Fatal police shooting of autistic Palestinian sparks outrage

The uproar over the fatal shooting of an autistic Palestinian man by Israeli police has drawn parallels with anti-police brutality protests in the US. Israeli PM Netanyahu has broken his silence to say he's "sorry."


Almost every morning, Iyad Halak walked through the small alleyways of East Jerusalem's Old City to the Elwyn El Quds Center — a school for people with special needs. He was a trainee at the institute's kitchen, aspiring to become a chef's assistant. For the 32-year old man with severe autism, walking on his own was important for him to feel independent, his family says. But on the final Saturday of May, it all came to a sudden end.

Shortly before 8 a.m., Israeli police released a statement that a suspect was "neutralized' in the area of Lion's Gate, a description usually used by Israeli security forces to describe the death of a suspect.

The statement added that officers "spotted a suspect with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol." The border police officers "chased after him on foot" after they claimed he failed to obey orders to stop, and opened fire.

One of Halak's teachers, who was nearby, told an Israeli TV channel later that she had tried to alert the officers in Hebrew that he was disabled — but to no avail. Iyad Halak was shot dead behind a garbage bin, where he had apparently sought shelter.

Police later said no weapon was found.

The details of how the fatal shooting happened are now part of an ongoing investigation by Israel's Justice Ministry, according to a police spokesperson. Two border police officers have been placed "off duty."

The fatal Israeli police shooting of Iyad Halak has sparked protests across several cities, including in Haifa, Israel

'Seems very easy for these people to kill'

Days after the deadly incident, staff from the Elwyn El Quds Center are still in shock and grief. "It broke our hearts," says Diaa Seider, a social worker and one of Halak's caregivers.

"For an autistic person like Iyad, it is not easy to deal with people or any new situation, he only dealt with people he knew and trusted. It would be difficult for anybody on the street who tried to contact him."

Imad Muna, a parent who accompanies his daughter every morning to the center, says: "It seems very easy for these people to kill, it's frightening. It is easy to kill a Palestinian."

While people in occupied east Jerusalem have grown accustomed to news of police violence, many were shocked by how an innocent person with disabilities was killed. Some see it as a more casual decision for Israeli forces to eventually use lethal force when dealing with Palestinian suspects.

The incident has drawn comparisons to the death of George Floyd in the US and to protests against police brutality. A series of small protests demanding justice were held by Palestinians in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, and in Jerusalem — as well as by some Israelis in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and other cities. Some protesters held photos of Iyad Halak and George Floyd, and signs reading "Palestinian Lives Matter" in reference to the "Black Lives Matter" movement in the US.

Halak's death evoked the longstanding criticism by Palestinian and Israeli Human Rights organizations of excessive use of force by Israeli security towards Palestinians and lack of accountability.

Read more: Palestinians, Israelis protest against Israel's decision to annex parts of the West Bank


Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu broke his silence a week after Halak's death

Netanyahu: From silence to 'sorry'

The reactions from Israeli commentators and politicians carried rare expressions of sorrow by some. "We are really sorry about the incident," said Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who is also the "alternate" prime minister, during a cabinet meeting the day after the shooting. "We share in the family's grief," he added.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained silent until the following week, saying he was "truly sorry."
"What happened with Iyad Halak is a tragedy," Netanyahu said during his cabinet meeting Sunday. "This was a man with a disability — autism, who was suspected — we know without justification — of being a militant in a highly sensitive area."

Israel's Public Security Minister Amir Ohana has promised an investigation and vowed to introduce new policing guidelines to better identify individuals with disabilities. But he also said police officers were often required to make "fateful decisions in seconds" in situations where there is "constant danger to their lives." In recent years, lone Palestinian attackers have carried out a series of stabbings and shootings in the Old City.


Iyad Halak's parents (center and right) say the pain of losing their son is indescribable

A devasted family

Throughout the past week, the family received condolences at their home in a residential neighborhood of East Jerusalem. But for Halak's father, nothing will bring back his son.

"He lived [cherished] to go to that center," says Iyad's father, Kheiri Halak, adding how important it was for his son to go there on his own for the past six years. "In the beginning, his teacher accompanied him for a month and taught him the way," Halak recalls. Iyad's teacher also explained to him that there could be checkpoints and border police forces along the way.

