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FOCUS | Those Damned Migrants: Blame It All on Them! |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 29 April 2015 11:51 |
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Weissman writes: "If immigration and border control pose divisive hot-button issues in the United States, migrants and asylum seekers could prove fatal for the European Union."
Migrants aboard a ship. (photo: AP)
Those Damned Migrants: Blame It All on Them!
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
29 April 15
 f immigration and border control pose divisive hot-button issues in the United States, migrants and asylum seekers could prove fatal for the European Union. Nearly 1800 of them perished in the Mediterranean in recent weeks. About the same number have reportedly gone missing, and officials are expecting as many as half a million refugees this year to brave the Med in hopes of finding a better life in Europe.
“It is sickening to see thousands of refugees drowning on the doorstep of the world’s wealthiest continent,” declared actress Angelina Jolie, the UN's Special Envoy for Refugees. “No one risks the lives of their children in this way except out of utter desperation.”
Briefing the Security Council on Friday, Jolie blasted the great powers for their humanitarian failure on Syria. An estimated 220,000 Syrians have died in the four-year civil war. Nearly four million are now refugees in neighboring countries. And Syrian war refugees are by far the largest group risking death to enter Europe by sea.
“We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world’s inability to protect and defend the innocent,” said Jolie.
Refugees from war-torn Afghanistan are similarly crossing the Med in large numbers. Yemenis are now joining the global exodus, while poverty, disease, and rotten governments appear to be the driving force for migrants from Eritrea and other African countries.
Jolie’s outrage rings true, but her argument could prove toxic. Washington has long justified military intervention, open and covert, by cloaking its imperial adventures in humanitarian camouflage. The classic case was Vietnam in the 1950s, as revealed in The Pentagon Papers. Working under Col. Edward Lansdale and in cooperation with the US and French navies, the CIA sent trained infiltrators into the Communist north to wage a psychological terror campaign that helped scare nearly a million, mostly Catholic refugees to flee south. The agency hoped the refugees would build a power base for Washington’s hand-picked Catholic ruler, Ngo Dinh Diem, while its “Vietnam Lobby” publicized the refugee’s flight from “the Communist Hell” to build public support for Diem in America.
The story in Syria, though far less elaborate, is cut from the same cloth. Under pressure to act in Syria, a publicly reluctant Obama used the CIA help the Qataris and Saudis supply Sunni rebels in Syria with Libyan and other arms. In their effort to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Kadhafi, Obama and his NATO allies similarly claimed to be protecting the supposed innocents of Benghazi. Regime change accomplished, the US, Britain, and France largely walked away, leaving chaos behind. That was how Libya became the single largest smuggling port for refugees and asylum seekers willing to risk their lives to get to Europe. Great powers may work hard to be seen as Good Samaritans, but they generally have their own interests and their own agendas, which humanitarians like Jolie tend to ignore.
Equally toxic, those of us who share Jolie’s outrage have so far failed to create a grass-roots movement that can counter one of the most salient facts of political life in Europe today. Voters, already battered by the no-hope economics of austerity, are increasingly blaming immigrants for lost jobs and declining healthcare and other social services. Racism no doubt fuels the scapegoating, as increasing numbers of Europeans turn to ultra-nationalistic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim parties like Marine Le Pen’s Front National. These are the folks most effectively working to break up the European Union. Nowhere are their efforts playing out more pungently than across the Channel, where Britain is now in the closing days of a nasty election campaign.
“Saving lives means rescuing these poor people,” declared Prime Minister David Cameron, offering to send the Royal Navy flagship HMS Bulwark, three helicopters, and two border patrol ships to join in the EU’s search-and-rescue efforts. But sticking to his earlier beliefs that this will only encourage more migrants to try their luck, he has limited Britain’s contributions to two months and has insisted that his country would not necessarily accept any of these poor people as permanent residents.
“What we need,” he said, “is a comprehensive plan, going after the criminal gangs, going after the traffickers, going after the owners of the boats – potentially taking action there as well and stabilizing the countries from which these people are coming.” In other words, more intervention to alleviate the disasters cause by earlier meddling while no doubt creating new disasters.
