Tracker

State Trooper Caught Saying About Protesters: ‘Don’t Kill Them, Hit Them Hard’ Reuters / Lindsey Wasson A Washington state trooper has been caught on camera preparing his fellow officers to engage with protesters by saying: “Don’t kill them, hit them hard.” The trooper’s words are muffled by a gas mask, but clearly audible. The Washington Post reported the state patrol apologized for what the trooper was caught saying after the video was shared widely Tuesday night. https://www.thedailybeast.com/washington-state-trooper-caught-saying-dont-kill-them-hit-them-hard?ref=home

Architect of Sweden’s Anti-Lockdown Strategy Admits Too Many People Have Died Reuters The man responsible for Sweden’s unique anti-lockdown coronavirus strategy has admitted that too many people have died and the country should have done more to prevent the spread of the disease. Sweden’s top epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, is the brains behind his country’s controversial approach to the outbreak. Throughout the pandemic, Swedes have been allowed to go to restaurants, hit the gym, and send their kids to school. But Tegnell told Swedish radio on Wednesday that there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done” in Sweden. According to The Guardian, when Tegnell was asked whether too many people in Sweden had died, he replied: “Yes, absolutely.” The scientist added: “If we were to encounter the same disease again knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.” Sweden’s death rate is among the world’s highest at 43 deaths per 100,000 people. https://www.thedailybeast.com/anders-tegnell-architect-of-swedens-anti-lockdown-strategy-admits-too-many-people-have-died?ref=home

Joint Chiefs Chairman Blasted as Uniformed ‘Prop’ for Trump’s ‘Fascist Political Stunt’ Gen. Mark Milley strolled with Trump through Lafayette Park after it was violently cleared of protesters. National-security vets say the chairman crossed the line. As President Trump walked through Lafayette Park shortly after police, backed by National Guardsmen, used tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters, there was a man in uniform accompanying him. He was not just any man and he wore not just any uniform. He was Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior-most officer in the U.S. military. He was not wearing his dress service uniform, but instead the camouflage of his combat uniform, as if to underscore that American streets where protesters are angrily demanding an end to institutional police racism are now the “battlespace” that Defense Secretary Mark Esper described. It’s nowhere near the first time that Milley and other senior officers have worn their combat uniforms in stateside settings, reflecting in part how a generation-long conflict has blurred the lines between peace and war. https://www.thedailybeast.com/joint-chiefs-chairman-army-gen-mark-milley-blasted-as-uniformed-prop-for-trumps-fascist-political-stunt

It's called poetic licence.

Barr Personally Ordered Police to Clear Protesters for Trump’s D.C. Church Photo Op: WaPo Attorney General William Barr ordered law enforcement on the ground in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square to clear the area Monday evening for President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reports. The directive resulted in police tear gassing protesters so the commander-in-chief could pose with a Bible in front of a church he does not regularly attend. The move was an unusual one for the nation’s highest-ranking legal official to make personally, speaking to the close relationship between the head of the Department of Justice and Trump. The D.C. Archbishop, Wilton Gregory, condemned the president’s photo opportunity as using the church for political points. https://www.thedailybeast.com/william-barr-personally-ordered-police-to-clear-protesters-for-donald-trumps-dc-church-photo-op-wapo?ref=home

Medical Workers Fighting COVID Say Cops Are Attacking Them ‘YOU PICKED THE WRONG TIME’ “I don’t know if it’s because they noticed my hospital ID or if it’s because they saw the blood, but they stopped, threw my phone at me, and I walked back to the hospital.” Courtesy of Rayne Valentine Twenty minutes after leaving his job at a Brooklyn hospital on Saturday night, 32-year-old Rayne Valentine was lying in the fetal position on the sidewalk. He’d been beaten and kicked by New York police officers, his hospital ID smeared with his own blood, he told The Daily Beast. Valentine, a Marine veteran who worked as a chef before the pandemic hit the restaurant industry, got a job in March at Kings County Hospital Center. He has spent the past several months moving medicine and patients around the facility, as well as piling hundreds of dead bodies—many of them COVID-19 victims—into refrigerated morgue trucks. Valentine told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that he needed a job, but, like many Americans, he also felt helpless and wanted to contribute on the front lines of the deadly pandemic. Unfortunately, his is just one of many horrifying stories of medical workers, firefighters, and paramedics who’ve been heralded as heroes—only to be tear gassed or beaten by police during the days of civil unrest following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-medical-workers-fighting-covid-say-cops-are-attacking-them-at-george-floyd-protests?ref=home

