­vi­ous years, AP reports.

For the first time, for­mer leader Robert Mugabe isn’t on the ballot.

Zimbabweans say they are eager for change after decades of tur­moil and eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion. “Why would I fight my fel­low Zimbabweans?” asks vot­er Tapiwa Kahondo. “I’m so hap­py for today, man. I’m so hap­py,” Kahondo told AP.

The oppo­si­tion has raised con­cerns about delays in the vot­ing in its strong­hold urban areas, and it has warned it will orga­nize peace­ful protests if the elec­tions are thought to be flawed, accord­ing to AP.

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Remember When Obama’s Tan Suit Was A Big Deal?

The ele­va­tion of Donald Trump to the American pres­i­den­cy has demon­strat­ed just how quick­ly the estab­lished norms we have come to take for grant­ed can disappear.

President Obama, a man tru­ly con­ver­sant of the weight he car­ried as the first non-white pres­i­dent com­port­ed him­self with immac­u­late fideli­ty and class.
Additionally, his wife Michelle and their two daugh­ters, com­plet­ed the mod­el fam­i­ly image many are now look­ing back on with great nos­tal­gic emotionalism.

President Obama wore this tan suit for which he was raked over the coals, for­tu­nate­ly for America, if this was a neg­a­tive, it was Obama’s worst faux pas.

Barack Obama’s most griev­ous sin even after two bruis­ing cam­paign sea­sons and eight (8) years in the white house, was his wear­ing of the now infa­mous tan suit which Republican cultists harangued and cas­ti­gat­ed him for, with the medi­a’s full acquiescence.
You may also remem­ber how mad the right-wing nut-jobs were? Their non­sen­si­cal argu­ments were that it was­n’t suit­ably pres­i­den­tial, or some cocka­mamie rea­son they came up with for hat­ing it.
It was a sign to ISIS that the American pres­i­dent was­n’t tough,that he want­ed to go to a fundrais­er , Long Island Republican con­gress­man Peter King declared.

New York’s Long Island Republican Peter King was one of the most vocal crit­ics of President Obama’s tan suit, he nev­er had any word for this monstrosity.

Obama’s sar­to­r­i­al depar­ture from the ho-hum of the tra­di­tion­al blue suit was all it took to get the igno­rant racist right all ginned up.
True to form, the racist right nev­er both­ered to read up on history(not that it mat­ters what col­or suit some­one wears, it’s their own damn business).
They group-think, and are prone to fol­low­ing the igno­rant­ly agen­da-dri­ven fringe ele­ments, like [rats behind the pied piper of Hamlin].

9/​4/​1981 President Reagan sit­ting at his desk in the Oval Office
Wearing a tan suit.

The truth of the mat­ter is that oth­er pres­i­dents had donned tanned suits before President Obama did, includ­ing Ronald Reagan the tit­u­lar deity of the polit­i­cal right.
As the nation grap­ples with the avalanche of mad­den­ing events today, it is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish what Republicans were hand-wring­ing about only three years ago.

Racist Nazis, new­ly empow­ered con­trol the streets.

The Press is under assault, dai­ly there are tweets from the pres­i­den­cy lam­bast­ing the free press. Refugees seek­ing Asylum are sep­a­rat­ed from their chil­dren and deport­ed with­out their chil­dren. People liv­ing in the United States for decades are sum­mar­i­ly round­ed up and locked up as well as deport­ed for minor infrac­tions com­mit­ted decades earlier.


Reporter Kaitlan Collins asked Trump about Vladimir Putin and Michael Cohen dur­ing a short meet­ing between Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the pres­i­dent of the European Commission. Collins was serv­ing as the “pool reporter,” mean­ing she was rep­re­sent­ing all the TV net­works at the time. She was barred from a white house event opened to oth­er journalists.

