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March 31, 2023

The ideology that has most radicalized people globally, and intensely so in the USA, is white supremacist capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.  No other economic and social system has so radicalized people that they have abandoned morals, norms, and principles for mammon aka wealth and power.  Yet few journalists, scholars, or media pundits discuss this radicalization that took hold and controls the narrative on the topic.   

Capitalist radicalization is driven by polarization using controlled capitalist narratives, media polarization, the emergence of social media, and the ongoing legitimization of military and para-military budgets for war on people from the streets of the US to the streets of Gaza and Kiev.  The military expenditures, particularly in the US and UK, paid for with the people's taxes do not benefit the majority of people in any way, shape, or form, yet the people are so radicalized that they consent to the violence with which they are consistently threatened and which is often perpetrated against them in the streets by militarized police. 

 I argue that the root cause of the violence is the perceived decline of white supremacist Euro-American domination and the simultaneous radicalization of conservatives, populist movements, and the Republican/Tory Parties. Since the 1960s, conservatives, particularly whites, rural residents, and evangelicals, have believed themselves to be in decline as immigration changes US and UK demographics and the acceptance of neo-liberal capitalist norms increases. In other words, this radicalization has also polarized two groups of capitalists against each other which will ultimately benefit a smaller group of ruling class elites.  

Capitalist radicalism in the guise of "American Exceptionalism" has been a potent cause of violence across the globe with atrocities and war crimes perpetrated historically and in the present day by the US and assisted by France, and the UK. Radicalization should be a central focus in the study of imperialism, colonialism, exceptionalism, globalization, and terrorism.  Analysts should identify what forces lead initially apolitical or moderate individuals to gradually embrace their governments' more extreme imperialist and supremacist beliefs and ultimately engage in and consent to aggressive State violence nationally and internationally.   

From the rationalist perspective, radicalization leads to conflict by magnifying the stakes of the struggle for power, thereby justifying extreme measures, such as the amount of money and weapons given to Israel and Ukraine to the detriment of the people here and in the UK and France.  The narrative of the capitalists be they neo-conservative or neo-liberal is one that poses that the opponent is so hostile, authoritarian, destructive and evil, that power must be seized, or retained, by any means necessary. From the "Euro-American" revolutionaries who justified the land thefts and slavery in what is now known as the USA to the neo-cons in the US, UK, and EU sponsoring the terror wars, to the militarized police enforcing mass incarceration in the US, these radicalized capitalists have argued for setting aside conventional moral and legal restraints on unrestrained violence and worldwide destruction. Conversely, while de-radicalization is seen as an important antidote to terrorist violence we never discuss the de-radicalization of the violence perpetrated and perpetuated by the State through the ideology of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization.  

 

 

 

Tags: capitalism, deradicalization, exceptionalism, imperialism, radicalization, supremacism


Posted at: 12:34 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

February 22, 2023

  •  

    Individual experiences in the US with police aka Law Enforcement Officers are vastly different based on race, class, sex, age, and creed.  That is why it is so important not to make assumptions that everyone has the same experience of this phenomenon--they clearly do not, nor do individuals have the same analyses about these encounters as these frameworks are based on worldview and creed.  

    If policing and imprisonment stopped violence, the U.S. would be the most peaceful country in the world. But decades of evidence show us this is not the case. If we believe in everyone’s right to live in safety and peace, we need to dismantle institutions that were never intended to get us there —and free up resources for solutions that are actually designed to create healthy, safe, sustainable communities. 

    The "free speech and dissent" narrative promotes the idea that though citizens can join protests or opposition parties, and even make legal appeals for protections from the State they face the constant threat of State violence. While victims nominally can seek redress, rulers ensure plausible deniability and little to know accountability for power holders.  For instance, in the US, the partnership between media and government produces rhetoric to instigate and justify State violence not only based on race, class, and creed but also against members of the judiciary or political opposition groups.  In these contexts, citizens’ encounters with LEO's, Border Patrol, ICE and National Guards are ambiguous and unpredictable even though citizens retain the formal ability to use the law and state institutions to challenge the regime and hold it accountable, these pathways are dangerous and precarious.  

