Janhastakshep takes serious note of and unequivocally condemns the inhuman, illegal and unethical demolition of thousands of houses (Jhuggis) of the Indian citizens along the railway lines near Keshavpuram and Nangloi in Delhi, the day before yesterday (10th September 2020), by the Railway authorities and Delhi Police under the pretext of Supreme Court Order, 31 august 2020, by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, known for anti-people and pro-establishment biases. It is to be noted that the Supreme Court order says removal of these inhabitations within 3 months. It is also to be noted that the inhabitants living there for a long time with ration cards a voter’s identity cards on the same address, were not given any prior notice. It is learnt that most of the men had gone out on their works and the women, children and old people, who were present were brutally attacked when they pleaded for time and were not allowed to remove their luggage, which were destroyed in the demolition spree. This act has thrown thousands of citizens on road rendering them shelter less in the stark violation of their fundamental right to life, as right to shelter is part of right to life. It is learnt that these people have been living there for over 30-40 years and according the established constitutional conventions cannot be removed from their settlements without providing them with alternative accommodation nearby. In their various judgments the Supreme Court and several high courts have held ‘right to shelter’ as fundamental right. In its celebrated judgment on 11th February 2010, in the case of Sudama Singh and others v/s Government of Delhi, the Delhi High Court has held “ ……the removal of their Jhuggies without ensuring their relocation would amount to gross violation of their Fundamental Rights”. As the said order of the Supreme Court has not overruled the abovementioned judgment, hence it continues to remain as the settled law. Thus the action of the railway authorities in collusion with Delhi Police is illegal and violation of the set procedures of the law that warrants Suo-moto cognizance of the court for proceeding with contempt of the court case against them. Though the railway authorities have submitted an estimate of around 48,000 houses (Jhuggies) to be affected along the railway lines, but it is generally estimated that the number would run into several lakhs.
As is well known that the present government is seeks to “disinvest (sell out)” all the public sector assets including Indian railways having plenty of land around and along the railway lines and stations. The prospective buyers of railways, the corporate houses, particularly the crony capitalists dependent upon government assistance for huge profits, have their eyes fixed on the railway land as invaluable real estate. Until the inhabitants of that land are evicted the future owners of the railways cannot enjoy the unhindered use of its real estate. The Supreme Court decision is in conformity with recent record of its subservient role to executive.
Janhastakshep demands:
- Immediate appropriate rehabilitation of evicted citizens of India with due compensation.
- Stay on any further demolition of Jhuggies before providing the dwellers with alternative accommodation.
- Halt the disinvestment process of public sector assets including Indian Railways.
Sd.
Prof. Ish Mishra (Convener)
Dr. Vikas Bajpeyi (Co-convener)
Biochemist, writer, humanitarian activist, and artist, Gideon Polya has had a selection of his essays gathered into a compendium titled US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (Korsgaard Publishing, 2020). The compendium is important because it brings to the forefront, for anyone who cares an iota for peace and social justice, the horrible crimes of the “mendacious and politically dominant neoliberal One Percenters” wreaking holocausts and genocides. Polya draws a distinction between the two in that while both involve a massive number of killings, genocides are carried out with an “intent to destroy.” For me, these two are synonymous and interchangeable because, where it concerns militarism, who ever heard of an unintentional holocaust? When the fatalities become so huge, it must be that the killers are aware of what they are doing; ergo, there is intent in the killings. [1]
Polya does not write in euphemistic niceties. He speaks straight to the matter and sees it as crucial to honesty, and such honesty is needed to bring to an end the holocausts. Accordingly, he is highly critical of the state and corporate media for lies of commission and lies of omission. The latter he considers more insidious because what is unstated cannot be refuted. Effectively, the state and corporate media is complicit in the history of genocides up to today.
The genocides are many. Some are arcane and while enormous, many people will never have heard of them; e.g., the Bengali Holocaust where, from 1943 to 1945, 6-7 million Indians perished under the auspices of the racist genocidaire Winston Churchill, and the WWII Chinese holocaust whereby Japanese invaders put 35 million Chinese to death.