A leading conservative writer comes out with a scathing argument for defeating Trump and his enablers: ‘The worst is yet to come’ George F. Will, who turned 79 on May 4, is among the most prominent conservative journalists in the United States — although he has been a vehement critic of Donald Trump’s presidency and even left the Republican Party because of it. And Will’s most recent Washington Post column is especially scathing: the Never Trumper stresses that voting the “crybaby in chief” out of office in November is crucial in order to reverse the country’s “downward spiral.” “Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: there is no such thing as rock bottom,” Will writes. “So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/a-leading-conservative-writer-comes-out-with-a-scathing-argument-for-defeating-trump-and-his-enablers-the-worst-is-yet-to-come/

Trump voters wanted this all along — now the trolling has turned to real-world violence. Right-wingers were thrilled because Trump "triggers the liberals" — now that trigger has become literal AMANDA MARCOTTE JUNE 2, 2020 5:32PM (UTC) Eager to get home to South Philadelphia before curfew — about an hour's walk — I left Monday's Black Lives Matter protest a few minutes before the police decided to tear-gas the peaceful crowd. The videos of the incident are terrifying — people desperately trying to scramble away from the painful gas, but trapped in the cloud by a fence and a hill that only a few could scramble over. It was a repeat of what is happening in city after city — most notably in Washington, where President Trump had a peaceful crowd gassed because they were getting in the way of a photo op — as police across the nation, evidently inspired by Trump's violent and authoritarian rhetoric, have begun violently crushing nonviolent protesters. https://www.salon.com/2020/06/02/trump-voters-wanted-this-all-along--now-the-trolling-has-turned-to-real-world-violence/ (One of the best articles on the current situation that I have come across)

The potential for urban warfare will come from the politicians who will be propelled into directing the police and military by panic among the white population stoked by Fox News and such.

As a measure of his ethics and manhood, Mitt Romney refused to comment on the killing of Floyd and the ensuing protests. In my eyes, he was the only Republican who had a shred of credibility and moral authority and poof! gone in an instant.

I fear that this will come to pass if the cops who did the killing walk. If the Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Semites arm themselves, it will be all-out urban warfare.

The problem is that a) they are not likely to come to trial for months, perhaps years and b) they are unlikely to be convicted.

Obama was hamstrung by his own party, and there was not and is not all that much difference between the GOP and DNC. The Democrats are fearful of alienating those voters who have supported the GOP for generations and are unlikely to ever change. This has been the fallacy in the thinking of the Democrats- trying to woo the intractable voters. The Democrats and America would be best served to proceed vigorously with a progressive agenda, knowing full well that they will be vilified by every conceivable insult, threat and dire prediction the GOP, the 1%, big business and the evangelical right can throw at them for the next ten years. Trump exemplifies the worst of America and the GOP and if the electorate is sickened by what their country is being deformed into, a moment may come when the sane majority will accept that "radical" change is the only remedy, or they will be reliving this horror in another 20 years, only even more violent and chaotic.

Disagree. I have people of colour in my extended family, one of whom lived in the US for several months, and it is a far uglier world down there. He has no hesitation in saying that it is better in Canada (he obviously hasn't lived in Alberta) although it isn't perfect here.

You need to remember that any plant reflects the soil it has grown in, and this is the case for Trump.

If the GOP has any survival instincts at all left, they will take the initiative and move to impeach Trump themselves. After yet another debacle which has once again exposed Trump for the inept, racist, fascist fool that he is, his popularity ought to plummet like a stone in a well. However, this is the nouveau-alt-right America we are talking about, and maybe Trump's approval ratings will hold. If his rating fall, as they would in any sane country, the GOP may well kick into survival mode and throw Trump under the bus.