Israeli security forces are usually present around the area of Lion's Gate; it is one of the main pathways that lead to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. "It was all ok, until now," says Kheiri, as he struggles to speak about his son.

"Iyad was 32 years old, but he can't be independent, he is like a boy who is 8 years old." The family's pain, he adds, is indescribable knowing that Iyad was shot by police over nothing.

At the Elwyn El Quds Center in the Old City, caregivers, students and parents are now facing the question of how to keep their loved ones safe in the future. Most do not count on the police for protection.

Imad Muna, a father, says he will stop letting his 21-year old daughter walk the last few hundred meters on her own.

"I wanted to give her some independence and watched her walking from afar," he says. "But since this happened I won't do that again for a while I will walk her to the door."


AUDIOS AND VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC

Palestinians in Jericho on edge over Israeli annexation

Date 08.06.2020
Author Tania Kraemer
Related Subjects Israel, Palestine, Fatah
Keywords Israel, Palestine, police shooting, Middle East, Iyad Halak

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3dPo2

From Black Lives Matter to the climate crisis: Banksy's political artworks

Elusive UK artist Banksy's new painting honors the Black Lives Matter movement. Here are more of his works commenting on the state of the world.

A statement on systemic racism
A vigil candle sets fire to the US flag: Banksy has revealed on Instagram a new painting commenting on George Floyd's killing and honoring the Black Lives Matter movement. "People of color are being failed by the system. The white system," the artist wrote. "This is a white problem. And if white people don't fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in," he added.  MORE PHOTOS 12345678910111213

Black Lives Matter activists were perfectly positioned to expose Trump

June 8, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon- Commentary

“Noobs are forever.” That’s what my partner jokingly said to me this weekend, after the two of us attended the strikingly huge Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Philadelphia on Saturday.

We were talking about the phalanxes of newcomers to the movement — often identifiable by their well-meaning but tone deaf signs — who had joined with more seasoned BLM protesters who have been at this for years. We’d both been to BLM protests before, most notably an enormous one in New York in 2014, after an NYPD officer choked Eric Garner to death. But there’s no question that something has shifted, and lots of people who had previously stayed out of the movement now felt compelled to pick up signs and march in the streets against police brutality.





The result is not just that protests seem bigger, but almost more numerous, spreading out not just to every large city but also the suburbs and small towns of America. (The Texas town where I went to high school, which has a population of 6,000, saw a protest on Saturday that drew hundreds of attendees.) There have been many and varied protest movements in the era of Donald Trump, with some — like the Women’s March or the climate strikes — being more successful than others. But BLM seems to be rising above, becoming the protest movement that is doing the best at harnessing the larger anger out there about Trump and his supporters and enablers.
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Black Lives Matter is capturing those who have just woken up and, more than any other progressive movement, is turning that noob energy into action.







After spending a lot of time in the quiet reflection that marching while people chant around you offers, I have a theory about why this happened: BLM, more than any other progressive movement in this country, represents an understanding of the democratic crisis in this nation. Activists against police brutality saw firsthand how the forces of authoritarianism organized themselves in a way to gut democracy from the inside out. They were fighting that fight while much of the country lived in blissful ignorance under Barack Obama. BLM has the tools to lead the rest of the country in the fight to save democracy — or, honestly, to restore it — before Trump annihilates it completely.

Even before Trump, BLM activists have been fighting against the efforts of authoritarians to amass power that is outside the grip of democratic control, with police departments as the instrument. Aided by powerful police unions, police have become an autonomous social institution that holds city, county and state governments in its thrall. Police departments remain largely unaccountable to the forces of democracy. Even Democratic mayors have succumbed to the same poisonous push to redirect more taxpayer funds away from education and social services and towards the vampiric police departments that wield ever more authoritarian power over people’s lives, especially people of color.

As the public has seen in recent weeks, and as BLM has long understood, when the cops decide to start cracking skulls, those Democratic mayors may protest but often have little power to rein them in.




This increasing police power exemplifies what Trumpism is all about, which is making sure that the power of white supremacy and unchecked capitalism are outside the reach of democratic reforms. To say that the police are a fascistic organization no doubt sounded like hyperbole to a lot of people during the Obama administration. Now it’s becoming clear that it’s just a fact.

