Japan's NHK removes video about U.S. protests after online outrage

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese public broadcaster NHK apologised on Tuesday and deleted from its Twitter account an animated video aimed at explaining the background behind U.S. protests for police reform, but which instead sparked online outrage for its depiction of African Americans.

Women gesture during a protest outside of City Hall against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd in Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 6, 2020. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

The 1:21 minute clip, which NHK had also broadcast on its Sunday evening programme “Sekai no Ima” (“The World Now”), featured a tough-talking black narrator citing the wealth disparity between black and white Americans and the economic impact from the coronavirus.

But it made no mention of police brutality or the death of George Floyd, a black man who died on May 25 after being pinned by the neck for nine minutes by a white officer’s knee, which sparked the latest protests.

In the clip, the narrator’s bodybuilder-like muscles were bursting out of a white tank top, while other African-American characters included a man with an afro and mutton chop sideburns, and a muscular man in a sleeveless purple suit, fedora-style hat and sandals strumming a guitar.

“While we understand @NHK’s intent to address complex racial issues in the United States, it’s unfortunate that more thought and care didn’t go into this video,” the interim head of the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, Joseph M. Young, said on Twitter. “The caricatures used are offensive and insensitive.”


NHK said it had decided to take down the tweet after receiving a lot of criticism and that it had posted the video with a “lack of consideration”.

“We apologise to those who were made to feel uncomfortable,” the broadcaster said on Twitter.

The video had been viewed more than one million times as of midday Tuesday on the programme’s @nhk_sekaima Twitter account.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka retweeted the video with a GIF expressing bewilderment.

“This is awful. I’m embarrassed to say I’m Japanese when I see this,” tweeted another user, @emiliharatatani. “Do you know what is happening in America now?!”


@CheetosOnToast called it “racist” and “discriminatory”.

Baye McNeil, a Japan-based African-American author and activist, said the clip showed the need for local broadcasters to educate themselves.

“Any child who looks at that video will walk away from it feeling, ‘Yeah, maybe these people have been treated unfairly ... but they’re big and awful and scary!’” he told Reuters before the video was removed. “How can they (NHK) think people are going to be sympathetic to the people being oppressed after watching that video?”


Reporting by Chris Gallagher and Chang-Ran Kim; Writing by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Lincoln Feast.

Philippines hesitates to boot US troops
Manila delays planned abrogation of US Visiting Forces Agreement as China ups strategic ante in nearby waters

By RICHARD JAVAD HEYDARIAN JUNE 3, 2020

US and Philippine troops arm and arm in a joint military exercise. Photo: AFP

MANILA – In a major policy reversal with sweeping strategic implications, the Philippine government suspended on Tuesday its earlier decision to abrogate its decades-long Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States.

“The abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement has been suspended upon the President’s [Rodrigo Duterte] instruction,” tweeted Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin without elaborating on the reason for the reversal.

In a formal letter to the US Embassy in Manila, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs vaguely mentioned “political and other developments in the region” as the basis for a six-month suspension of the impending abrogation of the vital defense agreement.

The suspension is extendable for another six months, meaning the VFA will likely remain in effect well into 2021, and with Duterte entering his final years in office, the agreement seems secure for the foreseeable future, analysts and observers say.

In a statement, the US Embassy welcomed the reversal and highlighted how “[o]ur long-standing alliance has benefited both countries, and we look forward to continued close security and defense cooperation with the Philippines.”

The VFA, negotiated soon after the closure of American military bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s, provides the legal framework for US soldiers to enter the Philippines.

It also provides the the legal framework for the Philippine-US defense alliance, enshrined in the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which at any given time sees US troops stationed in the country on a rotating basis, including in terrorism-prone southern regions.

US and Philippine Marines at the formal opening of annual Philippine-US Amphibious Landing Exercises at ex-US Subic naval base. Photo: AFP/Jay Directo

Without the VFA, the US would not be able to sustain its significant military presence in the Philippines, a turn that would have major ramifications for America’s strategic position in the Western Pacific, particularly vis-à-vis China.

It would also impact on joint military activities and exercises, of which nearly 300 were held last year, and effectively neuter the two countries’ longstanding alliance.

Since his election in mid-2016, the China-leaning Duterte has threatened to sever security cooperation with the US. His threat to cancel the VFA came in angry response in January to travel bans imposed by the US on Filipino officials involved in alleged rights abuses, including in prosecuting his drug war.


Experts and insiders believe Duterte’s reversal was likely motivated by China’s rising maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea, including in Philippine waters, as well as his government’s desperate need for sustained humanitarian assistance amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are reasons for the Philippines to be concerned. News reports suggest that China may soon move ahead with plan to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) across the South China Sea, including over islands, features and waters claimed by the Philippines.

For the past two decades, the VFA has been a linchpin of the Philippine-US alliance, facilitating large-scale entry of American troops for counter-terrorism and maritime security exercises, as well as billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance during major humanitarian crises.

The VFA allowed the Pentagon to deploy thousands of troops during the Haiyan super typhoon in 2013, which devastated much of the central Philippines, as well as US Special Forces and drones during the months-long siege of southern city of Marawi by Islamic State-backed militants in 2017.

During a high-profile Senate hearing earlier this year, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana underscored the centrality of the agreement to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations (HADR) since “the US forces are always there in times of calamities.”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (L) talks to US President Donald Trump (R) before the 31st ASEAN Summit, Manila, November 13, 2017. – Photo: AFP/Pool/Mark R Cristino

Duterte initiated the agreement’s abrogation on February 11 this year. Because it is a bilateral agreement, the two sides had 180 days to finalize the agreement’s cancellation in order to provide enough room for adjustments to the Pentagon.

The decision was unpopular among many Filipinos, who have favored strong security cooperation with the US to counterbalance China. Even Duterte’s allies in the Senate joined with the opposition earlier this year to challenging his unilateral nixing of the agreement without legislative concurrence.

In early March, veteran senators led by Senate President Vicente Sotto III asked the Philippine Supreme Court to “issue an order” to “refer [Duterte’s] Notice of Withdrawal to the Senate of the Philippines for its concurrence.” That legal challenge is still pending.

But the ongoing pandemic and China’s rising aggressiveness have seemingly forced Duterte’s hands.

Despite his rhetorical hostility towards the West, including the US, and cozy diplomatic relations with Beijing, Duterte has often shown strategic maturity vis-à-vis the perilous geopolitical environment in the region.

He has also been well-attuned to the sentiments of the powerful Philippine defense establishment, which has lobbied for robust security cooperation with the US, especially in these times of unprecedented strategic uncertainty.

