https://www.rollingstone.com

    • @arno c’est pas plutôt les « géants de l’histoire avec une grande H » ?

      (j’évite l’écriture inclusive de peur de poursuites en justice)

    • Mort d’Henry Kissinger : les zones d’ombre d’une éminence grise
      https://archive.ph/2023.11.30-115507/https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2023/11/30/mort-d-henry-kissinger-les-zones-d-ombre-d-une-eminence-grise_6203046_3382.h

      Dès 1975, la commission du Sénat américain, présidée par Frank Church, avait révélé son rôle dans la chute du régime de Salvador Allende au profit de la dictature Pinochet, au Chili, en 1973. En 2000, la déclassification des archives sur ces événements a étayé ces accusations. Dans son livre publié en 2001, Les Crimes de Monsieur Kissinger (The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Ed. Saint-Simon), le journaliste Christopher Hitchens accuse celui-ci de crimes de guerre, non seulement en Amérique latine, mais aussi au Cambodge (pour les bombardements de 1969 à 1973).

      Plusieurs magistrats, au Chili, en Argentine et en France, ont cherché – en vain – à entendre l’ancien secrétaire d’Etat qui, de ce fait, a été contraint de rayer certains pays de ses tournées de conférences. Il quitta ainsi précipitamment la France en mai 2001 après s’être vu remettre une convocation du juge Roger Le Loire, qui enquêtait sur le plan « Condor » d’élimination des opposants aux dictatures latino-américaines.

      Des conversations enregistrées à la Maison Blanche et révélées en 2013 ne laissent aucun doute. « Nous ne laisserons pas le Chili partir à l’égout », y menace ainsi Henry Kissinger en 1970, après l’élection d’Allende. De la Grèce à la Thaïlande et des Philippines à l’Argentine, la crainte du communisme et la défense des intérêts économiques américains mobilisait davantage le chef de la diplomatie américaine que la démocratie. Fidèle à lui-même, il n’eût de cesse de défendre la Chine contre les partisans de sanctions visant ses atteintes aux droits de l’homme.

      Le phénix de la diplomatie

      Cela ne l’empêcha nullement de poursuivre sa carrière universitaire, éditoriale et politique. Enseignant à l’université de Georgetown dès 1977, il fonda en 1982, à New York, un très lucratif cabinet de consultant au service de grandes sociétés privées (Exxon Mobil, American Express) et de gouvernements. Un temps conseiller du gouvernement vénézuélien (1990), de la Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer et du Crédit lyonnais (1994) et de Walt Disney (1997), Henry Kissinger n’a jamais perdu pour autant son accès privilégié à la Maison Blanche. Jusqu’au bout, il est resté un « insider ». Chaque président l’a consulté, tant pour valider ses orientations que pour neutraliser un personnage à la langue acérée, raffolant des médias.

      Ronald Reagan lui confia une commission sur l’Amérique centrale ; le démocrate Clinton lui demanda conseil avant d’abandonner tout lien entre avantages commerciaux et droits de l’homme en Chine. La proximité fut maximale avec George W. Bush, qui le nomma président de la commission d’enquête sur le 11-Septembre. Dès décembre 2002, M. Kissinger en démissionna après que la presse, soupçonnant des conflits d’intérêts, lui eût réclamé en vain la liste de ses clients. En 2006, Bob Woodward, journaliste vedette du Washington Post, rend compte en détail des conversations répétées du président Bush avec « dear Henry », qui encourageait la guerre en Irak. « La victoire sur l’insurrection est la seule stratégie de sortie sérieuse », proclamait-il alors. Trois décennies plus tôt, il avait conseillé Nixon de bombarder massivement le nord du Vietnam.

  • LA Sheriff’s Department Has Gang Members at ‘Highest Levels’ — Report – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/la-sheriff-department-gangs-alex-villanueva-1234691873

    The gangs also pose a clear-and-present danger to the public. “Most troubling,” the investigation reports, “they create rituals that valorize violence.” This includes holding “shooting parties” to celebrate member-deputies who open fire on suspects, as well as “authorizing deputies who have shot a community member to add embellishments to their common gang tattoos” — think: adding plumes of “smoke” to the muzzle of a tattooed gun. The report describes myriad other “harmful acts” by deputy gang members, including “falsified police reports, unlawful searches and seizures, [and] discriminatory enforcement of law.”

  • TikTok Served Nazi Propaganda, Jan. 6 Committee Found – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tiktok-served-nazi-propaganda-jan-6-committee-found-1234656268

    Jan. 6 Committee Experiment Found TikTok Went From Zero To Nazi in 75 Minutes
    The platform has largely escaped notice in the public battles over content moderation, but it’s not immune from hateful extremism
    January 5, 2023
    Photo illustration by Sandra Riaño. Photos in composite: Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/Getty Images; Kenny Williamson/Getty iStock

    When the Jan. 6 committee wanted to test how easy it was for TikTok users to wander down a far-right rabbit hole, they tried an experiment. They created Alice, a fictional 41-year-old from Acton, Massachusetts, gave her a TikTok account, and tracked what the social media app showed her.

    To their surprise, it only took 75 minutes of scrolling — with no interaction or cues about her interests — for the platform to serve Alice videos featuring Nazi content, following a detour through clips on the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation suit, Donald Trump, and other right-wing culture war flashpoints.

  • ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ Review: Nan Goldin vs the Sacklers – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed-review-1234634854

    All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is not a condemnation of Goldin’s parents, or even of her critics, just as her work is not, in the neatest sense, a direct condemnation. There is an enemy in this movie, to be clear. Poitras’ documentary is as interested in Goldin as an artist as it is in her forceful and very effective work as an activist. The brunt of her activism, of late, has involved the opioid crisis, of which Goldin is a survivor. Goldin founded the organization Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (PAIN) in 2017 to hold the Sackler family — founders and owners of Purdue Pharma and Mundipharma — accountable for their role in the overprescription of OxyContin and other addictive opioids.

