Sports section

NFL controversy....

No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad

Protest at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City

By Ajamu Baraka

“A shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system.”

So, we say: Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland; for our political prisoners; for the super-exploited Black and Brown working class; for oppressed Indigenous nations; and for the millions subjected to U.S. warmongering, sanctions and criminality. We say this to shift the focus from the individualization of this week’s rebellion back to the objective structures of white supremacist, global colonial/capitalist domination. (BAP Newsletter )

The ruling class is befuddled and confused about how to respond to the ongoing street demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd. The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy. The ferocity of the demonstrations that had not been seen since the brief uprising in 92 in response to the Rodney King verdict seems to have caught the authorities completely by surprise.

In the 1992 street actions in Los Angeles the nation and the world saw the first multi-racial, multi-national street action that was very different from the Black rebellions that rocked the U.S. in the 1960s. The racial configuration of the participants captured the range of non-European national minority communities and migrant peoples from across the Americas’ region.

“The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy.”

But even in a departure from what occurred in 92, the justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action of whites, Latinx, LGBTQ, immigrant and migrant workers and Black youth, initiated by Black people with Black leadership. The response from the rulers was predictable but unsurprising in its ideological and strategic coherence to break that emerging coalition of social forces.

I posted a comment on Facebook in response to what I saw as the counter-moves being made by the state. I was asked by several people to elaborate on those points, which I offer here.

Milan, Italy

In my original Facebook post I said:

“The enemy knows how to quickly adapt in the ideological struggle: 1) undermine the emerging unity with white agitator propaganda, 2) follow up with declaration against something called Antifa as a terrorist group, 3) instruct the police to join demos and express solidarity, 4) release statements from police chiefs and others pushing the bad apples theme, and most important, 5) keep the focus on the individual and call for "justice" for that individual to avoid attention on the systemic and enduring elements of Black and Brown colonized oppression.”

The white outside agitator trope. If it wasn’t frightening enough to see images of young white kids marching shoulder to shoulder with African and other colonized peoples, seeing white kids actually engaged in militant engagement with police authorities, which went beyond the approved forms of resistance, triggered a cognitive dilemma almost as serious as when they tried to comprehend and explain how China could escape the COVID-19 with five thousand deaths while the virus was killing tens of thousands in the U.S. 

That cognitive dissonance could only be achieved by resurrecting the outside agitator notion that emerged in the 30s and was directed at organizers from the Communist Party and militant union organizers who were working in the U.S. South. But that trope was given its fullest form in the Civil rights struggles in the 50s and 60s.

London, England

It’s redeployment today is geared to 1) delegitimizing Black agency by implying that resistance of this sort had to be directed by white folks, and, 2) generating suspicion and even hostility toward white participants. Granted, issues of counter-productive tactics and police infiltration are real issues. But the state saw a vulnerability in evoking the white agitator trope that the black petit-bourgeois administrators in various cities enthusiastically embraced.

Antifa as a terrorist group: With the ideological foundation of the white outside agitator, the next step was creating a more understandable target by inventing an organizational form in order to give the threat a more serious and ominous character. The problem should have been, though, that Antifa is not really an organization but an idea with a loose network of some organizations and mostly individuals, many of whom are anarchists with many other political orientations, who believe that the U.S. is facing a neofascist threat that should not be ignored.

But the fact that Antifa is a mirage is secondary when the objective is to drive an ideological agenda. The success of this, however, is yet to be determined. 

Instruct/encourage police to engage in public relations shunts like taking a knee or even walking with the demonstrators in some locations. Shrinking the distance between the police and the demonstrators is easy when the issue is being framed as “justice” for George Floyd, and by implication the idea that his killers were “bad apples.”

Those kinds of political stunts are not even inconsistent with a simultaneous display of military prowess and heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators, especially if the idea is taking hold that it is the “bad apples” among the demonstrators that are deserving of policing.

The bad apple trope plays right into the monumental political error being made by resisters by keeping focus on George Floyd as an individual, even if by extension the critique extends to the police and policing as a whole. The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police as the leading edge of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.

