EFTA00690384.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 07/16/2017 Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2017 07:40:17 +0000 Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(I4).png; image(15).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png; image(24).png; image(25).png; image(26).png; image(27).png; image(28).png; image(29).png; image(30).png; image(31).png; image(32).png; image(33).png; image(34).png DEAR FRIEND Hate in America There is a virus and our country. It's a virus called Hate. Inline image 1 On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president. Within hours, the United States was awash in an unprecedented wave of hateful incidents, many of them perpetrated by people claiming to be Trump supporters. Our Republic needs serious repairs. The signs were apparent well before Donald Trump won the election on a platform that included unapologetic bigotry. We should ask, for example, why we needed to be reminded that Black lives matter. EFTA00690384 Various forms of hatred surged during Trump's campaign —especially Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and general support for white supremacy. But his election appears to have emboldened vitriol of all kinds, triggering a rash of harrowing—and sometimes violent — incidents that has left many Americans afraid. In one way of looking at it, Donald Trump did us a service by ripping the Band-Aid off deep wounds we didn't want to look at or even admit we had. He liberated misogyny, paranoia, wild conspiracy theories, racism and tribalism from political correctness. That ended polite conversation as well as any illusion that America is a nation of pure values and virtues, a shining city on the hill. Donald Trump ran a campaign marked by racism, xenophobia, crude racial stereotypes and anti- Semitic imagery. So needless to say after he was elected, many white supremacists were celebrating. Usually, white supremacists just set out elections and think that political parties are in irredeemably corrupt. The combination of his races campaign and the attacks on political correctness tell many people that the gloves are off and make an act, unfortunately, with the worst instincts. The day after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center [a Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit] put up a reporting form about hate incidents on its website and within 10 days collected almost goo internets. It exposed that the fault lines where our country has historically been weak, were reopened again. Although those fault lines opened with Obama when to some degree white supremacist went crazy after his election, but the outbreaks of hate crimes was not to this new extent. And although many Trump voters are against racism and hate groups, there were a lot of people who flock to trumps candidacy because they felt that they were strangers in their own land with the changing demographics in our country, the dislocations caused by globalization, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. All of those things contributed to his sons for many people, particularly white working-class people, of alienation. Saying that, is a far cry from painting them all as "deplorables" or suggesting that they are all out there committing a crimes. In February, the Center reported that its count of hate groups in the country increased for the second consecutive year and the number of anti-Muslim organizations had nearly tripled within a year. It attributed the growth to "Trump's incendiary rhetoric" on Muslims and the reaction to the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. On May 26, white supremacist kill two men and injured at third, when they defended a pair of teenage girls, one in Muslim wearing a hijab, on a Portland Oregon train. In an attacked in March, a white supremacist travel from Baltimore to New York with the goal of finding a random black purse in the kill. There is a virus and our country. It's a virus called Hate. When looking at the number of hate groups there has been a major increase in the past 15 years. When looking at people engaged in online hate, like people who are registered users of something like [A EFTA00690385 white supremacist website] Stormfront, you will see a huge increase. This fellow in Portland, he rants and raves, and many people like to dismiss him as just crazy. But we are looking at somebody who is bitter, resentful and racist. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like that. In the 6os, these type of racist blew up the 16th St., Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama to put a whole one black progress. There was a tremendous backlash against the March on Washington in 1963. Now we are seeing a different kind of backlash to the browning of America. It is similar to what happened in the 5os and 1960s, but it's also different. In 1970 less than one and five people in the country was non-white. Today that figure is more than double in the country is having growing pains. We are not going to through a change like this without there being some sand in the gears. It is expected that the protections against hate crimes will suffer under benign neglect under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, especially immigration as more people will face deportation. And instead of dealing with the underlying issues, the Trump Administration's justice division is now focused on increasing police enforcement and running up the deportation numbers. But it is not doing anything to deal with growing divisions and subsequent hatred in the country. It impossible to deny that white supremacy is alive and