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Trump Wanted to Send in the Troops. Now Some Are Ready to Quit. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49660"><span class="small">Sarah Jones, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Thursday, 11 June 2020 08:14 |
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Jones writes: "To a president who threatened protesters with 'the most vicious dogs' and tear-gassed his way to a photo-op, the military looked like a blunt instrument. But soldiers aren't dogs, and may object to being used as such. In the ranks, dissent blooms."
Black Lives Matter protester in front of National Guard soldiers. (photo: Agustin Paullier/Getty)
Trump Wanted to Send in the Troops. Now Some Are Ready to Quit.
By Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
11 June 20
 rotests demanding justice for George Floyd have been overwhelmingly peaceful. But as unrest over Floyd’s killing by the Minneapolis police entered its first full week, President Trump pined for resolution. In a press conference, he warned that if cities and states won’t “defend the life and property of their residents,” he’ll “deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” He enjoyed at least some support from his party. It was time to send in the troops, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote in the New York Times. Several Army units are on stand-by for possible deployment.
Under any president, the prospect of federal troops in American streets would invite accusations of authoritarianism. But Trump is a special case. The protests tarnished his reputation as the prince of law and order and so he wanted a cudgel. To a president who threatened protesters with “the most vicious dogs” and tear-gassed his way to a photo-op, the military looked like a blunt instrument.
But soldiers aren’t dogs, and may object to being used as such. In the ranks, dissent blooms. Organizations that provide advice and assistance to conscientious objectors and dissidents in the military say that since governors first mobilized National Guard units to put down protests, they’ve heard from service members who object to their orders. Trump and Cotton were eager to send in the troops, but the troops themselves were somewhat less enthusiastic.
“There are a lot of concerns, and there’s a lot of personal conflict and moral crisis that service members are experiencing right now,” said Garett Reppenhagen, the executive director of Veterans for Peace and an Army veteran. “In the last 15 years, we’ve seen our foreign conflicts escalating all over the world. But I don’t think that folks thought that the global war on terror would be fought here in our country against Americans.”
Trump’s threat unsettled high-ranking officials, too. In a rare break with Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper described the use of the military for domestic law enforcement as “a matter of last resort.” Mike Mullen, a retired admiral and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, condemned the proposal in an editorial for The Atlantic. In a statement published by the same outlet, Esper’s predecessor, retired general Jim Mattis, warned that militarizing the protest response “sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society.”
That conflict may already be underway. By June 1, CNN reported, there were as many guardsmen on protest duty in the U.S. as there are active-duty troops in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan combined, though numbers are now declining as governors begin to send their units home. Mobilized to support state and local police officers in addition to federal law enforcement, guardsmen have not helped de-escalate tensions. In Louisville, Kentucky, members of the National Guard shot and killed David McAtee, a beloved local restaurant owner. Another guardsman reportedly fired live ammunition at a car in Minneapolis, though no one was injured. Videos taken in Washington, D.C., show National Guard helicopters flying deliberately low over protests. Rotor wash knocked tree branches into the street.
For one member of the National Guard, the possibility of harming civilians is too much to stomach. “Essentially, the events of the last week (escalating police violence against protesters, the militarization of the police response, political factors fueling political conflict) sort of catalyzed in me a realization in my heart that I cannot continue to engage in violence or be complicit in it,” he wrote to Intelligencer by encrypted text. The guardsman, who must remain anonymous to protect his identity, was deployed to a major American city. He has decided to leave the service as a result of his orders.
There’s no way to determine exactly how many guardsmen or active-duty soldiers are prepared to take similar action. But Reppenhagen said that service members have reached out to his organization through email and social media, asking for help as they consider their next steps. Other groups, including the GI Rights Hotline and About Face: Veterans Against the War confirmed that they’ve also received queries from service members who have either been mobilized in response to the protests, or fear they will be soon. “Some of them are just exploring their options and seeing what’s available to them, and what the legality is of various decisions they could make,” Reppenhagen explained. Others are looking for direct contact with lawyers. “Some have already made a decision not to deploy and not to report for duty. And they’re trying to figure out what the repercussions are going to be for them, and how to mitigate it,” he added.
In Reppenhagen’s view, the right of a service member to refuse an unlawful order provides them with some protection, though he said it can be ambiguously interpreted and defined. Service members have cited it in the past with mixed results. In one high-profile case, Army lieutenant Ehren Watada refused orders to deploy to Iraq in 2006 due to his belief that the war was illegal. After three years of court martial proceedings, the Army eventually allowed him to resign.