Hundreds of Black and Latinix people are dying every day from what the Black is Back Coalition  calls the colonial virus known as COVID-19. Yet because we are not watching grandma take her last breath on the ventilator after having been laying around the hospital for days, her unnecessary death and the literal deaths of thousands of our people did not bring the people out of their houses during lockdown and into the streets.

Those deaths will continue long after the other cops are charged, and the military secures the cities and people go home, because those deaths are generated by the contradictions of capitalism. They are produced by the structural violence that is inherent in a system that devalues all life but especially the life of non-European workers and the poor.

So, the state has responded. The challenge for us is how do we counter the state’s attempt to pre-empt the development of a new movement.

The definition of the “people” is an historic one that emerges out of concrete struggle with specific historical conditions. The deep structural crisis of the system of national and global capital are creating the conditions for neofascism as a capitalist reform strategy. Therefore, we must not allow the state to undermine the basis for building new forms of solidarity among people who are finding their voice.  

“The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police.”

And while Trump may be the face of this movement and the public attention fixed on his most bombastic statements and the spectacle of armed citizen groups showing up at various state capitals, he does not have complete power over the real rulers of capital. Trump barely controls the Executive branch and has had his program of radical nationalist economic reform, including gutting Obamacare, curtailed. Instead, he has become an administrator of the neoliberal agenda like the last five presidents before him.

It is those ruling class forces who fear the masses and will give Trump or even Biden, if he is elected, free reign to continue to jettison the last vestiges of liberal democracy in order to maintain the rule of capital. When it was clear to the Obama Administration that he was not going to be able to co-opt the occupy movement, he moved with decisive action to shut it down across the country.

Trump will move just as decisively and with same level of ruling class support to shut down the protests when he sees it politically advantageous to do so.  

Two things must happen fairly quickly. On the ideological level, a shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system. It is clear that the state is unwilling and unable to protect the fundamental human rights of the people. The demand for People(s)-centered human rights provides a broad, radical framework for advancing concrete demands that can unite broad sectors of the population.

And secondly, and most importantly, the theme and message around the importance of organization must be aggressively advanced. Mass mobilizations have a place but developing the organizational forms that will build and sustain the power necessary to bring about radical fundamental change is the primary challenge and historic task.

~ Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

No more....

Ernie Chambers, the militant barber of Omaha, Nebraska...

How many heroes stolen from us? How many unsung leaders cut down, tortured and disappeared from history itself?

American "democracy" and true liberatory Black leadership are incompatible.

"You can't have capitalism without racism." -Malcolm X

Who are these cops?

Back outside the White House. Today the perimeter has been pushed back another half block. Federal law enforcement of some kind, but they won’t identify themselves, and all insignias and name plates have been removed. pic.twitter.com/q5dmdMgkLV

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) June 3, 2020

Kevin Zeese from Popular Resistance writes:

The unidentified new DOJ militarized police force requires immediate litigation. Congress is not capable of responding. This needs to get into the courts quickly before they kill someone and cannot be held accountable. They were ordered to remove their names and other identifying information so they would be free to commit violence.

Six years ago Black Lives Matter was founded since then there have been more than 6,000 people killed by police with almost no accountability. The national uprising has been building for years since Occupy and the disappointments of the Obama era that failed to provide hope and change, followed by the worst president of my lifetime, Donald Trump - and the potential future worst Democrat of the last 40 years, Joe Biden. People are fed up and rising up for very good reasons.  Now we have a police crisis -- a government that cannot get its police to stop killing people is one extreme example of a failed state. This uprising needs to be the issue of 2020. It will be the people leading from below as we cannot trust elected officials to be responsible -- at any level of government. The US is a failed state and the people of the United States and the world see it.

The failed state is also shown by the worst-possible response to the pandemic, the continued corruption shown in the response to the economic collapse with trillions going to the wealthy and scraps going to the people and the long term failure to respond to the environmental and climate crisis. The response of both parties has been more fossil fuel production in the US. 

This uprising is so massive -- all 50 state and DC, including every major and modestly sized city -- that it is hard to describe. While the trigger has been police murder, the issue is bigger -- it is about a failed bipartisan state that serves only the wealthy and does not ensure people have economic security or the necessities of a decent life, as well as fails to protect the planet.