Polya examines the genocides in separate chapters from Bengal to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine, India, and of the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar — and many more in the text. A superfluity of the genocides are targeted at Muslims. Genocides are not merely carried out through warring and physical violence. Polya also addresses the opiate holocaust, the air pollution holocaust, and the climate genocide. Polya also finds that the International Criminal Court is complicit as a bystander to genocides, describing it as “a cowardly, racist, degenerate and look-the-other-way organization… a holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring organization…” (p 143)
Polya addresses global avoidable mortality: “The post-1950 excess mortality has been 1.3 billion for the World, 1.2 billion for the non-European World and 0.6 billion for the Muslim World…” (p 10) Polya does not shirk from criticizing his home country of genocide in the millenial homeland of Aborigines (“Australia — a nation that has exterminated all but 50 of 250 Indigenous languages and Aboriginal nations, with the rest at great risk” [p 32]) and abroad, along with much of the West. The author identifies the lead war criminal as “the Zionist-backed US War on Muslims (aka the US War on Terror)…” (p 19)
Readers are informed that the United States, which was born out of a genocide against Indigenous nations, has invaded 70 countries since independence in 1776. The current US-waged genocide against Muslims, argues the professor, is rooted in the US false flag of 9-11. In Iraq, this led to 1.5 million violent deaths and another 0.8 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation. Polya calculates 34 million avoidable deaths in 20 countries post-9-11.
Throughout the book, Polya provides and explains statistics and footnotes (unfortunately, there is no index) to the wars, killings, and excess mortality in country after country. The statistics provide a revealing and necessary lens on imperialist insouciance to the lives of Others. At times the presentation of stats is irksome because of over-repetition, as is the excessive iteration of the Genocide Convention. Editing would have helped to eliminate repetitive reading of parts of the book.
By encouraging the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan, the US has unleashed addiction around the world, even in the US. Polya charged, “Presidents Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been the worst drug pushers in history since Great Britain’s Queen Victoria …” (p 127) Iran, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has been particularly burdened by the opium trade. Yet it is responsible for 75% of the world’s opium seizures and 25% of the world’s morphine and heroin seizures. (p 126) Nonetheless, the US-imposed opiate holocaust has killed 33,000 Iranians and 5.2 million worldwide. (p 123)
Although the genocides are US-imposed, the Jewish/Celtic Australian author takes a harsh aim at his home country and the Jewish state. He writes of “the ongoing Aboriginal genocide in which some two million Indigenous Australians have died untimely deaths…” (p 233) In 1778, there were 350-759 different Aboriginal tribes whereas only 150 survive today with all except 20 endangered. (p 233)
The author decries “the ethnic cleansing of 90% of Palestine by a nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel.” (p 340)
Polya notes Jewish-assisted genocide extends beyond killing Palestinians. “Apartheid Israel is intimately involved in Aung San Suu Kyi-led Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide … the Maya Indian Genocide in Guatemala, the Sri-Lankan Tamil Genocide, the South Sudan Civil War, the Syrian Genocide, the Iraqi Genocide and the ongoing, endless Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide.” (p 247)
Polya is scathing in his denunciation of Zionism: “Zionism is egregious, genocidal racism and racist Zionists and all their supporters should be sidelined from public life, as have other racists such as neo-Nazis, Nazis, Apartheiders and the Klu Klux Klan.” (p 248)
And, holy genocidal complicity Batman, the US taxpayers have bankrolled Israel to the tune of $40 trillion in today’s dollars! (p 302)
Polya offers solutions, among them enacting BDS, exposing journalists who omit genocides, a 4% annual global wealth tax that would wipe out avoidable deaths globally, mandatory inclusion of externalities in the pricing of goods and services, and replacing neoliberalism with social humanism. Neoliberalism, writes Polya, is a “ruthless ideology … ultimately responsible for the carnage of the ongoing, 21st century Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide …” (p 356)
People genuinely in support of a world of peace and social justice should be informed of the horrendous crimes humans commit against other humans. Read US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide and become informed. Readers may be skeptical of the numbers that Polya presents and the methodology, but the killings are real.
Informed people must speak out about the evil, racist criminality of destroying swaths of humans. Polya exhorts readers: “Silence kills and silence is complicity.”
Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: kimohp@gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen.
ENDNOTE
- Thus, while Polya differentiates, I will use either of the terms, holocaust and genocide, interchangeably in this review.
