Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer, harmonica player and songwriter John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. Enjoy!

"And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

News and Opinion

This is worth reading in full for the historical context of slave rebellions and other anti-racist uprisings to the current rebellion.

'Riots', 'mobs', 'chaos': the establishment always frames change as dangerous

Last week, President Donald Trump described the recent protests as “rioting” by an “angry mob”. His linguistic framing of the widespread unrest was supplemented by the very title of the 1807 measure he threatened to invoke: the rarely used “Insurrection Act”, which allows states to request federal troops to help squelch internal disturbances. Much of the resulting press coverage settled on the more neutral descriptor “chaos”, a theme amplified by Trump’s allies. A Fox News op-ed on Monday proclaimed: “The rioting, looting and wave of arson hitting cities around the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police is much like the disturbances that convulsed American cities in the 1960s.”

The word “riot”, as well as the terms “mob”, “chaos” and “insurrection”, is alarming language that creates a deliberate mode of understanding in the listener. These words are often used to delegitimize and dismiss Black movements – to make them appear too far removed from civil society to be taken seriously. Yet these terms are often in conflict with reality. They also obscure the perspective of those most qualified to judge: the participants themselves. While many politicians and pundits have attempted to dismiss the current uprisings as “riots” – intimating that they are mere free-for-alls that lack purpose – that could not be further from the truth. Many of the uprisings that white Americans and Europeans have historically termed “riots” were, in fact, concentrated efforts to overturn systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe. ...

The protests against the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade contain a welter of motivations but one unifying theme. The current order of policing – in which Black people are treated far differently from white citizens – can no longer be countenanced. The structure must be upended. Whether that involves a full-blown dismantling versus less intrusive reform measures is a matter of disagreement, but the basis for grievance is near universal.

The United States may soon reap extraordinary benefits from this temporary upending of the usual order, just as Sharpe’s revolt in Jamaica saved Britain from the far more costly judgment over slavery coming to the United States three decades later.

“There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion,” wrote the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He added, “It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed.”

"He Didn’t Deserve to Die Over $20": George Floyd’s Brother Urges Congress to Stop Police Killings

'Make it stop': George Floyd's brother calls on Congress to act over police violence

Hours after George Floyd was laid to rest in Houston, his younger brother made an impassioned plea to Congress to prevent his death from becoming just “another name” on an ever-growing list of black Americans killed by police. Philonise Floyd testified before a House hearing in Washington on Wednesday amid a national reckoning over race and policing that has drawn millions to the street in protest and cries for action to be taken in every institution of American life, including government, military, media and entertainment, sports, academia, business, science and tech.

“I’m tired. I’m tired of the pain I’m feeling now, and I’m tired of the pain I feel every time another Black person is killed for no reason,” he said, his voice rising with emotion as he addressed the committee. “I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain.” The room fell silent as he testified, gripped by the rawness of his grief. ...

“Be the leaders that this country, this world, needs,” he continued. “Do the right thing.” ...

Lawmakers also heard testimony from national civil rights leaders, including the Floyd family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, who advocated for a range of reforms to police practices and accountability. Some witnesses seized on calls by protesters to “defund the police” – an effort to reimagine public safety by cutting budgets for police departments and redirecting the funding toward social services – to warn that lawmakers risked going too far and impeding public safety.

Congress make it stop? Pretty freaking unlikely. Hundreds of useless congressworms are even now figuring out how to spin doing nothing while offering the appearance of change for political advantage.

An excellent article, chock-full of detail, worth a full read. Here are some excerpts to get you started:

Democrats Push Reforms That Will Not Fundamentally Change Policing

Proposals for police reform by Democrats are distressingly similar to prior proposals that have done nothing to fundamentally change policing. In fact, the vast majority of provisions in legislation introduced in Congress were recommended by a task force convened by President Barack Obama five years ago. ...

A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council plans to “dismantle” or “abolish” the Minneapolis Police Department, which is under state investigation. Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender rejected “incremental reform” and declared, “Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.” City Council members do not know what a “whole new safety apparatus will look like.” Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the City Council, hopes to spend the next year talking with the Minneapolis community about what should replace the police department. However, Democratic Party leaders are hesitant or opposed to completely reimagining the role of police.

