BeckyDem
BeckyDem's JournalBen Crump @AttorneyCrump Police brutality has been normalized in America for far too long.
We must all remember: this pattern is NOT NORMAL. We must STOP justifying this behavior, and hold ALL of these officers accountable!
https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1300492050161373185
White privilege
Teen charged in Kenosha killings stalls return to Wisconsin
https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/teen-charged-in-kenosha-killings-stalls-return-to-wisconsin-08-28-2020
Facebook Employees Slammed Zuckerberg Over Militia Groups And QAnon After Kenosha
Following days of violence and civil unrest, Facebook employees wonder if their company is doing enough to stifle militia and QAnon groups stoking violence on the social network.
Ryan Mac
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Frustrated Facebook employees slammed CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday during a companywide meeting, questioning his leadership and decision-making, following a week in which the platform promoted violent conspiracy theories and gave safe harbor to militia groups. The billionaire chief executive was speaking via webcast at the company’s weekly all-hands meeting, attempting to address questions about violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the QAnon conspiracy that has proliferated across Facebook.
The meeting came one day after the Verge reported that a self-proclaimed militia group calling itself “Kenosha Guard” had used its Facebook page to issue a “call to arms” — violating Facebook's own policies — and remained online even though at least two people reported it before the shooting. It also followed weeks of employee unrest, in which the company’s rank and file have urged the CEO to combat the spread of QAnon-related content on its platform.
All of Facebook’s more than 50,000 employees can watch and comment on the stream during the meeting, or view a recording after its conclusion — and as Zuckerberg spoke, angry comments poured in.
“At what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?” wrote one employee. “[A]nti semitism, conspiracy, and white supremacy reeks across our services.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employees-slam-zuckerberg-kenosha-militia-shooting
Delayed Second Stimulus Already Leading to Cuts in Grocery Store Spending
Posted on August 28, 2020 by Yves Smith
The rich are so well insulated from the impact of the pandemic that they’ve managed not to see evidence of rising hunger in the US, like big lines at food kitchens. A new bit of evidence comes in the Wall Street Journal today, via a detailed account about how consumers are cutting back on grocery spending. With food such a core budget item, it seems likely that lower food spending translates into deeper cuts on other fronts.
The Journal attributes the falloff to the end of the $600 a week unemployment supplement in July. Grocers are sufficiently concerned that they are starting to offer more discounts.
The level of distress is almost certainly worse than the Journal reports, since the paper is relying on dollar spending. As most of you know, there’s been a lot of inflation in food prices even though the press has not taken much notice.
On top of that, I suspect, based on reader reports that some households are staring to up their stockpiles in anticipation of worsening levels of Covid in the winter, which could lead both to production problems and mini-buying panics. So if some are buying more to increase personal inventories, that means the adjusted average (in terms of purchases for current consumption) is even lower
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/delayed-second-stimulus-already-leading-to-cuts-in-grocery-store-spending.html
Staring down Trump, Kamala Harris says she stands with protesters on racial equality
Washington — In her first solo speech as Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator Kamala Harris vowed to stand with the protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as many in the country reel from the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was unarmed, in Wisconsin on Sunday.
"We also see pain, hurt, and destruction in the aftermath of yet another Black man shot by police. Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back in broad daylight in front of his three young sons," Harris said during her Thursday address. "People are rightfully angry and exhausted. And after the murders of Breonna and George and Ahmaud and so many others, it's no wonder people are taking to the streets. And I support them."
Harris, who delivered her remarks at George Washington University to a socially distanced press corps, not far from her Washington residence and blocks away from the White House, where President Trump will be addressing the Republican National Convention on Thursday evening.
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The California senator spoke with feeling about the shootings of unarmed black people that have come to light in the wake of George Floyd's murder. She promised that during a Biden-Harris administration the families of those shot by police would "have a seat at the table—in the halls of Congress and in the White House."
"Justice: let's talk about that because the reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human, and we have yet to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law," Harris said standing in front of American flags and gesturing to accent her points.
The California senator also condemned the pockets of violence that ensued after Blake's shooting. "We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protesters. We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence, including the shooter, who was arrested for murder. And make no mistake we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice. "
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-kenosha-protests-racial-equality-trump-covid-pandemic/
Coast Guard video shows Laura aftermath in tiny Cameron, La. area
CAMERON, Louisiana - A Coast Guard crew flew over parts of Cameron Parish Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Laura.
Crews were launched from New Orleans to fly west and conduct assessments of Louisiana port infrastructure along the vulnerable coastal areas.