There are other, potentially more drastic options for service members who don’t want to deploy against fellow citizens. “There’s G.I. resistance, which involves ignoring orders, failing to cooperate with orders, going AWOL, filing for conscientious objector status, and things of that nature, which are different levels of escalation, and have different consequences through the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Reppenhagen explained.
Jacob Meyer, a former Marine who volunteers with About Face, said that the stakes attached to any act of disobedience “can be scary.” Disturbed by the travails of LGBT Marines and by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Meyer filed for conscientious objector status while he was still in the military. “I couldn’t justify my service in the Marines anymore, feeling that way,” Meyer said. He was discharged eleven months later.
“The consequences are steep, but I don’t think any of them come close to the kind of burden on your conscience if you were to obey an immoral order,” he added.
For other service-members, the penalties for resistance aren’t as disturbing as the thought of being ordered to put down protests. Like the guardsman, who said he was “especially affected” by the involvement of fellow National Guard members in the Louisville shooting, they’re experiencing their own moments of reckoning.
An active-duty soldier in touch with About Face told Intelligencer that when he first enlisted, he was apolitical, and found Army life mundane. “I didn’t really foresee myself ever being in this kind of scenario, where I would have to seriously think about shooting an American citizen,” he said. After he deployed to Iraq, he became more critical of what he described as “the overall mission of the military.” Now that his unit is on stand-by, meaning it could still be called up by the Pentagon to quell unrest, he’s reached a difficult conclusion. He’s prepared to defy orders to deploy.
“I want to make it clear, I don’t want to go to prison,” he said. “But I have children. When they’re adults, I want them to look at their dad, and be able to say that when he was faced with this tough situation, he had the courage to stand up and do what he felt was right by the people of America. Not that he was a cowardly soldier who was just following orders.”
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Trump Puts Nation on Alert for Terrorists Posing as Peaceful Seventy-Five-Year-Olds |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 June 2020 13:11 |
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Borowitz writes: "Announcing that he was putting the nation on a 'double-red threat level,' Donald J. Trump warned the American people on Tuesday to be on the lookout for terrorists posing as peaceful seventy-five-year-olds."
Donald Trump. (photo: Getty)
Trump Puts Nation on Alert for Terrorists Posing as Peaceful Seventy-Five-Year-Olds
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
10 June 20
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 nnouncing that he was putting the nation on a “double-red threat level,” Donald J. Trump warned the American people on Tuesday to be on the lookout for terrorists posing as peaceful seventy-five-year-olds.
“One of these terrorists was already identified by the police in Buffalo,” Trump said. “They may be coming to your town next.”
Trump listed some “telltale signs of Antifa,” in order to help Americans identify septuagenarian terrorists in their midst.
“If the person appears to be seventy-five or older, with white hair and a peaceful demeanor, call the authorities immediately,” Trump said.
He warned that Antifa terrorists are infiltrating American society “everywhere,” even on Zoom.
“If you are on Zoom with your family and an elderly person suddenly appears with a friendly smile, a string of pearls, and the nickname ‘Grandma,’ you have been attacked by Antifa,” he said.
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FOCUS: Donald Trump Is a Nazi. Full Stop. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54641"><span class="small">Drew Magary, Medium</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 June 2020 11:02 |
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Magary writes: "We can stop with all the hedging and qualifying. He's a Nazi."
Donald Trump. (image: Guardian UK)
Donald Trump Is a Nazi. Full Stop.
By Drew Magary, Medium
10 June 20
We can stop with all the hedging and qualifying
 e’s a Nazi. He’s not scarily reminiscent of a Nazi. He doesn’t have alarming Nazi-like qualities. Your president, my president, is a fucking Nazi. That’s not a standard bit of tweeted hyperbole. It’s a truth. It’s bedrock. There’s no sly coding to it. You don’t get to go OH DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP IS SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD when there has never been any quiet parts to Donald Trump, nor any disguising his zeal for outright fascism.
If the past four years have not made it clear, if 100,000 dead and kids in cages and open admiration for fellow dictators didn’t do the trick, then this week better have. This eternal harbinger of misery got on the horn with 50 governors yesterday and demanded they “dominate” American protesters by arresting them, contact tracing them, and putting them in jail for 10 years. Then, later that day, he deliberately ordered his own men to teargas peaceful protesters and fucking PRIESTS to clear the way for him to walk — with the laziest possible gait — over to an empty church so that he could hold a bible upside down on camera. He has authorized, with some dubious legality, the American military to suppress the very people they serve. But of course, he barely needs the military when he’s already openly encouraged local police forces and everyday white shitbags to do as they please with the lavish caches of artillery they already possess. And they have.