In an op ed titled “Losing Both Elections” Gwynne Dyer sees Trump’s presence in the White House as exposing the U.S.’ racism leading to its being “extinguished”, a “necessary evolution of American history.” That is a very positive summation, but it comes about through some very strange presentation of information.
Dyer is a Canadian historian/journalist with degrees in military history and military philosophy (military rationales?) but surprisingly misses out large components of what history has actually recorded.
He begins the article noting how Europeans have a “deep well of respect” for the U.S. That may or may not be true but the arguments used to arrive at that statement are simply wrong.
Wars
His first joint is “Even if the United States was years late to both world wars, it showed up both times in time to save the day.” This is not true. World War I didn’t save any days, and would have ended in the full attrition of the warring empires of the day (Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Turkey [Ottoman Empire], Austria-Hungary) and a long process of unwinding the mess. As it was, the Paris Peace of 1919 created a long process of unwinding the mess – and in truth it is still not unwound today as the U.S. revives its Cold War policies against Russia.
World War II was already ‘won’ by the time the U.S. entered into the European fighting. The Soviet Union/Russia had decimated several German armies and were well on their way to conquering Germany itself. This came at a huge cost to the Russian defenders who incurred the largest personnel losses of any country in the war.
His next argument is “And American troops stayed in Western Europe to protect it from Soviet power throughout the Cold War.” This is not true either. The U.S. stayed in Europe to realize and optimize its new found position as the world’s industrial global leader and strongest economy – thanks mainly to the war and the fact that none of it was fought on U.S. territory.
He does argue correctly “Most Eastern Europeans see the United States as the instrument of their liberation from the Soviet Union,” but the other side of that coin is the unilateral decision by Russia to withdraw its troops and allow that freedom on the provision – partly – that NATO would not move “an inch closer” to the Russian border. Admittedly, the East Europeans feel liberated from Russian dominance, but their economies have not benefited greatly from the western imposed austerity programs and the rising right wing governments currently supported by the U.S.
Democracy
His conclusion from the above is “But would two terms of Trump mean the end of American democracy? Not necessarily.”
The fallacy here is that the U.S. is actually a democracy, if the word democracy is correctly defined as ‘people + power’ as the root words indicate. The U.S. is truly an oligarchy, a government run by the wealthy, who also happen to have a strong militaristic viewpoint, the military solution being the main solution for most U.S. problems (domestically, “law and order”; foreign affairs, “rule of law” but mainly oil and the petrodollar).
Solutions?
Dyer’s argument then proceeds into the race problem and ends with “Having been so exposed, it will probably finally be extinguished….It is a necessary evolution of American history, for which some people living elsewhere may also pay a substantial price.”
This conclusion is somewhat bizarre. Whether Trump is re-elected or not, the race problem will not go away. The U.S. has since its inception been a racist state, a heritage of the British Empire, indeed of all western European thought especially after the “Doctrine of Discovery” was formally announced as early as 1452 in Papal Bulls. Strangely enough, and supporting the idea of U.S. racism is the Doctrine’s usage as recently as 2007 to remove indigenous land from the original inhabitants. [https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/sherrill-v-oneida-opinion-of-the-court/]. The chances of racism being extinguished any time soon are very remote.
The final statement – “some people living elsewhere may also pay a substantial price” – is also bizarre. Ever since its inception, and even before it, “people living elsewhere” have always paid a substantial price – in their lives, their resources, their environment, their freedoms, their land. This began with the Indian Wars, runs through the Spanish War and its long ongoing battles for control (including 1965-67 Indonesia slaughter of up to a million peasants and workers labelled ‘communists’, a U.S. inspired slaughter), through the World Wars (ending with the unnecessary slaughter of millions of Japanese civilians from fire bombing and nuclear bombing), and continues on today through the many covert and overt actions of the militarized state (the Pentagon, the CIA, and the many mercenary companies making their living from these operations) as it fights to retain its military and financial hegemony of the world.