In recent months, the Philippines has shown a willingness to highlight Chinese strategic adventurism.

For example, top Filipino military officials revealed to the media in April that a Chinese warship pointed a laser gun at a Philippine frigate in the Spratlys in February, while Filipino diplomats stood in solidarity with Hanoi in early April by criticizing China’s sinking of Vietnamese fishing vessels.

One of the Philippines’ leading concerns is China’s next move in the South China Sea, including the possible reclamation and militarization of the Manila-claimed Scarborough Shoal, as well as declaration of an ADIZ across the entire area.

China’s control of the shoal, situated within the Philippines’ EEZ is crucial for the ADIZ.

“[In the past] Beijing has been hesitant to declare the ADIZ in the South China Sea due to a number of technical, political, and diplomatic considerations,” an anonymous source in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently told the South China Sea Morning Post newspaper.

“But the most practical problem is that the PLA has in the past not had the capability to scramble its fighter jets to expel intrusive foreign aircraft in the South China Sea, which is several times the size of the East China Sea, and the cost to support the ADIZ would be huge.”

But Beijing could soon make the move since it has consolidated its strategic position across a sprawling network of airstrips and military facilities in the Spratlys and Paracels, which could now credibly support and sustain an ADIZ declaration, strategic analysts say.

“Recent satellite images show that the People’s Liberation Army has deployed KJ-500 airborne early-warning and control aircraft and KQ-200 anti-submarine patrol planes at Fiery Cross Reef,” Lu Li-Shih, a China military expert told regional media.

“Once the PLA’s fighter jets arrive they can join the early-warning and anti-submarine aircraft in conducting ADIZ patrol operations.”

Whether the US military is currently in a position to counter such a move is not immediately clear, considering certain of its aircraft carriers have been docked at home ports due to Covid-19 infections among personnel. But assured access to nearby Philippine bases, via the VFA, could tip the strategic balance enough to give Beijing second thoughts.

A Pipelineistan fable for our times
Ukraine was supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany; it didn't work out that way

By PEPE ESCOBAR JUNE 8, 2020


Once upon a time in Pipelineistan, tales of woe were the norm. Shattered dreams littered the chessboard – from IPI vs. TAPI in the AfPak realm to the neck-twisting Nabucco opera in Europe.

In sharp contrast, whenever China entered the picture, successful completion prevailed. Beijing financed a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, finished in 2009, and will profit from two spectacular Power of Siberia deals with Russia.

And then there’s Ukraine. Maidan was a project of the Barack Obama administration, featuring a sterling cast led by POTUS, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John McCain and last but not least, prime Kiev cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland.

Ukraine was also supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany, as well as other European destinations.

Well, it did not exactly play like that. Nord Stream was already operational. South Stream was Gazprom’s project to southeast Europe. Relentless pressure by the Obama administration derailed it. Yet that only worked to enable a resurrection: the already completed TurkStream, with gas starting to flow in January 2020.

The battlefield then changed to Nord Stream 2. This time relentless Donald Trump administration pressure did not derail it. On the contrary: it will be completed by the end of 2020.

Richard Grennel, the US ambassador to Germany, branded a “superstar” by President Trump, was furious. True to script, he threatened Nordstream 2 partners – ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall – with “new sanctions.”

Worse: he stressed that Germany “must stop feeding the beast at a time when it does not pay enough to NATO.”

“Feeding the beast” is not exactly subtle code for energy trade with Russia.

Peter Altmaier, German minister of economic affairs and energy, was not impressed. Berlin does not recognize any legality in extra-territorial sanctions.

Grennel, on top of it, is not exactly popular in Berlin. Diplomats popped the champagne when they knew he was going back home to become the head of US national intelligence.

Trump administration sanctions delayed Nordstream 2 for around one year, at best. What really matters is that in this interval Kiev had to sign a gas transit deal with Gazprom. What no one is talking about is that by 2025 no Russian gas will be transiting across Ukraine towards Europe.

So the whole Maidan project was in fact useless.

It’s a running joke in Brussels that the EU never had and will never have a unified energy policy towards Russia. The EU came up with a gas directive to force the ownership of Nord Stream 2 to be separated from the gas flowing through the pipeline. German courts applied their own “nein.”

Nord Stream 2 is a serious matter of national energy security for Germany. And that is enough to trump whatever Brussels may concoct.

And don’t forget Siberia

The moral of this fable is that now two key Pipelineistan nodes – Turk Stream and Nord Stream 2 – are established as umbilical steel cords linking Russia with two NATO allies.

And true to proverbial win-win scripts, now it’s also time for China to look into solidifying its European relations.

Last week, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese premier Li Keqiang had a video conference to discuss Covid-19 and China-EU economic policy.

That was a day after Merkel and President Xi had spoken, when they agreed that the China-EU summit in Leipzig on September 14 would have to be postponed.

This summit should be the climax of the German presidency of the EU, which starts on July 1. That’s when Germany would be able to present a unified policy towards China, uniting in theory the 27 EU members and not only the 17+1 from Central Europe and the Balkans – including 11 EU members – that already have a privileged relationship with Beijing and are on board for the Belt and Road Initiative.

In contrast with the Trump administration, Merkel does privilege a clear, comprehensive trade partnership with China – way beyond a mere photo op summit. Berlin is way more geoeconomically sophisticated than the vague “engagement and exigence” Paris approach.

Merkel as well as Xi are fully aware of the imminent fragmentation of the world economy post-Lockdown. Yet as much as Beijing is ready to abandon the global circulation strategy from which it has handsomely profited for the past two decades, the emphasis is also on refining very close trade relations with Europe.

Ray McGovern has concisely detailed the current state of US-Russia relations. The heart of the whole matter, from Moscow’s point of view, was summarized by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, an extremely able diplomat:

“We don’t believe the US in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever. So our own calculations and conclusions are less related to what America is doing …. We cherish our close and friendly relations with China. We do regard this as a comprehensive strategic partnership in different areas, and we intend to develop it further.”

It’s all here. Russia-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” steadily advancing. Including “Power of Siberia” Pipelineistan. Plus Pipelineistan linking two key NATO allies. Sanctions? What sanctions?

Indonesia tackles racism in ruling on blackouts

Court finds President Joko Widodo broke the law by shutting down the internet during anti-racism protests in Papua

By JOHN MCBETH JUNE 9, 2020

A Papuan student with a painted face attends a rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, on August 22, 2019. Photo: AFP/Andrew Gal/NurPhoto WEST PAPUAN FLAG REJECTED BY INDONESIA REPRESENTS THEIR FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE 

Jakarta’s Administrative Court, reputedly the most progressive branch of Indonesia’s much-maligned judicial system, may have broken new legal ground by ruling that the government acted illegally in shutting down the internet during anti-racism riots in Papua last year.