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats introduced the “Justice In Policing Act” on June 8. It proposes “additional standards” for “early warning systems” to identify police who routinely engage in “problematic” conduct. It proposes improved “use of force” procedures, “civilian review” procedures, traffic and pedestrian stop and search procedures, improvements to administrative due process requirements, further incorporation of video monitoring technology, increased training, and changes to juvenile justice and safety. The legislation additionally includes tens of millions of dollars in funding for law enforcement grants that would go toward the “study of management and operations standards of law enforcement agencies.” Funds could be applied to “pilot programs” for “reforming” training, hiring, and recruitment.

Part of the omnibus legislation contains the “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act,” which does not stop the use of military-grade equipment at all. Instead, it notes $500 million worth of property was transferred to law enforcement and $6.8 billion worth of weapons and equipment were transferred to police in all 50 states and four territories in fiscal year 2017. All the section apparently aims to do is ensure police inform the Defense Department of how they plan to use military-grade equipment since they do not currently have to provide such information to the federal government.

Members of Congress also propose $5 million a year for a Justice Department task force of bureaucrats that would be called the “Task Force on Law Enforcement Oversight.” It mandates the collection of federal data on traffic violation stops, pedestrian stops, frisk and body searches, and instances where officers use “deadly force” and contains an anti-lynching law. It calls for the establishment of a “national police misconduct registry,” as well as the adoption of a “civil remedy” for anyone injured by “racial profiling” and a ban on federal “no-knock” warrants. The legislation would expand the budget for grants from the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office so more grants can be offered to police departments to hire additional officers, particularly officers who may be willing to live in the communities which they police. Grants to enhance “civilian oversight” of “community policing” could be awarded by the COPS office, but if the grants were awarded to law enforcement agencies, officers would effectively determine what “civilian oversight” looked like.

Historian Robin D.G. Kelley: Years of Racial Justice Organizing Laid Groundwork for Today’s Uprising

‘What I saw was just absolutely wrong’: National Guardsmen struggle with their role in controlling protests

POLITICO spoke to 10 National Guardsmen who have taken part in the protest response across the country since the killing of George Floyd while in police custody. Many Guardsmen said they felt uncomfortable with the way they were used to handle the unrest because demonstrators lumped them in with the police. They felt that while they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, their presence at times intimidated Americans from expressing their opinions and even escalated the tension.

And in the case of Guardsmen involved in the Lafayette incident, some felt used. “As a military officer, what I saw was more or less really f---ed up,” said one D.C. Guardsman who was deployed to Lafayette Square last Monday and who, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. The official line from the White House that the protesters had turned violent, he said, is false.

“The crowd was loud but peaceful, and at no point did I feel in danger, and I was standing right there in the front of the line,” he said. “A lot of us are still struggling to process this, but in a lot of ways, I believe I saw civil rights being violated in order for a photo op. “I’m here to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and what I just saw goes against my oath and to see everyone try to cover up what really happened,” the Guardsman continued. “What I saw was just absolutely wrong.”

One of the D.C. National Guardsmen said he was worried that a lot of the goodwill that the Guard has built up with local Washingtonians because of their coronavirus response and annual Fourth of July celebrations was in jeopardy. “Within the span of 30 to 40 minutes, all of that washed away because of political stuff,” he said.

Osterholm said the Guardsmen were ill-prepared for the hate directed at them by the protesters, which was reminiscent of the anti-military sentiment during the Vietnam War. The shift from being viewed as heroes during the coronavirus pandemic to villains suppressing citizens’ right to protest happened overnight, she said. “This generation doesn’t know what that feels like. This generation knows ‘thank you for your service,’ this generation knows that they can go to Lowe’s and Home Depot and they can get 10 percent off,” Osterholm said. “A lot of us are still in denial of the intensity and the traumatic impact this has had for everyone.”

Surprise! The Russiagate zombie lurches ahead.

DoJ push to dismiss Michael Flynn case a 'gross abuse of power', ex-judge finds

A former federal judge appointed to review the justice department’s motion to dismiss criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn has found that the government’s request should be denied because there is “clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power”. Former US district judge John Gleeson said in a filing on Wednesday that the government “has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the president”.

Gleeson was appointed by US district judge Emmet Sullivan in a special role to weigh in on the case, but it will ultimately be up to Sullivan and potentially an appeals court whether to accept the justice department’s motion to drop the case.