Under the Obama administration, BLM had made some progress toward establishing some democratic control over police power. The protests that grew out of Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere successfully raised public awareness of police brutality and created pressure on Democratic officials to act. While that progress was slow-moving, BLM had persuaded the Obama administration to direct the Department of Justice towards holding local police departments accountable, a decision the Trump administration, to no one’s surprise, has rolled back.

It’s safe to say that Trump’s election was, in no small part, fueled by a panicked reaction from right-wing America toward Black Lives Matter. To put it bluntly, Republican voters saw that BLM activists were successful at harnessing the power of democracy to push for greater racial equality and a fairer justice system. Given the stark choice between defending democracy or defending white supremacy, Republican voters went with the latter, in the form of the Great Orange Nemesis in the White House, who hasn’t been exactly subtle about his fascist yearnings.




There’s a famous quote from George Orwell’s “1984,” a book that flew off the shelves after Trump was elected: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

(The quote isn’t actually a genuine prediction from Orwell, as it’s often depicted, but a declaration by O’Brien, an official of the totalitarian government who functions as the mouthpiece for the aspirations of authoritarians.)




O’Brien’s metaphor became almost literally manifested in the image that kicked off what has now been two weeks of expanding protests: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, squeezing the life out of him while a crowd of ordinary citizens, desperate but powerless, pleads with Chauvin to stop.

A novelist honestly couldn’t come up with a more apt metaphor for the moment, when the majority of Americans oppose Trump and Trumpism, but have largely felt powerless to stop the march of authoritarianism in our country.

Yet instead of giving up and giving in, people are hitting the streets, determined to fight back. All credit for that goes to Black Lives Matter, a grassroots movement that never underestimated the power of authoritarianism.




“Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system,” civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander wrote in a powerful New York Times op-ed on Monday. “Our nation suddenly caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror and people of all races poured into the streets to say ‘no more.'”

Not to be overly optimistic, but — it just might be working. Police freaked out and started assaulting peaceful protesters in city after city, exposing exactly what BLM activists have been saying for years, that police function more like an occupying army than like a law enforcement organization accountable to democratic rule. Right-wing vigilantes have attacked protesters in some places as well, which is telling.

People who are not ordinarily “political” are making a direct connection between police and vigilante authoritarianism and Trump’s efforts to gut democracy. This realization has been aided by Trump’s public longing for violent repression and his orders to tear-gas a peaceful crowd to clear the way for a meaningless photo-op. His poll numbers are falling, and even though his strategy all along has been to win another election without winning the popular vote, there’s an increasing chance that he can’t win in November even with vigorous voter suppression.

Defeating not just Trump but Trumpism required a mass movement of people, including lots of “noobs,” gathered under one banner. BLM that was able to step forward and meet the moment. What’s happening now is a neat illustration of the aphorism that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.




It’s not happenstance that Black Lives Matter became the vehicle for this larger anti-Trump movement. That’s a direct result of activists putting in the hard work for years: When the right moment came along, they were ready.

Due to Trump’s maskless visit, medical supplier in Maine forced to toss out badly-needed swabs

on June 8, 2020 By Common Dreams


“Thanks, President Jackass.”

Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, Maine will have to discard an untold number of medical swabs that were manufactured while President Donald Trump toured its facility on Friday, after the president flouted basic sanitary precautions during his visit to the company’s production line.

As with most of the president’s public appearances during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump did not wear a face mask or any other personal protective equipment during his visit to Puritan, which is one of just two companies in the world that make the cotton swabs needed for coronavirus tests.

In contrast with Trump, the Puritan employees seen in photos and footage of the event wore masks, gloves, goggles, and plastic coverings over their shoes.

At one point during the visit, the president put his arm around an employee before saying, “I’m not supposed to do that.”

Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat who is challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for her Senate seat, slammed the president for coming to Maine for a photo-op at all in the middle of a public health and economic crisis as well as unrest over racial injustice—especially considering his visit may have worsened swab shortages across the country.