Cameron also warned that, if elected to succeed him, Labor Party leader Ed Miliband “would increase immigration, not reduce it.” The Tory leader is, of course, trying to woo voters away from the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP), which is fighting to get Britain to withdraw from the European Union.
In fact, like other European leaders, Cameron is only feeding the migrant bashing on which the anti-EU movement is building.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Baltimore Explained |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 13:15 |
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Ash writes: "The senseless killing of Freddie Gray sparked the Baltimore Riots of 2015, but the powder-keg now exploding there is an extension of an accumulative national outrage over homicidal police violence. Specifically the relentless killing by U.S. police of young black men."
Police move a protester back following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. (photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
Baltimore Explained
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
28 April 15
 he senseless killing of Freddie Gray sparked the Baltimore Riots of 2015, but the powder-keg now exploding there is an extension of an accumulative national outrage over homicidal police violence. Specifically the relentless killing by U.S. police of young black men.
It’s about Freddie Gray, but it’s also about Michael Brown and Eric Garner, it’s about Tamir Rice and Walter Scott. It’s about the literally hundreds of Americans each year gunned down by police officers. It’s a national shame and an international disgrace, and the National Guard – in full military deployment mode – is on the streets of Baltimore now to make sure that the status quo is protected.
More than that, Baltimore is yet another early warning sign that the abandonment of education, the futility of low wage jobs, and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few powerful individuals is creating a new social desperation that can only be controlled at the point of a gun.
The people of Baltimore want what the Black Panthers wanted in 1970, an end to police violence and a chance at economic opportunity.
The City of Baltimore did a good job of public relations after the Freddie Gray incident. But it was too late. The professionalism displayed by city officals could not mask the brutality committed against Freddie Gray by the police. Yes, Freddie Gray should have received treatment before being loaded into a police van. But that’s not what broke his spine and crushed his larynx. Mindless, racist brutality by police did that.
The presence of fully militarized police and National Guardsmen on the streets of Baltimore is another vain attempt to maintain the facade of Absolute Authority. “We the system, and if necessary the police and the military, are in control, and we will do whatever it takes to remain in control.” At least in urban African American neighborhoods that is, but not at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, or in Utah or Idaho, where heavily armed white residents openly defy federal law every day.
There is an epidemic of lethal police violence in America today. The states and local authorities are either unable or unwilling to stop the killing. Traditionally federal authority, the Department of Justice for the most part, has stepped in to defend civil rights. While outgoing attorney general Eric Holder and President Obama seem concerned, but they appear to have no stomach for the type of direct confrontation Johnson used in Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960s. Incoming attorney general Loretta Lynch hasn’t yet signaled how or if she will act. So far, however, the Justice Department during Obama’s tenure has lacked the resolve needed to confront militant U.S. police departments.
Right now repression is easier and more politically convenient than reform. But reform is the only thing that can bring peace and justice.
How many deaths will it take?
Marc Ash was formerly the founder and Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Nonviolence as Compliance |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27654"><span class="small">Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic</span></a>
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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 13:13 |
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Coates writes: "Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for order, nonviolence, and compliance."
A protestor on a bike in Baltimore. (photo: Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Nonviolence as Compliance
By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
28 April 15
Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for order.
 ioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city's publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city's police still have no idea what happened. I suspect this is not because the mayor and police commissioner are bad people, but because the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens who fall under its purview.
The citizens who live in West Baltimore, where the rioting began, intuitively understand this. I grew up across the street from Mondawmin Mall, where today's riots began. My mother was raised in the same housing project, Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray was killed. Everyone I knew who lived in that world regarded the police not with admiration and respect but with fear and caution. People write these feelings off as wholly irrational at their own peril, or their own leisure. The case against the Baltimore police, and the society that superintends them, is easily made:
Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson ....
And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims—if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him—a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”
The money paid out by the city to cover for the brutal acts of its police department would be enough to build "a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds." Instead, the money was used to cover for the brutal acts of the city's police department and ensure they remained well beyond any semblance of justice.
Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and "nonviolent." These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it's worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
The people now calling for nonviolence are not prepared to answer these questions. Many of them are charged with enforcing the very policies that led to Gray's death, and yet they can offer no rational justification for Gray's death and so they appeal for calm. But there was no official appeal for calm when Gray was being arrested. There was no appeal for calm when Jerriel Lyles was assaulted. (“The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”) There was no claim for nonviolence on behalf of Venus Green. (“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up.”) There was no plea for peace on behalf of Starr Brown. (“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.")
When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.
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FOCUS | Chicago Cop Beat Wife in Homan Square 'Black Site,' Document Shows |
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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 11:38 |
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Excerpt: "New documents reveal that a police officer punched his wife multiple times in Homan Square, the Chicago police facility described by The Guardian as 'an off-the-books interrogation compound.'"
A protestor stands outside Homan Square, demanding an investigation into the site. (photo: Jim Young/Reuters)
Chicago Cop Beat Wife in Homan Square 'Black Site,' Document Shows
By Ken Klippenstein and Paul Gottinger, Reader Supported News
28 April 15
 ocuments obtained by Reader Supported News via the Illinois Freedom of Information Act reveal that a police officer punched his wife multiple times in Homan Square, the Chicago police facility described by The Guardian as “an off-the-books interrogation compound” that denied detainees access to legal counsel. Lawyers have described Homan Square as a domestic “black site.”
The Chicago Police Department insists that it “abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square.” They contend that Homan Square is secretive “because many officers who operate there are often involved in undercover assignments.”
A February exposé by The Guardian depicted Homan Square quite differently, stating:
“Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.”
According to the documents obtained by RSN, which were authored by the Chicago city government’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), officer Maurice Anderson “punched [his wife] on the chest, neck, back and struck her on the face.” Anderson’s wife, Sharita Lewis-Anderson, was then transferred to Mt. Sinai hospital in an ambulance.
Doug Johnson Hatlem, a filmmaker who has documented years of Toronto Police violence and is now a Chicago resident, told RSN: “It just goes to show that Homan Square is a completely lawless outpost. Imagine what they are doing to captives they have never vowed to cherish and love forever.”
The altercation traced back to Anderson’s theft of his wife’s service weapon. (Lewis-Anderson was also a police officer.) According to testimony provided by Lewis-Anderson’s son, after the theft, Anderson told his wife, “Try going to work without your gun.”
Maurice Anderson had been working out in Homan Square’s gym when Lewis-Anderson arrived to retrieve her service weapon, after which Anderson struck her.
Anderson was later arrested for theft of his wife’s service weapon, money, car keys, and for “contributing to the neglect of a child” whom he left unattended at the time that he punched his wife. All of these allegations were sustained in the IPRA’s inquiry.
Although the document does not specify what disciplinary measures Anderson received from the department, a previous incident in which Anderson struck his wife resulted in just 30 days of unpaid suspension.
Despite his actions, Maurice Anderson remains a police officer at the Chicago Police Department, from which he draws an $80,000 annual salary.
According to a report by The New York Times about the lack of accountability for police violence against spouses, “In many departments, an officer will automatically be fired for a positive marijuana test, but can stay on the job after abusing or battering a spouse.”
Victims of police domestic violence can be reluctant to come forward. As Diane Wetendorf, Chicago resident and author of “Police Domestic Violence,” states, “The biggest problem for a woman reporting that she’s been abused by her police officer husband or boyfriend is that nobody believes you.”
“The women get terrified, too, so the crime is very under-reported. There is a legitimate fear of retaliation.”
The release of the document on which this story is based comes amidst ongoing protests in the United States calling for police accountability. On Tuesday, riots and protests swept across Baltimore in response to Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody. Baltimore police have themselves admitted that Freddie Gray did not receive timely medical care while in their custody.
FOIA document. (photo: Reader Supported News)
Ken Klippenstein is a staff journalist at Reader Supported News. He can be reached on Twitter @kenklippenstein or via email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Paul Gottinger is a staff reporter at RSN whose work focuses on the Middle East and the arms industry. He can be reached on Twitter @paulgottinger or via email.
Acknowledgement: This article could not have happened without the invaluable counsel of attorney Matthew Topic, who specializes in governmental transparency/freedom of information matters for the Loevy & Loevy civil rights law firm.
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