- CounterPunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org -

Roaming Charges: Nothing But Rednecks for 400 Years, If You Check

Posted By Jeffrey St. Clair On In articles 2015,Roaming Charges | Comments Disabled

Booking photos for five Virginia residents who threatened to kill a black pastor when he caught them dumping a broken fridge on his property this week.

Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps
Sample a look back, you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for four hundred years, if you check

– Public Enemy

+ Almost every violent act committed by police in the US is already illegal. Making these acts more illegal won’t change police behavior. Making these murderous acts public with body cam footage hasn’t changed police behavior. There are only 2 things which will: disarming & defunding the police.

+ NYPD had a chokehold ban in place (enacted in 1993) when NYPD cops choked Eric Garner to death.

+ Since the murder-by-cops of George Floyd, police across the US have killed at least 94 people, nearly 3 every day for a month (pretty close to the average over the last decade), according to databases maintained by the Washington Post and Killed by Police. Here are there names (if they’ve been identified)…

05-15, 2020

Roy Ogden, 65, M, White, SC
An unidentified person, 42, M, CA
Robert Avila, 31, M, Hispanic, CO
Hunter Carlstrom, 33, M, MS

05-16, 2020

Robert Johnson, 29, M, Black, MD
Wallace Dean Staples, 42, M, White GA
Randy Roszell Lewis, 38, M,  Black, TX

05-17, 2020

Juan M. Montalvo, 25, M, Hispanic, WA
Brian Cooper, 49, M, Black, TN
Bernard Ledlow, 39, M, White, LA

05-18, 2020

Robert Wayne Lawson, 64, M, White, AR
Jacob Bubb, 28, M, White, WI

05-19, 2020

Levi Morse, 32, M, White, AL
Wilbon Cleveland Woodard, 69, M, White, FL
Tyler Hays, 29, M, White, TN
An unidentified person, M, WA

05-20, 2020

An unidentified person, M, FL
Tobby Wiggins, 45, M, Black, AL

05-21, 2020

Ryan Whitaker, 40, M, White, AZ
Willie Lee Quarles, 60, M, Black, SC

05-23, 2020

Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal, 22, M, Hispanic, UT
Maurice S. Gordon, 28, M, Black, NJ
Christopher Clark, 36, M, NJ
Gary Kevin Partin, 57, M, KY

05-24, 2020

Michael Snyder, 44, M, TN
Anthony Grove, 52, M, W, MT

05-25, 2020

Gary P. Dorton, 43, M, TN
Joe Louis Castillanos, 38, M, Hispanic, TX
Dion Johnson, 28, M, Black, AZ
Reymar Gagarin, 35, M, CA
Justin Mink, 33, M, TX

05-26, 2020

Richard Councilman, M, White, CA
Jason Jesse Gallegos, 37, M, White, MI
Kenneth Bennett, 61, M, NY
John Alvarado, 22, M, Hispanic, TX
Tracy Drowne, 42, F, W, FL
An unidentified person, M, CO
Robert Avitia, 18, M, H, CA
John Vik, 47, M, OH
John Allen Dunaway, 61, M, FL

05-27, 2020

Tony McDade, 38, M, Black, FL
Joshua Blessed, 58, M, White, NY
Rommel Mendoza, 50, M, Hispanic, CA
Hector Hernandez, 31, M, Hispanic, CA
Alexander Scott, 30, M, OK
An unidentified person, M, AL
Modesto Reyes, 35, M, Black, LA

05-28, 2020

John Benedict Coleman, 53, M, White, UT
Steven Edward Ferguson, 31,M, W, CO
An unidentified person, M, CA
Ruben Smith, 35, M, Black, AR
An unidentified person, M, OR

05-29, 2020

Heba Momtaz Al-Azhari, 22, F, FL
An unidentified person, M, White, CA
An unidentified person, 32, M, Asian, CA
An unidentified person, M, PA
Momodou Lamin Sisay, 39, M, Black, GA
Jarvis Sullivan, 44, M, Black, FL