There is no part of the world where U.S. actions have not had a negative impact on the people living there, and have not had a “substantial impact”. This extends throughout the Americas with the Monroe Doctrine which is essentially a doctrine in violation of all current norms of international “rule of law”. It covers all of Asia, most spectacularly in Vietnam and also with the overflow effects in Laos and Cambodia and the brutal Pol Pot regime, the latter partly supported by the U.S. More recently it is obvious in South Asia, where the U.S. forever war still runs in Afghanistan, started when the U.S. supported the mujahideen freedom fighters of the Taliban against the Soviets, creating in the long run al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The impact is most strong in the Middle East with U.S. support of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the U.S. support of the dictatorial Saudi Monarchy (where there is not even the pretence of democracy), both combining into other wars of aggression in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and for the U.S., Iran next. These wars are a combination of Christian fundamentalism, oil, the US$, and the military, a symbiotic unitary expression of the greed and racism of the struggling U.S. empire.
There are no real solutions offered, just a vague warning of more of the same “substantial price” being paid. The race issue will not be solved even though it is currently a large highlight of domestic politics. The overall problem with the U.S. is that of a fully racialized state of violence attempting to rule the world – that is not a problem that will be settled whether Trump is re-elected or not.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator
America commemorates the 19th anniversary of 9/11. The BBC broadcasted live from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, that President Donald Trump and the First Lady Melania attended. The mainstream U. S. media just showed clips of the bells, which ring after every name of the victims from the plane cash in Shanksville was read. Didn’t they report because Trump attended the ceremony?
For the political class and the mainstream media, everything is clear about 9/11. That’s why the myth that 19 Muslims hijacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon lingers on. A plane heading for San Francisco crashed by passengers and disappeared on a field in Shanksville, PA, without any debris on the field, just a whole. The major of Shanksville at the time told a German television crew that there was no plane.
The events of September 11, 2001, are still unexposed. Instead, the world has narrated a story within 13 minutes that Osama bin Laden was the supposed mastermind, and after 24 hours, the „facts“ were set in stone by a congressional vote. At a lot of dissenting opinions about the attacks hushed, were silenced, or ignored. The mainstream media behaved the same. All their critical questioning broke off, and they fell in line with the official narrative. Deviations were not allowed and sanctioned with the end of the career. That way, it seems impossible to get to the bottom of the matter.
Elias Davidsson exposes and confirms the betrayal of the American people by its leaders in relation to the attacks of 11 September 2001. His new book runs counter to the official narrative, which was set in stone after 24 hours. In 17 chapters, the author proceeds like a criminal investigator concentrating on the legal and forensic aspects of 9/11, and he debunks the official narrative and everything that goes with it. From his standpoint, all the presented facts do not hold water. There is not a single hard evidence that the 19 Muslims committed this horrendous crime. The collapse of the Twin Towers due to fire is a fairytale taking the opinion of thousands of engineers into account. The same holds true for the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, flown by guys who hardly could fly a Cessna.
President George W. Bush branded Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization as prime suspects, although Washington supported bin Laden since the end of the Cold War, while at the same time putting him on the FBI’s most wanted list. Bin Laden was an CIA asset and his Islamists played a central role in US intelligence, military and terrorist operations.
For Davidsson, 9/11 was a propaganda-coup, unprecedented in history. „When the sun rose on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the official legend of 9/11 lay ready to be promoted worldwide. It was conceived before the events and confirmed by the U.S. Congress – give or take minor details – within 24 hours of the deadly events.“ Within hours, the entire world was led astray into believing what can be labeled an absurd tale. The author can’t understand that the Western world swallowed “this legend hook, line, and sinker.“ Everybody who questions the official story commits public suicide.
According to Davidsson, the official 9/11 Commission Report is for the birds. The collapse of WTC No 7 wasn’t mentioned at all. For the author not only academia but also the leftists and liberals failed. Academicians out of fear to lose their career, leftists argued that the attacks were retributions by Muslims against US foreign policies. None of the liberals or leftists ever asked for hard evidence that Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11, not to speak of Saddam Hussein.
Davidson’s book makes a case for the argument „that the main suspects for the mass murder 9/11 are to be found among U.S. officials.“ And he continues saying; “ Had the crime of 9/11 been carried out by rogue elements of the U.S. government or by a foreign state against the real interests of the ruling class of the United States and its allies, the plotters and perpetrators would have been exposed and punished long ago.“
As an expert on state sponsored terrorism, Davidsson calls for an independent investigation because the real perpetrators are still alive and kicking. The present book constitutes a valuable and possible lasting contribution to critical 9/11 research. To understand U. S. expansion around the globe and its global war on terror will find a lot of arguments in this most important book.
It’s available on Amazon.
Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn , Germany . He runs the bilingual blog between the lines. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de/
On May 25, 2020, African American George Floyd, was arrested and killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. The officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt forcefully on Floyd’s neck, and in effect crushing Floyd’s wind pipe. Three other officers were involved, two helping to restrain Floyd, and another standing guard between witnesses and the actual killing. Eight minutes passed and Floyd was dead. Video taken by onlookers was posted world-wide which led to protests and riots in Minneapolis and throughout the United States. Protests also broke out in countries around the world, most notably Europe. Absent the video, the question being asked is how many more killings are taking place at the hands of the police, specifically black men.
The cause of the protests and rioting, it is safe to conclude, has been the result of African American men and women being killed by police. George Floyd’s death unleashed rage and subsequently triggered protests which, at times, turned into violence, predominantly through the destruction of businesses and property. Yet the protest and rioting appeared different from the sixties. The African American uprising included whites, ostensibly millennial, a mixed-race, ethnic, gender identity, class struggle coalition of the discontent. In fact, while the immediate cause of the uprising was a concomitant reaction to lethal racist tactics by police, the “feel” of the uprising had deeper overtones. The protest was not only about deadly force used against African Americans, it was also, arguably, a continuation of what Reconstruction failed to do: eradicate the vestiges of white racism and its monuments dedicated to the South’s deviant overlords such as, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and host of other lionized sociopaths.
The general trend of African Americans being killed, without justification, has been transpiring increasingly for decades. The ACLU has documented numerous accounts of police harassment, intimidations, 4th and 5th Amendment violations, civil rights and civil liberty violations, and excessive force and brutality. The Innocence Project has documented disproportionately high number of African Americans who have been charged, tried, and convicted, to only be exonerated at a later date. Clearly law enforcement, District Attorneys, and the criminal justice system have all acted in illegal and rogue fashion targeting African Americans. This is systemic racism, and African Americans have been, and continue to be the primary target.
Rogue Law Enforcement
There is sufficient evidence that law enforcement in the US, has been attracting alt-right extremists in law enforcement. An FBI report, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006, identifies that white nationalist and supremacist groups have been, and continue to be, hired by law enforcement agencies. They are recruiting, knowingly or otherwise, current law enforcement personnel from extremist groups. The investigation warned that skin head groups were directing such recruits to take on a covert identity as “ghost skins.” The secret identity for white supremacists is to obviously “avoid overt displays” of their true identities, assimilating into society, and then promote the values of white hegemony.
In 2006 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office discovered that a neo-Nazi gang had formed within the Department. Similar investigations around the country have revealed that officers, and entire agencies, had ties with hate groups in states such as Illinois, Ohio Arizona and Texas. This has been corroborated by an October 17, 2006 Intelligence Assessment from the FBI Counterterrorism Division which detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police. Their point of their infiltration: to harass minorities and disrupt police investigations against racists and racist police themselves. The FBI report titled, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” found that the use of racist tactics of intimidation, brutality and protecting fellow racists cops from prosecution was, sadly, a highly effective recruitment tool for like-minded supremacists.
In 2009, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism and its relationship to “violent radicalization” in the United States. In the report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” April 7, 2009, Federal law enforcement agencies, according to the report had been alerted to an extremist threat in which state and local law enforcement have infiltrated these agencies and that other personnel are sympathetic to these groups and their cause. An FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015, gave greatest priority to the investigation of “domestic terrorism” focusing on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists, whose identifiable links connected to law enforcement personnel. On June 4, 2019, an FBI report from the Counterterrorism Division, “Confronting White Supremacy,” and June 4, 2020, FBI “Domestic Terrorism Conference Report,” described in detail the threat that white supremacist groups present to minorities and the public at large. On June 17, 2020, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) described, in their report, the deepening concern that white nationalist groups present to democracy itself. And on July 11, 2020, the PBS News Hour, examined the growth of the Alt-right in a report, “Should the US designate racial violence as terrorism?” The conclusion was not only in the affirmative but also concluded that racial terrorism is as much a concern as Islamic terrorism.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, published an investigation in 2019, that found thousands of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers were members of militia groups ranging from Confederate-sympathizing, anti-Islam, or anti-government. They were both active and interactive with each other on Facebook. Members of these groups are unabashed racists. They have been linked to groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, whose purpose is to defend white Americans from “enslavement” and the flood of immigrants, legal or otherwise. The investigation reported that active membership in these groups included active-duty and retired law enforcement officers. They are highly involved with explicitly racist Facebook groups such as “Veterans Against Islamic Filth” (the group deliberately lowercases “Islamic” in its name) and “PURGE WORLDWIDE (The Cure for the Islamic disease in your country)”, and more subterranean groups such as the “Patriots for the Reclamation of America,” and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs, City of Compton, “Executioners.” Even Netflix in a series, “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” identifies the Alternative Right and the Aryan Brotherhood, and its ostensible leaders, Richard Spence and Jared Taylor, as incendiary in their goals to maintain white identity. They argue that white America is being destroyed by integrating different cultures and identities and that Western white culture is threatened with extinction.