This is Nazism, gas included. This is the enemy. This is war. Anyone who says otherwise is part of the same complicity industrial complex that led us to this flashpoint to begin with. I don’t wanna hear any more BUTs to any of this. Every time you say BUT, another American is force-fed a flash grenade on camera. Your time expressing vague disappointment over Trump’s rhetoric and the general state of affairs is over. The chance of this ending peacefully? Also gone. Don’t tell me to break bread with Nazi sympathizers. Don’t tell me that I can vote my way out of this when the destruction you see before you has been wrought by a President that the majority of us did NOT vote for, by local officials who have suppressed and gerrymandered their way to permanent tenures, and by corporate lobbies who are agnostic to all of it.
And don’t tell protesters — REAL and genuine protestors and not the handful of dipshits co-opting the cause — how to protest. Who the fuck expresses their anger flawlessly? Why should anyone rein in their anger after what we’ve all just witnessed? Windows will be broken. I don’t care. What’s the cost of one window against the cost of losing George Floyd? Against reporters getting arrested on camera for reporting? Against kids getting unprovoked rubber bullets to the face? We are under attack from within and all but helpless right now. People just wanna be left the fuck alone by this asshole Nazi President. They just wanna LIVE. They want, you know, actual freedom. And yet, Trump refuses. He’s not gonna change. He’s not gonna grow interested in things OTHER than being a Nazi. This is his calling. He’s gotten approval from his bloodthirsty supporters and it’s given him true purpose. This is the hardest he’s worked in his whole life. He’s found his bliss, and it’s in remaking this country in his own image: sour, ugly, hateful, and miserable.
When I was growing up, you couldn’t be a Nazi openly. Outed Nazis and Klansmen were shamed and laughed into isolation. They were alone. But once the internet came around — a positive development in so many other aspects — they found each other. They connected. Suddenly they didn’t feel so alone. Suddenly they felt emboldened. Freer to be themselves. And Donald Trump, being a Nazi himself, realized that he could round up this disparate coalition, shelter them inside a gleeful GOP, and lead them. I didn’t see a single moment of shame from him or from any belligerent police officers this week. All I saw was pride. And I don’t see anyone who has the power to stop any of this right now laboring to do so.
This country built its modern reputation on two world wars that it was late to the party for. America was a decisive factor in both of those wars, but now finds itself late to a war happening on its own soil. If you can’t see that war outside your door right now, you’re either a fool or you’re cheering it on. I don’t want a fucking thing to do with you either way.
There is no acceptable response to Trump and the GOP right now other than outright hostility. All they want to do with power is hurt people with it. They are Nazis, and they have only begun fulfilling their grandest Nazi ambitions. I promise you that they won’t stop trying. Call them what they are. Nazis. Terrorists. This party cloaked itself in the American flag and now stands poised to render us history’s greatest disappointment.
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The Four Corner Posts of Police Violence |
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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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Wednesday, 10 June 2020 08:20 |
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Ash writes: "Experienced civil rights and police reform advocates were undoubtedly deeply saddened to see the killing of George Floyd captured in a shocking video, but it's not likely many were surprised."
This image of police in Minneapolis arresting a protester was taken after the death by asphyxiation of George Floyd at the hands of police there. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images/TNS)
The Four Corner Posts of Police Violence
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
10 June 20
 xperienced civil rights and police reform advocates were undoubtedly deeply saddened to see the killing of George Floyd captured in a shocking video, but it’s not likely many were surprised.
This is a scene that plays out day after day, all across America, and sometimes video of the incident makes its way into the public realm. The video being the key. No video, no public outrage. The police know that.
Two things the police do not want pointed at them are guns and cameras. Guns pose a lethal threat, so that’s understandable. Cameras, however, pose a different threat that police fear – a legal threat.
Very often when a video surfaces implicating a police officer engaged in the commission of a crime there is a tendency on the part of some in law enforcement to blame the video or the person who made it rather than the police officer committing the crime. This explains the images we now see coming out of riot police in Minneapolis targeting journalists.
Of course violence can be distilled into universal themes. Inhumanity, lack of compassion or empathy, and yes, good old all-American racism. But the longstanding pattern of police violence in America depends upon very specific mechanisms to continue to function year after year. These are the four corner posts of police violence in America.