President Trump shouldn’t have come to Maine for a photo op, but that’s exactly what he did. Now Maine frontline workers have to throw away crucial testing supplies that states across the country desperately need as they combat coronavirus. #mepolitics https://t.co/wFCEUs6mwD
— Sara Gideon (@SaraGideon) June 5, 2020

Former Senate candidate Ross LaJeunesse was more succinct in a tweet directed at the president:
thanks, president jackass https://t.co/X4vyVzJzff
— Ross LaJeunesse (@RossforMaine) June 6, 2020

Slow production of swabs has been identified as a key reason behind the U.S. government’s delays in manufacturing coronavirus tests. As NPR reported last month, Trump did not invoke the Defense Production Act to order scaled-up swab production at Puritan until April 19, more than a month after state officials including Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo raised alarm over the lack of swabs.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in mid-April that weeks prior, he had written to the president and urged him to “mobilize the incredible supply chains that the Department of Defense has and to ask them to convert some of their production from other hardware and software to swabs and contact vials and machines that can do analysis. And he did not agree with that assessment, and we lost weeks, frankly.”

Last month, the Portland Press Herald reported that 61% of Maine’s nursing homes, where many of its coronavirus cases have been confirmed, had seven or fewer swabs on hand to conduct tests. Nearly a third of the nursing homes had no swabs.

Historian: Robert E. Lee wasn’t a hero — he was a traitor


June 8, 2020 By History News Network


There’s a fabled moment from the Battle of Fredericksburg, a gruesome Civil War battle that extinguished several thousand lives, when the commander of a rebel army looked down upon the carnage and said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” That commander, of course, was Robert Lee.

The moment is the stuff of legend. It captures Lee’s humility (he won the battle), compassion, and thoughtfulness. It casts Lee as a reluctant leader who had no choice but to serve his people, and who might have had second thoughts about doing so given the conflict’s tremendous amount of violence and bloodshed. The quote, however, is misleading. Lee was no hero. He was neither noble nor wise. Lee was a traitor who killed United States soldiers, fought for human enslavement, vastly increased the bloodshed of the Civil War, and made embarrassing tactical mistakes.

      THE BASE OF THE LEE STATUE AFTER THE BLM PROTESTS THIS WEEKEND

1) Lee was a traitor

Robert Lee was the nation’s most notable traitor since Benedict Arnold. Like Arnold, Robert Lee had an exceptional record of military service before his downfall. Lee was a hero of the Mexican-American War and played a crucial role in its final, decisive campaign to take Mexico City. But when he was called on to serve again—this time against violent rebels who were occupying and attacking federal forts—Lee failed to honor his oath to defend the Constitution. He resigned from the United States Army and quickly accepted a commission in a rebel army based in Virginia. Lee could have chosen to abstain from the conflict—it was reasonable to have qualms about leading United States soldiers against American citizens—but he did not abstain. He turned against his nation and took up arms against it. How could Lee, a lifelong soldier of the United States, so quickly betray it?

2) Lee fought for slavery

Robert Lee understood as well as any other contemporary the issue that ignited the secession crisis. Wealthy white plantation owners in the South had spent the better part of a century slowly taking over the United States government. With each new political victory, they expanded human enslavement further and further until the oligarchs of the Cotton South were the wealthiest single group of people on the planet. It was a kind of power and wealth they were willing to kill and die to protect.

According to Northwest Ordinance of 1787, new lands and territories in the West were supposed to be free while largescale human enslavement remained in the South. In 1820, however, Southerners amended that rule by dividing new lands between a free North and slave South. In the 1830s, Southerners used their inflated representation in Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act, an obvious and ultimately successful effort to take fertile Indian land and transform it into productive slave plantations. The Compromise of 1850 forced Northern states to enforce fugitive slave laws, a blatant assault on the rights of Northern states to legislate against human enslavement. In 1854, Southerners moved the goal posts again and decided that residents in new states and territories could decide the slave question for themselves. Violent clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces soon followed in Kansas.

The South’s plans to expand slavery reached a crescendo in 1857 with the Dred Scott Decision. In the decision, the Supreme Court ruled that since the Constitution protected property and enslaved humans were considered property, territories could not make laws against slavery.

The details are less important than the overall trend: in the seventy years after the Constitution was written, a small group of Southerner oligarchs took over the government and transformed the United States into a pro-slavery nation. As one young politician put it, “We shall lie pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.”

