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As the Federal Moratorium Ends, 23 Million Americans Are at Risk of Being Evicted in Coming Months

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The enormousness of the crisis brought on by COVID-19 cannot be overstated. Cases and deaths are steadily rising in multiple states, as are unemployment numbers. Despite the continued severity of the crisis, Congress has stalled on passing a new relief bill and as the federal moratorium on evictions ends, millions of…

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The Cult Of Robert E. Lee

These days of re-thinking the Civil War there is one that seems to have this whole cult around him….that is Gen. Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate Forces.

It is fascinating, at least to me, that a traitor like Benedict Arnold is hated and a traitor like Lee is deified…..and believe me….in the South Lee is deified.

How did this whole cult spring up around Lee?

The reason the South fought the American Civil War has been contested ever since the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. An odd turn of events, considering that when 11 Southern states seceded from the Union at the war’s outset, they were very clear about why they were doing it.

In declaration after declaration, Confederate states explicitly said that they had seceded in order to preserve slavery.

South Carolina, the first to secede, cited “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” in its declaration of secession. Mississippi’s declaration argued “There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.” 

It was only after the war that many former Confederates changed course, creating an alternative narrative that historians refer to as the “Lost Cause.”

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-cult-of-robert-e-lee-was-born

Lost Cause….something I have also written about…..read it for yourself…….

Did Lee commit treason?

Led an armed rebellion against the government and person of the United States of America……then YES HE WAS!

In case you are interested…..https://athenaeumreview.org/essay/did-robert-e-lee-commit-treason/

More on the actions of Lee……

Robert E. Lee was a great “American” general, who attended West Point, led American soldiers to victory as a commander in the Mexican War and was beloved by his men

Until 1862, that is, when he turned traitor and gave up his commission in the US Army for a stint as commanding general of the “Confederate States of America” after South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina in April 1861, as an act of war. A devoted son of Virginia, Lee returned home and took up arms against the United States of America whose Constitution he had sworn to protect and defend.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-great-general-robert-e-lee-was-a-traitor-and-a-bad-person

To be fair I offer this short video that tries to refute the idea…..

Lee IMO was a bigger traitor than Arnold…..but that is the post for a rainy day.

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Anti-fascist movements are re-emerging in Brazil to counter Bolsonaro

Online or in the streets, Brazilians are demonstrating against fascism

Anti-fascist demonstration in Porto Alegre. On the sign: “Democracy is not negotiable. Demilitarization of the government now!” Photo by Maia Rubinm via Benedictas Fotocoletivo (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Every time Leandro Bergamin goes to a demonstration, he makes sure to not leave home without a mask and hand sanitizer. He usually takes the subway and a bus but tries to stay as far from other people as possible. “The pandemic is urgent, but it is also urgent that we fight for our basic rights”, he told Global Voices via a WhatsApp call.

Bergamin joined one of the most famous anti-fascist organizations in São Paulo: the Corinthians Democracy Collective, inspired by fans from the largest sports club in Brazil.

Football fan groups in Brazil, like the country’s other self-identified anti-fascist movements, have a history of fighting for human rights and democracy, but in 2020 they emerged as a counter-offensive to the growing pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations. As for the links between anti-fascism and football, Bergamin explains that:

Football has always had the issue of class struggle and regionalism. Football depends on politics to exist and politics depend on football.

May 31 saw one of 2020’s largest anti-fascist demonstrations in São Paulo. According to Bergamin, protestors were profoundly dissatisfied “with the frivolous way the country is being conducted” during the pandemic. Demonstrators criticized the Bolsonaro government’s authoritarian turn.

President Jair Bolsonaro showed authoritarian features since he launched his political career 30 years ago. His rise to the presidency has often been credited to his ability to capitalize on collective and individual resentments, which boosted support to call on strong military presence throughout the country. Bolsonaro helped fuel gun ownershipencouraged police killings and supported the Amazonian fires to free space for the agroindustry.

Since COVID-19 hit Brazil, he has been downplaying the pandemic and participated in protests to shut down the Supreme Court. Even after testing positive for COVID-19, he still made public appearances without any protective gear. He is accused of using the pandemic to dismantle environmental regulations, for participating in corruption schemes, and for enabling a genocide against indigenous peoples. He has verbally attacked the press and publicly endorsed violent practices against the opposition.