Flynn pleaded guilty, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition period.

In January, Flynn filed court papers to withdraw his guilty plea, saying federal prosecutors had acted in “bad faith” and broken their end of the bargain when they sought prison time for him.

Seattle Protesters Declare Autonomous Zone Around Police Precinct After Heated Standoff with Police

Hundreds of ex-US officials urge review of Barr's role in protest crackdown

Hundreds of former justice department officials have called for an internal review of attorney general William Barr’s handling of street protests in recent weeks, including Barr’s role in a crackdown on peaceful demonstrators outside the White House earlier this month. Nearly 1,300 former department of justice (DoJ) employees signed a letter published on Medium and addressed to the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

“We are asking you to immediately open and conduct an investigation of the full scope of the attorney general’s and the DOJ’s role in these events,” the letter said. “The rule of law, the maintenance of the department’s integrity, and the very safety of our citizens demand nothing less.”

The former officials expressed concern about Barr’s role in using gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters outside the White House on 1 June.

“In particular, we are disturbed by Attorney General Barr’s possible role in ordering law enforcement personnel to suppress a peaceful domestic protest in Lafayette Square on June 1 2020, for the purpose of enabling President Trump to walk across the street from the White House and stage a photo op at St John’s Church, a politically motivated event in which Attorney General Barr participated,” the letter said. ...

The signatories of the justice department letter included veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Minneapolis police department pulls out of union contract negotiations

The Minneapolis police department announced on Wednesday that it would withdraw from police union contract negotiations. The department’s chief said the contract needs to be restructured to provide more transparency and flexibility for true reform. “This is not about officers’ wages, bonuses or salaries,” the department chief, Medaria Arradondo, said at presser conference announcing the withdrawal. The move is considered the first step toward transformational reforms to the embattled agency in the wake of George Floyd’s death last month.

“This is about examining those significant matters that touch on things such as critical incident protocol, use of force, the significant role that supervisors play in this department, and also the discipline process to include both grievances and arbitration.”

Arradondo planned to bring in outside experts to examine how the contract with the Police Officers Federation can be restructured to provide transparency and “flexibility for true reform”.

The Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, confirmed barriers to police discipline earlier this week, telling ABC News on Monday that the city has difficulty terminating and disciplining officers because of the police union. Arradondo confirmed on Wednesday that it can be debilitating for a chief when there are grounds to terminate an officer and a third-party mechanism works to keep that person on the street. ...

When asked if Bob Kroll, a police lieutenant and the union’s president, needs to step down, Arradondo dodged the question, instead responding that he had been in communication with Kroll and that there were “going to have to be some decisions made”.

UN intervention in US? Families of black victims seek probe of racism, police violence

Bill de Blasio Promised to Change the NYPD. His Courage Failed Him, And Us.

Since becoming mayor, de Blasio has taken credit for court-ordered reforms that followed a settlement in the stop-and-frisk lawsuit. He has also claimed responsibility for falling crime rates that have generally been on a downward slope in the city for years. But his six years as mayor hardly brought the transformation to the largest police department in the country that [former Sharpton staffer who DiBlasio recruited, Kirsten John] Foy and so many had hoped for. Months into his first term, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed 43-year-old Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk, a moment that defined de Blasio’s relationship with the police — and with New Yorkers demanding police accountability.

When Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May — setting off the massive protests that have rocked the nation for more than a week — de Blasio joined many officials across the country in jumping to condemn the officers’ actions. “This nation has devalued the lives of Black men for centuries. It has to end,” the mayor tweeted. “And it will only end when there are consequences for those who do wrong. These officers need to be charged immediately.” New Yorkers were quick to point to the hypocrisy of de Blasio’s comment. Eric Garner, they noted, had died in a very similar manner, but the officer who killed him, Daniel Pantaleo, was never indicted, and it took five years for the NYPD to fire him.

Within days, protests over Floyd’s killing had also taken over New York City, where they have only grown larger as the days have passed. New York police have responded to the mostly peaceful protests with enormous violence. ... Plunged into a new crisis, de Blasio hesitated. For several days, he refused to condemn the actions of police, instead blaming protesters and defending officers even in the face of videos that left little ambiguity about their conduct. ... By the time de Blasio attempted to change his tune, at the end of last week, he had been booed at Floyd’s memorial in Brooklyn, a number of legal groups had threatened to sue the city over the curfew he imposed in response to the protests, and veiled or explicit calls for the mayor’s resignation had echoed from the streets to City Hall. With the protests showing no sign of slowing down, de Blasio promised, yet again, “change in the NYPD” and conceded that “we simply have not gone far enough.” ...