1. Absolute Authority
The concept that a law enforcement officer can and must totally control the interaction in every instance is foundational to policing in the US. When an American police officer instructs someone they are interacting with to do or not do something, a process begins. If the instructions are followed, the process often goes smoothly. But if the person they are interacting with objects, American police are trained to begin to increase the pressure and if necessary use force, including lethal force, to compel compliance. Non-compliance is viewed as unthinkable.
Non-compliance with police commands leads to a large number of police-involved fatalities every year. Even doing nothing when commanded to do something can result in the use of deadly force. There are many reasons why a person may be non-compliant, including disorientation and fear.
When a person is shot while attempting to flee, that is more specifically a person shot for non-compliance, and that accounts for a significant percentage of police-involved shootings every year.
It should be noted that in many other countries, particularly so-called Western democracies, police are trained to withdraw from situations that are not going well and reevaluate rather than force a potentially more dangerous conclusion.
2. Virtual Immunity
Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison is already on record warning that convicting Minneapolis police officers in the killing of George Floyd will not be easy: “What I’m really saying is that, you know, it’s hard to convict the police – and even when the criminal wrongdoing appears to be in front of your eyes.”
The record in fact would indicate Ellison’s assessment is something of an understatement. Traditionally, charges against US law enforcement officers in cases involving use of force are rare, and convictions almost unheard of. Radley Balko, writing for The Washington Post, breaks it down pretty thoroughly.
The legal process is designed from top to bottom to give police officers the benefit of every doubt and broad deference. From fellow police officers who would investigate, to district attorneys who would prosecute, to judges who conduct trials, and especially jurors who render verdicts, there is unilateral support for police officers and great reluctance to try, let alone convict them. The legal shield around police officers has for decades been so impenetrable that the effect has been virtual immunity.
The trial of former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager for the slaying of Walter Scott was indeed a stark example. Although Slager would ultimately plead guilty to federal civil rights charges in the killing of Scott, his state trial ended in a hung jury, despite direct video evidence of the killing that proved not only that Slager killed Scott as he attempted to run away, but also that he lied to investigators. It appeared to be an airtight case.
A single juror held out against convicting Slager, writing in a letter to the judge, “I cannot with good conscience consider a guilty verdict.” Neither the evidence nor the law made any difference to one juror who simply did not want to convict, and the trial had to be aborted.
3. Infiltration of Law Enforcement
For decades, really since the end of the Civil War, men who wanted to commit acts of violence against communities of color, but to avoid becoming themselves subjects of law enforcement, have sought to infiltrate law enforcement agencies. This has allowed them to commit those acts under color of law.
The murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia is a real-time reminder that violent racists still seek the protection and sanction of law enforcement agencies. Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and their alleged accomplice William Bryan are charged with murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Gregory McMichael had a nearly four-decade-long career as an officer with the Glynn County Police Department and after that as an investigator for the District Attorney’s office there.
Georgia has a long history of racist attitudes and conduct, and that might suggest that law enforcement agencies are more receptive to individuals with ill will toward people of color seeking to become police officers. However it seems more widespread.
San Francisco has the reputation of being the most socially and politically progressive city in America and arguably the world. But in 2016, a scandal broke when text messages sent by multiple veteran San Francisco Police Department officers came to light revealing blatantly racist language. At least 14 officers were implicated. The problem was not limited to a few bad apples, but appeared to be commonplace within the department.
4. Police Unions
Oversight of police departments by civilian or politically elected leaders at the state or local level works very much the same as oversight of the US Armed Forces on a national level. With one very significant difference. At the state and local level police unions to a very significant extent stand between the civilian overseers and the rank and file police officers.
Very often the police unions are among the most powerful organizations in their states. The result is that when civilian administrators become aware of misconduct, even when there is significant evidence of wrongdoing or illegality on the part of police officers, taking corrective action is an uphill legal battle against a powerful machine.
Stephen Rushin, writing for the Duke Law Journal to describe the manner in which states negotiate with police unions, put it this way:
“Most states permit police officers to bargain collectively over the terms of their employment, including the content of internal disciplinary procedures. This means that police union contracts – largely negotiated outside of public view – shape the content of disciplinary procedures used by American police departments.”
Rushin’s piece, supported by extensive citations, illustrates the impact of police unions on disciplinary actions and reform efforts. It provides powerful insight into why, even when discipline and/or reform are clearly warranted, it is often the police union that prevents it.
Solving a problem requires understanding its construct. Change is possible, but the mechanisms have to be understood and addressed.
Marc Ash is the founder and former 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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ost weeks, we talk about how to save the world, which seems the only accurate way to put it, given that we’ve just lived through the 