    She was inspired, in part, by the revelations disclosed in Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2017 New Yorker article on the Sackler family, which likened the pharmaceutical titans to “an empire of pain” and, in its very first paragraph, points to the reasons that this crisis, for Goldin, would prove not only personal, but institutional. Goldin is a renowned artist recognized worldwide for the groundbreaking candor of her photography, which has found homes in the permanent collections of the world’s most notable museums and archives. The Sacklers are a family whose name shares an equally broad, though far less noble, fame in the art world. You could see that name at the Met, on the Sackler Wing, and, as Keefe damningly listed, “the Sackler Gallery, in Washington; the Sackler Museum, at Harvard; the Sackler Center for Arts Education, at the Guggenheim; the Sackler Wing at the Louvre; and Sackler institutes and facilities at Columbia, Oxford, and a dozen other universities.” What is now seen as a canny, egregious feat of reputation laundering had for many years gone unchallenged. The family that made billions of dollars from its slick and novel approach to selling opioids — marketing them to doctors, rather than to patients — had also successfully wedded itself to a philanthropic image that the art world, Nan Goldin’s world, helped to secure. Her work was in the permanent collections of museums that took money from a family whose drugs almost killed her.

    #Nan_Goldin #Opioides

  • C’est marrant les souvenirs qui resurgissent en mettant en ligne des contenus pour un client… Là je viens de me rappeler que, grand ado à la fin des années 80, j’avais dans ma chambre un poster de Kandinsky.

    Et aussi un poster de H.R. Giger (des bébés avec des pustules, je crois bien).

  • PJ Harvey’s Greatest Deep Cuts: B-Sides, Demos and Rarities – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/pj-harvey-b-sides-demos-rarities-deep-cuts-1234618174

    The alt-rock icon’s outtakes have often been as good as the songs that made her albums, if not better. In honor of her new box set ’B-Sides, Demos & Rarities,’ here are some of Harvey’s must-hear obscurities.

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kKg8ySh3iUZva2fGszUW6ocldv5NVnUyo


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STxXS5lLunE&t=9s

    #PJ_Harvey c’est de l’amour

  • The U.S. Military Is Losing the ‘War on Terror’ in Africa – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/war-or-terror-africa-sahel-niger-pentagon-1234612083

    The Pentagon last month quietly released a report revealing that — despite sending forces to at least 22 countries in Africa — the U.S. isn’t reaching its objectives

    #objectifs ?

  • Pendant ce temps, Alex Jones, qui a diffamé les parents des victimes du massacre de Sandy Hook pendant des années, est en train de passer un très mauvais moment. Il y a une heure, l’accusation lui a révélé que son propre avocat s’était embrouillé et lui avait transmis l’intégralité du contenu de son téléphone 12 jours plus tôt. Téléphone dans lequel l’accusation trouve de nombreux messages évoquant Sandy Hook, alors que Jones soutenait sous serment que son téléphone ne contenait pas de tels messages. « Savez-vous ce que signifie “parjure” ? », demande l’avocat des parties civiles.

    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1554875160749977600/pu/vid/1280x720/RsHtr2Z22WpdqyYE.mp4

    Apparemment, les documents donneraient aussi une idée des sommes invraisemblables que lui rapportent ses saloperies (si j’ai bien compris, jusqu’à plusieurs centaines de milliers de dollars par jour).

    • Alex Jones avait déjà déclaré son bizness en faillite en avril dernier. Il vient de refaire le coup pendant son procès qui devrait fixer le montant des dédommagements :

      Sandy Hook Families Cast Wary Eye on New Infowars Bankruptcy - Bloomberg
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-01/far-right-radio-show-infowars-takes-another-swipe-at-bankruptcy

      The ultimate parent of Infowars, Free Speech Systems LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday just months after three corporate entities linked to Jones did the same in a failed attempt to corral and settle defamation damages owed to Sandy Hook families. In an initial hearing Monday, lawyers for for the families expressed concern about the structure of the latest move and its timing — smack in the middle of a two-week trial in Texas that will put a dollar figure on the damages.

      Sandy Hook Families Accuse Alex Jones of Diverting Funds From Infowars Parent Company - WSJ
      https://www.wsj.com/articles/sandy-hook-families-accuse-alex-jones-of-diverting-funds-from-infowars-parent-c

      Families of Sandy Hook victims who are suing Alex Jones for defamation accused the conspiracy theorist of siphoning significant amounts of money from Infowars’ parent company before he put the business into bankruptcy.

      Alinor Sterling, a lawyer representing nine Sandy Hook families, said Monday they are concerned Mr. Jones “has been systematically siphoning large amounts of money” out of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, since her clients sued him in 2018 for falsely claiming the 2012 school massacre was a hoax.

    • Et maintenant c’est le comité sur l’attaque du 6 janvier qui voudrait bien voir le contenu du téléphone de Jones…

      Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Subpoena Alex Jones’ Cell Phone - Rolling Stone
      https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alex-jones-cell-phone-jan6-committee-subpoeana-1392270

      The January 6th House committee is preparing to request the trove of Alex Jones’s text messages and emails revealed Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit filed by victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, Rolling Stone has learned.

      On Wednesday, Sandy Hook victims’ attorney Mark Bankston told Jones that his attorney had mistakenly sent Bankston three years worth of the conspiracy theorist’s emails and text messages copied from his phone.

      Now — a source familiar with the matter and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone — the January 6th committee is preparing to request that data from the plaintiff attorneys in order to aid its investigation of the insurrection. These internal deliberations among the committee, which is probing former President Donald Trump’s role in causing the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, began within minutes of the lawyer’s revelation being heard on the trial’s livestream on Wednesday afternoon.

    • suite du feuilleton Alex Jones…
      la procédure états-unienne (bon, ici, c’est celle du Texas, puisque nous ne sommes pas dans une Cour fédérale…) est une mine inépuisable pour les séries télé

      Thread by Maitre_Eolas – Thread Reader App
      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1555210562342117376.html

      Wow, rebondissement dans l’affaire Alex Jones. Il s’avère que les avocats de Jones avaient bel et bien présenté une requête de retrait de pièce (on dit « snap back ») sur la production erronée des données du téléphone.

      Pire pour les demandeurs, leur avocat avait écrit à l’avocat de la défense pour leur dire « votre production a l’air de contenir plus que ce que vous comptiez produire Y COMPRIS DES ÉLÉMENTS CONFIDENTIELS. »

      Erratum : les avocats de Jones ont présenté cette requête aujourd’hui mais apportent la preuve que les conseils des demandeurs avaient conscience que c’était une communication par erreur depuis le 22 juillet. Voici la requête avec les échanges de mail en page 2.

      Notez au passage que les échanges entre avocats ne sont pas confidentiels aux USA.