Bill de Blasio soared into City Hall in a landslide victory in 2013, with a broad mandate to enact a progressive vision of reform. Transforming policing was a fundamental component of his electoral pledge, and while police reform was not the only promise he left unfulfilled, the events of the last 10 days reveal just how deeply the mayor has betrayed the hopes for change he had set so high. But if de Blasio disappointed his supporters, those who knew him over the years said the warning signs had been there all along. In more than a dozen interviews, people who worked closely with the mayor on police reform issues — including many former staffers, fellow elected officials, and some of the city’s leading racial and criminal justice advocates — painted a picture of the mayor as a calculating operative with no real commitment to police reform beyond what benefited his political ambitions. They described a man who was well-versed in the language of progressivism and racial justice but lacked the moral clarity and political courage to guide the city through meaningful change. And they told a tale of broken promises by a politician who not only failed to deliver the justice, accountability, and safety he had promised New Yorkers — and particularly people of color — but who also ultimately damaged his own political future and helped push the city into the unprecedented crisis it currently faces.

By the time de Blasio finally lifted his ill-advised curfew on June 7, former aides to the mayor had taken to Twitter to blast his handling of the protests, and more than 1,000 current and former staffers had signed a public letter expressing their dismay with the mayor’s record — including the expansion of the NYPD’s budget under his administration, his refusal to end solitary confinement, and his long resistance to the grassroots movement to close the Rikers Island prison complex. In the last year alone, they noted, de Blasio had expanded the city’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and demonized new bail reforms aimed at keeping thousands of people out of jail.

“We saw in Bill de Blasio a chance for real change,” the group wrote. “Our time in the Mayor’s Office showed us that the change we had hoped for, and fought for, might never come.”

Krystal and Saagar: DC Mayor's #BLM mural EXPOSES emptiness of establishment response to protests

Police Body Camera Video Shows Yet Another Black Man Died Saying ‘I Can't Breathe’

Oklahoma City police released body camera footage on Tuesday showing the May 2019 arrest of 42-year-old Derrick Elliot Scott, a Black man who died in custody after telling officers that he couldn’t breathe. Oklahoma City police finally released a combined 87 minutes of footage from four officers, according to local TV station KOCO, after requests from media outlets and Oklahoma City’s Black Lives Matter group.

Police were responding to a 911 call about a man in a parking lot with a gun. When they approached the area and saw Scott, who matched the description, Scott ran, and officers tackled him to the ground. Scott can be heard on the video telling officers multiple times throughout the arrest that he couldn’t breathe.

At one point when Scott says “I can’t breathe,” an officer responds, “I don’t care.”

Another officer said, “You can breathe, man.”

Eventually, Scott began going in and out of consciousness, and officers tried to shake him awake. An ambulance was called and Scott was taken to the hospital, where he died a short time later. Scott’s right lung collapsed, and “physical restraint” could have been a factor in his death, according to a medical examiner report obtained by KOCO, as well as “methamphetamine, asthma, emphysema and heart disease.”

A Judge Said George Floyd’s Name When He Denied Qualified Immunity to 5 Cops

A federal judge used George Floyd’s name when denying legal immunity to five West Virginia police officers who fatally shot a Black, homeless man 22 times in 2013. A doctrine known as “qualified immunity” previously shielded the Martinsburg officers from being held civilly liable — an all-too-common roadblock for families trying to hold individual officers accountable in court. The two brothers of Wayne Jones, the man killed by police, sued the police officers and the city of Martinsburg shortly after Jones' death in 2013, but their complaint was tossed out three times because of the immunity doctrine.

Now, after years of fighting, the case can proceed to trial. On Tuesday, a panel of federal judges reversed a lower court’s decision, which applied qualified immunity protections to the five officers in the majority-white town of Martinsburg, about 85 miles away from Washington, D.C. The ruling was first reported by outlets including the National Law Journal and BuzzFeed News.

“Before the ink dried on this opinion, the FBI opened an investigation into yet another death of a black man at the hands of police, this time George Floyd in Minneapolis,” Judge Henry Floyd said in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling. “This has to stop.”