A protester in Porto Alegre, on June 14th, holds a sign saying: “For a world with more Marielles Francos [and] Angelas Davis [and} less Hitlers [and] Bolsonaros. Photo by Maia Rubinm via Benedictas Fotocoletivo (CC BY-NC 2.0)

For Ângela Meirelles de Oliveira, a historian who dedicated her career to studying Brazilian anti-fascism, the anti-fascist movement in the football world is an example of how anti-fascist groups are much more heterogeneous than before. A few structured organizations are supported by a vast, and diversified, support base which includes blue-collar and white-collar workers, different social classes, and different professions.

Anti-fascist groups emerged in Latin America in the 1930s, a decade after their European counterparts, to fight against fascist movements in the region, “which were many”, Oliveira told Global Voices in an email. There was, for example, the Integralist movement in Brazil and the Argentine Civic Legion. They also counteracted growing Nazism in communities of German origin in Latin America. 

Both then and now, critics of anti-fascism in Brazil deny that fascism ever existed in the country and therefore perceive anti-fascists as a “meaningless militancy,” said Oliveira. She continues:

On the one hand, [there are] those who saw in sympathizers of fascism only puppets of organized militancy, on the other, [saw them as] a group that would operate for a meaningless cause, since [they believed] fascism never existed in Brazil.

In 2020, the action is less organized, with little hierarchy, and more variety in their ranks. “They also have a very expanded agenda against oppression, given the motions against racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia,” adds Oliveira.

Today, anti-fascism is also going online. In May, Brazilians who did not take to the streets because of COVID-19 concerns shared the anti-fascist flag on social media. In May, June, and July, this flag — symbolizing anarchism, communism, and socialism — appeared on people’s profile pictures on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Users would also complement the flag with more personal identifiers such as “journalist”, “artist”, “feminist”, or “father”, for example.

Today, as before, anti-fascists and any person accused of fitting this label are under pressure in Brazil. In June, 900 pages with lists containing peoples’ personal data circulated on the internet. The so-called “anti-fascist files” doxxed hundreds of people accusing them of belonging to anti-fascist groups. The files were supposedly taken to the police to counter “terrorist activities”.

According to Oliveira, “The more oppressive a government is, the more they will see opposition as criminal”.

On July 24, the Brazilian news organization UOL had access to documents from the Ministry of Justice which compiled new alleged anti-fascist profiles. In total, there are 579 officials from the government identified as members of the “anti-fascist movement” and three university professors. The Ministry informed that the operation is legitimate and aims to support decisions focusing on “prevention, neutralization, and repression of criminal acts of any nature that violate public order, the safety of people and property”.

The most common argument against anti-fascist movements is about looting or destroying private property. Oliveira responds to this saying that antifas (the common shorthand name for anti-fascists in Brazil) question the justification of protecting private property when the state enforces violence on poor people of color. “In my opinion, the practice and action of [a]ntifas are fundamental to put such State actions in question”, says the researcher.

Bergamin adds that the anti-fascists organizations do not defend violent demonstrations and he says he believes that they have to be peaceful. “But I do not judge because, for many, violence is a way of survival in Brazil”, he says.

Bergamin says that he sees himself protesting more in the near future. “I believe the demonstrations will multiply and amplify,” he says.

Written by Giovana Fleck · comments (0)
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Serbia protests point to crisis of legitimacy for Vučić government

Young people wearing masks sitting on a street in Belgrade during anti-government protest on July 10, 2020. Serbia.

Peaceful protest in Belgrade, 10 July 2020. Photo by Wikipedia user OakMapping, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Over the past several years, Belgrade has been the setting for mass protests demanding transparency and accountability from the government led by President Aleksander Vučić of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Protests against gentrification and non-transparent development such as the initiative Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own (Ne da(vi)mo Beograd) brought thousands to the streets and made international headlines, while mass movement “1 out of 5 million” marched for weeks on end against corruption and for free and fair elections. Yet none of these mass anti-government protests were touched by state violence—that changed in early July of this year.

On the night of July 6 and for several nights afterward, police broke up protests in front of the national parliament with tear gas, stun grenades and beatings. Witnesses like Goran Sandić, an associate at the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, saw indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force even blocks away from the parliament—violence that was caught by cellphones in several instances and was widely distributed on Serbian social media.