Laura made landfall in the Cameron area just after midnight Thursday morning.
The Washington Post spoke with someone from there who reported in the immediate aftermath, it was difficult to reach family members who remained.
Many people were evacuated ahead of landfall earlier in the week, but a handful remained in the small, southwestern Louisiana parish.
Buildings not flooded by storm surge Thursday sustained heavy wind damage.
The video was of high water and flooding along Highway 82, which runs about 97 miles from Pecan Island to the Louisiana-Texas state line.
https://www.wbrz.com/news/coast-guard-video-shows-laura-aftermath-in-tiny-cameron-la-area/
IS QANON THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
( With the GOP headed by a narcissist con man and Mitch McConnell his happy accomplice, then yes.)
Guest host Ryan Grim discusses the past, present, and future of the bizarre conspiracy theory.
Deconstructed
August 28 2020, 6:00 a.m.
QANON IS A far-ranging conspiracy theory that alleges, among other things, that a patriotic Trump supporter (or supporters) embedded in the highest levels of the U.S. government has been using internet forums to send coded messages to the American public about a secret plan to arrest and/or execute a global cabal of child-torturing, blood-drinking, satan-worshipping pedophiles. Despite its self-evident implausibility, the mantle of QAnon has been taken up by a huge number of mostly right-wing Americans, including a shocking number of Republican politicians. Guest host Ryan Grim talks to Aída Chávez and the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer about the future of Q.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/is-qanon-the-future-of-the-republican-party/
Rand Paul
Go to hell. He can't even be a fucking libertarian who would stand up to Trump and recognize a civil rights struggle that is in his face. No, not him, just another lackey for Trump and the police.
Following the incident, Paul tweeted: "Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House. Thank you to @DCPoliceDept for literally saving our lives from a crazed mob."
https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-white-house-incident-1528220
Contested future: What next for the west?
Globalisation has, for many, undercut wages and jobs — and fuelled populism. Can three new books unpick an issue that so divides us?
Edward Luce
16 HOURS AGO
What’s the matter with the west? Your answer will largely depend on what you mean by “the west”.
If you are Jeffrey Sachs, a distinguished but controversial Ivy League economist, the west has been a productivity machine that gave the world the industrial era and now the digital age. The west’s half a millennium of dominance is now closing. Sachs’ perspective, in other words, is technical and somewhat bloodless. If you are Pankaj Mishra, a London-based India-born writer, the response is very bloody indeed. Mishra’s west gave the world colonialism, destruction and slavery. It is now sinking under the weight of its greed and hypocrisy. He too sees western hegemony coming to an end. If you are Thomas Frank, a Washington-based journalist and historian, your horizons are essentially American. The heyday of America’s spirit came in the populist era of the 1890s and early 1900s, and during Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. America’s only hope is to recover the egalitarian temper of those times.
Whichever view you take, the fate of the west is also on the ballot in the coming US general election. One candidate, Joe Biden, promises to revive America’s western alliances. The other, Donald Trump, would continue to put “America first”. There are reasons to be sceptical of whether the voting public cares deeply either way.
Were you to poll the average American, Frank’s perspective would come closest to reflecting their worldview. The rest of the world barely rates a mention in his new book except where globalisation is treated as elite project. The People, No is nevertheless a rousing book — part history and partly a call to arms against the plutocratic elites of both America’s main parties.
Frank’s real strength lies in his energetic optimism, which is a rare commodity nowadays. He makes two cases, the first highly semantic, the second central to the challenge of our times. His first is that the word “populism” has been hijacked. The term, an American original, now stands for what used to be meant by “Jacksonian” — resentful of those above you (the bankers and intellectuals) and cruel towards those below (the slaves and native Americans). In fact, Frank reminds us, the origins of US populism were very different. The prairie populists of the 1890s were in favour of racial integration, women’s emancipation and opposed to the robber baron capitalists. They gave birth not only to the term “populist” but also to the People’s Party, which briefly threatened to realign US politics. Its legacy carried into the progressive era that helped tame American capitalism, enshrine fiat money, create income taxes and launch trust busting.
https://www.ft.com/content/8a4dfeef-eb91-4ab5-b1f2-073373baee78
Rep. Barbara Lee: Without accountability, police violence against Black people will continue
We MUST end qualified immunity and put the #JusticeInPolicingAct into law.
Jacob Blake’s life matters. #BlackLivesMatter.
https://twitter.com/RepBarbaraLee/status/1298992693498933249
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