05-30, 2020

Derrick Thompson, 46, M, Black, FL

05-31, 2020

Israel Berry, 49, M, White, OR
Thomas Sutherlin, 32, M, White, WI

06-01, 2020

David McAtee, 53, M, Black KY
Jorge Gomez, 25, M, Hispanic, NV
Ryan Emblem Moore, 36, M, White, AR

06-02, 2020

Robert James Lyon, 65, M, CA
Sean Monterrosa, 22, M, Hispanic, CA
Tyquarn Graves, 33, M, Black, NY

06-03, 2020

Mary Lawrence, 39, F, White, OK
Gregory W. Hallback, 44, M, White, SC
Eric A. Galvan, 25, M, Hispanic, TX
Scott Anderson Hutton, 36, M, White, AR

06-05, 2020

Benjamin Ballard, 42, M, White, OK

06-06, 2020

Kamal Flowers, 24, M, Black, NY
Erik Salgado, 22, M, Hispanic, CA
Gregory Lee Turnure, 37, M, TN

06-07, , 2020

Jeffrey McClure, 26, M, NY
Jarrid Hurst, 35, M, White, CA

06-08, 2020

Michael Seltzer, 81, M, NM

06-09, 2020

Marcus James Uribe, 31, M, CO
Lewis Ruffin, 38, M, Black, FL

06-10, 2020

Jerry M. Bethel, 59, M, White, ID

06-11, 2020

Gregorio Cruz Vanloo, 28, M, Hispanic, TN
Mason James Lira, 26, M, White, CA
Michael Thomas, 62, M, Black, CA

06-12, 2020

Rayshard Brooks, 27, M, Black, GA
Caine Van Pelt, 23, M, Black, IN

06-13, 2020

Hannah Fizer, 25, F, White, MO
William Slyter, 22, M, White, MO
An unidentified person, M, CA

06-15, 2020

Nicholas Hirsh, 31, M, W, KS

06-16, 2020

An unidentified person, 24, M, IL
An unidentified person, 27, M AZ

06-17, 2020

Terron Boone, 24 , M, Black, CA

+ What brother Dixon said…

+ In announcing the indictment of Garrett Rolfe, Atlanta District Attorney Paul Howard said this is the ninth time his office has prosecuted a case against officers related to a homicide. Eight cases were for killing black men and one was for killing a black woman.

+ A day after an Atlanta police officer was indicted on felony murder charges for shooting Rayshard Brooks in the back and then literally dancing on his corpse as other cops watched, the city announced that every Atlanta police officer to receive a one-time, $500 bonus as thanks for their “hard work” during protests and COVID-19…

+ Police in Portland say they are covering their badge numbers because officers are getting doxxed. The department, however, has refused to answer specific questions about the alleged doxxing….

+ In an article disclosing many astounding things about cops in California who shot and killed the half-brother of a black man who was found hanging from a tree by a rope earlier in the week, this is perhaps the most harrowing: “Deputies shot and killed the man. A woman in the car was wounded in the chest and was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. A seven-year-old girl in the car was not hurt, sheriff’s officials said…”

+ How long were you silent, Sen. Klobocop, when you knew what was going on and were in a position to hold violent, law-breaking cops to account and did NOTHING?

+ Exit Klobocop, shivving Warren on her way out the door…

+ I don’t know who in their right mind would want to be VP, but Klobocop’s orchestrated exit is likely a play to secure a more powerful position in the Biden White House (if there is such a thing), such as AG or more chilling the next Supreme.

 

+ The sight of Aston Villa and Sheffield Union players kneeling before opening match of the Premier League’s restart would have thrilled my grandmother, Freda, a proud native of Sheffield…

+ Police in Phoenix shot 212 people between 2011 and 2018, killing half of them. Not a single one of those officers was charged with a crime. By comparison Baltimore Police shot 83 people during the same time span, 32 fatally. Phoenix PD is about the same size as the BPD, and Phoenix has much lower crime rate. Officers in Phoenix shot 44 people in 2018 alone. Now, the city wants to add an additional $24 million to the department’s $745 million budget. (h/t to Justin Fenton for stats on Baltimore Police Dept.)