'You will listen or you will perish'....

Solidarity in Washington DC

D.C. resident Rahul Dubey gave refuge to around 60 protesters inside his home after law enforcement had pushed them down his street, firing chemicals at them.

Been happening for a long time....

In 1962, a confrontation started by the LAPD outside a mosque resulted in the death of a Nation of Islam member. It was an event seized on by an outraged Malcolm X, who would condemn it in an impassioned speech.

Keep the light alive

Keep the light alive,
a vision is needed.

Black Elk said,
"Behold, a sacred voice
is calling you;
All over the sky
a sacred voice
is calling."

That voice was speaking
to George Floyd
when he called for
his mother
in his last minute
of life.

We know that Israel
is training
many domestic
police departments.
Some of which
are led by fascists
and white supremacists.
They have a 'holy'
alliance.

It's fertile soil
for those of us
who carry the vision,
love our Mother,
heal the wounds,
give voice to
'all our relations',
to resist.
Hoka Hey!

We must
remember the
next 7 gens,
our sacred responsibility.
Are we listening?

Show the love,
speak your truth,
respect all
spirits,
even when you want to
kill them.

The imperial fall
is in motion,
internationally
and here at home.
The crash will
be hard,
but we must
remember these words....

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

        Here are the things that must be considered:

                Where are you living?
                What are you doing?
                What are your relationships?
                Are you in right relation?
                Where is your water?
                Know our garden.
                It is time to speak your Truth.
                Create your community.
                Be good to each other.
                And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of
the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lonely wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

The Elders,
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation

Bruce

Neo-feudalism is here....

Krystal and Saagar talk to author Joel Kotkin about his new book, 'The Coming of Neo-feudalism.'

Is the THAAD Missile Crisis in South Korea Escalating?

 
By K.J. Noh

Why are thousands of South Korean Riot Police Bashing Anti-THAAD Protestors?

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, on May 28th, 2020,  "The Ministry of National Defense and the USFK (United States Forces in Korea) engaged in a transportation operation in the middle of the night to bring equipment to the Seongju THAAD [missile defense] system in Gyeong sang buk do [Province]. The Ministry of National Defense said that it supported the land transportation operation by the USFK from the night of the 28th to the morning of the 29th.  The work was said to have ended at 6:00 am.

This stealth operation in the middle of the night was nevertheless challenged by the residents of the area. 3,700 South Korean riot police had to be deployed as a phalanx to cordon off the roads to enable the operation and to prevent obstruction of the transport.  Several residents were reported to have been injured during the clash between local residents and the police.

Routine Operation?  Not likely.

Although the South Korean government has been taking pains to characterize this as a "routine" maintenance/replacement operation - like an oil change for a WMD-related missile system - what is striking and surprising about this recent action is that it is the first land transport operation for THAAD since September 2017 (when the remaining 4 out of 6 missile batteries were installed, also against mass protest).   Since then, the USFK and Blackwater operators of the THAAD system have been like the French foreign legion at Dien Bien Phu - completely besieged on top of a hill, with all supplies airlifted in, and operating troops leaving or entering only by helicopter.  This is due to the constant protest and surveillance of the base by anti-THAAD protestors encamped all around it. 

That this risky, costly, high manpower ground transport operation was undertaken signifies several things:

1) It's not a routine "replacement" - it's possibly a significant upgrade in systems, arsenal, or firepower: a one-time operation. 

2) The claim by officials is that the operation was to "replace older missiles, a power generator, electronic devices", and that "the new missiles are of the same type that the U.S. Forces Korea (UFSK) currently operates. As the mission was to replace expired ones, the number of updated ones is exactly the same as those to be taken out of the base."

This claim is hardly credible.  It stretches credibility that the lifespan of a $1.3 billion missile system is only three years, or that unused missiles "wear out" like cheap fashion or "expire" like bad yogurt.  Even a well-maintained urn of Kimchi can last longer than that.  (The poster boy for the built-in-obsolescence racket known as Microsoft only forces replacement of its systems every 5-10 years).