The head of the Oath Keepers movement, Stewart Rhodes, proclaimed in 2009, that the anti-government group includes thousands of “retired and active” police, sheriffs, and marshals. On May 30, during protests in New York City, an NYPD officer was making hand gestures (similar to those used by deputies – “the Vikings” – operated in the police department with full knowledge of the leadership. In San Francisco from 2015 – 2016, law enforcement attempted to terminate the employment of 17 police officers after an investigations revealed racist text messages were being sent within the ranks. Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan historically has been connected to local law enforcement. In 2014 a police department in Central Florida terminated the employment of two officers, one being the deputy chief of police, for membership in the KKK. In 2015, a police officer in North Carolina was photographed giving a Nazi salute at a KKK rally. The failure of police leadership to take disciplinary action on their own officers regarding excessive force and/or racist conduct is inherent to these agencies.
Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with George Floyd’s death, had been under investigation for over 17 documented complaints. None of those complaints resulted in disciplinary action while only a few resulted in a letter of reprimand placed in his file. The Minneapolis Police Department refused to disclose the exact nature of the investigations or reprimands. The refusal to disclose these disciplinary actions speaks to a larger issue of transparency and public accountability. Between 2011 and 2015, the NYPD recorded 319 law enforcement offenses, including harassment and assault in many cases. All offenses were “cause” for termination. Thirty-eight law enforcement officers were found guilty by police tribunals of excessive force, unnecessary and unprovoked fights during arrests, or firing weapons unnecessarily. Apparently internal investigations took little to no action on accusations of favoritism, racism, and unlawful interrogations to force confessions and guilty pleas.
Large cities such as Chicago, also have struggles in holding police accountable. According to the Citizens Police Data Project, only 7 percent of complaints have resulted in disciplinary action. These include allegations of law enforcement using racial slurs. In 2018, the chief of police in Elkhart, Indiana, failed to discipline an officer for racial slurs while simultaneously promoting him to sergeant. The chief had full knowledge that the officer was making numerous statements on “white power” on police communications according to ProPublica. The “white power” motto has also been identified with Minneapolis Lieutenant Bob Kroll, who is president of the Police Officers Federation. He was named as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by four black Minneapolis law enforcement officers against the Minneapolis Police Department for discrimination. In the complaint, the allegation by the plaintiffs alleged that the Lieutenant displayed a “White Power badge” on his motorcycle jacket. Kroll, rejects the characterization, but has been heard frequently describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a “terrorist organization.”
The Obama administration made serious attempts to address police forces. In fifteen police departments throughout the United States, the administration legally forced these departments into consent decrees implementing reform. Under federal law the police departments were to commence with reforms from racial discrimination to brutality. In one case, the Justice Department report on its consent decree with Chicago, revealed that the police department received over 30,000 complaints of officer misconduct in five years and determined that a systematic pattern of excessive force has undermined confidence within minority communities. But the new Trump administration sought to undue these reforms.gang members) that has been linked to white supremacist groups, later reported to the New York Attorney General’s office. The Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook comments made by nearly 2,900 current and former police officers in eight cities, suggests that nearly 1 in 5 of the current officers identified in the study made public posts or comments that appear “to endorse violence, racism and bigotry,” as reported by Buzzfeed News and Injustice Watch in a study of the database. In fact, there are 1269 identified problematic posts from active duty Philadelphia police officers on the site. Of the 1073 Philadelphia police officers identified by the Plain View Project, 327 of them posted public content endorsing violence, racism and bigotry. Of those 327, at least 64 hold leadership roles within the force, serving as corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, or inspectors.