well in this country. Powered by social media platforms, and encouraged by the rise of Trump-as-champion, America's hate groups have emerged from the fringes with a newfound sense of respectability. In 2015 alone, the number of homegrown hate groups jumped by 14 percent—a proliferation unprecedented in recent times. Inline image 3 Groups like — Klansmen, neo-Nazis, white nationalists — did more than talk and meet and march. They plotted to turn their hatred into violence. "They laid plans to attack courthouses, banks, festivals, funerals, schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, clinics, water-treatment plants, and power grids," EFTA00690386 reports the Southern Poverty Law Center. "They used firearms, bombs, C-4 plastic explosives, knives, and grenades." Inline image 2 It would be all too easy to turn away from this reality, or consign it to the distant past. But thanks to photographs like the ones above, as evidence that white supremacist groups are thriving in America. Let these photographs serve as proof that we are far from the post racial ideal that many Americans have been clinging to. And let them remind us not to be fooled: The spread of white supremacy is not confined to the South, to states like Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee — it extends deep into the heartland, to Pennsylvania and Maryland and Ohio and Indiana. Hate groups exist all across the United States — quite possibly, to a neighborhood near you. Inline image 1 Hate is not just the propensity for violence, as anyone or any group that vilify entire groups of people for characteristics such as race, religion or their sexual orientation should be classified as hate. Groups like the Family Research Council, who promote the claim that they are really only against gay marriage, when the reality is that they spread demonizing lies about the LGBTQ community — such as the false idea that game man have a high propensity for pedophilia. When you start demonizing and talking about gay people as inherently immoral, filthy, perverted, dangerous that crosses the line into hate. As such, we should be careful when describing groups opposed to transgender people's access to EFTA00690387 bathrooms that don't match their gender — whereas when these same groups describe transgender people as inherently evil, they are hate groups. This year there has been a lot of conflict about free speech and hate speech. Plans for events with Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos have become the targets of violent clashes in Berkeley. But in our great county, under the Constitution, you have the right to hate, you just don't have the right to hurt people. And the argument of the campus protesters, that the mere presence of those kinds of words actually hurt people because it poisons the atmosphere, is a slippery slope. This is why the "liberal" Southern Poverty Law Center (who made a name for itself as a standard-bearer in the fight for civil rights since 1971) filed a lawsuit against [the neo-Nazi website] Daily Stormer, [white supremacist] Richard Spencer was in Auburn, AL, at a college and the University tried to block him for speaking, and the federal judge said that action was unconstitutional — and the judge was right. Of all the problems pointed out and all the fixes promised by political candidates last year, job number one should be dealing with hate. It's one thing for people to have different political opinions. It's another for us to disagree, sometimes violently, about human dignity, basic decency, and what America stands for. It's difficult to imagine that we can solve our other big problems unless we fix this one. And hate is not just about race or color as many Trump voters openly admitted hating Hillary Clinton as the reason for their vote. The same can be said for Kathy Griffin, who may be a wonderful satirist, but her latest antic was neither funny or thoughtful, because ten U.S. Presidents have been assassinate, with six of them surviving and four not. What Kathy Griffin did in an attempt of mock President Trump was not just stupid but hateful. A study released in February shows that social media engagement by groups labeled as "hate" organizations has been booming in the last two to three years — and the largest shares of activity are focused on anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. The study titled "Hate on Social Media:A Look at Hate Groups and Their Twitter Presence" was conducted by SafeHome.org, an organization of home security experts that conducts research aimed at making communities safer. The study used data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit based in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate groups nationwide. Study authors said in the report that they wanted to see what hate groups were doing on Twitter and who is following them. "We studied these Twitter accounts to understand not just how hateful sentiment has evolved over the years, but also in which states these comments originate," reads a statement at the beginning of the study. The research showed that hate groups collected more "likes" to tweets and comments in 2016 than in any other year since 2008. From 2014 to 2015, the number of "likes" on hate group tweets and comments tripled, and from 2015 to 2016 they tripled again. The sentiment in this engagement has largely been focused against immigrants and against Muslims, according to the report. As we know, hate is nothing new. To greater or lesser degrees, it always has resided in the seamy underbelly of American society. The election of our first black president eight years ago was celebrated as an affirmation that we had finally outgrown racism. But Barack Obama has been the most threatened president in our history, the target of more than 3o potential death threats a day. During his two terms, the rate of presidential threats has increased 400%. One of the remarkable achievements of his presidency is the grace that he and his family have shown throughout, yet many EFTA00690388 American who define themselves as Trump supporters dismiss his wholesome values and will tell you that he is a Muslim who sold out the country to extremist radicals. Inline image 2 A year ago, the FBI released its numbers on hate crimes in 2015. There were more than 5,800, up 6% from 2014. Attacks against American Muslims jumped nearly 70% compared to 2014. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks these things, counted nearly 900 active hate groups in the United States last year, about 100 more than the year before. Hate crimes reportedly have spiked since Donald Trump's election. The New York Times cites "an alarming rise in some types of crimes tied to the vitriol of this year's presidential campaign..." These data only scratch the surface. They include assaults, arsons, bombings, physical threats and property destruction; they do not include insults, intimidation, slurs, public demonstrations, ostracization, bullying and many other hateful incidents that are unreported because they stop short of breaking the law. We should not have been surprised earlier this year, when people took to the streets to declare that Trump is not their president. Neither should Trump. As commentator Van Jones pointed out during a post-election panel discussion, Trump was "one of the most explosively provocative candidates in the history of our country and there's a price to be paid for that." ****** So True Truly wise words from Lady Gaga EFTA00690389  Inline image 1 Web Link: https://www.facebook.comiladvgaganownetkideos/1522641857778302/ Lady Gaga delivers an eloquent warning against hate, which she explains divides us. It should be a must hear for everyone. Please enjoy.... ****** Nothing Has Really Changed On October 21, 1916 an African American man killed by a lynch mob in Abbeville, South Carolina. EFTA00690390  Inline image 10 On October 21, 1916 an African American man killed by a lynch mob in Abbeville, South Carolina. Anthony Crawford was born in 1965 during early in the Reconstruction Era. After the Civil War, Crawford's father became the owner of a modest acreage of cotton fields on the Little River, about seven miles west of Abbeville, which he worked with his son. Anthony was an ambitious and literate child who routinely walked seven miles to the school in Abbeville. Crawford inherited the land on his father's death, which he increased by substantial land purchases in 1883, 1888, 1899 and 1903. In the mid or late 189os, Crawford was co-founder of the Industrial Union of Abbeville County, which was devoted to the "material, moral and intellectual advance of the colored people". He was the father of twelve sons and four daughters. By 1916, his land holdings had expanded to 427 acres (as much as 6o0, according to some sources) prime cotton farm land. Many of Crawford's children had settled on plots adjoining that of their father. With a net worth of approximately $20,000 to $25,000 in 1916 dollars, Crawford was without doubt one of the richest men in Abbeville County. Crawford was also known for his refusal to tolerate disrespect or defiance in any form. Once, when his church's preacher delivered a sermon decrying Crawford's meddling in church affairs, Crawford jumped out of his seat, struck the man and fired him on the spot. This extended even to whites: "The day a white man hits me is the day I die", he was quoted as having said to his children. After his death, the Charleston News & Courier (now the Post and Courier) described Crawford as "rich, for a negro, and he was insolent along with it". EFTA00690391 On October 21, 1916, Crawford was taking two loads of cotton and a load of seed into Abbeville and had a disagreement over the price of cottonseed with W.D. Barksdale, a white store owner. After Crawford left the store, one of Barksdale's employees followed him outside and hit him on the head with an ax handle. Crawford called for help, which drew the attention of Sheriff R.M. Burts. The officer arrested Crawford, under the charge that he had cursed a white man but could also be said, for his own protection, as a mob of angry whites was already beginning to accumulate. Crawford was held at the jail briefly, and released later that day on $15 bail. The police allowed him to exit from a side door, but the mob saw him anyway and pursued him into a cotton mill nearby, where Crawford took shelter in the boiler room. A salesman named McKinny Cann entered the boiler room after Crawford, and Crawford, grabbing a hammer from some nearby tools, knocked the man unconscious. Although the mill workers attempted to stop it, Crawford was stabbed and severely beaten by the mob. Sheriff R.M. Burts appeared and arrested Crawford once more, much to the chagrin of the mob of whites. The sheriff could only get Crawford away from the mob by promising to the brothers of Cann that he would not try to sneak Crawford out of town before the full extent of McKinny Cann's injuries was known. As it happened, Cann was not badly hurt, although Crawford was. He was treated by physician C.C. Gamble, who also happened to be the mayor of Abbeville, and also happened to be a relative of a man named James Rodgers who had been shot in December 1905 during an altercation with Crawford's sons. Gamble announced that Crawford would likely