Legal reform advocate Dian Rosita says while the court stopped short of declaring the practice of internet blackouts unlawful, it was the first time human rights principles had been applied to an existing law, something she hopes will set a standard for other jurists to follow.

Live-streamed on June 3, the judgement said President Joko Widodo and then communications minister Rudiantara had violated the 1959 Emergency Law by imposing the internet blackout without proving during court hearings that a state of emergency was justified.

Although the law was passed long before the internet was conceived, it gives the government the power to take any actions it deems necessary to deal with an emergency situation affecting the country’s security.

Responding to a lawsuit brought by a coalition of civil society groups, the three administrative court judges, all women, ruled that any policy which limited the people’s right to information should be made in accordance with the law and not merely at the discretion of the government.

Among the plaintiffs was the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), which claimed in its submission that the government had only succeeded in sewing confusion by robbing journalists of the ability to verify what was happening in Papua.

Although Widodo promised in 2015 to lift the long-time blanket ban on foreign reporters entering Papua, that has never happened, mainly because of the prohibitive procedures laid down by security agencies to gain a travel permit.

The court found “bandwidth throttling” was used in West Papua and Papua provinces on August 19, 2019, and that authorities either blocked content or cut off internet access entirely in 42 cities and regencies between August 21 and September 4.

An Indonesian activist protests against the internet blackout in Papua and West Papua in August 2019. Photo: Facebook/JP/Seto Wardhana

The Information and Communications Ministry claimed to have blocked 713,166 internet links during the period of the riots which it claimed contained hoax messages about further racial incidentsin the East Java port city of Surabaya, where the trouble began.

Previously, in May, the Communications Ministry cut social media and instant messaging across Jakarta in an effort to head off the organization of violent protests against Widodo’s re-election, following a heated presidential race.

While the tactic appeared to achieve its purpose, it raised questions about the future implications for freedom of speech and raised the broader issue of how other governments in the region have been using partial blackouts as an authoritarian tool.

Internet research firm TOP10VPN says 122 national or region-wide shutdowns cost the global economy more than US$8 billion last year, mostly in response to protests or civil unrest “as authoritarian regimes looked to restrict the flow of information and maintain their grip on power.”

Coming in the middle of an explosion of racial unrest in the United States over the death of a black suspect at police hands, the Papua ruling has also forced some Indonesians to look inwards at their own record of racial discrimination towards ethnic Melanesians.

Last year’s riots were triggered by an incident in Surabayain which a mob shouting “monkey” and other insults attacked Papuan students who had allegedly defiled an Indonesian flag in the aftermath of Indonesia’s 74th independence day celebrations.

A Papuan student with the West Papua Morning Star flag painted on her face during a rally in Jakarta, August 28, 2019. Photo: AFP Forum via NurPhoto/Andrew Gal

Spread on social media, the violence left more than 30 people dead and caused widespread damage to government buildings in Manokwari and Jayapura, the respective capitals of West Papua and Papua, and the district centers of Wamena, Sorong, Fak Fak and Timika.

Papuan students have long been the subject of discrimination on Java, but little has been done to address that and other derogatoryissues which go to the heart of the rebel Free Papua Movement’s (OPM) struggle for independence.

Amnesty International Indonesia called the court decision a rare victory for Papuans. “Although the ruling is only a small step towards justice for human rights abuses in Papua, at least it is a step in the right direction,” executive director Usman Hamid said in a statement.

Legal reform began under new Supreme Court chief justice Bagir Manan in 2001, two years after the fall of long-serving president Suharto. But it has been a painfully slow process with criminal justice trailing far behind advances made in adjudicating civil law, particularly litigation.

The Administrative Court has made the most progress because of the pioneering work of Sorbonne-trained Paulus Lotulung, the Supreme Court’s former deputy chief justice for state administration who once admitted he was ashamed of the corruption in the court system.

Although the government is likely to appeal the Papua ruling, Rosita believes the court’s judgement is so well argued, rare in Indonesia’s judicial system, that state attorneys may only be going through the motions.

But the longer term impact of the decision remains in doubt, given subsequent statements by the communications ministry that the court’s failure to specifically address internet blackouts meant it could still apply them when it feels they are warranted.

“If internet access had remained open, the government was worried that the spread of information would have brought further divisions,” said current Communications Minister Johnny Plate, who made it clear he respected the court’s decision.

Rosita, senior researcher with the Indonesian Institute for an Independent Judiciary (LeIP), hopes the ruling can be used to push Parliament into outlawing the use of internet blackouts as a weapon to put down civil unrest. 

An armed Indonesian policeman stands guard near a burning building after hundreds of demonstrators marched near Papua’s biggest city Jayapura on August 29, 2019. Photo: AFP/Indra Thamrin Hatta

Some legal activists believe the practice could be prohibited as part of amendments to controversial provisions of the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions Law (ITE) that they say already impinge on freedom of expression.

The government argued the blackout was in accordance with the ITE law, but the judges asserted that the legislation could only be enforced to block access to electronic information and illegal documentation, not the internet itself.

The judgement also said that fake news should only be tackled by using provisions in the Criminal Code or blocking specific accounts that spread false information.

Reformers don’t put much faith in the Constitutional Court, which has taken a conservative turn since its formative years in the early 2000s when the caliber of the justices negated the political way the court was structured.

Indonesia follows the French judicial system in which court decisions can be used as a model, but not as a binding legal precedent to be followed in deciding subsequent cases with a similar set of issues or facts.

However, the Indonesian and Dutch supreme courts have been engaged in consultative discussions that could see a system of precedence adopted internally, without the judiciary going so far as to take on the role of lawmaker.

The Indonesian court does publish occasional circulars that provide guidelines on tackling specific cases, but now the 60-member bench has formed itself into different chambers, each charged with drawing up a set of norms aimed at eliminating often glaring inconsistencies in court decisions.

Broadest economic collapse since 1870: World Bank

The Covid-19 crisis will drive 70 to 100 million people into extreme poverty, according to report

By HEATHER SCOTT JUNE 9, 2020

People in need queue at a free food distribution point on June 6, 2020, in Geneva, as the Covid-19 pandemic casts a spotlight on the usually invisible poor people of Geneva, one of the world's most expensive cities. Photo: AFP

The coronavirus pandemic inflicted a “swift and massive shock” that has caused the broadest collapse of the global economy since 1870 despite unprecedented government support, the World Bank said Monday.