Members of the press are barred from press brief­in­gs for ask­ing ques­tions they are duty bound to ask.
People of col­or are being gunned down in the streets by racist whites in police uni­forms. States purge mil­lions from vot­ers lists with­out con­se­quence, while unnec­es­sary trade wars cre­ate pan­ic and fear.
And yes, prices are begin­ning to rise as a result, even as farm­ers begin to see the results of these reck­less un-nec­es­sary poli­cies and ques­tion the votes they casted.
As the sky seems to be falling, those who did not vote for this look to Special coun­sel Robert Muller a (Republican) to save them, even as Trump’s col­lab­o­ra­tors in the Republican-con­trolled House file arti­cles of impeach­ment against Rod Rosenstein for refus­ing to hand over evi­dence to them which are part of an ongo­ing crim­i­nal and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence investigations.

Postville-raid-after­math-pho­to. Families are torn apart.

Nations which fought along­side America are now side­lined, while old foes are giv­en cre­dence and def­er­ence. Meetings between exec­u­tives of the American Government and oth­er nations, even hos­tile pow­ers, are held in pri­vate, with no doc­u­men­ta­tion of what was said and it gets worse.
The [régime], sor­ry I meant the admin­is­tra­tion, now decrees, it will no longer have read­outs of con­ver­sa­tions Trump has with for­eign leaders.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this would not be tol­er­at­ed by the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, so whats dif­fer­ent this time?
Whats dif­fer­ent, is a sys­tem­at­ic and con­cert­ed assault on insti­tu­tions and sen­si­bil­i­ties, so exas­per­at­ing and over­whelm­ing, that we sim­ply tune them out.
Ladies and gen­tle­men that is how democ­ra­cies die. “[Remember what you hear and see hap­pen­ing is not what is real­ly hap­pen­ing”][sic].

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“Jamaica No Problem My Ass”!(video)

Far from accom­plish­ing the desired result of few­er mur­ders and vio­lent crimes ‚the mea­sures adopt­ed by the Government to date has demon­stra­bly only accom­plished a thin veneer of safe­ty to a few Jamaicans.
My com­ments are nev­er designed or intend­ed to cas­ti­gate, rather, they are intend­ed to guide pol­i­cy-mak­ers toward a dif­fer­ent way of accom­plish­ing their goals.

I know this is gets bor­ing and repet­i­tive, I under­stand how many Jamaicans both at home and in the dias­po­ra feel like sim­ply throw­ing up their hands,accepting the cur­rent state of affairs as the new nor­mal, the way things have to be.
Only, that is not true.

Over the years we have watched help­less­ly, mouths agape, as vio­lence and aggres­sive behav­ior have been nor­mal­ized in our soci­ety. Violence and the accep­tance of it as an effec­tive con­flict-res­o­lu­tion tool, are now a thing.
The pop­u­lar cul­ture has not only nor­mal­ized it through music and the­ater, it has become a way of demon­strat­ing the bona-fides of impres­sion­able young men across the Island.
The media not to be out­done, has aid­ed in the malig­nan­cy by incul­cat­ing into its own day-to-day report­ing, praise and ado­ra­tion for the cul­ture, co-opt­ing the street’s ver­nac­u­lar into its presentations.

The polit­i­cal class on both sides of the divide, not inter­est­ed in strong effec­tive lead­er­ship, have sim­ply cosigned and adapt­ed to the norms cre­at­ed by the youths and as a con­se­quence con­tin­ue to pre­side over the rapid and inevitable dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Jamaican society.
Instead of lead­ing, pol­i­cy­mak­ers con­tin­ue to co-opt and pur­sue paths which makes enforc­ing the laws more dif­fi­cult and break­ing them less consequential.

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The Institutions of law con­tin­ue to dete­ri­o­rate, though not for a lack of will­ing­ness to uphold their oaths, by most in those agen­cies, but out of a lack of leg­isla­tive leadership.
The Police, the office of DPP and oth­ers all strug­gle with car­ry­ing out their man­dates, despite an incred­i­ble short­age of resources and Legislative support.
One can eas­i­ly under­stand how a poor devel­op­ing coun­try could have dif­fi­cul­ty pro­vid­ing ade­quate salaries and equip­ment to these crit­i­cal arms of the Government.
What is not read­i­ly under­stood is the con­tin­ued addi­tion of more gov­ern­ment agen­cies which mil­i­tate against the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tion of justice.