Six Atlanta Officers Charged for Tasing, Assaulting Two Students: DA Charges have been filed against the six Atlanta police officers involved in an assault on two college students during a protest. Two of the officers were fired Sunday after the incident was captured live on local station CBS46. Charges against the six officers include aggravated assault, simple battery, criminal damage to property, pointing a handgun, and aggravated battery. The students, 22-year-old Messiah Young and 20-year-old Teniyah Pilgrim, both attend historically black colleges in Atlanta and were arrested after the city’s 9 p.m. curfew while in their car leaving a protest at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. The officers shattered the car’s driver side window and tased Young. Pilgrim was detained, but released without charges. Young was charged with fleeing the scene and driving with an expired license, but Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered the charges to be dropped. https://www.thedailybeast.com/six-atlanta-officers-charged-for-tasing-assaulting-two-students-da-says?ref=home

Attorney for George Floyd’s Family: Authorities Told Us Three Other Officers Will Be Charged The family of George Floyd has learned the three other officers involved in his police killing last week will also be charged, a civil-rights attorney said Tuesday. Ben Crump, the lawyer representing the Floyd family, said in an interview on the Today show that authorities have told his clients that the three officers will be charged. “We heard that they expect to charge those officers...We understand they will be charged. That is what the family is hearing from the authorities and he [George Floyd] died on the scene and that's important to note,” Crump told host Hoda Kotb. https://www.thedailybeast.com/attorney-ben-crump-says-authorities-told-george-floyd-family-three-other-officers-will-be-charged?ref=home

Australian government wants to probe violent assault on journalists by police in Washington, DC The “Justice for George Floyd” protests have found some police officers abusing not only nonviolent demonstrators, but also, journalists who were covering the protests — and some officials in the Australian government, according to the Straits Times, are investigating a police attack on two Australian journalists outside the White House on June 1. A video, the Straits Times reports, shows Australian journalist Amelia Brace “being clubbed with a truncheon” by Washington, D.C. police and her cameraman Tim Myers, “being hit with a riot shield and punched in the face by police clearing Washington’s Lafayette Square of protesters on Monday.” And the disturbing incident has been widely broadcast in Australia. Marise Payne, Australia’s minster of foreign affairs, noted, “We have asked the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C. to investigate this incident. I want to get further advice on how we would go about registering Australia’s strong concerns with the responsible local authorities in Washington.” Brace and Myers were shot with rubber bullets and teargassed, as were many nonviolent protestors at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/australian-government-wants-to-probe-violent-assault-on-journalists-by-police-in-washington-dc/

America is there already.

Because so many of US police forces have been militarized, the operational attitude in protests is not to deescalate, but to crush as if it were a military engagement.

Episcopal Bishop ‘Outraged’ Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters to Use ‘Our Church as a Prop’ The bishop who oversees St. John’s Episcopal Church, which President Donald Trump visited on Monday evening shortly after police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades to a clear a path for him, was “outraged” that the president would use that place of worship for a photo-op on Monday night. Speaking with Washington Post reporter Michelle Boorstein, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, the diocese of Washington, D.C., said that neither she nor the rector in charge of the church—which suffered fire damage during Sunday evening’s protests—were informed in advance of the visit, nor were they told “that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.” Budde continued: “Holding a bible, one that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to enflame violence. I am beyond. We need moral leadership and he’s done everything to divide us and has just used one of the most sacred symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/episcopal-bishop-outraged-trump-tear-gassed-protesters-to-use-our-church-as-a-prop?ref=home

Arlington police ‘reevaluating’ agreement with DC police after officers were used ‘for a purpose not worthy of our mutual aid obligations’ On Monday, June 1, police from Arlington, Virginia (a Washington, D.C. suburb) helped police in the nation’s capital control large protests demanding justice for George Floyd. But Arlington officers, according to Washington television station WUSA 9 (a CBS-affiliation station) are now “reevaluating” their “agreement with” Washington law enforcement because of their actions on behalf of President Donald Trump. Washington police have been widely criticized for using violent force against peaceful protestors in order to clear the way for Trump to speak at St. John’s Episcopal Church and rally his base with a photo op. And Arlington police, according to WUSA, see that as a misuse of law enforcement. https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/arlington-police-reevaluating-agreement-with-dc-police-that-used-officers-for-a-purpose-not-worthy-of-our-mutual-aid-obligations/