The world economy is expected to contract by 5.2% this year – the worst recession in 80 years – but the sheer number of countries suffering economic losses means the scale of the downturn is worse than any recession in 150 years, the World Bank said in its latest Global Economic Prospects report.

“This is a deeply sobering outlook, with the crisis likely to leave long-lasting scars and pose major global challenges,” said World Bank Group Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Ceyla Pazarbasioglu.

The depth of the crisis will drive 70 to 100 million people into extreme poverty – worse than the prior estimate of 60 million, she told reporters.

And while the Washington-based development lender projects a rebound for 2021, there is a risk a second wave of outbreaks could undermine the recovery and turn the economic crisis into a financial one that will see a “wave of defaults.”

Economists have been struggling to measure the impact of the crisis they have likened to a global natural disaster, but the sheer size of the impact across so many sectors and countries has made that difficult.

Under the worst-case scenario, the global recession could mean a contraction of 8%, according to the report.

But Pazarbasioglu cautioned: “Given this uncertainty, further downgrades to the outlook are very likely.”

Meanwhile, a group of American economists who are the arbiters of when a recession starts and ends said Monday the United States entered a downturn in February, ending 128 months of uninterrupted growth, the longest streak in history.

Recessions typically are defined by several months of declining economic activity.


But the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a non-profit, non-partisan research organization, called the current situation in the world’s largest economy “unprecedented” due to the severity of the drop in employment and production, even if it might turn out to be shorter than other recessions.
China still growing, barely

China is nearly alone in seeing modest growth this year. However, the World Bank warned the depth of the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will hinder recovery prospects in developing nations, especially commodity exporters.

While China will see GDP rise just 1%, the World Bank said, the rest of the forecasts are grim: US -6.1%, eurozone -9.1%, Japan -6.1%, Brazil -8%, Mexico -7.5% and India -3.2%.


And things could get worse, meaning the forecasts will be revised even lower, the bank warned.

Though dramatic, the current forecast falls short of the Great Depression, which saw a global contraction of 14.5% from 1930 to 1932, while the post-war downturn in 1945-1946 was 13.8%, according to the World Bank.

But because of the pandemic there remain some “exceptionally high” risks to the outlook, particularly if the disease lingers and authorities have to reimpose restrictions – which could make the downturn as bad as 8%.

“Disruptions to activity would weaken businesses’ ability to remain in operation and service their debt,” the report cautioned.

That, in turn, could raise interest rates for higher-risk borrowers. “With debt levels already at historic highs, this could lead to cascading defaults and financial crises across many economies,” it said.

But even if the 4.2% global recovery projected for 2021 materializes, “in many countries, deep recessions triggered by Covid-19 will likely weigh on potential output for years to come.”


– AFP

How Trump could legally militarize America

US president's penchant for legal loopholes to push controversial policies could justify military occupation of protest-hit cities

By JENNIFER SELIN JUNE 6, 2020

Troops gather during a demonstration on June 1, 2020 in Washington, DC. Joshua Roberts/Getty Images/AFP
After a week of both peaceful protests and violent chaos in the wake of George Floyd’s death, President Donald Trump announced, “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

Is Trump’s warning just bluster? Does the president have the authority to send the military into American cities?

The answer to this question involves a web of legal provisions that help define the president’s constitutional roles as commander in chief and chief executive of the country and that simultaneously try to balance presidential power with the power of state leaders.
‘Protect states in times of violence’

Tracing back to the Magna Carta, the British charter of liberty signed in 1215, there is a longstanding tradition against military involvement in civilian affairs.

However, the US Constitution guarantees that the national government will protect the states in times of violence and permits Congress to enact laws that enable the military to aid in carrying out the law.

Almost immediately after the Constitution’s enactment in 1787, Congress passed a law that allowed the president to use the military to respond to a series of citizen rebellions.

Troops serving as what’s called “posse comitatus,” which translates roughly to “attendants with the capacity to act,” could be called to suppress insurrections and help carry out federal laws.

Following the Civil War, the national government used troops in this capacity to aid in Reconstruction efforts, particularly in states that had been part of the Confederacy.

The use of troops in this manner may even have influenced the outcome of the 1876 presidential election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. That happened when, in return for agreeing to withdraw federal troops from the South, Democrats informally agreed to the election of Hayes when the disputed election was thrown to a congressional commission.

Two years later, Hayes signed into law the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the use of the military in civilian matters.

The Posse Comitatus Act has not changed much since that time. The law prohibits the use of the military in civilian matters but, over time, Congress has passed at least 26 exemptions to the act that allow the president to send troops into states.

The exemptions range from providing military personnel to protect national parks to helping states in carrying out state quarantine and health laws.

Military troops arrive in Los Angeles to restore order after rioting occurred in the wake of the verdict in the Rodney King case in 1992. Photo: Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Insurrection Act

What exemption would President Trump use if he wants to send the military to one or more states?

He would likely rely on the Insurrection Act, which governs certain circumstances when the president can use the military. Signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, Congress originally passed the law in order to help fight citizen rebellions against federal taxes.

Over time, the law has evolved to allow the use of troops in other circumstances. For example, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson used the Insurrection Act in the 1950s and 1960s to send the military to enforce court desegregation orders and to protect civil rights marchers.

It was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, when he ordered 4,500 troops to Los Angeles after rioting erupted in response to the acquittal of police officers charged with beating Rodney King.

The Insurrection Act says that the president may use the armed forces to subdue an insurrection or rebellion and take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress violence.

But before doing so, he must issue a proclamation ordering insurgents to disperse and return to their homes.

While state governors and legislatures also have the legal authority to ask the president to use troops in this manner, none have done that during this period of unrest. The states have preferred to rely on a combination of local law enforcement and the National Guard, which is under state command, not federal.

Not only does this strategy enable governors to maintain authority over their states’ responses to the clashes in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but it also keeps things more straightforward legally and politically.
 

After President Trump’s threat to send troops to quell violence, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, middle, told CNN ‘I reject the notion that the federal government can send troops into the state of Illinois.’ Photo: Chris Sweda-Pool via Getty Images

Authority uncertain

Reliance on the Insurrection Act raises a host of political and practical questions about who is in charge when the military sends troops into a state.

For example, despite the fact that the act was invoked in response to the Rodney King riots, the military actually was not used as directed. The Joint Task Force Commander in control of the mission appears to have been confused regarding how the Insurrection Act worked alongside the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act.

He issued an order prohibiting troops from directly supporting law enforcement and that led to numerous denials of requests for assistance.