die from his wounds. The fear that Crawford might die before the mob could get to him collided with the fear that the sheriff might spirit him out of town, and at 3 p.m., around 200 white men besieged the jail, captured and disarmed Sheriff Burts, and abducted Crawford. Crawford was dragged through the black section of town with a rope around his neck. The mob then stole a lumber wagon from a black driver and used it to take Crawford to a fairground nearby. Crawford was then stabbed before being hanged from a tree there, while armed whites used his body for target practice riddling his body with more than 200 bullets. The paper's headline the next day read "Negro Strung Up and Shot to Pieces". After dark, the county coroner, F.W.R. Nance, took a jury to the fairground and cut down Crawford's mutilated remains. The coroner found Crawford had died "at the hands of parties unknown". South Carolina governor Richard Irvine Manning III was quick to denounce the murder. He ordered a full investigation of the crime by both Sheriff Burts and State Solicitor Robert Archer Cooper, exhorting them to hand down indictments of the mob participants. Many Abbeville residents were held and questioned, including Cann's three brothers, but it became increasingly apparent that no resident of Abbeville would testify against any member of the mob; moreover it would be virtually impossible to select an impartial jury from the ranks of the city. Manning called for the trial's venue to be moved to a different county, although nothing came of it. And white in the area made it known to Crawford's family that if they didn't move they would be given the same fate. After numerous treats the Crawford family resettled in Evansville, Indiana. And after the Crawfords were driven out of the state, more than half or the blacks in the county followed them, fearing if someone as rich as affluent as the Crawford family feared for their lives it was wise for blacks to leave. The definition for lynching is that when three or more people, which constitutes a mob, put someone to death without legal sanction from a court and they do it for the purpose of tradition or whatever their version of justice is. Lynching started during the Revolutionary War years, named after the EFTA00690392 brother of the man who founded Lynchburg, VA when there were not too many courts or difficult to get to them as the British were in many places in the South making it difficult and dangerous to get around, as a form of local justice not condoned by a formal court. And it was not until 1886 that the number of Black lynch victims exceeded the number of White victims when this American tradition became racialized for a number of reasons. During the history of our country there is a constant struggle over the meaning of who deserves the protection and rights afforded under the U.S. Constitution. And what happens and the racial function of a stereotype is to show that someone is undeserving of first-class citizenship. And to rather recently first-class citizenship was not seen as a right but as a privilege. And it was a privilege accorded to those with a particular character and who lived their life in a particular way who enjoyed that honor. And within Conservatives there is still a big element that believe "that if we live our life a certain way, we are going to get somewhere and become first-class citizens because that's what the Constitution says." Hence it is viewed as a privilege and not a right, whatever the interpretation of the Bill of Rights. Inline image 9 In the late 19th Century there was an evolving scientific theory that human beings could be categorized and ranked by such constructs as social standing and group affiliation. Drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of biology that the fittest will survive this science called `Social Darwinism' perpetuated various myths about how so cities evolved. One destructive myth was that Black People were inferior to White People and therefore there was a justification to suppress their advancement in all areas, less the society as a whole be brought down. EFTA00690393  Inline image 8 There had always been prejudice around color ever since the first African came to the U.S. but that change in the late 19th Century with the advent of Social Darwinism and the need to think about Black People, Black labor and Black bodies in a particular way, you begin to see that Blacks are devolving down the evolutionary scale into more primitive identities. And with primitive less civility, lack of control, lack of character, lack of honor, etc. And scientist actually sort to prove these thing imperially. And from then they also began to think about the notion of what is happening to women, especially around women sexuality. Thus this need for White women to maintain this purity and the purity of the race. While there were no shortage of reasons for discrimination against Black People by Whites in this period, the emerging myth of the threat of a White Woman by a Black Man became a tense focal point and the often false accusation of rape became the chief justification for lynching. Inline image 7 One person of this period to expose this destructive myth was activist Ida B. Wells, who was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, and in 1892 a very good friend of hers was lynched in Memphis, TN by the name of Tom Moss along with two other men. And what she begins to understand that lynching EFTA00690394 is taking on a new king of face with Blacks being victimized in greater numbers. And the reason for this rise in lynching which reaches a peak in 1892 is that the accusations that Black Men