Kakva je ovo sramota! Zauvek obrukali srpsku uniformu! Zauvek! pic.twitter.com/PRkZ39UgkU

— Balša Božović (@Balshone) July 7, 2020

What a shame! Serbian uniform disgraced forever! Forever!

“We saw with our own eyes and on video that the police attacked people physically,” says Sandić, who attended the second night of protests as an observer. Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) mapped numerous incidents of attacks against both protesters and journalists and an umbrella of NGOs has filed complaints with the public prosecutor and ombudsman calling for an investigation into the incidents.

Why did these protests, unlike the waves of mass protests during the years prior, evoke such a violent crackdown from the authorities? Observers point, on the one hand, to the nature of the protest that was initially underestimated as being mainly anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and supporters of the far-right before swelling to thousands of citizens from all different ages and backgrounds.

A vanguard group of protesters surrounded the parliament and were able to enter it before the police began to break up the scene. “The 5th of October [2000, when Slobodan Milošević’s regime collapsed] was finished by entering the parliament, so it is very symbolic”, says Zdravko Janković, an activist with Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own who has attended numerous public protests in the last decade.

On the other hand, though, these protests represent a unique threat to a president voted in by a minority, plagued by accusations of corruption, and presiding over an unfolding public health and economic emergency. As Sandić notes, “This is literally a life or death situation.”

False Reporting of the COVID-19 Numbers

After months of a strict nationwide lockdown, President Vučić announced that the country had successfully contained the pandemic and enacted a loosening of measures in late May, coinciding with the run-up to rescheduled parliamentary elections.

OSCE’s election observatory body commented on the campaign, “A notable aspect was the meshing of the SNS’s campaign with media coverage of the president and the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.” The ruling party received considerably more media coverage than any other and benefited from having their supposedly successful combating of COVID-19 repeated by all major media channels. Meanwhile, normal life resumed in some measure, and Belgrade even hosted Europe’s first football derby since the lockdown, with 25,000 fans in attendance.

This made it all the more jarring when Vučić announced, a mere two weeks after highly contested elections that were boycotted by close to 50% of the electorate, that the country would head back into a strict lockdown. This gave the impression that the lifting of the sanctions had been a political move to enable elections.

In the meantime, new information started to cast significant doubts about the government’s rush to reopen the country. An investigation by BIRN showed that authorities significantly under-reported the number of deaths from COVID-19, according to information from the government’s own database. It appeared that “they had one report for the government and one report for the public,” says Janković. Numbers on international tracking sites like the World Health Organization still reflect the government’s numbers—they list a total of 491 deaths as of July 24 for Serbia, whereas the data reported by BIRN showed 632 death as of June 1.

Despite denials by the government and accusations of fake news, the report apparently managed to reach a large number of people, who felt that the government had manipulated them for political ends. “The real journalism has found its way to crawl up in the pile of rubbish journalism,” adds Sandić.

Infiltrators or Agitators

The presence of right-wingers as well as hooligans at the protests on July 6 and the days following is indisputable, but the government’s claims that the protests were dominated by such forces, or even foreign agitators, are highly suspect. Attendees and observers, as well as video footage, show a wide range of protesters from all walks of life.

#NoviSad pic.twitter.com/Vpmo3lfvyj

— Goran Radojev (@RadojevGoran) July 8, 2020

“I was there to monitor and what I could see … the demographics of the protest were such that there were older people, younger people, middle-aged people with children, etc., but from the moment where the clashes started it was mostly young males, dressed in black who started provoking the police,” says Sandić. “What is clear is that there was an attribution of the scenes of violence to all citizens in the protest instead of to hooligans.”

“The only opposition is reality”

Despite attempts by Vučić and some in the media to cast the protests as the work of anti-science conspiracy theorists and people angry exclusively (and irrationally) about lockdown measures, the scenes of police brutality and tear-gassing of journalists that were widely broadcast both on public and social media have jolted Serbian society, and apparently deeply threatened the government’s ability to control the narrative about the pandemic.

The doubts over the official coronavirus numbers have reached members of the medical community, a large group of which has called for the resignation of the government task force and an investigation into possible concealment efforts by the regime. A planned reintroduction of a curfew was revoked. Suspicions over the legitimacy of the elections and the presence of irregularities continue to dog the SNS, even as they dominate the parliament with a super-majority. And long-standing suspicions of the party’s connections to organized crime were re-awakened by a report by investigative outlet KRIK that caught the president’s son watching the Belgrade derby together with a “football hooligan” who has suspected ties to a Montenegrin crime klan.