Questions about the federal government’s authority in the wake of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana raised similar concerns.

The administration of President George W. Bush determined that it had authority under the Insurrection Act to send federal troops to the area, despite the fact that Louisiana’s governor was opposed to military assistance.

For political reasons, President Bush did not end up deploying troops but, in 2006, Congress amended the law to address concerns that the military was unable to provide effective assistance to states in emergency situations.

The amendment was later repealed when all 50 state governors raised objections to what they perceived as a grant of unilateral power to the president.

These examples suggest a real difficulty balancing governmental responses to domestic crises. States need the flexibility and authority to respond as they see fit to the needs of their citizens.

But the federal government can and often does serve as a supplemental resource. As the events of the past week illustrate, striking an effective balance is rarely a straightforward thing.

[Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter.]

Jennifer Selin, Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri-Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why America’s revolution won’t be televised
The so far purely emotional insurrection lacks political structure and a credible leader to articulate grievances

By PEPE ESCOBAR JUNE 3, 2020

 

People raise their hands and shout slogans as they protest at the makeshift memorial in honour of George Floyd on Tuesday in Minneapolis. Photo: AFP / Chandan Khanna


The Revolution Won’t Be Televised because this is not a revolution. At least not yet.

Burning and/or looting Target or Macy’s is a minor diversion. No one is aiming at the Pentagon (or even the shops at the Pentagon Mall). The FBI. The NY Federal Reserve. The Treasury Department. The CIA in Langley. Wall Street houses.

The real looters – the ruling class – are comfortably surveying the show on their massive 4K Bravias, sipping single malt.

This is a class war much more than a race war and should be approached as such. Yet it was hijacked from the start to unfold as a mere color revolution.

US corporate media dropped their breathless Planet Lockdown coverage like a ton of – pre-arranged? – bricks to breathlessly cover en masse the new American “revolution.” Social distancing is not exactly conducive to a revolutionary spirit.

There’s no question the US is mired in a convoluted civil war in progress, as serious as what happened after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King in Memphis in April 1968.

Yet massive cognitive dissonance is the norm across the full “strategy of tension” spectrum. Powerful factions pull no punches to control the narrative. No one is able to fully identify all the shadowplay intricacies and inconsistencies.

Hardcore agendas mingle: an attempt at color revolution/regime change (blowback is a bitch) interacts with the Boogaloo Bois – arguably tactical allies of Black Lives Matter – while white supremacist “accelerationists” attempt to provoke a race war.

To quote the Temptations: it’s a ball of confusion.

Antifa is criminalized but the Boogaloo Bois get a pass (here is how Antifa’s main conceptualizer defends his ideas). Yet another tribal war, yet another – now domestic – color revolution under the sign of divide and rule, pitting Antifa anti-fascists vs. fascist white supremacists.


Meanwhile, the policy infrastructure necessary for enacting martial law has evolved as a bipartisan project. 

Protesters jump on a street sign near a burning barricade near the White House during a demonstration against the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020 in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

We are in the middle of the proverbial, total fog of war. Those defending the US Army crushing “insurrectionists” in the streets advocate at the same time a swift ending to the American empire.

Amidst so much sound and fury signifying perplexity and paralysis, we may be reaching a supreme moment of historical irony, where US homeland (in)security is being boomerang-hit not only by one of the key artifacts of its own Deep State making – a color revolution – but by combined elements of a perfect blowback trifecta: Operation Phoenix; Operation Jakarta; and Operation Gladio.

But the targets this time won’t be millions across the Global South. They will be American citizens. 

Empire come home

Quite a few progressives contend this is a spontaneous mass uprising against police repression and system oppression – and that would necessarily lead to a revolution, like the February 1917 revolution in Russia sprouting out of the scarcity of bread in Petrograd.

So the protests against endemic police brutality would be a prelude to a Levitate the Pentagon remix – with the interregnum soon entailing a possible face-off with the US military in the streets.

But we got a problem. The insurrection, so far purely emotional, has yielded no political structure and no credible leader to articulate myriad, complex grievances. As it stands, it amounts to an inchoate insurrection, under the sign of impoverishment and perpetual debt.

Adding to the perplexity, Americans are now confronted with what it feels like to be in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Pakistani tribal areas or Sadr City in Baghdad.

Iraq came to Washington DC in full regalia, with Pentagon Blackhawks doing “show of force” passes over protestors, the tried and tested dispersal technique applied in countless counter-insurgency ops across the Global South.

And then, the Elvis moment: General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, patrolling the streets of DC. The Raytheon lobbyist now heading the Pentagon, Mark Esper, called it “dominating the battlespace.”

Well, after they got their butts kicked in Afghanistan and Iraq, and indirectly in Syria, full spectrum dominance must dominate somewhere. So why not back home?

Troops gather during a demonstration on June 1, 2020 in Washington, DC. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images/AFP
Troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, the 10th Mountain Division and the 1st Infantry Division – who lost wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and, yes, Somalia – have been deployed to Andrews Airbase near Washington.

Super-hawk Tom Cotton even called, in a tweet, for the 82nd Airborne to do “whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters.” These are certainly more amenable targets than the Russian, Chinese and Iranian militaries.

Milley’s performance reminds me of John McCain walking around in Baghdad in 2007, macho man-style, no helmet, to prove everything was OK. Of course: he had a small army weaponized to the teeth watching his back.

And complementing the racism angle, it’s never enough to remember that both a white president and a black president signed off on drone attacks on wedding parties in the Pakistani tribal areas.

Esper spelled it out: an occupying army may soon be “dominating the battlespace” in the nation’s capital, and possibly elsewhere. What next? A Coalition Provisional Authority?

Compared to similar ops across the Global South, this will not only prevent regime change but also produce the desired effect for the ruling oligarchy: a neo-fascist turning of the screws. Proving once again that when you don’t have a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X to fight the power, then power crushes you whatever you do.

Inverted Totalitarianism

The late, great political theorist Sheldon Wolin had already nailed it in a book first published in 2008: this is all about Inverted Totalitarianism.

Wolin showed how “the cruder forms of control – from militarized police to wholesale surveillance, as well as police serving as judge, jury and executioner, now a reality for the underclass – will become a reality for all of us should we begin to resist the continued funneling of power and wealth upward.

“We are tolerated as citizens only as long as we participate in the illusion of a participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism,” he wrote.

Sinclair Lewis (who did not say that, “when fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross”) actually wrote, in It Can’t Happen Here (1935), that American fascists would be those “who disowned the word ‘fascism’ and preached enslavement to capitalism under the style of constitutional and traditional native American liberty.”