are raping White Women. She sees this as new because there has been no history of this tendency. And especially in the numbers that people are professing. And she knows that the reason that Thomas Moss was lynched is because he was competing suer.essfully with a neighboring white store owner. Inline image 6 And what she does is that she becomes an investigative reporter. So when she starts taking against lynching she is not just giving an opinion, she is actually going to sites of lynchings. She using statistics that other people are using to disprove the idea/myth by simply finding out instances that when there was a charge of rape, often they were just consensual relationships between these black men and white women. And if it is consensual, these Black men are not monsters nor are the white women in need of protection which Black People are being killed in the name of and why there was a need for lynching, as it really distinguishes the difference between White and Black People — with Blacks being the victims and Whites the spectators. Inline image 5 According to Tuskegee Institute between 1882 and 1968 at least 3446 Blacks (out of 4745) were lynched in the United States. They were tortured, hanged, burned alive, dragged behind trucks and castrated, and in a number of cases their bodies were dismembered with the pieces either discarded or kept by many as souvenirs. Thirty-nine years later while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, 14- year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants—the white woman's husband and her brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. EFTA00690395  Inline image 4 Since the Reconstruction era lynchings enforced white supremacy and intimidated blacks by racial terrorism. And not terribly long ago in America a black person was killed in public every four days for often the most mundane of infractions, or rather accusation of infractions — for taking a hog, making boastful remarks, for stealing 75 cents. For the most banal of missteps, the penalty could be an hours- long spectacle of torture and lynching. No trial, no jury, no judge, no appeal. Now, well into a new century, family after family bury their sons, daughters, fathers and mothers killed at the hands of authorities, the rate of police killings of black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the loth century. About twice a week, or every three or four days, an African American has been killed by a white police officer, according to studies of the latest data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That number is said to be incomplete and likely an undercount, as only a fraction of local police jurisdictions even report such deaths — and those reported are the ones deemed somehow "justifiable". That means that despite the attention given the deaths of teenagers Trayvon Martin (killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman) and Jordan Davis (killed by a white man for playing his music too loud), their cases would not have been included in that already grim statistic — not only because they were not killed by police but because the state of Florida, for example, is not included in the limited data compiled by the FBI. Even though white Americans outnumber black Americans fivefold, black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed when they encounter the police in the US, and black teenagers are far likelier to be killed by police than white teenagers. The haunting symmetry of a death every three or four days links us to an uglier time that many would prefer not to think about, but which reminds us that the devaluation of black life in America is as old as the nation itself and has yet to be confronted. Beyond the numbers, it is the banality of injustice, the now predictable playing out of 21st Century convention — the swift killing, the shaming of the victim rather than inquiry into the shooter, the kitchen-table protest signs, twitter handles and spontaneous symbols of grievance, whether hoodies or Skittles or hands in the air, the spectacle of death by skin color. An encounter with the police officers can turn deadly within seconds, especially if you are black or brown. Even when it is captured on video with the victim either complying calmly or running away or with their back to the officer, juries overwhelming chose to believe the officers instead of "their lying eyes." With the latest example being that three times in the same week that a jury acquitted Officer Jeronimo Yanez shoot seven times into the car where Philando Castile, was sitting with his fiancée and her five year-old daughter and killing him, with a dashcam video showing the victim complying calmly, two other officers' trials ended without a conviction. EFTA00690396 On June 21, 2017 a jury cleared a former Milwaukee officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown, of wrongdoing in the death of a 23-year-old man, Sylville K. Smith, with a video showing that when the officer fired the second shot, Mr. Smith no longer had a gun and was on the ground — "hands up, with no place to go." And a day later jurors in Cincinnati told the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked in the retrial of Raymond M. Tensing, the former University of Cincinnati police officer who faced charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Samuel DuBose, an unarmed motorist, in 2015. While activist groups such as Black Lives Matter have drawn attention to police shootings in recent years, acquittals of police officers have become all but expected in these sorts of incidents. According to a report by HuffPost last year, only 13 officers