The ensuing fury over the expansion of slave power in the federal government prompted a historic backlash. Previously divided Americans rallied behind a new political party and the young, brilliant politician quoted above. Abraham Lincoln presented a clear message: should he be elected, the federal government would no longer legislate in favor of enslavement, and would work to stop its expansion into the West

Lincoln’s election in 1860 was not simply a single political loss for slaveholding Southerners. It represented a collapse of their minority political dominance of the federal government, without which they could not maintain and expand slavery to full extent of their desires. Foiled by democracy, Southern oligarchs disavowed it and declared independence from the United States.

Their rebel organization—the “Confederate States of America,” a cheap imitation of the United States government stripped of its language of equality, freedom, and justice—did not care much for states’ rights. States in the Confederacy forfeited both the right to secede from it and the right to limit or eliminate slavery. What really motivated the new CSA was not only obvious, but repeatedly declared. In their articles of secession, which explained their motivations for violent insurrection, rebel leaders in the South cited slavery. Georgia cited slavery. Mississippi cited slavery. South Carolina cited the “increasing hostility… to the institution of slavery.” Texas cited slavery. Virginia cited the “oppression of… Southern slaveholding.” Alexander Stephens, the second in command of the rebel cabal, declared in his Cornerstone Speech that they had launched the entire enterprise because the Founding Fathers had made a mistake in declaring that all people are made equal. “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea,” he said. People of African descent were supposed to be enslaved.

Despite making a few cryptic comments about how he refused to fight his fellow Virginians, Lee would have understood exactly what the war was about and how it served wealthy white men like him. Lee was a slave-holding aristocrat with ties to George Washington. He was the face of Southern gentry, a kind of pseudo royalty in a land that had theoretically extinguished it. The triumph of the South would have meant the triumph not only of Lee, but everything he represented: that tiny, self-defined perfect portion at the top of a violently unequal pyramid.

Yet even if Lee disavowed slavery and fought only for some vague notion of states’ rights, would that have made a difference? War is a political tool that serves a political purpose. If the purpose of the rebellion was to create a powerful, endless slave empire (it was), then do the opinions of its soldiers and commanders really matter? Each victory of Lee’s, each rebel bullet that felled a United States soldier, advanced the political cause of the CSA. Had Lee somehow defeated the United States Army, marched to the capital, killed the President, and won independence for the South, the result would have been the preservation of slavery in North America. There would have been no Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln would not have overseen the emancipation of four million people, the largest single emancipation event in human history. Lee’s successes were the successes of the Slave South, personal feelings be damned.

If you need more evidence of Lee’s personal feelings on enslavement, however, note that when his rebel forces marched into Pennsylvania, they kidnapped black people and sold them into bondage. Contemporaries referred to these kidnappings as “slave hunts.”




3) Lee was not a military genius

Despite a mythology around Lee being the Napoleon of America, Lee blundered his way to a surrender. To be fair to Lee, his early victories were impressive. Lee earned command of the largest rebel army in 1862 and quickly put his experience to work. His interventions at the end of the Peninsula Campaign and his aggressive flanking movements at the Battle of Second Manassas ensured that the United States Army could not achieve a quick victory over rebel forces. At Fredericksburg, Lee also demonstrated a keen understanding of how to establish a strong defensive position, and foiled another US offensive. Lee’s shining moment came later at Chancellorsville, when he again maneuvered his smaller but more mobile force to flank and rout the US Army. Yet Lee’s broader strategy was deeply flawed, and ended with his most infamous blunder.

Lee should have recognized that the objective of his army was not to defeat the larger United States forces that he faced. Rather, he needed to simply prevent those armies from taking Richmond, the city that housed the rebel government, until the United States government lost support for the war and sued for peace. New military technology that greatly favored defenders would have bolstered this strategy. But Lee opted for a different strategy, taking his army and striking northward into areas that the United States government still controlled.

It’s tempting to think that Lee’s strategy was sound and could have delivered a decisive blow, but it’s far more likely that he was starting to believe that his men truly were superior and that his army was essentially unstoppable, as many supporters in the South were openly speculating. Even the Battle of Antietam, an aggressive invasion that ended in a terrible rebel loss, did not dissuade Lee from this thinking. After Chancellorsville, Lee marched his army into Pennsylvania where he ran into the United States Army at the town of Gettysburg. After a few days of fighting into a stalemate, Lee decided against withdrawing as he had done at Antietam. Instead, he doubled down on his aggressive strategy and ordered a direct assault over open terrain straight into the heart of the US Army’s lines. The result—several thousand casualties—was devastating. It was a crushing blow and a terrible military decision from which Lee and his men never fully recovered. The loss also bolstered support for the war effort and Lincoln in the North, almost guaranteeing that the United States would not stop short of a total victory.