(INDECOM), The Independent Commission of Investigations and the Public Defender’s Office, both have hos­tile agen­das which are anti­thet­i­cal to the nation’s law enforcement.
In addi­tion to that, there are unprece­dent­ed lev­els of human rights med­dling in Jamaica’s leg­isla­tive process which are hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the rule of law, and peace and tran­quil­i­ty on the Island.
As a con­se­quence, despite the well know ills of oth­er nations includ­ing right there in the CARICOM region, the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans would emi­grate if only they could. Those who say they want to stay may be con­strued to be those with polit­i­cal pow­er and oth­ers who have the rest of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing under the ter­ror of their bootheels.

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We do not own the rights to this video.
The above video gives an indi­ca­tion of what is hap­pen­ing as entire fam­i­lies are mas­sa­cred when­ev­er these hood­lums feel like it, some­times up to sev­en lives extin­guished in one fell swoop.
Groups of police offi­cers, though well armed them­selves find­ing them­selves engaged in gun­fights which lasts for hours.

There are some who argue that there are killings every­where. There is no deny­ing that in the United States, for exam­ple, a coun­try with more guns than peo­ple, the reg­u­lar mas­sacre of large groups of peo­ple are rather com­mon. There may even be legit­i­ma­cy to the argu­ments that suc­ces­sive Administration in the United States [Republicans]have refused, [Democrats]unable to get sup­port to effect mean­ing­ful change to the nation’s gun laws
What is unde­ni­able is that despite the self-serv­ing way Conservatives in the United States inter­pret the 2nd amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion, vio­lent offend­ers have no hid­ing place when they com­mit crimes.

Our coun­try has long tran­si­tioned from one with a high mur­der rate to one in which heav­i­ly armed thugs exact their will on entire com­mu­ni­ties with pre­cious lit­tle push-back from the government.
The stark real­i­ty is that despite the show of force, by way of the use of the bod­ies of police offi­cers and sol­diers, there is real­ly a sys­tem­at­ic hack­ing away at the fire­wall which is sup­posed to pro­tect inno­cent peo­ple from these maraud­ing thugs.

On the one hand the Police are ham­strung through the lack of resources and remu­ner­a­tions but on the oth­er hand, the same gov­ern­ment which employs the police employs, pays and empow­ers oth­ers to throw up crit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to the police abil­i­ty to do their work.
On the rare occa­sion that the Police and pros­e­cu­tor’s office are able to put away a mur­der­er, the appel­late court always seems to find some tech­ni­cal­i­ty on which to over­turn those convictions.
On that basis, pop­u­lar mur­der­ers are gen­er­al­ly guar­an­teed a get out of jail card. It may not be free but get out they do.

All told, the efforts of Government may be con­strued to look like they are work­ing for the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the com­mon man but a clos­er look reveals that they are enhanc­ing and empow­er­ing murderers.
The pre­ten­tious nature of the aver­age Jamaican who grad­u­at­ed from high school to those indoc­tri­nat­ed at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to is a per­fect storm which has exis­ten­tial con­se­quences for our country.

Before we show our smiles to the rest of the world under the stu­pid and inane mantra “Jamaica no prob­lem” we may want to clean the garbage from our house and put out the trash.
The mur­der­ers have enough peo­ple work­ing hard on their side, it is time that good and decent Jamaicans have some­one on theirs.

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A DISTRESSED MAN CAME TO A POLICE STATION LOOKING FOR HELP. HOURS LATER, HE WAS IN A COMA

Earl McNeil’s family is demanding answers from the National City, California, police department.

A pho­to of McNeil in the hos­pi­tal in the days after his inter­ac­tion with the National City Police Department that was blown up into a poster for Tuesday’s protest

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Saturday, May 26, Earl McNeil, a 40-year-old African American man with a his­to­ry of men­tal health issues, walked up to the tele­phone attached to the front of the police depart­ment build­ing in National City, California. According to police, McNeil told the dis­patch­ers on the oth­er end of the phone that he was high, had a war­rant out for his arrest, and “want­ed to kill Jesus.”