    One of the main points of my study pedagogy is to identify and elaborate militarized masculinities across race and gender in today's model of justice as a key mechanism of social control for today's authoritarian regimes in which the US is at the forefront no matter the rhetoric of "freedom" in the war mongering mass incarceration surveillance state nation. When state agents, such as the police, perform as State sanctioned militarized masculinities, they reproduce and magnify the ambiguities of modern authoritarianism in its neoliberal version of the "democratic state".  Militarized masculinities are therefore especially well suited to protect elites aka the ruling class from ordinary people.  The contradiction between the police's ordered discipline and rabid violence against the citizenry reveals that it is a source of tension that produces and projects the frontline of power for the regime, giving militarized masculinities special potency as a mode of social discipline.  

     

    June Terpstra, Ph.D. 

     

     
     
     
     
 

 

Tags: leo, militarized police, social control


Posted at: 10:06 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

September 16, 2022

The national debate about the role of policing in the USA is far from over.  Protests may have quieted down for a bit because organizers have been bought off with big grants but there are new groups and organizers that will replace them because the problem is nowhere near being solved.  Social media makes it hard to ignore police brutality and violence no matter how much censorship is increased in the US. The problem remains that the system of policing in the USA today is the result of a historically and present-day corrupt system driven by the politics of supremacy (class, race, sex, etc.) The structure still remains that those classified as rich and white have generally a civil, moral, and juridical standing lifting them above all other races and classes. The present system of rule of law and law and order uses law enforcers as the front line for social control of the poor, the dissenter, the striker, and people of color whether they are crossing a street, driving a car, or sleeping in their beds.  This dominant paradigm or model of policing is being challenged by citizens, human rights agencies, and many scholars in spite of those who want to protect the status quo and who are still running the criminal justice show.

The problem is not about 31 flavors of cops in blue as good or bad cops.  The problem is The System generally and the criminal justice system specifically whose foundational values, mission, policies, and practices "serve and protect" the rich and protect them against the poor. The facts are that the police are The State’s front line for law enforcement and those laws serve the economic interests of the ruling class based on a draconian system of economic, racial, and sexual inequality.  Without a domestic armed force, the economic, social, and political power of the ruling class and elites would not be possible.

Both material deprivation and structural inequalities have long been known as contributing factors to crime — it should not be surprising that there is a correlation between inequality and violent crime across the country.  In other words, in terms of controlling crime, America's gigantic mass incarceration complex stuffed full of people serving decades-long sentences is clearly not working.  Inequality with few public services in US society produces mass despair and severe social and economic dysfunction. Yet thus far, despite the calls to Defund and Abolish or reform by directing tax dollars towards a re-configured way of doing the real work of serving and protecting the people nothing has changed. The post-modern emphasis on "changing the narrative" in policing instead of changing the facts of material reality on the ground does us no good in solving problems and only adds to the confusion manifested by relativism, post-modernism, and social media bots and trolls. By now we could and should be focused on preventing and solving crimes and fostering rehabilitation for offenders instead of retribution, revenue generation, and political repression. 

Many of my students who are law enforcement officers (LEOs) want what many of the citizens want -- safe, healthy, and empowered residents and investments in programs that prevent crime from occurring in the first place. However,  as it stands now legally, the sole function of the police is neither protection of citizens nor prevention of crime but law enforcement.

"In the 1981 case Warren v. District of Columbia (Links to an external site.)the D.C. Court of Appeals held that police have a general "public duty," but that "no specific legal duty exists" unless there is a special relationship between an officer and an individual, such as a person in custody.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that police have no specific obligation to protect. In its 1989 decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (Links to an external site.), the justices ruled that a social services department had no duty to protect a young boy from his abusive father. In 2005'sCastle Rock v. Gonzales (Links to an external site.)a woman sued the police for failing to protect her from her husband after he violated a restraining order and abducted and killed their three children. Justices said the police had no such duty.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling (Links to an external site.) that police could not be held liable for failing to protect students in the 2018 shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida."  https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/do-the-police-have-an-obligation-to-protect-you/ (Links to an external site.)