Another example of racism and white supremacists in law enforcement can be traced to the 1990s in which a federal judge discovered that a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang” of Los Angeles police
On March 31, 2017, Trump’s former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, ordered the Justice Department to review Obama-era consent decrees on police department reform. Sessions then curbed their use by requiring political appointees to sign off on any future settlements. The Trump administration restriction on the use of the decrees was characterized as a transition away from protecting civil rights to instead promoting “law and order.” This was continued by Trump’s next Attorney General William Barr, who supported Sessions’ policy. To date, the Trump administration has not issued any new consent decrees against police forces within the United States.
Not all law enforcement officers are members of racist or white supremacist groups. Nor do all law enforcement support alt-right ideology. Notable examples of strong relations with citizens and community-led policing in response to this past several week’s protests include New Jersey police officers marching with Black Lives Matters protestors, police chiefs listening to and walking with protestors, and police in both New York City and South Florida kneeling in solidarity with protestors. In Flint, Michigan, Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson removed his riot gear and walked with marchers. In Long Beach, California, Chief Robert Luna fired a rogue officer for posting his picture on Facebook standing with his baton over blood.
*
To be sure, there are other issues needing attention. Qualified immunity for police and district attorneys, police (unidentified) infiltration disguised as protesters assaulting protestors and damaging property falsely blaming protestors. Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wrey, found no evidence of Antifa’s involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement” was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in “Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests,” cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, “41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally,” described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a “left-wing” group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the “right-wing” police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.
Most disturbing is the training techniques – taught to American law enforcement by the Israeli Defense Forces – involving the neck suppressing technique used on George Floyd. The IDFs, use the same techniques on Palestinians as reported by Amnesty International (http://amnestyusa.org/7-17-20), and also documented in The Progressive in “US Police Are Being Trained by Israel – And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price.” The police training tactics are sponsored by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (A-DL), which in turn sponsors the American Jewish Committee Project Interchange Institution and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
The term “systemic racism” means that institutions produce and perpetuate racially disparate effects in the case of minority populations. Professor Bernard Harcourt of Columbia University Law School has conducted and compiled several empirical studies of systemic racism in law enforcement agencies. These include a wide range of police tactics which include the use of policies such as “stop and frisk” and the disparate rates of police activities including traffic stops, searches of motorists during traffic stops, levels of respect shown during stops, misdemeanor arrests, marijuana arrests, use of SWAT teams, individuals jailed for inability to pay petty fines, militarized policing of targeted neighborhoods, resolution of murders of white versus black victims, sustained complaints against police officers, and unarmed victims of police shootings. The evidence of links to explicit white supremacist groups is only the tip of a racist iceberg, according to Harcourt.
In The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens, 2018, Harcourt argues that the effort to reduce crime in the United States initiated a terror campaign on its citizens, specifically African Americans, in much the same way the United States supported terror tactics in the Third World. Modern militarized police officers with tanks and drones have become pervasive tools along with government surveillance and profiling. Social media also serves to distract and track citizens from the fact that they have consciously or unconsciously surrendered rights to privacy, unauthorized surveillance, and unlawful searches and seizures. All of these, Harcourt contends, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States – one that is rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. Harcourt provides a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of domestic counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy, and secondly, as an increasing way of ruling ordinary Americans in an authoritarian manner.
Finally, Harcourt demonstrates how counterinsurgency’s principles – bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, misleading, gaslighting and pacifying propaganda – have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising – that is, till recently with the nascent Minneapolis rioting and subsequent uprisings in urban America. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of government at the behest of the power elite. For Harcourt, seeing and identifying this is the first step in resistance to the white nationalist police state within America. So the immediate task is twofold: demand an end the police killings of innocent black men and resist descending into a fascism.
Edward J. Martin, Ph.D. is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, California State University, Long Beach, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration. His areas of research include political economy, sustainable development, welfare policy, and inequality. He is Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Economic Development. His publications have appeared in New Political Science, Contemporary Justice Review, International Journal of Public Administration, and Social Policy. He is co-author of Savage State: Welfare Capitalism and Inequality and Capitalism and Critique: Unruly Democracy and Solidarity Economics
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