were convicted of murder or manslaughter in fatal on- duty shootings from 2005 to 2015. The data project Mapping Police Violence estimates that in 2015, only 1 percent of cases of on-duty shootings—over 1,000 in the United States that year alone—resulted in those involved being convicted of a crime. The vast majority of cases since 2005 have been ruled to be justified homicides. On an average, 39 black people were lynched per year under Jim Crow. In 1892, the worst year, 161 black Americans were lynched. More than a century later, the numbers have hardly improved. In 2015, 258 black people were killed by US police, representing over 26% of deaths, while only 228 black people were shot and killed in 2016. The number of Hispanics shot and killed by police was higher in 2015 as well. There were 156 people who were fatally shot by officers in 2016 while 2015 saw 16 more deaths of Hispanic people, amounting to 172 Hispanics shot and killed by cops. Inline image 3 Although it has been 36 years since the last lynching (Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama in 1981), it is evident that the continued unbridled killing of people of color by police officers is as equal a scourge. Like lynching it involves death caused by "race prejudice" without due process of the judicial system. And although Social Darwinism is no longer viewed a science, the myth of color is real, as it seems that trained police can get exonerated by just claiming they fear for their lives even if the victim is unarmed running away. Yet, Jessie Murray was denied the use of "stand your ground" as a defense in his murder trial, the same defense that George Zimmerman used in his acquittal for killing the unarmed Trayvon Martin. Shockingly, the judge stated that the reason Murray could not use the defense was because he said his gun fired by accident during the struggle with the victim and his three friends. Court documents described Murray as being assaulted by the Nathan Adams, a former police officer, and three of his friends. Despite this threat, the court seems to be saying that Murray should have allowed himself to be beaten first and then used his gun as a last resort. EFTA00690397  Inline image 2 And this is how police treat our children. Web Link: https:/hrww.facebook.com/polic ethepoliceACPAideos/1736706443013011/ As Elie Mystral in a recent article about the Jessie Murray trial mused — "Can black people also defend legally ourselves against white people, if we are afraid of them? Hahaha that was a rhetorical question. OF COURSE a black person can't legally "defend himself' against a white man. Every brother in here knows that black people can't legally use force against a white person, no matter how threatening and dangerous that white person maybe. Every black person I know knows that if they have to defend themselves against any white person out there, they'd best be willing to catch a homicide/attempted homicide charge. We don't get to "stand your ground." We don't get to have "self-defense." We get to run, or die. If we fight back, we get the full weight of the legal system crashing down on our heads." White guy open carrying an AR-15 Web Link: https://youtu.be/rihlogXCxAs In 2015 a Libertarian 2nd Amendment group did an experiment where two men — one white, one black — walk down the street strapped with AR-15s. The white man, Warren Drouin, is a well-known fixture in the open-carry movement. In fact, he and police in his small Oregon town are on a first-name basis because of the scores of complaints from scared neighbors over Drouin's exercises. The camera shows Drouin being approached by a police officer and a polite exchange about his right to carry a gun in public. The encounter is so cordial that the officer shows Warren his AR-15, even though Warren refuses to give his sir name and other information. Inline image 1 The next clip follows an unnamed black man as he carries the same weapon strapped across his back. A police car approaches and out jumps a white officer who pulls his gun and orders the man, "Get down on the street. Now!" The officer also orders the man's wife, who is recording the incident, to get EFTA00690398 on the ground. "I'm seven months pregnant," she replies. "I am being held at gunpoint," the man says from the ground. "I am merely open carrying." Two men carrying the same weapon get very different reactions with the only big difference being the color of their skin. See the difference when you are Black -- Web Link: https://youtu.be/E6jzzh-F2gs So please don't tell me that race isn't a factor when according to Propublica young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts. As you can see there is this really that much difference today, than what happened to Anthony Crawford a century ago? And if you are not Black or Hispanic you probably don't feel it but be assured one of the great privileges of a white skin, is that police are less inclined to immediately assume the worse which an easily result in one's death. And the Blue Line, that honest cops, their superiors and union representatives, as well as public officials and our judicial system refuse to cross to castigate the rotten apples, only make things worse Hence the anger of Black Lives Matter supporters and minority communities as a whole. While We Were Fighting for Healthcare The EPA Dismantled A Rule That Protects Drinking Water For 117 Million "This proposal strikes directly at public health," an environmentalist group warns. Inline image 1 EFTA00690399 The Environmental Protection Agency is set to undo yet another Obama-era environmental regulation after releasing a proposal on Tuesday meant to dismantle