Law enforcers are simply not equipped to address many of the problems with which Police Departments are tasked. In a new and better system, people would rarely need to call the police, because mental health and substance abuse treatment, housing services, support systems for the formerly incarcerated, and other programs would be funded to an extent that would prevent many of the crises that trigger 911 calls. In a real democracy, laws would be enforced through the consent of the people—not by force or threat of force with the almighty gun, tanks, tear gas, and other deadly military toys.

Given the history of policing in the slave patrols and removal of natives to reserves and the police's past and current role in strike-breaking, criminalizing protest, enforcing the criminalization of drugs, homelessness, mental illness, debt, and enforcing voter disenfranchisement laws, police are an undeniably anti-democratic force that some refer to as the Police State. Reforms have been tried repeatedly in the past but time again reforms and commissions have not improved policing in the US in any substantive manner.  Unless we create a new system the antidote to neo-liberal pro-police procedural reform and small-scale divestment and investment will not cure the country of the antidemocratic laws, policies, and practices dominating the political and ideological landscape of the criminal justice system today.

 

Dr.June Terpstra

 

Tags: abolish the police, acab, classism, criminal justice, defund, justice, police reform, racism, sexism


Posted at: 11:09 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

November 19, 2021

The Jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse case has just given white supremacists in the USA of any age a license to kill "race traitors" and any people of color who fight against racism. The behaviors of the Judge made it all possible and he is a case example epitomizing the authoritarian excesses of the State in which the concept of white supremacy and social control supports the everyday reality of killing "bad guys" based on false narratives be it "cowboys and natives", or Blacks vs Whites, or Christians vs Muslims in a country very much at war with itself. He played jeopardy with the jurors, banned the use of the word "victims" of the men murdered, allowed the offender to choose jurors, and buddied up with jokes and laughter with the Defense and offender while the prosecutor threw the case.
 
This kangaroo court justifying its rulings with loophole laws represents a country utterly lost to all reason, humanitarianism, and real due process.
 
Dr. June Terpstra, From Wisconsin, 11/19/21

Tags: kangaroo court, license to kill, rittenhouse, white supremacist judge


Posted at: 01:09 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

November 2, 2021

Commentary

No good will come from the Judge in the Rittenhouse trial underway in Kenosha, Wi, USA this week. The general outcome of this trial will resemble a battlefield rather than a due process-oriented court hall in a so-called "Democratic" republic. The Judge presides over a battle to the death of ideas, a common feature of the US where the paucity of in-depth insight and evidenced-based knowledge are notable only by their absence in legal and political processes. Judge Schroeder displays a draconian authoritarianism over his virtually exclusive and inviolate courtroom domain pronouncing that the human beings murdered may not be called "victims" thus dehumanizing them with labels such as "arsons" and "looters". He is already playing to the herd mentality of those he considers as part of ‘his’ crowd. Several news outlets report him playing “Jeopardy” with the prospective jurors thus trivializing what should be a serious trial garnering national attention. I can well imagine what the family of the murder victims feel. Without much care for due process or the Prosecutor, this judge will silence those who dare dissent with other opinions or viewpoints and most importantly, in the streets. They will be censored and canceled as if they are an enemy attempting to undermine and harm his totalitarian regime--his courtroom.
 
"In Kenosha legal circles, Judge Schroeder has a reputation for strictness in sentencing. He is known for delivering lectures to prospective jurors about their civic duty, which on Monday he likened to serving as an American soldier in Vietnam." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/us/judge-schroeder-kyle-rittenhouse.html
 
His war-driven narrative in a country divided by race, class, creed, and sex will be corralled forever within white supremacist wannabe cowboy minds who saw victory in the dead bodies of Vietnamese people. Underpinned by the general intelligence level of those of his ilk most often trolling online papers such as the Racine Journal he already is going towards the vicarious thrill of noising up those killed as opponents in the culture wars already supporting the Defense's argument of "self-defense". This Judge epitomizes the authoritarian excesses of the State seen in the USA where every racist, exceptionalist, hegemonic concept of social control creates a reality of killing "bad guys" based on false narratives in a USA very much at war with itself.
 