      Donc :
      1 - Les avocats des plaignants savaient qu’ils n’auraient pas dû avoir ces pièces.
      2 - Les avocats de Jones ont dû penser qu’ils ne les utiliseraient donc pas, pas besoin de snap back.
      3 - Les avocats des plaignants les ont utilisé quand même.
      4 - L’avocat des demandeurs s’est exposé à des poursuites disciplinaires.
      5 - Si le juge estime que ces pièces n’auraient pas dû être produites, ça va poser un problème sur la validité du procès.
      6 - Les avocats de Jones ont dû lui dire qu’il y avait eu cette production erronée
      7 - Jones aurait donc menti à la barre en ayant conscience que les avocats des demandeurs savaient qu’il mentait mais il pensait qu’ils ne pourraient pas le prouver.
      8 - Sa détresse à la barre vient donc de là, et le silence de son conseil était un silence de colère et d’avocat qui pensait déjà au coup suivant.
      PS : l’erreur est tout simplement qu’un juriste (paralegal) du cabinet a envoyé le mauvais lien de téléchargement aux adversaire, en leur envoyant un lien donnant accès à l’intégralité du dossier.

    • Thread by Maitre_Eolas – Thread Reader App
      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1555216637749596160.html

      ÇA VA TROP VITE !
      La requête a été examinée en urgence par la juge Gamble (le jury délibère toujours et ignore tout de l’imbroglio), qui l’a rejetée il y a 30 mn et refuse aussi la demande de mistrial.

      Elle refuse de sceller l’intégralité des infos ; elle accepte de confidentialiser les informations médicales communiquées par erreur (elle ordonne leur destruction) et pour les messages, examinera au cas par cas.
      Je vais chercher le texte de sa décision qui devrait être publiée dans les heures qui viennent pour voir les motifs de sa décision.
      Jones pourra bien sûr faire appel en se fondant sur cette décision.
      NB : l’appeal, en droit US, est un pourvoi en cassation plus qu’un 2e procès.

    • Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to pay $4.1m over false Sandy Hook claims
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/04/alex-jones-defamation-trial-verdict-sandy-hook

      The jury in Alex Jones’s defamation trial on Thursday ordered the far-right conspiracy theorist to pay $4.1m in damages over his repeated claims that the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.

      Jurors in Austin, Texas, gave their verdict after deliberating about one hour Wednesday and seven hours Thursday at the end of a nine-days-long trial. The verdict levied against Jones was far below the $150m or more the plaintiffs had requested that jurors award them.

      […]

      In a separate phase on Friday, jurors are to determine whether Jones owes any punitive damages in addition to the compensation he was ordered to pay on Thursday. “With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple [other pending legal matters], it is clear that Mr Jones’s time on the American stage is finally coming to an end,” Bankston added.

    • Le complotiste Alex Jones condamné à verser 45 millions de dollars
      https://www.france24.com/fr/am%C3%A9riques/20220806-le-complotiste-alex-jones-condamn%C3%A9-%C3%A0-verser-45-millions

      Le célèbre complotiste d’extrême droite Alex Jones a été condamné, vendredi 5 août, au Texas, à verser une amende de 45,2 millions de dollars aux parents d’un garçon tué dans la pire tuerie jamais survenue dans une école américaine.

      C’est donc au total près de 50 millions de dollars que Jones devra verser.

      Quelques remarques :

      – il y a 4 millions de dollars de dédommagement aux parents d’une des victimes, c’est-à-dire la compensation du dommage subi ;

      – et ces 45 millions qualifiés de « punitive » ; c’est-à-dire une somme destinée à le punir et à le dissuader de recommencer ; il me semble que c’est différent du système français, puisqu’ici ce sont les parents qui vont toucher cette somme « punitive » ;

      – ce n’est pas un procès « le peuple des États-Unis contre Alex Jones », mais la famille d’une des victimes contre Jones ; il y a d’autres familles, il y a donc d’autres procédures en cours, ça ne devrait pas s’arrêter là ;

      – l’avocat de la famille avait estimé la richesse de Jones entre 135 et 270 millions de dollars, ce qui avait motivé une demande de 150 millions de dollars, afin de réellement l’empêcher de recommencer ;

      – la défense de Jones, elle, n’a jamais fourni de documents comptables (c’est une raison de la condamnation par défaut de Jones : la défense n’a jamais communiqué les informations qu’elle devait communiquer à l’autre partie), et proposait de prendre l’argent correspondant à un peu plus de 18 heures d’émission consacrées à Sandy Hook, évaluées à un revenu de 14 000 dollars de l’heure, soit 270 000 dollars ;

      – un des arguments de l’avocat de la famille, c’est qu’il faut mettre un terme (« it ends now ») à cet univers de « alternative facts » (fondement notamment du trumpisme) ; il semble donc que le jury texan l’a largement suivi là-dessus ;

      – Alex Jones a préventivement commencé à organiser la « mise en faillite » de son entreprise pour tenter de ne pas payer ; s’il continue avec cette mauvaise foi visible pour ne pas régler sa condamnation, il finira en taule ;

      – À plusieurs reprises, Alex Jones a clairement été pris en train de mentir sous serment ; je ne sais pas s’il y aura des suites à cela ; s’il est poursuivi pour ça, il encourt de la prison ferme.

      – Suite à la révélation que le contenu de son téléphone avait été communiqué par erreur à l’avocat des parents, il se dit désormais que c’est la commission d’enquête du l’assaut du Capitol qui s’y intéresse. Pour rappel, Steve Bannon, autre figure de l’alt-right, risque jusqu’à deux ans de taule pour avoir refusé de coopérer avec la commission :
      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/07/23/assaut-du-capitole-steve-bannon-un-proche-de-donald-trump-reconnu-coupable-d

    • Depuis j’ai appris que la somme dite « punitive » est, dans le code du Texas, limitée, mais le jury n’en est pas informé pour ne pas l’influencer. De ce fait, les 45 millions devraient être ramenés à une somme légèrement inférieure à 1 million.

      Pas de quoi mettre Jones sur la paille, donc.

  • Eric Clapton Isn’t Just Spouting Vaccine Nonsense—He’s Bankrolling It - Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/eric-clapton-vaccine-lockdown-racist-comments-1239027


    T exas Gov. Greg Abbott (middle), known for his attacks on abortion and voting rights, attended Clapton’s recent Austin show.