3) There has been no clear South Korean Ministry of Defense declaration or accounting to South Korea's National Assembly on what was transported in or "replaced" - at least 4 trucks were covered up with black shrouds - most likely new missile batteries, launch units, possibly radar modules.  Is it a complete soup-to-nuts THAAD system?  This is unclear.  However, it definitely is not like the brake pad change or cat-6 cable switch-out to replace "worn out" parts at the "end of their operating cycle" as is claimed by the government.

4) Nothing has been taken out (yet), so whatever this is at this point, it's unlikely to be a simple "replacement", but an augmentation or increase in equipment, systems, armaments, firepower.

5). The government also claims it was "to improve living conditions of troops at the base".  It's unclear how one would improve living conditions on a site that has access to an elite country club on top of a hill with sweeping views surrounded by lush nature.   Perhaps they need a golf course? 

6). The official also said "the operation has nothing to do with the U.S. move to improve its seven THAAD batteries in the region, including the one in Seongju." Never believe something until it's been officially denied, especially if the denial seems unnecessary or responds to a concern that has yet to be raised.

The withdrawal of the US from the ABM treaty - which subsequently allowed the development and deployment of THAAD at seven sites around the world, including Korea, and the 2019 disavowal of the INF treaty - permitting the emplacement of nuclear cruise missiles around China's [and Russia's] periphery are all ominous, threatening maneuvers that increase US firepower "overmatch" against China , and thus increase the risk of war.

As US-China relations were degrading, and frictions escalating, in mid February of this year, there was talk of "upgrading" the missile launchers and radar at the Seongju THAAD site - separating out components for more flexible firepower, as well as increasing the number of missiles.  That discussion was tabled, but the stealth - and misconduct - employed in the initial THAAD development and deployment in 2016-17, combined with the odd denial that this is currently happening here, should lead people to suspect that this may actually be happening.

In fact, in light of those plans, this can be read as an ominous maneuver in terms of all the other military buildup and maneuvers going on in the South China Sea, along the Taiwan strait, and elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, China has officially condemned this maneuver. 

This maneuver by the US also forces [President] Moon into unwanted foreign relations friction with China after his party's landslide legislative victory, at a time when the Trump administration is escalating on all fronts against China.

Fearful Asymmetry: How THAAD Came to Korea

Although the US has wartime operational control of South Korean forces - nearly 5 million troops, and massive firepower are arrayed in Korea, Okinawa, and Japan.  Despite this massive force projection platform, it is effectively in a stalemate with North Korea and China in East Asia and along the peninsula, due to the rough strategic parity of the forces deployed - and it has always sought to find a way to redress this state of affairs.

The THAAD - Terminal (Theater) High Altitude Area Defense system - a high tech anti-ballistic missile defense system built by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon - is an integral component/weapons platform of the Pivot to Asia, the US plan to encircle and contain China.

The US has wanted to place a THAAD system in Korea since at least 2013, and possibly since the declaration of the Pivot in 2011, as part of the military and geostrategic design of its encirclement:  THAAD destabilizes the existing balance of power in the region because it creates the possibility of neutralizing Chinese nuclear deterrence, i.e. China's nuclear shield, and potentially enables a cost-free nuclear first strike by the US. While it's sold as an anti-missile system against North Korean missile threats, everyone knows that it's targeted against China, in particular the AN/TPY X-band radar, which renders China's inland interior - up to 3,000 km inland - transparent to US surveillance and attacks.  It also renders early warning of any Chinese missile launches.  Because of this, the Chinese consider THAAD to be a threat that cannot be tolerated, and has to be removed.

The system itself was initially placed in South Korea, under highly secretive and controversial circumstances, during the transitional period during the ouster of Park Geun Hye regime in 2016-2017.  Despite massive opposition of the Korean people to THAAD system it was announced, and then forcefully deployed: this was Park's final ugly insult to the Koreans and her last sycophantic act of fealty to the US, a troubled legacy that Koreans are still struggling with.