+ Just 20% of arrests during the first few days of protests in Chicago over the killing of George Floyd were for looting-related crimes, new data shows, refuting earlier statements by the Chicago Police Department that “looting” accounted for the majority of arrests that weekend.

+ The city of Chicago spent more than $113 million on police misconduct lawsuits in 2018 alone.

+ A 2019 University of Chicago study found that police unionization increased violent incidents of misconduct by 40%.

+ NYPD budget: $16.4 million per day.

+ Average hours of training required to be a police officer:

Finland 4500
India 4500
Germany 4000
Australia 3500
England 2250
Canada 2100
New Zealand 1924
USA 672

+ Still it’s not how many hours cops in the US are trained, it’s what they’re trained to do in those hours by veterans of the IDF and the School of the Americas, such as: apply a chokehold, use a taser, deploy pepper spray, swing a truncheon, fire a tear gas canister, shoot “rubber” bullets, profile black drivers/joggers, place a drop gun.

+ Pelosi’s statement is outrageous, but it also reflects precisely who they are. The 1994 Crime Bill was the domestic equivalent of the Iraq War for black and brown America and the Clinton neoliberals (with an assist from Bernie Sanders) pushed it through with fewer regrets than Madeleine Albright expressed for supervising a murderous sanction regime that killed 500,000 Iraqi kids.

+ The only war you enlisted in, Joe Biden, was the drug war, where as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee you helped draft cocaine sentencing laws penalizing blacks, who used crack, much more harshly than whites (the disparity was 100-1), who used powdered cocaine, even though it is the same drug with the same biochemical effects on the body. You still oppose legalizing pot, which is a leading pretext for police harassment of black and brown youth.

+ In the three years since Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his alleged desire to grant more clemency requests, a group of lawyers reviewed 550 cases for good candidates, submitted more than 120 requests to the governor’s office, and to date Cuomo has granted… 2. Even during a pandemic raging through NY’s jails and prisons. I guess he’s presidential material, after all…(h/t Rachel Barkow).

+  A Quinnipiac University poll asked: “Is being the victim of police brutality something you personally worry about?”

Whites: 13% Yes. 86% No
Blacks: 74% Yes. 25% No

+ From the guy who refused to pursue the killers of Malcolm X and featured one of them in a campaign ad…

+ James Baldwin: “The American delusion is not only that their brothers all are white but that the whites are all their brothers.”

+ Black girls are four times as likely to be arrested in schools as white girls. In some states, they are 8 times as likely to be arrested.

+ The only Minneapolis officer in more than a decade to have been convicted for killing someone is Mohamed Noor, a black man, who shot Justine Damond, a white woman.

+ Austin Police Chief Brian Manley has vowed to continue arresting people for marijuana possession despite a new resolution to decriminalize minor cannabis possession enacted by the Austin City Council

+ De-Leaf the Police: 79% of Portland, Oregon’s cannabis tax went straight into the general police budget.

+ You might mistake this for the homepage of The Nation. But no, it’s Drudge…

+ The Trump WH has known about Bolton’s book since January, yet they waited until Wednesday to seek an injunction against its publication. Why? Trump believes Bolton’s book, and the fake fight over its contents, helps him and he probably isn’t wrong. The more fervently the Democrats defend it, the more potent Trump’s counterattack about the unity of the elites who led us into the Iraq war, personified by the partnership of Biden and Bolton.

+ Bolton in the WSJ: “Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

+ Yes, this is awful. But did Bolton ever object to the concentration camps that Trump has been running on the US border for 3.5 years, including ones for the caging of children stripped from the arms of their distraught parents?