In the appellate court’s ruling, the judges mentioned the police killings of both Floyd in Minneapolis, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, noting that the expectation should be that police act with “respect for the dignity and worth of black lives.” They ruled that the police officers in Martinsburg could be held liable because they shot Jones when he was incapacitated and not moving, violating a “clearly established” right.

Amazon to ban police use of facial recognition software for a year

Amazon is implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its artificial intelligence software Rekognition amid a growing backlash over the tech company’s ties to law enforcement.

The company has recently stated its support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which advocates for police reform – using Twitter to call for an end to “the inequitable and brutal treatment of black people” in the US and has putting a “Black lives matter” banner at the top of its home page. But the company has been criticized as hypocritical because it sells its facial recognition software to police forces.

Amazon has not said how many police forces use the technology, or how it is used, but marketing materials have promoted Rekognition being used in conjunction with police body cameras in real time.

When it was first released, Amazon’s Rekognition software was criticized by human rights groups as “a powerful surveillance system” that is available to “violate rights and target communities of color”. Advocacy groups also said the technology could have a disproportionately negative effect on non-white people. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed this complaint in a tweet on Wednesday, saying the technology “shouldn’t be anywhere near law enforcement”.

“Facial recognition is a horrifying, inaccurate tool that fuels racial profiling and mass surveillance,” she said. “It regularly falsely [identifies] Black and Brown people as criminal”.

In a statement on its blog Wednesday, Amazon said it will pull the use of its technology from police forces until there is stronger regulation around it. The move follows IBM putting a permanent end to its development of facial recognition technology.

ICE Plans to Spend $18 Million on Thousands of New Tasers

As protests against police brutality sweep the U.S. and demands to defund police multiply, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking thousands of new “conductive energy weapons” — what the general public commonly refers to as tasers — and training at a U.S. military base on how to use them.

According to a recent contracting request, the immigration enforcement agency is willing to pay up to $18 million for new gear and training to bolster its Enforcement and Removal Operations division, a wing of ICE tasked with enforcing civil immigration laws and conducting deportations. Advocates believe the request is an unsettling sign from an agency that has steadily grown increasingly politicized, militarized, and engaged in the ongoing crackdown on protests against police violence. ...

In addition to a “modernization program that upgrades current arsenal to the most technology advanced CEW weapon,” ICE is also seeking annual instruction courses to be held at the U.S. Army’s base at Fort Benning. As a hub for many of U.S. military’s most elite units, the Georgia base also houses an ICE division devoted to firearms and tactical training.

Among immigration and border rights advocates, Fort Benning, which is named after a Confederate general, is infamous for its role in housing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, which in the 1980s served as training ground for Latin American death squads.

It Won’t Be Protests That Bring On the Next Big Wave of Covid Infections

As people across the nation and the world came out to protest the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, corporate media carried a warning: Demonstrations against police violence risk creating a major upsurge in the spread of the coronavirus. [see article for list of examples -js] ...

Thomas Chatterton Williams in the Guardian (6/8/20)  accused supporters of Black Lives Matter protests of “distorting science”:

The climate change–denying right is often ridiculed, correctly, for politicizing science. Yet the way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like…politicizing science.

But is it? If protests against police killings don’t produce a “second wave” of coronavirus infections, do we really need to rethink everything epidemiologists have told us about how Covid-19 spreads?

In fact, if we’ve been listening to what epidemiologists have told us about the coronavirus, there are reasons to believe that the protests will not have a major impact on the pandemic’s trajectory.

Most obviously, protests overwhelmingly take place outdoors, and coronavirus transmission occurs overwhelmingly in enclosed spaces. As immunologist Erin Bromage (5/6/20) notes, “Of the countries performing contact tracing properly, only a single outbreak has been reported from an outdoor environment (less than 0.3% of traced infections).” One study estimated that outdoor transmission is 19 times less likely than indoor transmission (MedRXiv, 4/16/20).

Does this mean that no one will catch the coronavirus at BLM protests? To the contrary, we can be statistically certain that some infections will occur. But it does emphasize how dangerous outdoor activities have to be before they can have a significant impact on the course of the pandemic. This is part of why it’s hard to see the impact on new case rates of the anti-lockdown protests that started in mid-April, even though, from news reports, it appears people who demonstrated in favor of lifting coronavirus restrictions were far less likely to wear face masks while doing so.