    Eric Clapton went from setting the standard for rock guitar to making ‘full-tilt’ racist rants to becoming an outspoken vaccine skeptic. Did he change? Or was he always like this?

    #racisme

  • Lee ’Scratch’ Perry, Reggae Giant and Dub Pioneer, Dead at 85 - Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lee-scratch-perry-dead-obit-1045198

    Lee “Scratch” Perry, the monumental reggae singer, producer and studio wizard who pushed the boundaries of Jamaican music — and as a byproduct, rock, hip-hop and dance — with his explorations into dub, has died at the age of 85.

  • #Peter_Gabriel reprend son Biko pour #Playing_For_Change, avec #Angélique_Kidjo, #Yo-Yo_Ma, #Meshell_Ndegeocello...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWNEr4eHL18

    Qui plus est, il explique avoir accepté de le faire parce que :

    Bien que le gouvernement de la minorité blanche soit parti en Afrique du Sud, le racisme dans le monde que l’apartheid représentait n’est pas parti. Le racisme et le nationalisme sont malheureusement en hausse. En Inde, au Myanmar et en Turquie, en Israël et en Chine, le racisme est délibérément exploité à des fins politiques.

    Watch Peter Gabriel Re-Record ‘Biko’ With Artists From Around the World
    Andy Greene, Rolling Stones, le 12 février 2021
    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/peter-gabriel-biko-performance-1126360

    #Steven_Biko #Musique #Musique_et_politique #Afrique_du_Sud

  • Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era – Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-change-risks-infectious-diseases-covid-19-ebola-dengue-1098923

    A warming world is expanding the range of deadly diseases and risking an explosion of new zoonotic pathogens from the likes of bats, mosquitoes, and ticks

    #climat #zoonoses #pandémies #maladies #moustiques #tiques #chauve-souris

  • What a World Without Cops Would Look Like – Mother Jones
    https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-george-floyd

    Efforts to cut off funding for police have already taken root in Minneapolis, where the police department’s budget currently totals $193 million. (In 2017, the department received 36 percent of the city’s general fund expenditures.) Two days after Floyd’s killing, the president of the University of Minnesota declared that that the campus would no longer contract with the police department to provide security for large gatherings like football games. On Friday, a member of the Minneapolis Board of Education announced a resolution to end the school district’s contract to station 14 cops in its schools. And community groups such as the Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block are petitioning the city council to cut the police department’s budget by $45 million and reinvest the money in health and (non-police) safety programs.

    With other campaigns to cut police budgets underway in cities like Los Angeles and New York and calls to defund the police gathering steam on social media, I spoke with Brooklyn College sociology professor Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing & Social Justice Project and author of The End of Policing, to talk about the sweeping vision of police abolition and what it means in practice.

    #abolir_la_police #police #justice #justice_réparative #USA

    • Minneapolis council member: Conversations underway to disband police
      https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/america-in-crisis/minneapolis-council-member-conversations-underway-to-disband-polic

      "The department is ungovernable,” Fletcher said. “Chief (Medaria) Arradondo is a leader that we’ve all had very high hopes in and that I imagined could play a role in envisioning the next version of public safety. But he has clearly not been able to make the culture change happen that we were hoping for and investing in.”

      What it would take to disband the department is unclear. But what is clear is that the department is already seeing a reduced role in the protection of the city.

      On Wednesday, the Minneapolis Park Board voted to terminate its relationship with the department, and the Minneapolis Police will no longer be involved in guarding events on park property.

      Fletcher said in a Twitter post that it’s time to “declare policing as we know it a thing of the past.”

      Minneapolis City Council members look to disband the police department as schools and other city agencies cut ties with police
      https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/minneapolis-city-council-members-look-to-disband-the-police-department-as-schools-and-other-city-agencies-cut-ties-with-police/ar-BB152szZ
      https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB152eBW.img?h=630&w=1200&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&f=jpg

      Several members of the Minneapolis City Council are exploring ways to permanently disband the Minneapolis Police Department.
      Over the past week, several other city agencies have severed their ties to the department.
      “We can send a city response that makes situations better. We can resolve confusion over a $US20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon, or pulling out handcuffs,” Councilmember Steve Fletcher said.

      Mais pas de grosse presse sur ça...

    • Six Ideas for a Cop-Free World - Rolling Stone
      https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/police-brutality-cop-free-world-protest-199465

      Editor’s note: This story was originally published on December 16th, 2014, following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, black men who were killed by police. In recent days, in the wake of nationwide protests demanding justice for George Floyd, we are sharing some of our previous coverage about how to end systematic racism in America.

      After months of escalating protests and grassroots organizing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, police reformers have issued many demands. The moderates in this debate typically qualify their rhetoric with “We all know we need police, but…” It’s a familiar refrain to those of us who’ve spent years in the streets and the barrios organizing around police violence, only to be confronted by officers who snarl, “But who’ll help you if you get robbed?” We can put a man on the moon, but we’re still lacking creativity down here on Earth.

      But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the “disorderly conduct” of the urban poor. Like every structure we’ve known all our lives, it seems that the policing paradigm is inescapable and everlasting, and the only thing keeping us from the precipice of a dystopic Wild West scenario. It’s not.

    • I’m a Minneapolis City Council Member. We Must Disband the Police—Here’s What Could Come Next | Time
      https://time.com/5848705/disband-and-replace-minneapolis-police

      I have been surprised, then, by how difficult and controversial it has been to pass the relatively small budget changes that we have made, which have not even cut their budget but merely redirected some proposed increases to fund a new Office of Violence Prevention. Other programmatic proposals to change the way we police have been met with stiff institutional resistance.

      Minneapolis Police had an opportunity to distance themselves from Derek Chauvin, to express sympathy, to be a calming presence. Instead, they deployed tear gas and rubber bullets, effectively escalating the situation from protest to pitched conflict. By the next day, it was clear that people on Lake Street were rallying for much more than the prosecution of four officers. They were demonstrating their anger at decades of harassment and racialized violence and calling for it to end.

      We have a talented, thoughtful police chief who has attempted some important steps. He has fired officers for significant abuses only to have his decisions overturned and those officers reinstated by arbitrators. Mayor Frey has met fierce resistance from the Federation to implement even minor policy changes.

      After viewing George Floyd’s murder, watching police not only fail to apologize, but escalate the situation with aggressive tactics, and finally watching the department abandon neighborhood businesses to exclusively defend their precinct building, most of my constituents have had enough.

