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/

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.

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.

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 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.

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 1^st, 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Stanley Hall in Makokoba, Bulawayo, has a snaking queue but vot­ers wait­ing patient­ly. Presiding offi­cer says Makokoba has a lot of elder­ly vot­ers who need assis­tance, hence delays #ZimbabweDecides #ElectionsZW pic​.twit​ter​.com/​V​t​9​3​t​N​z​FPo

— ZimLive (@zimlive) July 30, 2018

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 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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

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.

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].