The National City Police Department is housed in an impos­ing con­crete build­ing on National City Boulevard, the main thor­ough­fare of the low-income, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Latinx city that sits just to the south of San Diego, and a lit­tle more than 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. It was a few miles from where McNeil had been liv­ing, accord­ing to his rel­a­tives. Prompted by the con­ver­sa­tion with dis­patch­ers, offi­cers met McNeil out­side the police sta­tion, and soon after arrest­ed him on sus­pi­cion of being under the influ­ence of drugs.

When McNeil was tak­en out of the sta­tion sev­er­al hours lat­er, he was secured in the stiff nylon blan­ket and restraints known by police offi­cers as the “WRAP.” Officers put him in the back of a police car to check him into San Diego Central Jail for pro­cess­ing. But by the time he arrived at the jail, McNeil was in med­ical dis­tress, and he died 16 days later.

His death has sparked an out­cry from fam­i­ly mem­bers and com­mu­ni­ty activists who have demand­ed more infor­ma­tion from the police about the cir­cum­stances of his death.

At a City Council meet­ing on June 19, Rodriguez lis­tened to com­ments from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with a vis­i­ble smirk on his face, enrag­ing advo­cates and McNeil’s fam­i­ly members

An unexplained death

McNeil’s fam­i­ly is des­per­ate for answers about what hap­pened on May 26. According to a spokesper­son from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, McNeil was “reject­ed” for book­ing by the sheriff’s depart­ment, and remained in the cus­tody of the police depart­ment. “The Sheriff’s Department can­not com­ment on what may or may not have tran­spired while he was in the cus­tody of NCPD,” the spokesper­son told The Appeal. After he was reject­ed by cen­tral book­ing, para­medics were called to assist him — and McNeil lost con­scious­ness soon after they arrived, accord­ing to a state­ment released by the police department.

The red cour­tesy phone out­side the National City Police Department that police said McNeil used to con­tact them
Credit: Max Rivlin-Nadler

But the police have released lim­it­ed details about the inci­dent, despite a grow­ing pub­lic out­cry — nobody cam­era footage, no names of offi­cers involved in McNeil’s arrest, no sur­veil­lance footage from the precinct itself. The results of McNeil’s autop­sy have yet to be released to the fam­i­ly, although the police chief told the San Diego Union-Tribune that pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion from inves­ti­ga­tors present dur­ing the autop­sy found that there was no trau­ma on McNeil’s body.

McNeil’s fam­i­ly isn’t so sure. Photos they took while he was in the hos­pi­tal show bruis­es to his head and lac­er­a­tions to his body that they believe were caused at some point dur­ing the hours he was in National City police custody.

In the state­ment released in the days fol­low­ing McNeil’s death, the police said that McNeil was “inten­tion­al­ly hurt­ing him­self” dur­ing the trip to the coun­ty jail, despite being con­fined to the WRAP. The police did not respond direct­ly to the family’s alle­ga­tions or to a request for com­ment from The Appeal.

Tammy Davis, McNeil’s aunt, said she had to leave a meet­ing with the police chief, Manuel Rodriguez, because he kept smil­ing, and he refused to apol­o­gize for or elab­o­rate on what hap­pened to McNeil when he was in custody.

“There was a smile on the chief’s face and he was shak­ing his head. Every ques­tion we asked, he couldn’t give an answer,” Davis said. “He had a smile on his face from the time we start­ed the meet­ing to the time we left the meet­ing.” Rodriguez did not respond to requests for com­ment.

At a City Council meet­ing on June 19, Rodriguez lis­tened to com­ments from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with a vis­i­ble smirk on his face, enrag­ing advo­cates and McNeil’s fam­i­ly mem­bers (Rodriguez dis­putes that he was smirk­ing and instead says he was just try­ing to keep a “calm” face.) At the same City Council meet­ing, Tasha Williamson, a com­mu­ni­ty activist who has been work­ing with the McNeil fam­i­ly, was arrest­ed after she went over her allot­ted speak­ing time and refused to leave the podium.