      Every member of the Minneapolis City Council has now expressed the need for dramatic structural change. I am one of many on the Council, including the Council President and the Chair of Public Safety, who are publicly supporting the call to disband our police department and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity. What I hear from most of my constituents is that they want to make sure we provide for public safety, and they have learned their whole lives to equate “safety” with “police,” but are now concluding that need not be the case.

      We had already pushed for pilot programs to dispatch county mental health professionals to mental health calls, and fire department EMTs to opioid overdose calls, without police officers. We have similarly experimented with unarmed, community-oriented street teams on weekend nights downtown to focus on de-escalation. We could similarly turn traffic enforcement over to cameras and, potentially, our parking enforcement staff, rather than our police department.

      By Steve Fletcher
      June 5, 2020 9:57 AM EDT
      Fletcher is a City Council Member for Ward 3 in Minneapolis, Minn.

      We can invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution. We can send a city response that that is appropriate to each situation and makes it better. We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs.

      Mostly—and this might be the hardest part to envision and make real—we need to be more deeply engaged with each other. We need to build the relationship networks, skills, and capacity in our communities to support each other in resolving conflicts and keeping each other safe before things escalate dangerously. Our isolation from each other has required us to outsource the management of social interactions. We have to get relational.

    • Opinion | The Police Killed George Floyd. Redirect Their Funding Elsewhere. - The New York Times
      https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/george-floyd-police-funding.html

      The only way we’re going to stop these endless cycles of police violence is by creating alternatives to policing. Because even in a pandemic where black people have been disproportionately killed by the coronavirus, the police are still murdering us.

      On Monday, a worker at a store in Minneapolis called 911, claiming that George Floyd had used counterfeit money. The incident ended with a police officer suffocating Mr. Floyd to death, despite his and bystanders’ pleas for mercy. Protests have since erupted across the country while the police respond with military-style violence.

      As the case of George Floyd makes clear, calling 911 for even the slightest thing can be a death sentence for black people. For many marginalized communities, 911 is not a viable option because the police often make crises worse.

      More training or diversity among police officers won’t end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers. Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers procedural justice as well as trainings for implicit bias, mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans “warrior style” policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices “reconciliation” efforts in communities of color.

      George Floyd was still murdered. The focus on training, diversity and technology like body cameras shifts focus away from the root cause of police violence and instead gives the police more power and resources. The problem is that the entire criminal justice system gives police officers the power and opportunity to systematically harass and kill with impunity.

      The solution to ending police violence and cultivating a safer country lies in reducing the power of the police and their contact with the public.

      Municipalities can begin by changing policies or statutes so police officers never respond to certain kinds of emergencies, including ones that involve substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness or mental health. Instead, health care workers or emergency response teams would handle these incidents.

      Ideally, people would have the option to call a different number — say 727 — to access various trained response teams.

      The good news is, this is already happening. Violence interruption programs exist throughout the country and they’re often led by people from the community who have experience navigating tricky situations. Some programs, like one in Washington, D.C., do not work with the police; its staff members rely instead on personal outreach and social connections for information about violence that they work to mediate and diffuse. We should invest in these programs, which operate on shoestring budgets, so they have their own dedicated dispatch centers outside of 911.

      Dallas is pioneering a new approach where social workers are being dispatched to some 911 calls that involve mental health emergencies. The program has shown success, and many of the people receive care that they would never have gotten in jails or overcrowded hospitals.

      In California, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective deals with child sexual abuse without the police. The collective develops pods — groups of people including survivors, bystanders or people who have harmed in the past — that each pod-member feels they can turn to for support when needed.

      Here’s another idea: Imagine if the money used to pay the salaries of police officers who endlessly patrol public housing buildings and harass residents can be used to fund plans that residents design to keep themselves safe. The money could also pay the salaries of maintenance and custodial workers; fund community programs, employment and a universal basic income; or pay for upgrades to elevators and apartment units so residents are not stuck without gas during a pandemic, as some people in Brooklyn were.

      https://batjc.wordpress.com

      By Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris

      Mr. McHarris is a doctoral candidate focusing on race, housing and policing. Ms. McHarris is a strategist with the Movement for Black Lives.

    • Black Lives Matter Has Been Doing The Work To ’Defund The Police’ For Years
      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-matter-has-been-doing-the-work-to-defund-the-police-for-years/ar-BB156D9S
      https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB156BjH.img?h=630&w=1200&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&f=jpg&x=3157&y=7

      Los Angeles’ BLM chapter and its partners proposed an alternative “People’s Budget,” which showed how redirecting money allocated for LAPD could pay for desperately needed housing assistance, rent suspension, mental health services and support for public schools. The activists succeeded in embarrassing City Council members into delaying a vote on the budget and ultimately allowing a June 1 deadline to pass without revising the budget.

      Despite its progressive reputation, Los Angeles has lagged behind the rest of the state in criminal justice reform. L.A. County jails incarcerate more people than any other jail system in the country.Black Lives Matter activists have been at the forefront of efforts to change that.

      Although Black Lives Matter does not endorse candidates, it has led the effort to oust Lacey, who has opposed almost every criminal justice reform measure that has come up during her eight years in office. Lacey, the county’s first Black district attorney, ran for reelection in 2016 unopposed but is facing a progressive challenger in November after failing to secure more than 50% of the vote in the primary.

      Thanks to BLM organizing, L.A. residents will also have the chance to vote on Measure R, a civilian-driven ballot initiative that aims to reduce the county’s jail population by getting prisoners with mental health conditions out of jail and into treatment. Organizers collected 250,000 signatures to get Measure R on the ballot.

    • What does ’defund the police’ mean? The rallying cry sweeping the US – explained | US news | The Guardian
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/defunding-the-police-us-what-does-it-mean?ref=hvper.com
      https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8fd0ed9636b86ed15b807511f42695dda676873d/0_135_3219_1931/master/3219.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

      For years, community groups have advocated for defunding law enforcement – taking money away from police and prisons – and reinvesting those funds in services. The basic principle is that government budgets and “public safety” spending should prioritize housing, employment, community health, education and other vital programs, instead of police officers. Advocates argue that defunding is the best way forward since attempts to reform police practices over the last five years have failed, as evidenced by the brutal killing of George Floyd. Groups have a range of demands, with some seeking modest reductions and others viewing full defunding as a step toward abolishing contemporary police services.
      How much does America currently spend on police?