So American fascism, when it happens, will walk and talk American.

George Floyd was the spark. In a Freudian twist, the return of the repressed came out swinging, laying bare multiple wounds: how the US political economy shattered the working classes; failed miserably on Covid-19; failed to provide affordable healthcare; profits a plutocracy; and thrives on a racialized labor market, a militarized police, multi-trillion-dollar imperial wars and serial bailouts of the too big to fail.

Instinctively at least, although in an inchoate manner, millions of Americans clearly see how, since Reaganism, the whole game is about an oligarchy/plutocracy weaponizing white supremacism for political power goals, with the extra bonus of a steady, massive, upwards transfer of wealth.

US President Donald Trump walks back to the White House escorted by the Secret Service after appearing outside of St John’s Episcopal church across Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. Photo: AFP/ Brendan Smialowski
Slightly before the first, peaceful Minneapolis protests, I argued that the realpolitik perspectives post-lockdown were grim, privileging both restored neoliberalism – already in effect – and hybrid neofascism.

President Trump’s by now iconic Bible photo op in front of St John’s church – including a citizen tear-gassing preview – took it to a whole new level. Trump wanted to send a carefully choreographed signal to his evangelical base. Mission accomplished.

But arguably the most important (invisible) signal was the fourth man in one of the photos.

Giorgio Agamben has already proved beyond reasonable doubt that the state of siege is now totally normalized in the West. Attorney General William Barr now is aiming to institutionalize it in the US: he’s the man with the leeway to go all out for a permanent state of emergency, a Patriot Act on steroids, complete with “show of force” Blackhawk support.

 

ESSAY
Point of no return for Failed States of America
An African American academic resident in South Korea finds every good reason never to return home
By MICHAEL HURTJUNE 7, 2020

As the issue of race continues to impact the USA, a man walks past a mural in Los Angeles featuring the eyes of an African-American. Photo: AFP

I am a Rip van Winkle – a man out of time. As I watch America eat itself, I muse upon this fact more deeply. My status as a black American who has lived in South Korea since 2002, with no real plans to go back, has seemed strange to some.

But in recent years, my friends regard this ongoing decision to not return as less strange. And in recent months, it has come to be a point of no small amount of envy to many of my friends who dream of escaping the twin epidemics of Covid-19 and white supremacy-fueled rampant racism in the United States.

In 1670, the Puritan preacher Samuel Danforth warned his fellow colonizers that America had an ongoing moral challenge as it continued its “Errand into the Wilderness.” But the Puritan “wilderness” was not a blank swathe of land, those beckoning fields of Little House on the Prairie.

To the contrary, it was a land filled with fearful, fantastic beasts and rapacious monsters. It was a moral maw, a gaping abyss that beckoned the gawker to jump. It was a land of moral risk, of spiritual danger.

The spatial and moral wilderness defined the constant fear that Puritan elders had of going “astray” and falling into the beckoning darkness of civic immorality and spiritual iniquity.

In 1987, pioneer rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy made the declamation that America was an “anti-nigger machine,” and that, “If I come out alive … then they won’t come clean.”

Indeed, neither Amaud Arbery nor George Floyd made it out alive, but unlike most blacks murdered in the USA, their stories made it out – on video. Which is what made the Rodney King incident so shocking back in 1992: the whole thing was on tape.

But absolutely nothing came clean.

No fear of being shot

I never really made a conscious decision to leave the United States. Rather, it was a constant stream of small and incremental decisions to stay.

$4 doctor visits? Stay here. $12-a-month high blood pressure pills? Yeah, stay. Ability to leave my laptop on my table at Starbucks and to go to the john and find it there 20 minutes later? Stay. $600 root canal with zirconium crown? Stay. Being able to take public transport across Seoul for $1.50? Stay. 5G? Stay.


No fear of being shot – whether by mass shooter, or for “existing-while-black”? Again, stay.

By the time the scoring even gets to Korea’s fast, smart and effective handling of Covid-19 with big data-enabled contact tracing, strict and adhered to containment measures, and free coronavirus treatment to all citizens and non-citizens as well as immigrants regardless of document status, the scoring is hopelessly skewed.

Who in their right mind, in command of their senses, or with even half the proverbial brain, would go back to live in the Failed States of America? Because that’s what America is – a failed state.

Protesters look through the fence erected by police in front of Washington DC’s Lafayette park across from the White House to protest the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis on June 4, 2020. Photo: AFP/Olivier Douliery
It is not about prosperity or well-being. If a government cannot even guarantee the basic human rights or physical security of its people – while demonstrating allegiance to money and profit over the interests of protecting human bodies or the body politic – then what other conclusion can there be?

The ultimate test of my choice came with the novel coronavirus. Korea’s handling of the pandemic was swift, transparent and effective. It engendered public cooperation and public trust.

I watched the United States botch the response from the top down and from the same Day One, thanks to a leader who exemplified American selfishness and narcissism, the concerns of profits over people, of appearance over truth, of fascist concerns with unity over actual individual liberties.

The USA that I liked to believe existed and which I had idealized in my memory was quite different from the FSA I see now. The USA gave way to the FSA during Hurricane Katrina, then Harvey, then with the choice of the Trumpets to choose sickness and death over better health care because it had a black man’s name on the label.

All you need is hate

The crucible really shattered as we entered the era of “Hate in the Time of Corona.”

Amid a wrecked economy with 40 million unemployed, one Amy Cooper delivered an Oscar-worthy performance of hysterical white female privilege when she called the police on a black birdwatcher who had politely asked her to keep her dog in check. That set the scene and provided the tinder for the spark that was George Floyd’s senseless murder

Then America started to burn. As it should have in response to the Blue Wall that always treats black bodies as fodder, as things that do not matter.

Nowadays, we Americans rattle off our roster of fantasy rights like Puritans who used to sling chapter and verse at social problems. And like the Bible, the Constitution is often seen as a magical amulet that justifies the values that it signifies. Unfortunately, we now venerate both Bible and Constitution mostly to bolster personal and public politics, and to pick fights.

This is not to say Korea is perfect. On November 21, 2007, I got arrested in Seoul for calling the Korean police on somebody attacking me.

A drifter in his 50s who was hammered on soju and stank like a sewer accosted me while I was shooting a Korean model on the street, berating me for being “a nigger taking pictures of a good Korean girl” and berating her as a “whore who should know better.” He started trying to kick me; I proceeded to call the police.