She said the police’s asser­tion that he hurt him­self is ridicu­lous. “I was hor­ri­fied by their state­ments because we had actu­al­ly gone to the hos­pi­tal the day they pulled the plug and saw his body,” Williamson said. She wants to know why they won’t release footage from his time in cus­tody. “It just feels like a cov­er-up. It feels like they think we’ll go away.”

All body cam­era footage cap­tured by the National City police is acces­si­ble by the San Diego dis­trict attorney’s office. The police department’s pol­i­cy for offi­cer-involved shoot­ings is not to release the video “until the dis­trict attorney’s inde­pen­dent review of the inci­dent has been com­plet­ed and the find­ings have been pro­vid­ed to the law enforce­ment agency involved.” The police depart­ment could not con­firm if the same pol­i­cy applies to sur­veil­lance footage, or whether there’s a dif­fer­ent pol­i­cy for inci­dents involv­ing arrestees injured while in custody.

Last month in Sacramento, police released body cam­era video of a man who died in police cus­tody just a week after his death and released exten­sive sur­veil­lance footage with­in the month.

A Distressed Man Came to a Police Station Looking for Help. Hours Later, He Was In a Coma.

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Evangelical Apostasy Places It’s Values Over God’s Words

Are you a per­son of faith who some­times feel despon­dent and anx­ious as events out­side your con­trol seem to put the very exis­tence of a God into question?
Do you see few­er and few­er peo­ple in your church pews as the assault on truth and decen­cy inten­si­fy, seem­ing­ly, in a direct assault on every­thing you believed?
You are not alone.

Almost dai­ly we see and hear of events which fright­en and ter­ri­fies us, we hear the obvi­ous question,“Where is God, how could a God allow this to hap­pen”? Sometimes the very events which are sup­posed to bring us clos­er to God are the events which dri­ve us far­ther away from him,
The idea of trust­ing to our own under­stand­ing has been a non-starter from the begin­ning. Hence the Lod gave us his word to guide us in times when we see no way out, in times when we ask where is God in all of this.

We some­times live our lives trust­ing on our own knowl­edge„ our own under­stand­ing, we make deci­sions on how we relate to unfold­ing events sole­ly on what we know. Totally con­ver­sant of how that can be destruc­tive to us the Lord encour­ages us in his holy word to have faith.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the sub­stance of things hoped for, the evi­dence of things not seen.

Where do we turn for com­fort when the very body of Christ align itself with the dark forces which made you despon­dent in the first place?
Well the word of God acknowl­edged that we would find our­selves in this dilemma.
Philippians 2:12: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my pres­ence but much more in my absence, work out your own sal­va­tion with fear and trembling,

Dr. David R. Reagan writ­ing about Apostasy in the Church said, The Bible clear­ly proph­e­sies that the Church of the end times will be char­ac­ter­ized by apos­ta­sy. Paul said that the Antichrist will not be revealed until “the apos­ta­sy comes first”(2 Thessalonians 2:3). Jesus proph­e­sied that “many will fall away” and “most people’s love will grow cold” (Matthew 24:10, 12).

As we report­ed in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle Churches are clos­ing rapid­ly, and those which have remained open are expe­ri­enc­ing few­er peo­ple in their pews. Additionally, Christians in some parts of the world are increas­ing­ly com­ing under vio­lent attack and are being killed in shock­ing numbers.
We look at church lead­ers and we see ram­pant hypocrisy and ver­bal Jiu-jit­su on their part as they try to jus­ti­fy and legit­imize those with whom they agree while lam­bast­ing oth­ers they dislike.