a rule protecting rivers and streams from pollution. The latest target from the notably anti-environmental administration of President Donald Trump is the Clean Water Rule, which in 2015 updated a longstanding act passed during the advent of the EPA to clean up heavily polluted federal waterways. The rule, passed under former President Barack Obama, expanded federal authority to include all "navigable" waters under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. It ultimately protected the drinking water of more than 117 million Americans. The Clean Water Rule was introduced in 2015 to update a longstanding act passed during the advent of the EPA to clean up heavily polluted federal waterways — one of which was so fouled with sewage, it burst into flames in the late 1960s. The Clean Water Rule was the result of more than 400 meetings with stakeholders and a review of more than 1 million public comments. However, Trump has long called the update that environmentalists hailed a "disaster." He signed an executive order shortly into his term, urging the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to dismantle the rule. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt released a 42-page plan to do just that on Tuesday, the first step in a complicated, rule-making process experts have described as a "huge task." The New York Times notes the process would require the White House to craft a legal reason for the rollback, and environmental groups have announced they are prepared to fight such plans. "We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation's farmers and businesses," Pruitt said following the proposal's release. Inline image 2 Inline image 3 The Natural Resources Defense Council on Tuesday lambasted the move, calling it a "big mistake." Rhea Suh, the environmental nonprofit's president, declared the Trump administration's action a EFTA00690400 "reckless attack on our waters and health" and vowed to stand up to the president. "This proposal strikes directly at public health," Suh said in a statement. "It would strip out needed protections for the streams that feed drinking water sources for one in every three Americans. Clean water is too important for that. We'll stand up to this reckless attack on our waters and health." WI Inline image 4 Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, also said Pruitt is "smashing everything he touches in the EPA,"and called the move "gratuitous," "vindictive"and "and-clean water." If we want to keep government protections for clean water we better move soon. As the EPA under Scott Pruitt has signaled that he is intent on getting rid of many of them, starting with The Clean Water Rule an Obama-era federal regulation that prohibits companies polluting our waterways and protecting 1/3 of America's drinking water, even though 78% of the American public say that we need to do more to protect our clean air and clean water. Additionally, Pruitt's budget takes money from the Great Lakes Clean Up Fund even though io% of Americans get their drinking water from the Great Lakes. The good news is that so far 4o Democrat and 28 Republican lawmakers have publically written to President Trump to not slash this project. ****** America's global standing plummets under Donald Trump A new survey from Pew Research Centre shows sharp drops in approval EFTA00690401  Inline image 1 America and the world: Could do better The world does not much like Donald Trump. A new survey of 40,447 people in 37 countries shows that trust in the president pales in comparison with that invested in Barack Obama. Of all the countries surveyed, Mr Trump's worst ratings come from Mexico; just 5% of Mexicans say they are confident in him. At the other extreme is Russia, where only ii% liked Mr Obama, but 53% say that they like Mr Trump, with the only other country where Trump's approval is higher than Obama is Israel. IT IS no surprise that a fast-tweeting, pugnacious president, with little regard for diplomatic niceties or enthusiasm for treaty obligations, is not much liked outside his borders. Nonetheless, the magnitude of the change in global opinions on America's leadership since Donald Trump took office is still remarkable. A new survey by the Pew Research Centre of 40,447 people in 37 countries shows that trust in Mr Trump pales in comparison with Barack Obama's final ratings. Whereas 64% of those surveyed had confidence in Mr Obama to do the right thing, just 22% are similarly optimistic about his successor, whom they described as "arrogant" (75%), "intolerant" (65%) and "dangerous" (62%). Citizens in Western Europe put no more stock in Mr Trump — who took office just five months ago — than they did in George W. Bush, the architect of the highly unpopular war in Iraq, when he limped out of the White House in 2008. Respondents' approval rating for America overall has also slumped, from 64% to 49%. EFTA00690402  Inline image 2 Of all the countries surveyed by Pew, Mr Trump's worst ratings come from Mexico, America's southern neighbor. The president has characterized its immigrants to his country as rapists, and promised to force its government to pay for a wall on their shared border. Sure enough, just 5% of Mexicans say they are confident in him. At the other extreme, respondents in only two countries prefer Mr Trump to his predecessor. Israelis are fonder of him by seven percentage points, perhaps because he has sounded, at times, friendlier toward settlements and harsher towards Iran. A far greater gain comes from Russia, where only ii% liked Mr Obama, but 53% say that they like Mr Trump. The FBI is currently investigating whether anyone