+ Bolton claims Trump (like Obama and Holder) wanted journalists jailed to coerce them to divulge their sources: ‘These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”

+ Bolton, himself, much preferred the time-honored method of droning the unembedded reporters in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan…

+ For Bolton the worst presidential crimes are the decisions not to commit war crimes: Calling off the Iran attack is what Bolton deems “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do.”

+ Bolton describes a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey where Trump says journalists should be jailed and forced to divulge their sources: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.” (Bolton would rather just drone the unembedded ones in Iraq and Afghanistan…)

+ Maybe the dust-up over Bolton’s book will prompt Trump to change his mind about the Hague and turn Bolton over to the ICC, where he belongs…

+ At this point books and increasingly redundant insider accounts are not going to sway the election. Only Trump can elect Biden. And only Biden can lose to Trump. The election will be decided by whichever candidate can present themselves as being somewhat less than who they really are, a feat which both seem incapable of pulling off.

+ Ken Klippenstein: “One difference between Manning’s and Bolton’s disclosures is that Manning had no expectation of profiting off hers.”

+ Biden on Bolton: “If these accounts are true, it’s not only morally repugnant, it’s a violation of Donald Trump’s sacred duty to the American people to protect America’s interests and defend our values.”

+ Will Biden commit to making Bolton Secretary of State in bid to win over Neo-Cons?

+ Liberals are bragging about how easily Obama drank water compared to Trump during his trembling performance at West Point. Yet, I remember his flippant response (Obama’s version of Trump’s paper towel toss in Puerto Rico) to the poisoned people of Flint…

+ 30 states now have COVID-19 reproduction rates (R values) of >1 and rising. Only two states, NY and NJ, are at their lows. Only a couple of weeks all states were well below 1, the strategy was (slowly) working, now they’ve just given up with dire consequences.

+ Houston, we have a problem. Estimated ICU capacity will be exceeded in two weeks. Less than a 30 day supply of gloves and gowns on hand….

+ According to a new “pre-print” research paper on the spread of COVID-19 in San Francisco during a six-week period of the stay-at-home order, Covid-19 infections from diverse lineages continued circulating among low-income, Latinx persons unable to work from home and maintain income during San Francisco’s shelter-in-place ordinance.

+ Spay him down with Lysol before and after the hearings…

+ Nearly 500 employees at Orlando International Airport were tested for coronavirus., 260 of them tested positive for COVID-19…Welcome to Orlando, NBA!

+ Mike Pence, who encouraged governors to downplay the new spikes in COVID-19 infections, is like the Good Samaritan…only in reverse.

+ Sergei Dovlatov: “The world is going crazy. Crazy becomes the new normal, and normal feels like a miracle.”

+ You are ten times more likely to survive the coronavirus in Germany, New Zealand, and Taiwan compared to the USA, the UK, and Brazil.

+

+ Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (a member of the odious Ricketts clan, which owns the Chicago Cubs) has informed local officials that if citizens are required to wear masks in public buildings, their governments will not receive any of the $100 million in federal coronavirus aid money…

+ “In Oklahoma, all the experiences that went into the making of the nation have been speeded up. Here, all the American traits have been intensified. The one who can interpret Oklahoma can grasp the meaning of America in the modern world.” —Angie Debo (h/t Russell Cobb)

+ Kayleigh McEnany (AKA, MAGAda Goebbels) on Trump’s Tulsa rally: “As in any event you assume a personal risk. That is just what you do. When you go to a baseball game, you assume a risk. That’s part of life. It’s a personal decision of Americans as to whether to go to the rally or whether not to go to the rally.”

+ Except, of course, what they willing infect themselves with at the rally, they bring back with them to spread among the people who made “a personal decision” not to go to the rally for that very reason.

+ More from the president’s press secretary: “All children deserve equal opportunity, because we are all made equal by God.” Does this apply even to ANTIFA anchor babies?

+ Speaking of ANTIFA, rightwing media personality Cassandra Fairbanks raised nearly $25,000 to relocate her family after she claimed she was attacked at her home by “ANTIFA” with guns and fireworks earlier this month. But an investigation by Rightwing Watch turned up next to nothing that supports her story.