4) Lee, not Grant, was responsible for the staggering losses of the Civil War

The Civil War dragged on even after Lee’s horrific loss at Gettysburg. Even after it was clear that the rebels were in trouble, with white women in the South rioting for bread, conscripted men deserting, and thousands of enslaved people self-emancipating, Lee and his men dug in and continued to fight. Only after going back on the defensive—that is, digging in on hills and building massive networks of trenches and fortifications—did Lee start to achieve lopsided results again. Civil War enthusiasts often point to the resulting carnage as evidence that Ulysses S. Grant, the new General of the entire United States Army, did not care about the terrible losses and should be criticized for how he threw wave after wave of men at entrenched rebel positions. In reality, however, the situation was completely of Lee’s making.

As Grant doggedly pursued Lee’s forces, he did his best to flush Lee into an open field for a decisive battle, like at Antietam or Gettysburg. Lee refused to accept, however, knowing that a crushing loss likely awaited him. Lee also could have abandoned the area around the rebel capital and allowed the United States to achieve a moral and political victory. Both of these options would have drastically reduced the loss of life on both sides and ended the war earlier. Lee chose neither option. Rather, he maneuvered his forces in such a way that they always had a secure, defensive position, daring Grant to sacrifice more men. When Grant did this and overran the rebel positions, Lee pulled back and repeated the process. The result was the most gruesome period of the war. It was not uncommon for dead bodies to be stacked upon each other after waves of attacks and counterattacks clashed at the same position. At the Wilderness, the forest caught fire, trapping wounded men from both sides in the inferno. Their comrades listened helplessly to the screams as the men in the forest burned alive.

To his credit, when the war was truly lost—the rebel capital sacked (burned by retreating rebel soldiers), the infrastructure of the South in ruins, and Lee’s army chased one hundred miles into the west—Lee chose not to engage in guerrilla warfare and surrendered, though the decision was likely based on image more than a concern for human life. He showed up to Grant’s camp, after all, dressed in a new uniform and riding a white horse. So ended the military career of Robert Lee, a man responsible for the death of more United States soldiers than any single commander in history.

***

So why, after all of this, do some Americans still celebrate Lee? Well, many white Southerners refused to accept the outcome of the Civil War. After years of terrorism, local political coups, wholesale massacres, and lynchings, white Southerners were able to retake power in the South. While they erected monuments to war criminals like Nathan Bedford Forrest to send a clear message to would-be civil rights activists, white southerners also needed someone who represented the “greatness” of the Old South, someone of whom they could be proud. They turned to Robert Lee.

But Lee was not great. In fact, he represented the very worst of the Old South, a man willing to betray his republic and slaughter his countrymen to preserve a violent, unfree society that elevated him and just a handful of others like him. He was the gentle face of a brutal system. And for all his acclaim, Lee was not a military genius. He was a flawed aristocrat who fell in love with the mythology of his own invincibility.

After the war, Robert Lee lived out the remainder of his days. He was neither arrested nor hanged. But it is up to us how we remember him. Memory is often the trial that evil men never received. Perhaps we should take a page from the United States Army of the Civil War, which needed to decide what to do with the slave plantation it seized from the Lee family. Ultimately, the Army decided to use Lee’s land as a cemetery, transforming the land from a site of human enslavement to a final resting place for United States soldiers who died to make men free. You can visit that cemetery today. After all, who hasn’t heard of Arlington Cemetery?

Michael McLean is a PhD candidate in history at Boston College.

SMACK DOWN
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swats down Kayleigh McEnany with a single tweet after being derided as a ‘Biden advisor’

 June 8, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


Republicans are keen to tie Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to former Vice President Joe Biden, believing that her Democratic Socialist platform will be a liability for the Democratic Party with moderate voters in November.