Deceitful Deployment: Melons, Missiles, and Country Clubs

Park's administration played four years of footsie under the table with the US: the US and South Korean governments assured both Korea citizens and China that ”no decisions about deployment had been made," and only exploratory discussion were happening. This was despite strong signals from the US to South Korea that THAAD deployment was non-negotiable.  This “strategic ambiguity” turned out to be a ploy: a canard to calm down the raging Korean opposition to THAAD, and to avoid alienating Beijing.  During this time, the administration had been secretly scouting out locations for placement and negotiating specifics of emplacement.  Eventually, an artillery site adjacent to a melon farming area in Seong Ju County in the southern part of the country was found, and the deployment was initiated. However, the opposition to the deployment - massive, popular, and religious - was so overwhelming that the government relented, and looked around to find a different - and more defendable - site.  They quickly took over the Lotte Sky Hill Seongju Country Club, an exclusive private golf course belonging to the Lotte Conglomerate not far from the original artillery site. This site was chosen because of its isolated, elevated terrain, and because the installation could happen immediately without "massive civil engineering work and infrastructure installation".  This is a typical example of the incestuous nature of SK corporate-government-military nexus, and also speaks to the hurried, urgent, covert nature of the installation.

South Koreans, especially those living in the region had been massively opposed to the THAAD system for several reasons:

1)    They understood that this would draw South Korean into a deadly arms race with China, and that Seong Ju (its THAAD missile batteries) and environs, as well as other parts of South Korea would become targets and collateral damage in any shooting war.
2)    The lack of consultation and procedural democracy around the deployment rankled even the most stolidly conservative of Koreans.
3)    The loss of land (in a small, highly populated country with scarce arable land), and the fear of families and crops being irradiated by high-energy X-band radar were serious concerns to farmers and activists.
4)    Last but not least, US military bases tend to create massive social problems around them: prostitution, rape, gender-and-race-based violence, the degradation of civic and social life. The down-to-earth farmers of the region were not down for this.

In the period after THAAD deployment was suddenly announced, protests against the US-aligned Park Geun Hye government crested into the millions: over a period of months, throughout the dead of winter, over a quarter of the country's population came out to protest her corrupt government.  Park’s popularity ratings dropped to 4% - below the confidence interval of the poll - before completely flat-lining.  Years of neoliberal violence, labor abuse, colonial sycophancy, capitulation to US and Japan imperial designs, depraved indifference to human life, and unending corruption finally exploded into months of street protest. Park was eventually impeached, arrested, and imprisoned, and a caretaker Prime Minister was put into place. During this transitional period under the caretaker government, when the government was functioning on life support, the US bum-rushed the placement of the missiles - again during the dead of night - onto this golf course/country club in the South.  This action illegally bypassed the South Korean requirement of parliamentary review and approval.  It had been timed to occur before the election of a new South Korea president, to establish facts on the ground that would be hard to reverse with any subsequent administration.

On May of 2017, progressive president Moon Jae In, was elected to the South Korean presidency. President Moon had campaigned, among other things, on suspension of the THAAD deployment, contingent on further evaluation and environmental review.  However, not long after he took office, even more missiles were installed by the military leadership without notifying him, indicative of whom the South Korean military was really reporting to. This has been a thorn in his side since. President Moon, too, was pressured to increase THAAD deployment, and during the North Korea-US missile standoff in September of 2017, he relented to further temporary deployment.

The system is operated by the Combined Task Force Defender Unit, part of Delta-2, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment of the US Forces Korea, with an assist from the contractors of the mercenary company Blackwater.  What was originally a temporary, contingent deployment has clearly been converted into a permanent, enduring, and profitable assignment for some.

How to Solve the THAAD issue: A Modest Proposal

There is one long-shot solution to the THAAD debacle that does not involve war, insurrection, or destabilization. 

Objectively, golf courses are an abomination - a waste of productive land and water for the exclusive and non-productive use of a miniscule elite.  However, President Trump is very keen on charging the Koreans for the costs and the operation of the THAAD (which the Koreans have so far resisted). This has resulted in considerable antagonism, as has the entire "cost-sharing" agreement: the US wants a 500% increase in the current protection racket payment of $1 Billion/year that South Korea pays for the privilege of having its country occupied with US forces.
 
The Koreans could offer to pay off the THAAD costs, and then ask for full possession of the THAAD missiles, which are currently under the control of the US.

Once the Korean government takes possession of them, they can disarm them and place them as massive public sculptures in a peace museum or public park as a sculptural examples of imperial phallic-narcissistic extremism.