I see no reasoning elements in this society making their voices heard in yet another exceptionalist field. I see no end to this situation where the differences between people in the US will only widen until they hardly have a single thing in common anymore. Imbued with an airtight entitlement no matter how ridiculous, wrong-headed, and utterly false their thoughts and communications may be no one will make a difference in the outcome of this trial which will look like the Zimmerman trial. Rittenhouse is a true white supremacist capitalist hero for many white people in the USA.
 
This kangaroo court already resembles a place utterly lost to all reason and due process.
 
 

 

Tags: culture wars, dehumanization, dissent, judge schroeder, murder, racism, rittenhouse, white supremacy


Posted at: 11:06 AM | 2 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

September 23, 2021

Very sad news. Professor Charles Mills, preeminent philosopher and longtime friend of Philosophy at NEIU, has died.  Prof. Mills was on Dr. Milsky's dissertation committee, he was our first Hoagland TriVia speaker, and he served on Dr. Zimmer's committee as well. In the picture, you see him visiting Dr. Zimmer's class in the way back 2018. He had only just received the Lipponcot Award.
 
This is very sad news and a big loss in the world of philosophy. I met the Jamaican philosopher, Charles Mills in graduate school at Loyola. I studied his book, "Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race" in one of the philosophy classes I took there and it is in my top ten most influential books. I used it heavily in my dissertation. I also got the chance to meet him and his wife and they were both wonderful and she was very funny. I have used his written work in my classes for many years. May he rest in peace and power in the knowledge that his brilliance shed a light in that befuddled but beautiful discipline called philosophy. Below is an excerpt from my dissertation about his work. I have introduced the work of Charles Mills to literally thousands of students.
 
"Mills says that one's being and consciousness is shaped through the assigned category of race despite scientific evidence that there are no biologically determined characteristics of race, save phenotype. However, there is a pervasive social construction, a set of positions in a global structure, for which race will be an assigned category that influences the socialization one receives, the world in which one moves, the experiences one has, and the view one develops. This white racism so structured the world as to have negative ramifications for every sphere of black life---juridical standing, moral status, personal racial identity, epistemic reliability, existential plight, political inclusion, social metaphysics, sexual relations, aesthetic worth. The dominant moral code within liberalism and democracy is based on a racialized anthropology or a Herrenvolk ethic. Thus, we must bring to consciousness the assumptions and mechanisms of this ethic, and ultimately to subvert it so that " the white eye can thereby learn to see itself seeing whitely. (Mills, 1999)
Mills' battle to bring such a moral code to the fore of people's consciousness, is, however, uphill. The mainstream view in American society is that race is an anomaly, which is to say that racism is generally seen to be insignificant although historically present. Mill's claim goes far beyond asserting that racism was and still is a historical fact. He argues that race structures our values, our morals, and our self-conceptions; indeed, our liberal democratic society is based on---and depends on---the perpetuation of this racialized ethic. Herrenvolk democracies, like the USA, are democratic for the master race, the herrenvolk. (Mills, 1999)
One major problem of white supremacism is that of cognition: whites do not see themselves as racist. Our moral education forms a cognitive structure to see whiteness as the norm, and Mills points out general societal discomfort (even hostility) toward interracial marriages. Despite this fact, most whites do in fact have good intentions, but Mills argues that white supremacy was and still is an integral aspect of U.S. history. Such assertions are sure to make whites uncomfortable because most whites do not “feel”racist. White supremacy, however, is independent of feelings of racism. Whereas in the past, white privilege was asserted through blatantly racist acts and political policies, eventually liberal, Enlightenment ideas about the “equality of man” were spread and officially proclaimed. Rather than weeding out notions of racial superiority, the result was that the mechanisms of white privilege became more complex and more firmly entrenched. Whites today are heirs of this same system-the Herrenvolk ethic-and, despite a lack of “racist feelings”, whites perpetuate this system simply through their desire for privilege, their desire for what they feel is their “due.” (Mills, 1999)...
 