On Monday, during a White House briefing, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany attempted this in an unsubtle manner:
>@PressSec from the podium: “Biden adviser Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.” cc @AOC
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 8, 2020

McEnany is referring to the fact that Ocasio-Cortez is one of a number of people who sits on a panel advising the Biden campaign on climate change policy. Biden hasn’t endorsed Ocasio-Cortez’s entire Green New Deal proposal, but has hailed it as a positive step and adopted some elements from it.

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t impressed with McEnany’s attempt to use her name for political points — and weighed in on the title she gave her.

.@PressSec wouldn’t be the first person to mistake a women of color for having a lower position or title than she does, but Kayleigh – in case you haven’t picked up a newspaper in two years, I’m a Congresswoman.  

https://t.co/3FRHo7dpTL — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 8, 2020

‘Tinyman Square’: Internet suggests names for new fencing complex around White House

June 8, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Monday, anti-Trump conservative and ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson posed Twitter a question:

We need a name for the newly expanded White House Fence complex.
FOB Pussygrabber?
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 8, 2020

Plenty of people were quick to respond with suggestions of their own.


Tinyman Square
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 8, 2020
The Assholamo
— Marco Murder Hornet Paradiso (@ParadisoReale) June 8, 2020

Alcatrash
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 8, 2020

How about the Turdcage?
— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) June 8, 2020


Fort BoneSpurs
— RenoSparksCow (@RenoCow) June 8, 2020


Fort Coward!
— Mary (@onward22) June 8, 2020


The Great Wall of Narcissism
— Tom (@bluesfn2017) June 8, 2020

AREA 45
— Mickey Hines (@mickhines) June 8, 2020

How about the "Inferiority Complex"?
— Louise (@Louise44301601) June 8, 2020

Chicken Coup sums up situation AND has a nice “ring” to it.
— joyce stoer cordi (@joycecordi) June 8, 2020

The Golden-Shower Arches
— The Notorious ROY G BIV (@robwoodyard1) June 8, 2020

Shitmo
— CHARI

 

(@charito_lee) June 8, 2020

The Whiter House
— Ray the K (@raykeck14) June 8, 2020

Pre-Leavenworth.
— @JOURNOPIXS

(@journopixs) June 8, 2020


Furor Bunker
— Sid MacLeod- NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!

 

(@sidmacleod) June 8, 2020
pic.twitter.com/Zx1A1pzBqm
— Cheecierom@romano37 (@cheecierom) June 8, 2020

Trump ridiculed for meltdown on Gen. Colin Powell after CNN appearance: ‘Cadet Bone Spurs says what?’

June 7, 2020 By Tom Boggioni- Commentary


As might be expected, Donald Trump did not care for the comments made by former Secretary of State Colin Powell on CNN Sunday morning — including his endorsement of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States, so the president lashed out on Twitter.

With Powell calling out the president for his treatment of Gold Star families and accusing the president of being a “liar” Trump tweeted back,”Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden. Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction?” They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!”

That received quite a bit of pushback from commenters with one bluntly stating, “You couldn’t shine Powell’s shoes.”


You can see some other responses below:
You couldn’t shine Powell’s shoes.
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) June 7, 2020


Whenever Trump attacks men with honour and integrity. Accomplished military officers that served their country honourable, it’s best to let the picture speak. pic.twitter.com/8MKpgl9RFp
— Chidi®️ (@ChidiNwatu) June 7, 2020

Admit it Donald, you just shit your pants, didn’t you?
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) June 7, 2020

At least he went to war with another country, rather than his own.
— Parody Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson_MP) June 7, 2020

Colin Powell is more patriotic and more everything than you’ll ever be.
And the way you keep attacking generals and veterans? Keep it up. Americans will catch up.
You are digging your own political grave, and we love to see it. pic.twitter.com/KeCOainfkU
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) June 7, 2020


Powell served in Vietnam (multiple tours) inc, and received countless medals, inc for saving 3 fellow soldiers from a helicopter crash.
You claimed you couldn’t fight the Commies bc your feet had a boo-boo.
— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) June 7, 2020

You have to talk louder, #BunkerBoy. We can’t hear you over the massive sound of Republicans changing their votes to support @JoeBiden.#GOPExit
— Liddle’ Savage (@littledeekay) June 7, 2020