      In the past four decades, the cost of policing in the US has tripled and is now $115bn, according to a recent analysis. That steady increase comes as crime has been consistently declining. In most cities, spending on police is significantly greater than spending on services and other departments ($1.8bn on police in Los Angeles, for example, which is more than half the city’s general fund). The Covid-19 economic crisis has led cities and states to make drastic budget cuts to education, youth programs, arts and culture, parks, libraries, housing services and more. But police budgets have grown or gone largely untouched – until pressure from protests this week.

    • Abolishing Prisons Is within Our Grasp | Bitch Media
      https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/prison-abolition-should-be-the-american-dream

      The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with 2.2 million adults in prisons or jails at the end of 2016. Nearly 60,000 children under the age of 18 are also incarcerated in juvenile jails or prisons, and about 10,000 more children are held in adult jails or prisons. Citizens pay the high price for this system because our tax dollars are funneled into policing and incarcerating the people in these systems—predominantly Black and Brown people. This is by design. Slavery legally ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but the language of this amendment still allowed slavery as punishment for a crime. The carceral system revived slave labor, allowing the United States to continue disenfranchising and enslaving incarcerated Black people. Now almost every aspect of Black and Brown people’s lives is affected by the carceral state—from extra surveillance and imprisonment to disenfranchisement upon release. The entire system is built to maintain white supremacy, which remains the status quo in the United States.

      “It might be challenging to envision a world without policing or imprisonment because we’re constantly being told that these systems are natural [they’re not] and have always existed [they haven’t],” says Mohamed Shehk, the national media and communications director of Critical Resistance. Though some Americans have difficulties imagining a world without police or prisons, communities who don’t rely on the PIC do exist. Shehk says the Palestinian village where his mother grew up doesn’t have a police force. Problems there are resolved by “bringing in the elders of the community to come up with a resolution.” In 2011, the indigenous Purépecha town of Cherán banned political parties, gangs, and police. Since then, they boast the lowest murder rate in the entire Michoacán region, which is historically one of the most violent regions in Mexico. What’s more, since Cherán abolished the corrupt police force, they haven’t had a single kidnapping.

      “Policing exists to manage the consequences of inequality in ways that benefit those people who are creating the inequality,” says Alex S. Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. “The decision to use police to manage the problems of the poor is inherently unjust in most circumstances and actually racist because this burden so falls most heavily on communities of color.” Many wealthy white communities have already abolished police forces because they don’t want the criminal justice system solving their intercommunal problems. Why is this option not available to all of us?

      Abolitionists are often asked to explain what will happen to people who commit murder or rape if police and prisons are abolished. Shehk responds with a similar question: “What are we doing now with people who commit those harms?” Some of the high-profile assault stories that surfaced during the #MeToo movement, including Chanel Miller’s rape at the hands of Brock Turner and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of her assault by Brett Kavanaugh, revealed that survivors of sexual harassment and assault aren’t being protected by this system. Instead, the criminal justice system protects and maintains agents of the patriarchy, including students like Turner, police officers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and presidents.

      Since the United States locks people up at a higher rate than any other country, you’d assume this “would be the safest place, virtually free of harm or violence,” Shehk says, but that’s obviously not the case. The president of the United States and two Supreme Court justices have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault on multiple occasions. Less than 1 percent of rapes result in the incarceration of the perpetrator, while at least 89 percent of survivors face emotional and physical consequences. Often the rapes reported to police aren’t even investigated, considering the 200,000 rape kits the federal government estimates are sitting—submitted, yet unopened—in police storage. That’s not justice.

      ActivismMagazinePoliticsprisonThe Fantasy Issue
      Beyond BarsPrison Abolition Should Be the American Dream
      by Reina Sultan |

      artwork by Matice Moore and Dawud Lee
      Published on June 4, 2020

      I do not have all the answers, left. I try to have conversations about every subject we must deal with in our communities, center. Someone you love needs your support, but you cannot be there, no matter how much they need you, right. (Artwork by Matice Moore and Dawud Lee for the LifeLines Project)
      This article was published in Fantasy Issue #87 | Summer 2020 Subscribe »

      In her 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis wrote, “Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish.” Those who oppose prison-industrial complex (PIC) abolition partially see it as a fantasy that can’t be realized. “This is a measure of how difficult it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and families. The prison is considered so ‘natural’ that it is extremely hard to imagine life without it,” Davis writes.

      But activists and organizations have been imagining life without prisons for decades. The Prison Research/Education/Action Project’s 1976 pamphlet “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists” laid out the pillars of abolition: “moratorium,” “decarceration,” and “excarceration.” “Moratorium” calls for an end to the building of prisons, jails, and detention centers; “decarceration” works to have nonviolent offenders released from prison; and “excarceration” involves diverting people away from interacting with law enforcement through decriminalization. In 1997, Davis and City University of New York professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore cofounded Critical Resistance, an international organization that aims to dismantle the pic by using these three pillars. A year later, 3,500 people convened for a three-day Critical Resistance conference to discuss the limitations of the PIC in the United States.

      Other organizations with similar goals have also been erected: Decrim NY wants to decriminalize sex work in New York City and in the state and decarcerate sex workers. The Black Youth Project 100 uses a Black, queer, and feminist lens to work toward the liberation of all Black people, including those who are currently incarcerated. No New Jails NYC calls for an end to the building and funding of new prisons and jails in New York City. All of these organizations are working toward a common goal: ending the pic.
      Justice Is Not Served

      The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with 2.2 million adults in prisons or jails at the end of 2016. Nearly 60,000 children under the age of 18 are also incarcerated in juvenile jails or prisons, and about 10,000 more children are held in adult jails or prisons. Citizens pay the high price for this system because our tax dollars are funneled into policing and incarcerating the people in these systems—predominantly Black and Brown people. This is by design. Slavery legally ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but the language of this amendment still allowed slavery as punishment for a crime. The carceral system revived slave labor, allowing the United States to continue disenfranchising and enslaving incarcerated Black people. Now almost every aspect of Black and Brown people’s lives is affected by the carceral state—from extra surveillance and imprisonment to disenfranchisement upon release. The entire system is built to maintain white supremacy, which remains the status quo in the United States.