Mills makes a strong claim that in current U.S. society-our values, our morals, and our self-conceptions-rests upon a racial hierarchy, which, through the generations, has become more and more firmly entrenched. I believe Mills is correct, and those who benefit from this society are most often blinded by privilege and at times unable to accurately judge the true situation. Once the cognitive dysfunction is recognized, especially by members of socially privileged epistemic communities, Mills advises a self-conscious reflection on the ways in which their very social advantage may have fostered epistemic disadvantage in the goal of attaining moral truth. (Mills, 1999)
 
Charles Mills Presente
 
A death notice is posted here:
May be an image of 1 person and standing
 
 

Tags: charles mills, philosophy, racism


Posted at: 07:28 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

September 8, 2021

I have been teaching a course called "Five Hundred Years of Resistance to Imperialism" for almost 20 years but this year I view this course as one of the most difficult to teach. The manner in which the ruling class has co-opted and subverted real revolutionary, decolonizing, and paradigm-shifting efforts is mind-boggling. While there have been CIA, Mossad (Israeli secret service) and MI-6 (British Secret Service) successes in fomenting regime changes and coups since the 1950's the level of their sophistication at these violations of state sovereignty presently are at an all-time high from Ukraine to Hong Kong to Cuba. https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/.

We now have government-sponsored uprisings and manufactured revolutions that look like real resistance movements but they are not and it becomes hard to tell who the players are given the narratives the media spins. No other uprising may be more confusing than the January 6th attack on the Capitol this year. White people calling themselves patriots, many who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, carrying Confederate flags, some in costumes with white supremacist and Nordic symbols entered the Capitol at the urging of President Donald Trump. These pro-Trump supporters used American flag poles to break windows with bats and pipes to beat Capitol Police and created a riotous insurrection. Yet Fox News is still trying to trick its followers into believing that Antifa groups and Leftists were dressing up like white supremacists.

Who benefited from the January 6, 2021 insurrection performance? Trump clearly incited his followers to attempt a coup but the more complex plot in this script is one the CIA has been using and perfecting for decades to infiltrate and subvert any real resistance movements whether we support them or not. This makes it difficult to study and organize movements for real anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revolutions that will destroy class inequities, white supremacy, patriarchy, invasions, and occupations towards decolonization, independence, and liberation.

Tags: fake uprisings, manufactured revolutions, real resistance, revolutions


Posted at: 07:46 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

January 20, 2021

I was born during the nuclear bomb dropping Truman years. Truman ushered in the Cold War against all communist and socialist countries, leaders, and people. Later this made me want to know more about why the ruling class hated communism so much. I spent much of my professional research years studying that subject with tours in Cuba, Venezuela, and China.I came of age and so did the cold war during the "I Like Ike" years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. That mantra was repeated a lot in our house. Later I found out about his hatred of the Soviets and his anti-communism, the US-engineered coup in Iran, the support for Ngo Dien Diem, and his messing with Nasser and Fidel.
 
Then came the Kennedy years with Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis and while Chicago was a Democratic stronghold my Italian mother believed Republicanism was akin to godliness not to mention, which she did mention, that he was a womanizer. When Kennedy was shot and killed she politely said she did not mourn his death. I remember thinking that was pretty cold and not at all "Christian" behavior when everyone else in the neighborhood was devasted.
 
As a teen, it seemed no one liked LBJ and in my circle of friends, we all hated the Vietnam war. I remember LBJ called smart people effete intellectuals hence my bad vibe about him because I knew I wanted to be an effete intellectual like the Beatniks in Hyde Park.
 
Nixon's failings were the stuff of dark tragedy. He hated Blacks and Hippies and criminalized drugs with the stated intent to lock em up. I was already in college and had joined a Socialist Club. I did vote for Eugene McCarthy, who was the Bernie Sanders of that time period. After that, I was so disgusted with presidents from Watergate to Blow-job gate that I only voted for third party candidates such as Citizen's Party, any group Ralph Nader was running for, and later the Green Party.
 
I remember when Gerald Ford came in it was a bit of a sigh of relief after “tricky Dicky”. But he was still a Republican and he pardoned Nixon which I view today as worse than pardoning Bannon.
Of course, during the Ford years, things got worse for workers of all colors when Republicans were the face of the ruling class and women kept trying to kill him (Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore are the only two women in our history who have ever attempted to assassinate an American President). Those were the days!
 
While Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and announced that American troops would be withdrawn from South Korea. He also decided against the construction of the B-1 bomber as a replacement for the aging B-52, regarding the proposed airplane as costly and obsolete, and also decided to cut back on the navy's shipbuilding program. Champions of military power protested, charging that he was not sufficiently sensitive to the threat of the Soviet Union. He may have seemed benign but he supported CIA operations in Zaire, Guatemala, East Timor, Angola, Afghanistan, and El Salvador.
 
Then came Reagan and that is when I knew it was all a sham when an actor could become president. His policies were anti-union, pro-coups, dirty tricks in the Middle East while supporting the war criminal Oliver North and privatization. The veil of ignorance dropped for me. Behind the real iron curtains of the office of the presidency was nothing but corruption. Reagan and Bush brought down the Berlin Wall but workers, students, and prisoners in the USA are all still suffering the effects of both Reagan and Bush.
 
It was during the CIA Director George H. Bush regime I began to study the crimes of the CIA and the USA at home and abroad. Bush Sr. began with a racist election campaign. He made a dishonest case for war along with war crimes which I teach about in my Terrorism in Law and Media class. Under Bush Sr., the U.S. dropped a whopping 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq and Kuwait, many of which resulted in horrific civilian casualties. The Bush administration deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure for “leverage” over Saddam Hussein. He escalated the racist war on drugs and he too, as so many before him were accused of groping women.
 
As for Bill Clinton, I disconnected from Chicago Democratic friends both liberal and radicals who demanded I vote for him. I did not. His Welfare reform ended another friendship with someone who was proud to serve on his Welfare Reform committee. His NAFTA trade laws embedded globalization and inspired the anti-globalization movement in which I was active from the US to Italy. His regime Enacted the Clinton-Gore Administration's tough crime-fighting strategy. The Bill contained stricter penalties, including "three strikes and you're out" legislation, which helped states fill up more prisons. This president also signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into law at a ceremony at the White House. President Clinton first sent this legislation to Congress in February 1995 and called for additional antiterrorism measures and actions after the devastation of the federal building in Oklahoma City. His regime also sponsored NATO Expanded to Eastern Europe breaking up the former Yogoslavia led the NATO Alliance in a 79-day air war that expelled Serb forces from Kosovo. He authorized attacks on Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological programs, and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. He also messed with Somalia. His Monica Lewinsky affair was disgusting but not as much as his wars.
 
Yet it was George W Bush that pushed me over some edge inside of myself to no longer be fooled in any way shape or form by the US regimes no matter who was the president du jour. An alleged former cocaine addict son of a CIA Director and war criminal daddy Bush he ushered in the US terror wars while reading a storybook to children while planes crashed into the Twin Towers in NYC. He then used this event to manufacture consent for illegal wars that have destroyed countries and lost millions of lives. Bush also botched the handling of Hurricane Katrina.
 
I had no illusions about Barack Obama and voted for the Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, with whom I later traveled to China. Barack kept all the militarism and US-sponsored terrorism going in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and destroyed my husband’s childhood country of Libya. He helped sponsor ISIS and told lies about Syria as Bush did within Afghanistan and Iraq. He authorized CIA and Naval destabilization War Games staged in Iran and ongoing CIA hostilities, in coordination with Columbia, against Venezuela. He did little to nothing to end the police brutality against Black people yet my liberal friends and family loved him and still care nothing about the people he killed and the countries he destroyed. He and Michelle are cool with them. No wonder my friends in other countries view us as vile.
 
And then came Trump, a gross and disgusting reality TV star with countless rape accusations against him and whose support from the white supremacist dominionist T-Party poopers was gob-smackingly deplorable. The list of disgusting executive orders, deregulation, and the massive transfer of wealth during his regime became a daily surreal nightmare which the pandemic and its mishandling have caused the death of hundreds of thousands. He went out with a bang sponsoring a white supremacist insurrection.
 
