Tag: Racism

US Law Enforcement Kill More People in 2022 Than Any Previous Year on Record

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According to reporting in various independent news outlets during the first week of January 2023, American law enforcement personnel—primarily police and sheriff deputies—killed more people in 2022 than any proceeding year on record. This reporting relies upon research by the Mapping Police Violence Project which chronicled 1,183 people killed by American law enforcement between January 1st and December 31st 2022. Common Dreams, in its January 6th, 2023 coverage, noted that a 2021 study in the Lancet found about half of killings by law enforcement go unreported, meaning the 1,183 figure could in reality be double.

Nevertheless, the scope of the problem as reported is large, and increasing. Since 2013, when researchers at the Mapping Police Violence project began aggregating reports of law enforcement killings, the number has always been more than 1,000 per year. In 2017 it was 1,089; in 2018, 1,140; in 2019, 1,097; in 2020, 1,152; in 2021, 1,145. Between 2013 and

— source projectcensored.org | Jan 20, 2023

Nullius in verba

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Archbishop says desecration of Jerusalem cemetery a ‘hate crime’

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Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum has called the desecration of a Protestant cemetery in Jerusalem a “clear hate crime,” days after Israel swore in the most far-right government in the country’s history. Two unidentified men broke into Jerusalem’s Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery and desecrated more than 30 graves on Sunday, local media reported. Security footage circulated on social media shows one man of Orthodox Jewish appearance entering the graveyard, pushing over a cross-shaped tombstone and smashing it with rocks with the help of a second man. The graveyard, founded in 1848 and maintained by local communities, contains the graves of 73 men of the Palestine police service who were killed during the second world war. It is also the burial place of many senior Christian leaders including Samuel Gobat, the former bishop of Jerusalem.

— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Jan 5, 2023

Nullius in verba

White men charged in attack on Black teens at South African swimming pool

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Police in South Africa charged a White man with attempted murder and have charged two others with assault after an attack on Black teenagers trying to use a swimming pool while on vacation sparked widespread outrage. Video of the incident, which was shared widely on social media, appeared to show a White man choking and striking a Black teen in the face before pushing another Black teenager into the pool and gripping him in a headlock, seemingly to try to push him underwater. Kgokong Nakedi, 18, told reporters that he and a 13-year-old cousin were assaulted on Christmas Day by White people at a vacation resort they were visiting in Bloemfontein, in the Free State province.

— source washingtonpost.com | Dec 29, 2022

Nullius in verba

Veterans Understand Martin Luther King Jr’s Powerful Demand for Peace

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Veterans Day celebrations have come and gone. One thing about veterans: Everyone’s for them. But what does that really encompass? How did they get here? And what of the veterans to come?

The World Veterans Federation (WVF) is an international network comprised of 172 veterans organizations from 121 countries representing about 60 million veterans worldwide. It acts as a humanitarian, peace, and justice advocate not just for veterans but for victims of war. Out of those 121 countries with 60 million veterans, one country contains about 19 million — over 30% — of all the world’s veterans. That’s the United States.

Why so many? The U.S. represents only 4.25% of the world’s population. That outsize representation, where we dramatically outnumber other countries in producing veterans, is repeated in our jails where we imprison more than 20% of the entire world’s prison population and repeated in our routine gun shootings where we own 42% of the world’s privately held guns.

Veterans For Peace (a U.S. member of WVF), was formed in 1985. Odds are you’ve never heard of it. It suffers from a lack of recognition, particularly among members of Congress, precisely because it stands in opposition to US wars of aggression (Iraq in 2003 as characterized by Kofi Annan).

— source | James Rothenberg | Jan 06, 2023

Nullius in verba

Martin Luther King Jr. was the Victim of J. Edgar Hoover’s Dirty Tricks

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Ours is an age beset by conspiracy theories, with the fascist QAnon cult at the center of much public lunacy. These completely implausible ideas, apparently taken seriously by millions of people, have been enabled by the internet, by social media, and by the rise of a new, militant billionaire class that funds them. Indeed, with the turn to such conspiracies by new Twitter owner Elon Musk, that site has seen an explosion of hate speech, calumny, and wacky but dangerous ideas. Just to refresh our memories, QAnon accused Hillary Clinton and other high officials of running a pedophile ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. At one point these vicious lies even led to the pizzeria being shot up. This conspiracy theory was believed and broadcast by Gen. Michael Flynn, the former U.S. National Security Advisor! More recently, QAnon acolytes were involved in the January 6, 2021, attempted coup d’etat.

You may wonder if the world has abruptly gone mad.

Alas, it is the sad duty of historians to remind everyone shocked by the present that, as Ecclesiastes 1:9 has it,

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.

As we commemorate the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is worth remembering that the Q of his era was not anonymous. It was J. Edgar Hoover, the long-term head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI was formed in 1908 by Teddy Roosevelt, over the objections of Congress, which feared a secret police. Its initial charge was to hunt down anarchists, who in the hysteria

— source juancole.com | Juan Cole | 01/16/2023

Nullius in verba