Earlier this year MSNBC’s Alex Witt asked Franklin Graham, son of famed Televangelist Billy Graham and him­self a Minister and head of Samaritan’s Purse” about reports of Donald Trump’s alleged infi­deli­ties and dalliance.
Anytime reli­gion is politi­cized it’s in dan­ger of extinction,”[Ravi Zacharias]

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​c​a​l​s​-​c​o​n​t​i​n​u​e​-​t​o​-​d​i​s​t​o​r​t​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​-​t​e​a​c​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​o​-​j​u​s​t​i​f​y​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​a​n​d​-​h​y​p​o​c​r​i​sy/
“He said he didn’t say it,” Graham said. “I don’t think any of those sen­a­tors if he did use that lan­guage, have heard that word for the first time. I’m sure that’s a word they’ve used before, I think there’s a lit­tle hypocrisy here.”
“We have a busi­ness­man who is a pres­i­dent, not a politi­cian, but a busi­ness­man,” Graham said. “We should all be grate­ful that he’s brought his knowl­edge to Washington and he’s help­ing to turn this econ­o­my around.”

Obama’s pri­vate sec­tor job growth graphic.

So there you have it moral­i­ty in high office is no longer a virtue as long as the econ­o­my is doing well. Is there any won­der that young intel­lec­tu­als are not rush­ing to hear about God?
While we are on the sub­ject of the econ­o­my it is instruc­tive to do the utmost to ensure that in that nar­ra­tive about eco­nom­ic well-being we do not lose sight of the facts.
Intellectualism/​Science and Religion were not always at odds with each oth­er. Previously the most learned schol­ars were the most reli­gious. the American National Academy of Sciences has writ­ten that “the evi­dence for evo­lu­tion can be ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with reli­gious faith”, a view offi­cial­ly endorsed by many reli­gious denom­i­na­tions globally.

Obama’s econ­o­my.

The sim­ple truth is that the word of God remains unchanged, the prob­lem is with the mes­sen­gers. Franklin Graham is by no means the only white so-called con­ser­v­a­tive who have tied them­selves into pret­zels try­ing to legit­imize what they want you to believe.
In fact, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, and shock­ing­ly even some Black pro­claimed min­is­ters of the gospel have used the Bible and their own twist­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of God’s words to bring the body of Christ into disrepute.

At no time in our recent his­to­ry, at least not in my life­time has pol­i­tics so ensnared the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment and places the body of Christ in con­tra­ven­tion to the teach­ings of Jesus Christ. Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glo­ry of God.
♦Proclaiming oppo­si­tion to Abortions while hat­ing chil­dren not of your skin col­or is not Christlike.(Not tak­ing sides on the abor­tion issue)
♦Abortions may very well be sin­ful but to dis­re­gard every­thing else and vote for a par­ty which would put judges in place who rule against the basic human and civ­il rights of all peo­ple is equal­ly sin­ful and hypocritical.

♦We may not agree with the lifestyle of our neigh­bor but we are duty bound to love them with the agape love, “the high­est form of love, char­i­ty” and “the love of God for man and of man for God”.That love which is the God kind of love, if we want to claim to be his children.
♦We can­not claim real Christian faith if we con­tin­ue to dwell in the cesspool of igno­rance, con­tin­u­ous­ly engulfed in the tox­ic imbe­cil­i­ty of the supe­ri­or­i­ty of skin col­or, lack­ing the sim­ple and fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing that there is only one human race.
♦We can in no like wise claim God when we turn our backs in obliv­i­ous dis­in­ter­est at the pain and suf­fer­ing of our dis­en­fran­chised and abused broth­ers and sisters.

The evan­gel­i­cal move­ment has fall­en woe­ful­ly short on lit­er­al­ly all counts.
The church is active­ly engaged in dis­tort­ing the word of God and turn­ing away some of those who were once believ­ers of the faith and alien­at­ing fur­ther, those on the out­side look­ing on.
2nd. Thessalonians 2:1 – 3 King James Version (KJV) Now we beseech you, brethren, by the com­ing of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gath­er­ing togeth­er unto him,

2 That ye be not soon shak­en in mind, or be trou­bled, nei­ther by spir­it, nor by word, nor by let­ter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.