involved in Mr Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election on his behalf. Even in countries where he is mostly despised, Mr Trump still found some support from those who share his ideology. Across Europe, people with favorable views of their hometown populist party have much higher appraisals for Mr Trump — though, even among them, confidence was not above 50%. Of those who approve of the National Front, 39% express confidence in Mr Trump; for those who disapprove of Marine Le Pen's party, that number is just 6%. America's president is often described as the "leader of thefive world". Mr Trump may be making that moniker an anachronism. Given his reluctance to reiterate America's commitment to NATO's collective-defense policy, it is little wonder that Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor and a staunch defender of liberal internationalism, inspires more confidence than Mr Trump does. However, he also fell short of leaders with far weaker democratic credentials. Even autocrats like Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin scored better. EFTA00690403  Inline image 4 For my Trump supporter friends, this is not Fake News or an indictment of the President but there is a consequence when any country or its leader loses standing internationally. This slide of lost trust didn't just start with President Trump, as Americans have been losing trust in our greatest intuitions, especially after Ronald Reagan proclaimed in his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981 that "Government is the problem." Continuing on with this soundbite, Republican Conservatives then used this mantra to justify the largest redistribution of wealth in history, through pushing for tax cuts that favor the wealthy and large corporations at the cost of cutting services to the Middle Class, Poor, Children and the Elderly, as well as cut funding for the country's education. With the latest example of this skullduggery, being the current Congressional Republican's healthcare bill dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) which is really a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by a dramatic reduction in health care funding for approximately 23 million poor, disabled and working middle-class Americans and described by many as Ruthless, Soulless, Vicious and Mean. And the truth is that the President Trump, has shown himself to be a shallow, vindictive, cruel, self- serving man who lies so effortlessly that he probably no longer can tell what is true or not. From his unfounded `birther' acquisitions against President Obama, to his misogynistic behavior which would have disqualified a candidate for school office in a middle-school, to his absolutely unwillingness to say anything negative against Vladimir Putin or Saudi Arabia's monarchy. This is a leader who refuses to acknowledge the greatest assault against America since 9/11, the hacking of the recent Presidential election by the Russians, which if you or I had done the same thing we would be jailed for decades. But his real failing is that he has been exposed as a blowhard, who will bomb Syria because they can't really respond but has changed policies on a dime, when confronted with the realities that f@#king with the Chinese, Russian or Israel, like every bully, he will suffer a beat down. As German Lopez wrote in VOX on May 16, 2017 — Trump could damage public trust in government for generations — His actions threaten public trust not just in his administration but in the White House as an institution: It's a startling reality of the current White House: You can't believe anything President Donald Trump and his staff say. The latest example came this week — after a Washington Post report on Monday found that Trump had leaked highly classified information about ISIS during a meeting with Russian officials. Reportedly, the gaffe came because Trump was bragging about the quality of his intelligence. "I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day," he reportedly said. EFTA00690404  At first, White House officials insisted that the report was "false," offering a non-denial denial that claimed "at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed." (The allegations never had to do with intelligence sources or methods, but rather the substance of the intelligence itself.) Then within 24 hours, Trump effectively refuted the White House press shop's line — seemingly acknowledging on Twitter Tuesday that he had given classified intel to Russians and arguing that he was allowed to do it. Lopez: Before the FBI scandal, there was the very first time that White House press secretary Sean Spicer went to the podium. Then, he argued that Trump's Inauguration Day drew bigger crowds than President Barack Obama's — a claim that was easily disproved by looking at two pictures of the crowds. Shortly after, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway infamously defended Spicer by arguing that the administration was merely offering "alternativefacts." This is not how the presidency normally works. It's normal, if unfortunate, that all presidents and their staffs have misled the American public on occasion. But the Trump administration's habit of lying even about basic facts is simply not normal. All of this has led me to a question: Could Trump's lies and scandals damage the White House as an institution — not just while he's in office, but in the long term? It's not unprecedented. Political historians and scholars widely agree, for example, that the pervasive dishonesty of the Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal damaged faith in the government in the long term. "If