It must be KILLING @realDonaldTrump that for 12 days now, the SIZE of the CROWDS of Peaceful Protesters have simply DWARFED his PITIFUL Inauguration#SizeMatters

— The Resistor Sister 

(@the_resistor) June 7, 2020


Right on schedule. pic.twitter.com/xY5XjS65Wk
— D Villella

(@dvillella) June 7, 2020


pic.twitter.com/X7kEX0evsr
— Mandrake (@readamagazeen) June 7, 2020

The only people supporting you now is Diamond and Silk, Scott Baio, Tomi Lahren, a Swastika, and a bag of shit. Fuck off impeached asshole.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) June 7, 2020

I’ve lost track but did Trump publicly bash the whites Generals? In just asking. He all over Collin Powell today
— NellyO3 (@DragonLuva3) June 7, 2020

Cadet Bone Spurs says what?
GTFOH pic.twitter.com/EjiUqEIqoB
— Louise (@clwtweet) June 7, 2020


Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “If you want to get into a debate with a 4 star general, I think that’s highly inappropriate”
— The Hardy Report Podcast (@EdwardTHardy) June 7, 202

Trump has now had over 10 US Generals/Admirals attack him. Joe Biden is the US Military’s top choice!
— Black Lives Matter (@HKrassenstein) June 7, 2020

A 5 times draft dodger calls a respected general who put his life on the line for our country “overrated”. SHAME ON YOU DONALD! #TrumpOrAmerica
— Republicans for Joe Biden (@RepsForBiden) June 7, 2020

Trump is a ‘downright moron’ who appears ‘too stupid to be president’: ex-Republican economist


 June 8, 2020
By Brad Reed 

President Donald Trump has described himself as a “very stable genius,” but economist and former Republican Bruce Bartlett believes that he’s anything but.

Writing on Twitter, Bartlett promotes a new piece he’s written for The New Republic that he says deeply examines the question of whether Trump is “too stupid to be president.”

In the piece itself, Bartlett notes that tales of Trump’s ignorance on policy matters have become legendary, and he says there is no evidence that things have improved over the last three-and-a-half years.

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“From the earliest days of his administration, it has been obvious to everyone who has come in direct contact with him that Trump knows very, very little about any policy issue or even how the federal government operates. Among those most alarmed by Trump’s ignorance and incompetence were those in the military and intelligence community,” he writes. “After a National Security Council meeting on January 19, 2018, Defense Secretary James Mattis told aides that Trump had the understanding of ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.'”

Bartlett then runs through a litany of both Trump advisers and foreign diplomats marveling at his colossal ignorance, including some aides who believe Trump doesn’t even understand that some foreign countries are in different time zones.

“With the Trump presidency, H.L. Mencken’s 1920 prediction that one day the White House ‘will be adorned by a downright moron’ has now come true,” Bartlett concludes.

Read the whole article here https://newrepublic.com/article/158069/donald-trump-not-smart-polls

Trump thinks he can restart the rallies because BLM protests inoculate him against criticism

June 8, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


According to President Donald Trump’s campaign, the outbreak of outdoor public protests mean he can start holding rallies in large arenas again.

Politico reported Monday that the president will restart his “Make America Great Again” rallies in two weeks even if his older rally attendees run the risk of catching the coronavirus.

“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump. The great American comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”

He did not say whether the campaign would be requiring masks, temperature checks or masks to attend.

There are still states that are limiting gatherings, so it’s unclear where Trump will try to hold his rallies. At the same time, there are states that aren’t restricting crowds, like Texas, and are experiencing an uptick in cases and hospitalizations.

Trump is probably most needed in Colorado and Arizona for Sens. Martha McSally and Cory Gardner, both of whom are seen as likely losses for the GOP in November. While Arizona is open to anyone, Colorado’s order encourages outdoor recreation while prohibiting gatherings in groups larger than 10.

Florida has similarly reopened everything after refusing to lockdown. Still, however, Florida is restricting gatherings of 50 people or more.

The swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania limit large gatherings as well that would stop a large Trump rally. In Ohio it is 10 or more and in Pennsylvania, depending on the county, it is 250 or more banned. Michigan won’t allow crowds of over 100 people.

It’s unknown if Trump will do his rally outside at a field or place where people can social distance or if he’ll pack people into smaller locations.