Another important aspect of protests, whether against police violence or quarantines, is that even when they are huge, they involve a relatively small percentage of the population. If, as seems likely, hundreds of thousands of people across the US came out to express outrage against police killings, that’s still less than a percentage point of the US population.

Protests also tend to take place over a limited time frame. For an activity to have a sustained impact on the course of the outbreak, it needs to be a continuing change in behavior that increases the odds of transmission. In the context of a pathogen that is already widespread in the population, a one-time event can cause a temporary spike—but not a “second wave.”

So far, there’s no sign of any spike related to the BLM protests. In Minnesota, where protests started on May 26, or 15 days ago, average new cases have declined from 704 to 431 per day since then (as of June 9). New York State was averaging 1,468 new cases a day when the protests started on May 28; now it’s averaging 930. These numbers are not so much a defiance of epidemiological observations as they are confirmation.

None of this is to say that activists should not take the coronavirus into account when planning demonstrations; it remains a deadly disease for those who catch it while protesting, even if they are unlikely to shift the course of the national epidemic. Masking is highly encouraged, as is maintaining social distancing to the extent possible. Marches are safer than stationary rallies; clapping is safer than chanting.

Police can play a great role in making protests safer, though of course if public safety were their paramount concern, these protests would not be happening. Anti-protest tactics like tear gas and “kettling,” reprehensible at the best of times, should certainly be abandoned in the face of a public health emergency. Holding arrested protesters in crowded cells certainly puts them at high risk for spreading the coronavirus; New York State Judge James Burke’s suspension of the rule that arrestees have to be brought before a judge or released within 24 hours, “because we are in a crisis caused by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic” (1010 WINS, 6/4/20), was a shocking prioritization of bureaucracy over human life.

But those warning that protests against police lawlessness could create a “second wave” of Covid-19—as though we were through with the first wave—are barking up the wrong tree. Of much greater concern than the protests—an outdoor activity with a limited time frame involving perhaps hundreds of thousands of people—is the reopening of the economy, which envisions tens of millions of people returning to mostly indoor workplaces for eight hours a day, five days a week, for the foreseeable future.

If we listened to epidemiologists, we would say that this an extremely high-risk change in behavior. But then, if we listened to epidemiologists, we wouldn’t be reopening the economy yet.

U.S. Passes 2 Million Coronavirus Cases as States Lift Restrictions, Raising Fears of a Second Wave

Nine California counties report spike in new coronavirus cases or hospitalizations

Nine California counties are reporting a spike in new coronavirus cases or hospitalizations of confirmed cases, raising fears that authorities may have to reimpose or tighten public health restrictions aimed at slowing the virus’s spread.

New diagnoses in the heavily populated Los Angeles area are going up in part because testing is more widely available. But officials say infections and hospitalizations in most other parts of the state are being driven by factors tied directly to the loosening of restrictions or overt flouting of public health rules. It is too soon to see whether cases will also spike after protests over the death of George Floyd swept the state.

In Sacramento county, which had 33 hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients and 14 in its intensive care units as of Tuesday, health officials said the rise in infections is tied to recent gatherings, including birthday parties and a funeral. ...

The rising concern in California comes as 21 US states reported weekly increases in new cases of Covid-19, with Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posting rises of 40% or higher. Arizona, which was among the first states to reopen mid-May, this week reactivated its emergency plan for medical facilities.

US economy will shrink 6.5% this year, Fed forecasts

The US economy will shrink by 6.5% this year, the Federal Reserve has forecast, announcing it would keep interest rates close to zero into 2022.

The US central bank’s moves come as the economy struggles with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Fed expects the US economy will return to growth in 2021, with unemployment falling to 9.3% and GDP increasing 5%, followed by 3.5% growth in 2022.

“The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment, and inflation in the near term, and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term,” it said in a statement.

The Fed cut interest rates to near zero in March when the global coronavirus pandemic reached US shores, and the Fed has since purchased more than $2tn in treasury and mortgage securities to ensure smooth market functioning.