      “It might be challenging to envision a world without policing or imprisonment because we’re constantly being told that these systems are natural [they’re not] and have always existed [they haven’t],” says Mohamed Shehk, the national media and communications director of Critical Resistance. Though some Americans have difficulties imagining a world without police or prisons, communities who don’t rely on the PIC do exist. Shehk says the Palestinian village where his mother grew up doesn’t have a police force. Problems there are resolved by “bringing in the elders of the community to come up with a resolution.” In 2011, the indigenous Purépecha town of Cherán banned political parties, gangs, and police. Since then, they boast the lowest murder rate in the entire Michoacán region, which is historically one of the most violent regions in Mexico. What’s more, since Cherán abolished the corrupt police force, they haven’t had a single kidnapping.
      Doctor Climax

      From Our Sponsors

      Some communities within the United States are also accustomed to policing themselves. Shehk says it’s “important to remember that many communities don’t call the cops because of rightful mistrust.” He also points out that “you can also visit Beverly Hills or the Golden Triangle or the other elite, wealthy, white neighborhoods of this country to see what a community without police or prisons looks like.” When a student at an elite private school in Orange County, California, is found with weed in their backpack, teachers don’t call the police—and there isn’t an active police presence within the school itself. Instead, teachers call the student’s parents, believing it’s an issue that can be solved within the family. Black and Brown students, on the other hand, are funneled from school into the criminal justice system in what is commonly known as the school-to-prison pipeline. These students are increasingly accused of crimes, suspended, or reported to the police compared to their white counterparts, which often creates a lasting connection with the carceral state.

      Reducing interaction with law enforcement would allow students the space to make mistakes and learn from them, and would encourage teachers to build better relationships with parents. It also moves resources away from metal detectors, surveillance equipment, and onsite police and toward quality educators, better school supplies, and extracurricular activities. “Policing exists to manage the consequences of inequality in ways that benefit those people who are creating the inequality,” says Alex S. Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. “The decision to use police to manage the problems of the poor is inherently unjust in most circumstances and actually racist because this burden so falls most heavily on communities of color.” Many wealthy white communities have already abolished police forces because they don’t want the criminal justice system solving their intercommunal problems. Why is this option not available to all of us?
      What Does Abolition Look Like?

      Abolitionists are often asked to explain what will happen to people who commit murder or rape if police and prisons are abolished. Shehk responds with a similar question: “What are we doing now with people who commit those harms?” Some of the high-profile assault stories that surfaced during the #MeToo movement, including Chanel Miller’s rape at the hands of Brock Turner and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of her assault by Brett Kavanaugh, revealed that survivors of sexual harassment and assault aren’t being protected by this system. Instead, the criminal justice system protects and maintains agents of the patriarchy, including students like Turner, police officers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and presidents.

      Since the United States locks people up at a higher rate than any other country, you’d assume this “would be the safest place, virtually free of harm or violence,” Shehk says, but that’s obviously not the case. The president of the United States and two Supreme Court justices have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault on multiple occasions. Less than 1 percent of rapes result in the incarceration of the perpetrator, while at least 89 percent of survivors face emotional and physical consequences. Often the rapes reported to police aren’t even investigated, considering the 200,000 rape kits the federal government estimates are sitting—submitted, yet unopened—in police storage. That’s not justice.

      Get Bitch Media’s top 9 reads of the week delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning! Sign up for the Weekly Reader:
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      Murder clearance rates aren’t much better, with police reportedly solving only about 60 percent of murders. When the victim is Black—as the majority of homicide victims are—the clearance rate declines to the lowest of any other racial group. In communities that are particularly disenfranchised, those rates can be in the single digits. These figures don’t instill much faith in law enforcement’s efficacy.

      As Vitale puts it, “serial killers don’t just fall out of the sky.” According to him, treating criminalization as the only option for deterrence is one of the reasons nothing is done to help children or teenagers who, despite the threat of prison, still exhibit violent tendencies. That violence might be prevented through robust social services, mental healthcare, and support systems. Shehk also lists “restorative and transformative justice practices, healing circles, or community accountability models” as examples of nonpunitive ways of addressing harm. “Rather than trying to cage away the problem, one key part of these models is an attempt to address the root cause of the harm and to change the conditions in which it occurred so that it doesn’t happen again,” he says. “Many of these are informed by Indigenous practices, and all of them seek to uplift the humanity of the parties involved.”

      Mass incarceration costs $182 billion a year, when considering policing, court costs, and the operating costs of prisons and jails—and it doesn’t even effectively deter crime, achieve justice for victims, or rehabilitate perpetrators. Rather than funneling money into the PIC, the United States could fund an education system that invests in mental-health services instead of policing and surveillance. We could use those billions of dollars to finance living accommodations for houseless people and provide them with mental healthcare and drug rehabilitation as needed. This money could be used to train crisis intervention teams or violence interrupters to deal with escalated situations.

      The possibilities are endless, if we allow ourselves to dream bigger than criminalization and bondage. “Being an abolitionist is the most realistic position because it is based in statistics and logic along with empathy and respect for human dignity,” says Agbebiyi. To Daoud, “over-policing creates a system of engineered conflict and perpetuates harm. As such, she—and others at BBO—believes that abolishing prisons must be coupled with radically caring for your community in many forms, including cop-watching and bystander intervention. The dream of abolition is being realized every day by people working for a more equitable world. “If you’re doing work to advocate for a living wage, that’s abolitionist work. If you’re doing work to advocate against environmental racism, that’s abolitionist work. If you’re working to make sure folks have access to affordable healthcare, that’s abolitionist work,” Agbebiyi says. Moving abolition from a fantasy to a reality is going to happen incrementally, but we can certainly make it happen. Vitale confirms this, saying, “Abolition is embedded in tons of movements all over the country and it’s happening right now.”

      by Reina Sultan
      #abolitionnisme_carcéral #prison

    • Majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledges to dismantle the Police Department.
      https://seenthis.net/messages/859237

      Nine members — a veto-proof majority — of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the city’s Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.

      Saying that the city’s current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people gathered late in the day on a grassy hill, and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.

    • Mpls. Council majority backs dismantling police department - StarTribune.com
      https://www.startribune.com/mpls-council-majority-backs-dismantling-police-department/571088302


      Alondra Cano was one of nine Minneapolis Council members who spoke out in support of advocacy group Black Visions, which is calling for the end of the Minneapolis Police Department.
      JERRY HOLT – STAR TRIBUNE

      In their boldest statement since George Floyd’s killing, nine Minneapolis City Council members told a crowd Sunday that they will “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.