+ Trump will forever be known as the president who was more outraged by black athletes taking a knee during the anthem to protest cops killing black people, than by a cop wearing an American flag patch taking a knee on a black man’s throat until his last breath.

+ You can lead a Democrat into a radio booth, but you can’t make them talk sense. Consider Madame Prosecutor blaming Russian bots the controversy over Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police violence…

https://twitter.com/DonWinslow18/status/1272336320023724033

+ Today’s US Senate: one Senator (Roy Blount) can block the removal of confederate statues, but 48 votes can’t block the appointment of confederate judges for life.

+ Is Roy Blount blocking the removal confederate statues in the Capitol because he wants one of his own someday?

+ Sen. John Kennedy, the Louisiana Republican, says an amendment to remove the names of Confederate leaders from military property “picks on the South unfairly.”

+ Isn’t it punishment enough that the South is represented in Congress by dolts like Kennedy?

+ I wonder how long a statue of a torch-wielding Sherman would have lasted on the courthouse square of any Georgia town from Atlanta to Savannah?

+ Protesters in Portland dethroned a statue of Thomas Jefferson this week. They should replace it with one of Sally Hemings, the true mother of country…

+ Instead of changing the names of military bases (like rebranding Ft. Hood as Ft. Westmoreland or Ft. Benning as Ft. Rios Montt), let’s try getting rid of a few of them altogether…

+ According to a Gallup survey, pride in the US has fallen to a new low. Trump has done his work in helping many Americans see who we really are…

+ And now a word from the Deporter-in-Chief…

+ Maria Hinjosa: “I hate to be a buzz kill but I want to remind people that young people who are part of DACA have been deported ever since it was started. It is NOT at all a perfect solution. Only real massive immigration reform would do that. But it is a win for all of those activists.”

+ Apparently, it will take a Democratic administration with an AG competent enough to end DACA once and for all, as part of a “comprehensive” immigration reform compromise between politicians to the Left of Ted Cruz and the Right of Joe Manchin…

+ We now resume our normal, regularly scheduled SCOTUS opinions…

+ Can an “Originalist” point me to the exact language in the Constitution that requires an “originalist” interpretation of how the Constitution should be interpreted and applied?

+ You spent 40 years writing the future we are now living…

Image: Kenneth Schubert.

+ John Stauber: “Biden is open to change, but he prefers large checks.”

+ Rep. Katie Porter on the Trump administration’s decision to block Congress from receiving any information on how Covid relief checks are being spent and what corporations are getting them: “Mnuchin’s suggestion that he can’t disclose this information is just dead wrong. It’s something he could change tomorrow, and he could simply direct the banks to disclose this … If they don’t, Congress is going to act. And I’m going to stay on this.”

+ Congress should have acted to begin with. It’s gross political negligence that they didn’t. They knew who they were dealing with…

+ Public Citizen: “It’s been 9 weeks since Steve Mnuchin suggested people could live off $1200 for 10 weeks.”

+ Bill Barr announced this week the execution dates for four federal inmates. The Hippie Pope needs to excommunicate this apostate.

+ According to a piece in Politico on corruption and money laundering operations inside the DEA, “the DEA facilitated the purchase of aircraft by drug trafficking organizations. ” Barry Seal, phone home…

+ Amy McGrath, the former fighter pilot now running as a Democrat to unseat Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, once Amy sued her elementary school-teacher roommate in small claims court over $116.77.

+ Schumer, by contrast, always sets his watch to  WST (Wall Street Time)…

+ Uber’s leadership is 3.3% Black and its tech leadership is 0.8% Black. Its full-time employees are 9.3% Black; in tech roles, it’s 3.6%. Uber’s drivers are about 20% Black. None get Juneteenth off.

+ Those indecisive swing voters may save Biden yet! According to a poll by Zogby, majority of voters believe Biden is in the early stages of dementia; 60% of younger voters think so; swing voters less likely to think Biden has dementia.