At that point, the guy said I had attacked him, producing some yellowed (and days-old) bruises on his shin. I was arrested and entered into the system. I was later found not guilty for lack of evidence – it was a baseless charge and the Korean model’s statement bolstered mine.

But I always remembered the friendly words of the cop: “Hey buddy, here’s a tip. You’re a foreigner. Never call the police on a Korean, because you’ll always lose.” That experience was maddeningly disappointing and disconcerting. But I never feared for my life.

In 2017, I took three months in Ohio to attend my brother’s wedding and spend time with my elderly mom. Between my county being the capital of the opioid crisis in the USA, white men starting to get their mass shooting groove on and cops killing black men like it was going out of style, I decided to get my concealed carry license and keep a Springfield Armory XDS 9mm handy and on my person at all times.

It should go without saying that I shouldn’t have to do this. Game, set, match – South Korea.

Since Samuel Danforth’s warnings have come to pass as America betrays both the letter and spirit of its most sacred texts, and whose base love of iniquity continues to power the expansion of injustice, I have slowly reached the sober conclusion that America is no place for a black man to live.

George Floyd told me to keep my black ass in Seoul for as long as it takes for the FSA to make itself great. Not again, but rather for once.

Dr. Michael Hurt (Instagram @kuraeji) is a visual sociologist and fashion photographer living in Seoul who pays the bills by lecturing in Cultural Theory at the Korea National University of the Arts and other universities. 

#DEFUNDTHEPOLICE!

As cities make deep cuts because of COVID-19, police departments are keeping their funding

Across the country, the police are often the one city agency not facing deep cuts in proposed post-pandemic budgets. As protesters face off against incredibly well-equipped police, they’re asking what that money is for.

Police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 30, 2020. [Photo: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images]


BY KRISTIN TOUSSAINT
As images from protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death have spread around the country, a key demand from protesters has been the defunding of city police departments: that cutting the money a city spends on police would, in fact, make communities safer. They’ve pointed to the tactical gear and equipment that the police have been pictured using as evidence that cities spend far too much money on their law enforcement, at the expense of other agencies that often lack funds to offer basic services to residents.

This is an apt time to be making that demand, as cities are in the process of figuring out next year’s budgets. But despite the fact that every U.S city is being forced to make drastic cuts to existing programs in the face of a stunning loss of tax revenue from closed businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, one area of city government is seeing virtually no cuts at all: police departments.

Under New York mayor Bill de Blasio’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2021, the NYPD—which currently has a budget of $6 billion—would see a cut of just $23.8 million, or 0.39%, Gothamist reported. In contrast, the Department of Education would have its budget cut by $827 million—3% of its overall funding. The Department of Youth and Community Development, which funds after-school programs, literacy services, and summer youth work programs, would lose 32% of its budget.

In a letter to the mayor sent May 30, New York City Council Speaker Cory Johnson and other council members called for every city agency to identify meaningful savings they could make, so the nearly $9 billion budget gap is made up with 5-7% cuts from each department, rather than disproportionately larger cuts for a few agencies. “No proposed cut should be one that would weaken the social safety net or hurt vulnerable New Yorkers,” they wrote. An April letter sent to de Blasio from the Communities United for Police Reform pointed out that in 2019, when the city allocated $6 billion to the NYPD, it allocated just $2.1 billion to homeless services, $1.4 billion to housing, preservation, and development, and $1.9 billion to the health department.

In Los Angeles, the LAPD budget is slated to actually increase by $123 million. The proposed 2020-2021 spending includes nearly $41 million in bonuses for officers who have college degrees, “even as thousands of other city employees face pay cuts amid a financial crisis at City Hall,” the Los Angeles Times reports, along with pay raises for officers. Overall, the current plan increases LAPD’s budget by 7.1%, while it cuts the budget for the Housing and Community Investment Department, which, per the Times, “sends inspectors to look for violations at apartment buildings,” by 9.4%.

LAPD will receive just under 54% of Los Angeles’s total general fund—money not raised or collected for special purposes such as voter-passed measures—which allocates $1.8 billion to the agency. When you include pensions and retirement, building services, liability claims, and “other department related costs,” though, the total price tag of the police department tops $3 billion.


Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies on May 30, 2020. [Photo: David McNew/Getty Images]


In 2017, Oakland allocated the highest share of its general fund to policing, according to a Center for Popular Democracy study on police budgets, with $242.5 million going to police, or 41% of city expenditures. Oakland is facing a predicted $80 million budget gap over the next 14 months. Since Oakland passes two-year budgets, the city isn’t currently in the budget proposal process, but in a memo to the City Council, Adam Benson, the city’s budget director, quantified this shortfall in an interesting way: “If the full annual cost for a police officer is approximately $250,000 annually, then $80 million is equal to the cost of funding 320 police officers for one year—about half of the City’s police force,” Benson wrote.


When Minneapolis passed its 2020 budget in December 2019, it included increased police funding for as many as 30 new officers. In that budget, police expenditures total $193 million. That’s about 60% more than the $119 million the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development Department, which handles affordable housing and employment opportunities for low-income residents and teens, received.

When people protesting police brutality urge the defunding of police, this is what they are addressing. “Instead of further investing in the police, we need to invest not only in community-based programs for public safety, but we also need to invest in people’s ability to have access to food, clothes, shelter, health care, education, and gainful employment—the necessities of life. This is why we have these issues in our communities,” Sean Blackmon, an organizer with Stop Police Terror Project DC, a group that advocates for the end of militarized policing and alternatives to policing that would build community, said in a video he posted to Twitter Monday morning.

Washington, D.C.’s proposed 2021 budget adds $1.7 million to the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget, even as it aims to cut $166 million from other agency budgets. D.C.’s fiscal year 2020 general fund allocated $522 million to MPD. “The DC police don’t need any more money,” Blackmon continued in his video. “We need to divest from the police and invest in DC’s black communities and in DC’s poor, working, and oppressed communities.”

Spending more on policing does not necessarily make a community safer. Though nationally crime has dropped across those same three decades that police spending increased, the Center for Popular Democracy says that drop is in spite of increased spending, not because of it.

“Study after study shows that a living wage, access to holistic health services and treatment, educational opportunity, and stable housing are far more successful in reducing crime than police or prisons,” the center, which works to transform state and local policies through partnerships with community-based organizing groups, wrote in its 2017 report. In Minnesota, even as crime rates declined since the 1990s, the state’s prison population grew, reaching one of its highest levels in 2013.