The continuous drip of bad news for this government undermines their ability to gain public cooperation at a moment when the country faces an unprecedented double threat of an out-of-control pandemic and roiling economic turmoil. “They are facing a problem of their legitimacy—which is quite complicated at this stage of the pandemic in Serbia,” notes Janković. The link between trust in the government and the ability to impose measures to combat these threats has been observed in other countries like the United States, but coming on top of years of anger and despair over corruption as in Serbia, it amounts to a potentially dangerous situation, particularly if the government continues to show itself unwilling to address the mounting accusations levied against it by outraged members of the public.

For observers like Sandić, the concern that the government will fight hard to maintain its grip over authority is as much a concern as the ongoing threat from COVID-19. “I am afraid that the spark that will light up the fire of change could end up in deaths, and that would be the worst scenario.”

The violence and lack of accountability bared openly for the nation to witness during July’s protests after years of restraint suggest these fears may not be unfounded.

Written by Christina Lee · comments (0)
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Donald Trump Will Deploy Federal Agents to Chicago as Part of Nationwide ‘Anti-Violence’ Operation

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had strong words for the president at a Tuesday news conference; “We welcome actual partnership, but we do not welcome dictatorship,” the Democrat mayor said. “We do not welcome authoritarianism, and we do not welcome the unconstitutional arrests and detainments of our residents, and that is something I will not tolerate.”

But she also sent a letter to Trump on Monday saying the city would welcome federal support in specific areas, The Post writes, including drug enforcement and pursuing illegal firearm traffickers. yi8pa2wet479ua3cqi6c.jpg

Throughout his presidency, White House occupant Donald Trump has had an obsession with Chicago.

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White Supremacists Admit to Targeting Minority Communities and Journalists in False ‘Swatting’ Reports to Law Enforcement

A member of a white supremacist group accused of targeting journalists, activists and politicians for harassment and threats of violence admitted to his involvement in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, ooi4ihtgy5axk9kzodzw.jpg

A member of a white supremacist group accused of targeting journalists, activists and politicians for harassment and threats of violence admitted to his involvement in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, and investigators found that the whole thing may have started with a white student trying to get out of…

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Pennsylvania Approves Police Reform Bill Requiring Employment Records From Officers Seeking New Jobs

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The state of Pennsylvania is taking baby steps towards weeding out the “bad apples” (in a bunch that’s more spoiled throughout than people want to admit, but whatever) plaguing police departments by requiring officers applying for new positions to reveal previous employment records. And I know what you’re thinking:…

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Huawei Fights Back

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mspohr writes: Looks like Huawei is going to fight back against the U.S. for the sanctions it has imposed on the company… using the U.S. patent system, which recently made some changes to FRAND agreements (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) to make it even easier to sue. They’re starting with Verizon and its suppliers, HP and Cisco.

“It has filed patent infringement claims against Verizon for its own technology and for products Verizon has acquired from Cisco and Hewlett-Packard and demanded royalty payments for hundreds of patents,” reports Forbes. “Huawei’s patents may not even be practiced in the firms’ accused products, but Huawei is using the legal process to compel court discovery on Verizon’s and its suppliers’ confidential information to enrich Huawei’s knowledge of competitors’ products and technology.” […] The report adds: “It is likely that the Trump Administration simply had not considered how Huawei would turn U.S. patent law against U.S. companies, since the President and his team have consistently led the charge to rid Chinese-controlled companies from the communications infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad, especially in 5G.” Didn’t see that coming?

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Secret Trump Order Gives CIA More Powers To Launch Cyberattacks

The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. From a report: The secret authorization, known as a presidential finding, gives the spy agency more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it targets, undoing many restrictions that had been in place under prior administrations. The finding allows the CIA to more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring the agency to get approval from the White House. Unlike previous presidential findings that have focused on a specific foreign policy objective or outcome â” such as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power â” this directive, driven by the National Security Council and crafted by the CIA, focuses more broadly on a capability: covert action in cyberspace. The âoevery aggressiveâ finding âoegave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries,â said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea â” which are mentioned directly in the document â” but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. âoeThe White House wanted a vehicle to strike back,â said the second former official. âoeAnd this was the way to do it.â

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