Glenn Greenwald ridicules Dems thirsting for George W. Bush endorsement

Nina Turner CALLS OUT Joe Biden for flaunting BLM activists

Worth a full read:

‘Their greed is gonna kill us’: Indian Country fights against more fracking

A few winters ago, Sam Sage started getting strange phone calls. Families living in rural areas south-west of Counselor, New Mexico, were telling him they saw sickly bull snakes and near-death rattlers above ground during the snowy, winter months of the south. Sage, the administrator at the Counselor Chapter House, a Navajo local government center, was incredulous.

“In February? There’s no snakes in February,” he said.

Sage had a theory for what was happening: underground vibrations from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, forced the snakes from their dens and on to the surface. Over the years, he’s noticed other changes. Vegetation died off and the climate became drier. People living in homes with dirt floors told him they had felt vibrations from the ground late at night, from 2 to 4am.

The Navajo and Puebloan lands of north-western New Mexico where Counselor is located are no stranger to drilling. The first oil well in the area was reportedly drilled in 1911 with natural gas following soon after. Today, the US Bureau of Land Management is considering a plan, known as the Mancos-Gallup Amendment, which could lease land in the region for some 3,000 new wells – many of which would be for fracking oil and gas. The plan would expand drilling into some of northern New Mexico’s last available public lands, threatening the desecration of sacred Native artefacts near Chaco Canyon while bringing in a swath of new public health risks to a place that’s already reeling from one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the world.

Fighting the amendment is something of a last stand for Native and environmental activists who have seen the oil and gas industry proliferate in recent decades. They say at least 90% of public lands in northern New Mexico are already leased for oil and gas drilling. Under the Trump administration, the amount of US lands up for lease to oil and gas companies has soared – 461m acres across the country, as of earlier this year. To New Mexico environmentalists and indigenous activists, the new plan is just another instance of the administration’s energy dominance agenda threatening some of the country’s most pristine lands.

The new proposal would encroach further upon the Chaco culture national historical park – a network of historic archaeological sites that today hold Unesco world heritage status and are of spiritual importance to Navajo and Puebloan people in the region. “To a non-indigenous person, they [are] ruins. But to an indigenous Pueblo person, they’re still active sites that are used in spiritual ways,” said Julia Bernal, the environmental justice director at the Pueblo Action Alliance, an indigenous sustainability organization formed in the wake of Standing Rock. “The fight has constantly been, ‘These are sacred sites.’ But the non-indigenous power is like, ‘Well prove to us these are sacred sites.’ How can we prove that when it’s our beliefs?”

Researchers Show Hack-for-Hire Operation Targeted Groups Fighting for Climate Action and Net Neutrality

The Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab reported Tuesday that a hack-for-hire group targeted thousands of organizations around the world, including climate advocacy groups involved in the #ExxonKnew campaign.

Groups that have asserted ExxonMobil knew about and hid data linking fossil fuel extraction to the climate crisis for years were among those that faced phishing attempts by a group dubbed "Dark Basin" by Citizen Lab. According to the research, numerous progressive groups—including Public Citizen, Greenpeace, 350.org, and Oil Change International—were among those targeted.

After an extensive multi-year investigation, Citizen Lab reported that it has linked Dark Basin "with high confidence" to BellTroX InfoTech Services, a technology company based in India which has publicly stated its hacking capabilities.

In 2017 when Citizen Lab began its investigation, the group believed Dark Basin could be state-sponsored, but soon determined it was likely a hack-for-hire operation. Its targets—which also included journalists, elected officials, and digital rights groups that have lobbied for net neutrality—"were often on only one side of a contested legal proceeding, advocacy issue, or business deal."

The watchdog has not been able to definitively link Dark Basin's phishing efforts to particular entities which would have an interest in threatening the #ExxonKnew campaign and net neutrality advocates.

"That said, the extensive targeting of American nonprofits exercising their First Amendment rights is exceptionally troubling," wrote Citizen Lab in its report.

A global hack-for-hire scheme, Citizen Lab wrote, "is a serious problem for all sectors of society, from politics, advocacy, and government to global commerce," particularly because the targets have little recourse without a robust investigation by law enforcement.

"Many of Dark Basin's targets have a strong but unconfirmed sense that the targeting is linked to a dispute or conflict with a particular party whom they know," the report reads. "However, absent a systematic investigation, it is difficult for most individuals to determine with certainty who undertakes these phishing campaigns and/or who may be contracting for such services, especially given that Dark Basin's employees or executives are unlikely to be within the jurisdiction of their local law enforcement."