Defunding the police would also reduce city-related expenses around legal fees for police misconduct, freeing up millions that cities can use to invest in their communities. From 2006 to 2012, Minneapolis paid nearly $14 million in lawsuits “related to excessive force leading to death or injury, cases involving property damage during raids, and the use of racial slurs.” In New York City, between June 2017 and June 2018 alone, taxpayers spent $230 million to settle 6,472 lawsuits against the NYPD. As millions of Americans struggle with rent, schools continually face strapped budgets, people drown in medical bills, and, most recently, hospitals have had to rely on PPE donations and are also facing financial ruin during a pandemic, activists are asking cities to consider if they’re really allocating their budget most effectively.


Even if former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin is convicted in the death of George Floyd, that won’t fully deliver justice to black communities, Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president and co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement on Friday. “The only way for us to win real liberation,” she said, “is to transform our systems by divesting from policing, investing in community-led solutions, and demanding that politicians take concrete legislative action at every level from the City Council to Congress.”

OPINION

Police violence enabled by ‘liberal’ US politicians

Biden says he doesn't support defunding police

Biden, other Democrats push back on police defunding ...

Joe Biden Doesn't Want to Defund the Police

George Floyd’s death proves again why the US needs to defund bloated and militarized police departments

Airmen riot at Moody

MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. --

Moody hosted Georgia State Patrol’s Mobile Field Force semiannual riot control training, Nov. 16-17, here.

By SONALI KOLHATKAR JUNE 6, 2020

Police in riot gear stand in formation during protests on May 29, 2020, in Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: AFP

Not since the mass protests that originated in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 when a white police officer killed a black man named Michael Brown has the United States witnessed the current magnitude of the movement against police brutality.

The brutal videotaped killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 has pushed Americans to the limit of what they will tolerate from police. Huge, multiracial protests have broken out in hundreds of cities demanding an end to racist policing.

While many of the problems can be laid at the feet of President Donald Trump, whose administration obliterated the modest Obama-era police reforms and who has delighted in openly encouraging police to be violent, the current status quo of accepting and encouraging racist and murderous policing has been a largely bipartisan project at the federal, state, and local level.

Also read: Bush sent military to quell 1992 riots; will Trump?

Protests against US police brutality have a long history that predates the rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter” becoming a household phrase. Well before Trump was on the national scene, Democratic and Republican leaders had many years to right the wrongs that black activists and community leaders were decrying.

After Rodney King’s brutal beating was caught on tape in Los Angeles and the acquittal of his abusers sparked a historic and violent uprising, there were years of reforms aimed at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that resulted in only the mildest changes. That liberal city, dominated by Democrats, continues to have the largest number of police killings nationwide and to date, the city’s first black female district attorney, Jackie Lacey, has refused to prosecute a single officer during her tenure.

When Eric Garner was choked to death by police in Staten Island, New York City, his horrific killing, captured on video, and his last words, “I can’t breathe,” sparked mass protests and deep discourse about reforming police protocols. But just as in Los Angeles, the core demand that activists have been making at least since the police murder of Amadou Diallo – that those who violate rights should be held legally accountable – has gone unmet.

Daniel Pantaleo, the New York Police Department (NYPD) officer who put Garner in a chokehold, remained on the force for five years and was ultimately fired but never charged. Like the LAPD, the NYPD has enjoyed the protection of a largely liberal and Democratic political landscape.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, some modest reforms were enacted at the federal level, largely through executive orders as Congress remained unable to break through political gridlock. Obama’s federal oversight of police departments through court-ordered consent decrees was a start, but in his last act as Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions signed a memorandum that undid the Obama-era consent decrees before stepping down.

Trump also resumed the flow of military equipment and weapons to local police departments.


Now, as mass protests are taking place all over the US, the images of well-armed and flak-jacketed police facing off against protesters and violently subduing them while remaining encased in protective gear stands in stark contrast to America’s desperately under-equipped health-care workers who have been vainly trying to save as many lives as possible during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Police are clad head to toe in high-tech gear, face shields and body armor, with no shortage of plastic handcuffs, rubber bullets, and teargas canisters. The optics of these modern-day gestapo-like forces roaming city streets, bashing in heads and firing teargas into the faces of unarmed protesters, are a reminder of just how many federal- and state-level resources we Americans have poured into law enforcement over the years at the expense of health care, education, and other public needs.

Even as the economic collapse triggered by the pandemic threatened to devastate public school systems, in the liberal havens of Los Angeles and New York City, law-enforcement budgets remained unscathed.

California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom proposed big cuts to schools to compensate for massive budget shortfalls at the same time that LAPD officers were receiving $41 million in bonuses. LA’s Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti recently released this year’s proposed city budget – typical of previous years – which sets aside a whopping one-third of all city spending on police.

Similarly in New York City, the Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to compensate for pandemic-related revenue losses is to make cuts to the school budget that are 27 times that of his city’s police budget cuts.


Alice Speri, writing in The Intercept, explains, “The US spends some $100 billion annually on policing,” and “in cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60% of the entire annual budget.”

And while the pandemic is forcing cities to make hard choices about which public services to slash, police-department budgets have remained immune to cuts. Liberal cities like LA, New York and Minneapolis, in the words of one journalist, “keep piling money on police departments.”


Just as congressional Democrats for far too long have poured money into the US military to fuel wars abroad – even outdoing Trump’s thirst for military largesse – the Democratic Party’s state and local leaders have poured money into domestic armed forces – the police – to fuel a war on us American citizens, and especially those among us with black or brown skin.

Now, because the collective public rage over police violence and impunity has reached a fever pitch, something extraordinary is happening. A long-standing activist call to defund the police is receiving a mainstream platform.


On May 30, The New York Times published an op-ed by two advocates of Black Lives Matter titled “No More Money for the Police.” Black Lives Matter has explicitly called for “a national defunding of police” and is demanding “investment in our communities and the resources to ensure black people not only survive, but thrive.”

Author Alex Vitale’s 2018 book The End of Policing aptly articulated on its cover, “The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last 40 years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself.”

Vitale’s work has taken on new urgency during the protests over George Floyd’s killing. In a recent piece he wrote for The Guardian, he explained that the solution for local authorities to tackle police “is to dramatically shrink their function.” Vitale added, “We must demand that local politicians develop non-police solutions to the problems poor people face.”

That means mayors and governors from all parts of the US political spectrum need to stop subscribing to the notion that police can solve problems caused by poor education, health care and jobs, and directly start diverting money from police into education, health care and jobs.

Liberal leaders in particular, who have paid mere lip service for years to social justice, need to put their money where their mouth is and wrest it out of the hands of police departments.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute, which provided it to Asia Times.


SONALI KOLHATKAR
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. More by Sonali Kolhatkar