+ Just stating the obvious: “Tucker Carlson doesn’t have an obligation to investigate the truth of statements before making them on his show and his audience doesn’t expect him to report facts,” a lawyer for Fox News told a New York federal judge during a hearing on a libel suit this week.

+ Micah Van Huss, a Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature, introduced a resolution this week congratulating “the people of Tennessee for clearly seeing that the mainstream media has sensationalized the reporting on COVID-19”.

+ Timothy Mellon, the top donor to Trump’s super PAC wrote in his autobiography that black people were “even more belligerent” after the expansion of social programs in the 1960s and 1970s and that Americans who rely on government assistance were “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam.”

+ Unemployment claims are now more than double their peak during the 2007-09 Great Recession…”

+ According to rankings of the world’s most competitive economies by the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, the US fell from number one in 2018 to number three (and sinking) in 2019. Forbes blames “Trump’s trade policies are the main reason for the significant drop in American competitiveness.”

+ Open them up to the houseless people in the Tenderloin and send Zuckerberg the bill: The apartment vacancy rate in San Francisco rose to 6.2% in May, up from 3.9% only three months ago…

+ The center-left in the UK is the longest running Monty Python routine in politics…

+ The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, says he would kneel for the Queen but not to oppose racism. “On this taking the knee thing, I don’t know maybe it’s got a broader history but it seems to be taken from the Game of Thrones. It feels to me like a symbol of subjugation and subordination.” It’s not the stupidity of these racists which infuriates me, so much as their smugness.

+ Rashford for PM…

+ When the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” stopped paying their employees in the Dominican Republic this month, the great Albert Pujols stepped in cover their salaries for five months at a cost of $180,000. I’m quite sure that Arte Moreno (Net Worth $3.3 billion) and the other owners of the Angels have much deeper pockets than the great Albert Pujols, but they don’t have a heart or a conscience and Albert has both…

+ GOP money is streaming into a Super-PAC backing Rep. Eliot Engel, the embattled congressman from New York, who is one of the most strident defenders of Israel on the Hill. This is explains HRC’s endorsement. But what’s the Congressional Black Caucus’ excuse?

+ The Cult of a Three-Headed Cow would make more theological sense than the religious one Trump seems to be the avatar of…

+ Will the Imperial Stenographer come to Trump’s rescue in September with another dazzling reappraisal of Trump’s secret strength, quiet resolve and unconventional wisdom as commander in chief, the way Woodward rehabilitated the reputations of Dan Quayle and George Bush?

+ I am awaiting Sophia Coppola’s film about how Melania taught all the children of MAGAland about Juneteenth from her gilded room in Versailles on the Potomac…

+ In an attempt to wash the filthy image of Melania’s Juneteenth from Versailles message from my mind, I’m listening to Louis Jordan’s Juneteenth Jamboree, recorded in 1940 and probably the first commercially released musical celebration of Juneteenth…

+ Just an observation: No one sets up a false argument and then still gets it wrong quite like Nate Silver. He’s the statistician who so often pulls the rug out beneath his own feet, which is quite a trick if you think about it.

+ We’re back!

+ In the next 50 years, the Arctic Ocean will absorb significantly more carbon dioxide than what has been predicted by current climate models, according to new research from the University of Bern.  The increased rate of ocean acidification, combined with other rapidly changing chemical conditions, could ultimately disrupt the entire Arctic food chain.

+ The Arara tribe, only contacted in 1987 and exceptionally vulnerable to outside diseases, is now the most heavily infected in the Brazilian Amazon. The Arara live in the Cachoeira Seca reserve, a region that is teeming with illegal entry by loggers, ranchers and miners. According to official statistics. 46% of the 121 Arara people living in the reserve have the virus, but experts believe it’s highly likely that all the Arara in the territory are now infected.