350.org responded to the report, noting that Citizen Lab's ongoing investigation could eventually uncover the fossil fuel industry's involvement. While acknowledging the evidence does not exist to directly implicate Exxon or any specific corporate actor behind the effort, the group said it would be deeply troubled to find out the company would behave in such a manner.

"If the investigation demonstrates that Exxon is behind these attacks, it only shows how far the fossil fuel industry will go to silence critics and avoid accountability for fueling climate change," said 350.org.

Net neutrality advocates are accustomed to seeing "an uptick in breach attempts whenever we're engaged in heated and high-profile public policy debates," Tim Karr of Free Press told CBC Tuesday. Free Press was targeted by Dark Basin in 2017 as President Donald Trump's FCC was working to repeal net neutrality rules.

"When corporations and politicians can hire digital mercenaries to target civil society advocates, it undermines our democratic process," Evan Greer, deputy director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, told CBC.

Iowa Quietly Passes Its Third Ag-Gag Bill After Constitutional Challenges

In the midst of uprisings against police brutality across the U.S., Iowa legislators quietly passed a bill on Friday to increase penalties for animal rights activism that has targeted the factory farming industry. Debates in both the state House and Senate were followed rapidly by votes in favor of the legislation. The bill now awaits the governor’s signature.
“The intent is to silence whistleblowers and those that would expose animal welfare abuses,” said Adam Mason, the state policy director for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, which has fought two previous ag-gag laws in Iowa courts.

The latest bill would create a new crime, “food operation trespass,” for anyone who enters a location without permission where a “food animal” is kept or where meat is sold or processed. Animal rights activists have repeatedly published damning footage of Iowa farms that reveals sick or wounded animals and overcrowded conditions. In some cases, such footage has been captured via undercover investigations in which an activist obtains a job at a factory farm; in others, activists have entered properties surreptitiously to film poor conditions. A first-time trespasser would now face up to two years of incarceration and a fine of up to $6,250. If they entered a farm without authorization a second time, they could be charged with a felony carrying up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $7,500.

This is the third time Iowa legislators have passed a so-called ag-gag bill, a type of legislation named for its ability to stifle free speech about agricultural facilities. The first version was overturned on First Amendment grounds in January 2019, and the second was put on hold while a constitutional challenge moves through the courts. The latest version was buried at the bottom of an agriculture bill that largely addressed coronavirus-related concerns. Iowa’s legislature, which had been suspended since the pandemic began, only returned to work last week. “Doing this on their third day back in session, as people are protesting against police violence, is pretty nefarious,” Mason said. The Iowa Pork Producers Association lobbied on behalf of the bill, while the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, the Iowa Broadcasters Association, and the environmental organization Food and Water Watch lobbied against it.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Intercepted podcast: Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition

Echoes of the 1917 East St. Louis “Race Riot” in Today’s Uprisings

Humanity Is Escaping From The Abusive Relationship With The Police State

How the Far-Right Boogaloo Movement Is Trying to Hijack Anti-Racist Protests for a Race War

White US police union bosses protect officers accused of racism

The Fed Just Pulled Off Another Backdoor Bailout of Wall Street

A Bumpy Road for Progressives in West Virginia

Christopher Columbus statue toppled in Virginia by protesters

Ousted IG Says State Dept. Tried to Bully Him Into Dropping Saudi Arms Probe

'Grim Situation' of Spiraling Instability in Brazil Could Be Precursor of Coup, Observers Warn

Israel Loses Its Best

Outrage as Guatemalan Maya spiritual guide is tortured and burned alive

Keiser Report | You Can Land on a Fraction

Jimmy Dore: Unhinged NYPD Union Boss Angrily Defends Cops

Krystal Ball: Biden's INSANE call for more police funding

Saagar Enjeti: Trump, GOP SCREWED if they don't adopt massive jobs program

A Little Night Music

John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson - Shake The Boogie

John Lee Williamson - Deep Down In The Ground

John Lee Williamson - Lord, Oh Lord Blues

John Lee Williamson - Shannon Street Blues

John Lee Williamson - She Don't Love Me That Way

John Lee Williamson - You´ve Been Foolin Round Downstairs

John Lee Williamson - Susie-Q

John Lee Williamson - I Been Dealing with the Devil

John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson - Better Cut That Out