      We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said, reading off a prepared statement. “We’re committed to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.

      Their words — delivered one day after Mayor Jacob Frey told a crowd of protesters he does not support the full abolishment of the MPD — set off what is likely to be a long, complicated debate about the future of the state’s largest police force.

      With the world watching, and the city’s leaders up for re-election next year, the stakes are particularly high. While Minneapolis has debated the issue in the past, Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police has added a sense of urgency, and the calls for police departments to be disbanded have echoed in other cities around the country.

      Council members have noted repeatedly since Floyd’s death that Minneapolis has the chance to redefine policing. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, nine of them walked onto a stage at Powderhorn Park to support members of advocacy group Black Visions, who were calling for the end of the MPD. On stage were Council President Lisa Bender, Vice President Andrea Jenkins and Council Members Alondra Cano, Phillippe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison, Steve Fletcher, Cam Gordon, Andrew Johnson and Jeremy Schroeder.

      Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed and will never be accountable for its actions,” they said. “We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new, transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.

      #démantèlement de la #police_municipale


      Gallery: A new sculpture was erected on Chicago Avenue S. just north of E. 38th Street, the site where George Floyd was was asphyxiated in Minneapolis police custody
      JEFF WHEELER – STAR TRIBUNE.


      Visitors to the intersection where George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis were continuously leaving fresh flowers on the names of other victims of police violence on Sunday, June 7.
      JEFF WHEELER – STAR TRIBUNE_

    • The End of Policing: Alex Vitale on How Cops & Their Unions Cover Up Inequality, Exploitation | Democracy Now!
      https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/8/alex_vitale_end_of_policing#transcript

      Professor Alex Vitale argues the answer to police violence is not “reform.” It’s defunding. The author of “The End of Policing” says the movement to defund the police is part of “a long story about the use of police and prisons to manage problems of inequality and exploitation.” He asks, “Why are we using police to paper over problems of economic exploitation?” He also discusses the role of police unions. “They become, in many cities, the locus, the institutional hub, for a whole set of right-wing ’thin blue line’ politics that believe that policing is not only effective but it’s the most desirable way to solve our problems. And embedded in this is a deep racism that says that certain populations can only be managed through constant threats of coercion.”

    • Minneapolis City Council Vows to Dismantle Police Dept. After Mass Protests & Grassroots Organizing | Democracy Now!
      https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/8/minneapolis_police_abolition#transcript

      The City Council of Minneapolis announced Saturday it would disband and abolish the police department responsible for the killing of African American man George Floyd, following nearly two weeks of mass protest and growing calls to defund the police.

      In a statement, nine of the city’s 12 councilmembers said, quote, “Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed, and will never be accountable for its action. … We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said.

      The historic announcement comes after years of organizing on the ground by groups like Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective and MPD150.

  • Twitter #Bots Are Spreading #Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories -
    Nearly Half of Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories on Twitter Are Coming From Bots- Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-twitter-bots-1004328

    As part of the study, researchers analyzed nearly 200 million tweets since January referring to the coronavirus. It looked for specific markers that typically identify bots, such as whether they tweet multiple times in a short period, or copy-paste text from other tweets. The team found more than 100 false narratives and conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 that were perpetuated by bots, such as the idea that 5G wireless towers are spreading the virus, or that the virus was created in a lab in Wuhan, China.

    [...]

    What is surprising is the degree to which bots are flooding the platforms: As Carley told MIT Technology Review, typically bots comprise about 10% to 20% of the disinformation campaign activity. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to pose a unique opportunity for bad actors to spread false information.

    #complotisme

  • Beyond JFK: 20 Historical References in Bob Dylan’s ’Murder Most Foul’ - Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-jfk-references-974147

    Bob Dylan fans woke up this morning to the stunning news that the songwriter had released a 17-minute epic titled “Murder Most Foul.” “Greetings to my fans and followers, with gratitude for all your support and loyalty over the years,” Dylan wrote. “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you.”

    It’s his first original song since 2012’s Tempest, though he has released three albums of cover songs associated with Frank Sinatra since then. The closest analogue to “Murder Most Foul” in Dylan’s vast catalog is Tempest’s title track, a 14-minute song about the Titanic.

    “Murder Most Foul” centers around another historic tragedy: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It’s packed with references only JFK buffs will likely recognize, like the “triple underpass” near Dealey Plaza, the removal of his brain during the autopsy, and the “three bums comin’ all dressed in rags” captured on the Zapruder film that conspiracy theorists have been obsessing over for decades. Cleary, Dylan has spent a lot of time reading books and watching documentaries about this.

    As the song goes on, however, it veers away from JFK and touches upon several other historic events of the era. It’s sort of like Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” mashed up with the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Dylan fans will be picking this one apart for years, but here are 20 non-JFK references in the song.

    #Musique #Bob_Dylan

  • Noam #Chomsky on 2020 Primary, Media Criticism, COVID-19 : Useful Idiots - Rolling Stone
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/noam-chomsky-covid-19-useful-idiots-podcast-970047

    Chomsky gives a grim assessment of the government’s response to #COVID-19: “There’s a concept of economy and efficiency. You should have just enough beds for what you need tomorrow. You shouldn’t prepare for the future. Right? So the hospital system’s crashing. Simple things like tests which you can easily get in a country South Korea, you can’t get here. So the #coronavirus, which should be controlled in a functioning society, is going out of hand here. We’re just not ready for it. What we’re good at, what our leaders are good at, and have been very good at for the last 40 years, is pouring money into the pockets of the rich and the corporate executives while everything else crashes.

  • Les Etats-Unis profitent de la pandémie pour sauter à pieds joints dans le fascisme :

    DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency
    Peter Wade, Rolling Stone, le 21 mars 2020
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/doj-suspend-constitutional-rights-coronavirus-970935

    They also asked Congress to pass a law saying that immigrants who test positive for COVID-19 cannot qualify as asylum seekers

    the Trump administration is taking steps to hold more people in prisons for an undetermined amount of time

    Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

    #fascistovirus #coronavirus #USA #solidarité (manque de) #prisons #migrants #salops #qu'ils_chopent_tous_Ebola