+ In an ominous sign, COVID-19 has claimed the life of one of the Amazon’s fiercest indigenous defenders, Paiakan, who led the fight against the Belo Monte hydroelectric project in the 1980s, who died Tuesday at a hospital in the city of Redencao, in northern Brazil.

+ Brett Chapman: “Two of my favorite Ponca words are the words for ‘Briton’ and ‘French.’ The Ponca word for ‘Briton’ is ‘Niasigamasa,’ which translates as ‘uppity white person’ and the word for ‘French’ is ‘Xihaskaukedi’ or ‘ordinary white person.'”

+ I like the idea of calling it THE Yellowstone National Park because where else does something like this happen…

+ There are more than 200,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania alone, most of them leaking methane. It will take several THOUSAND years to cap them all.

+ Trump’s EPA has announced this week that it will not regulate or even place limits on perchlorate in drinking water, a toxic chemical compound linked to infant brain damage.

+ In hearings before the Colorado Air Commission this week, it became clear that meeting goal of curbing climate pollution 90% by 2050 will require almost zeroing out emissions from electricity generation, oil and gas production, transportation.

+ Public Citizen: “Why is the defunding the police considered extreme when defunding the EPA is the default position of the GOP?”

+ “Whether we can’t breathe because of toxic pollution or policing, it’s the same systemic racism that is killing us,” says Robert Bullard, often credited as being the “father of environmental justice.”

+ In every age category, Black people are dying from COVID at roughly the same rate as white people who more than a decade older…

+ 60% of the world’s mining companies have their headquarters in Canada. Here are profiles of the 10 largest ones, including their financial details and criminal rap sheets.

+ Just heard that one of the most influential ecologists of our time, Michael Soulé, has died. His books and journal, Conservation Biology, had a huge influence on my own thinking about extinction, species preservation and landscape ecology. He was 84. ..

+ Gwyenth Paltrow promoting her “It Smells Like My Orgasm Candle” with her son Moses gives fresh meaning to Come on Baby Light My Fire…

+ The most useful thing I found on the Internet this week was an article in Popular Mechanics on how to safely topple a statue…

+ Ismail Muhammad writing in Paris Review on John Coltrane’s “Alabama”: “Coltrane’s playing assumes the qualities of the human voice, sounding almost like a wail or moan, mourning violence that is looming, that is past, that is atmospheric, that will happen again and again and again.”

+ RIP Ian Holm, whose greatest role may have been as Bernard Samson, in Len Deighton’s Game, Set and Match, nearly as good, if not better than, Alec Guinness’s George Smiley…(You can watch a fairly well-preserved version on YouTube.)

+ Joyous Juneteenth news: A recording of a Thelonious Monk concert at a California high school in 1968—organized by a 16-year old student named Danny Scher  at Palo Alto High and captured on tape by the school’s janitor—will be released in July.

+ John Edwin Mason: “Mingus’s ‘Freedom’ opens with what sounds like the moans of a chain gang & the crack of the overseer’s whip. It erupts into a swinging cacophonous section that suggests the hopeful beginnings of a revolution, before it subsides into a blues. `No freedom for me.’”

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology
John Bellamy Foster
(Monthly Review Press)

Who Killed Berta Caceres?: Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet
Nina Lakhani
(Verso)

The Art of Her Deal: the Untold Story of Melania Trump
Mary Jordan
(Simon & Schuster)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

Recognition: Music for a Silent Film
Sara Serpa
(Biophilia)

Go-Go Penguin
Go-Go Penguin
(Blue Note)

Alive in the Wilderness
Endless Field
(Biophilia)

A Reservoir of Underlying Grievances

“Disorder did not erupt as a result of a single ‘triggering’ or ‘precipitating’ incident. Instead, it was generated out of an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a reservoir of underlying grievances. At some point in the mounting tension, a further incident –in itself often routine or trivial — became the breaking point and the tension spilled over into violence. ‘Prior’ incidents, which increased tensions and ultimately led to violence, were police actions in almost half the cases; police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.” (Kerner Commission Report on Civil Disorders, 1968.)