Of course, the US won't go for this immediately.  The only way to make this happen is if the Koreans could offer the  current THAAD site - what used to be the Lotte Skyhill Country Club and Golf Course - previously a magnificent, beautiful, ultra-luxurious 18 hole golf course and country club with exquisite, sweeping views - lofted 2,200 feet above the surroundings - as an inducement to President Trump.  It would require some clean up and renewed landscaping, as military deployments tend to turn even pristine environments into a mélange of bachelor cave and toxic trash dump, but that could be arranged, and should be included in the offer.  After all, the only worse use of land than a golf course is a military base.

After the missiles are removed, the site cleaned up and landscaped, President Trump can then reopen the course for golf, creating a "marvelous, beautiful" private club, and play golf there, which it seems, is the only thing he loves more than firing missiles and tormenting women.

The US Empire gets a check; the Trump Empire gets its 20th golf course - the Trump Skyhill Country Club and Golf Course - to add to the portfolio of "top notch, magnificent, prestigious" golf courses, and South Korea, North Korea, China, and North East Asia set the conditions for enduring peace in the region.

There have been worse deals in history.

*******************
For more on the deployment of the THAAD missiles within the context of South Korea's recent history and politics, and the relationship with NK, China, the US, and Japan (KPFA flashpoints).
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=261456        

~ K.J. Noh is a Korean-American scholar, journalist and activist from San Francisco, California

Gas tanker truck tries to rundown protesters in Minneapolis

Thousands of peaceful protesters were occupying an interstate bridge in the heart of Minneapolis, Minnesota when a gasoline tanker truck came barrelling down the road toward them.

People quickly scattered and it appeared that one lone brave protester sat in front of the truck forcing it to stop.

The driver of this truck has to be one sick fool and deserves to spend many years in jail for attempted murder of these peaceful folks.

It seems that Minnesota has some serious issues that it needs to address rather than blaming the protesters - a very mixed group of black and white folks calling for justice in the case of the killing of George Floyd by four white cops.  All four of those cops need to be charged with murder.

America is one very crazy country.

Bruce

'Light em up'

National guard and Minneapolis Police Department sweeping a residential street. Shooting paint canisters at people on their own front porch. Yelling “light em up”.

This is what the US military has been doing to innocent people all over the world for many years.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

We know that many local police departments across the US are being trained by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who are famous for the way they brutally treat Palestinian people.

Instead of pausing, arresting the four cops who killed George Floyd and prosecuting them for murder, the US corporate oligarchies who run this country are going full-speed-ahead to shut down the growing protests.  They refuse to learn anything in this moment.

Their ultimate goal is to pit the American people against one another as the corporate fat cats steal the national treasury and resources of the nation.  We are heading into Neo-feudalism.

This macho attitude of brute force will only make matters worse.  They will kill more innocent people and further alienate legions of people in this country and around the world. 

The US has been using this aggressive, violent militarization since this nation was founded.  First they massacred the native people, then brutally suppressed slaves brought to this nation from Africa, attacked the civil rights and anti-war movements, and shut down the Occupy movement using these same ugly tactics.  

All of this violence will only hasten the collapse of this nation.  America is again showing the world that we are not the 'exceptional' nation that Washington claims we are, but are in fact a cruel, psychopathic, violent country that has no conscience nor any moral compass.

All of us must reject this militarization of the police and the fascistic attitude toward the citizens who dare publicly stand to say 'Stop the killing of black people across this land'.

Bruce 

'Charge the cops'

Tamika Mallory (a Black Lives Matter leader), Stephen Jackson (former NBA star) and Jamie Foxx (actor) speak passionately at rally for Greg Floyd who was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

They are demanding that all four cops involved in the murder be arrested and charged.

Protests against the Floyd killing are not only happening all across the US but are spreading internationally to cities like Berlin, London, Toronto and more.

There is also growing evidence that undercover police have been in part responsible for some of the violence (window breaking and starting fires) in Minneapolis.  This is standard operating procedure at big protests as the power structure understands that they can turn public opinion against the protests by instigating violence.

Sunday song plus bonus