And now Biden aka The Corpse. I watched him attack Anita Hill for daring to speak out about the sexist behavior of Clarence Thomas, he took credit for the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill I teach about every semester, he sponsored the 1995 Terrorism Bill, and that year he tried to cut Social Security. In 2001 he voted for the Patriot Act and in 2002 he voted for the war against Iraq and in 2005 he voted against bankruptcy protection for students. Biden is also viewed as a groper of women, especially younger women. He has supported all of the corporate sponsorships of war and a police state.
 
All the presidents of my lifetime have dropped all manner of bombs and are killers. Of the last three, Bush dropped tens of thousands of bombs, Obama dropped tens of thousands of bombs and Trump dropped tens of thousands of bombs. I was glad to see all of them go and have no illusions about the new bomb dropper/groper in Chief. It only means my resolve for fundamental social and economic change is deeper.
 
The struggle continues.

Tags: inauguration, presidents, war mongers


Posted at: 11:15 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

January 10, 2021

As you know, on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, people calling themselves patriots, many who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, carrying confederate flags and some in costumes with white supremacist and Nordic symbols entered the Capitol at the urging of the President Donald Trump. These pro-Trump supporters used American flag poles to break windows, and bats and pipes to beat Capitol Police and created a riotous insurrection.
 
Many of these rioters are the same people who defend police, veterans and service members when Black Lives Matters activists and supporters or people they call Antifa take to the streets in protest or when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee to condemn police brutality.  As is the historical pattern in the US, most of them, white men, walked out of the Capitol unscathed and bragged about their actions on social media as if they had won a major battle in a war. It did not take long for the indigenous people of this land to note on social media that they were not afforded such kid-gloved treatment while engaging in peaceful protests at Standing Rock where water protectors, including women and children, were met with tear gas, vicious dogs, rubber bullets and water cannons, which were used to soak them in frigid 23 degree temperatures during their protests. 
 
I understand the gut reaction of those outraged by the police’s seeming willingness to allow Trump supporters to break into the Capitol. But there is a danger in inadvertently calling for more militarized law enforcement. We must instead look at the deeper issues, which are white supremacy and capitalism enforced through systemic and individual violence.
 
As lawmakers find ways to respond to the storming of the Capitol, remember the ramifications won’t just impact the White supremacists. Any calls for greater security in U.S. government buildings, more deployment of law enforcement to protests, or more stringent laws will, as we know and have seen time and time again, be used against Natives, Black and Brown dissenters and all those who oppose the present system.   The US already has more than enough laws and resources and manpower to quell any uprisings that the ruling class disagrees with, as we saw during last summer’s protests.  The police going lenient on the Trump protesters was just another example of how the cops protect and enforce white supremacy.  This is not new.  
 
The challenges for all of us in the fields of criminal justice and justice studies is more important than ever.  Those challenges include acknowledging the lies that have been told and the truths that have been hidden about the fundamental purpose of law and justice in the USA and to make the necessary changes creating new systems and changing ourselves so that distributive, restorative, and transformative justice will have a due process in which to be implemented.
 
Dr  T
 
 

 


Posted at: 09:58 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink RSS

January 7, 2021

Staged
June Terpstra, Ph.D.
1/7/2021
 
Who benefits from yesterday’s insurrection performance if not the corporate, security state, and military-sponsored Democratic Republic of Neos (DRN) aka imperialists? This group of ruling class players made up of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives who have been in league with their corporate/CIA/military sponsors since at least WWII, are experts at these staged historic events that typically bring about regime change. This brief analysis will offer an evidence-based critical analysis of yesterday's US domestic regime change operation. Not the first and probably not the last.
The history of DRN sponsored coups and regime-change operations managed by the CIA demonstrates their effectiveness at organizing distressed populations using narratives of nationalism, supremacy, and individual freedoms against leaders and regimes that do not comply with the DRN agenda for total hegemony. Elites generally favored the Trump regime over a Clinton regime but after a while, the benefits were just not enough for the DRN and it was time for The Donald to go.
 
In practice, the US/CIA regime change scripts and color revolutions sponsored since WWII do not vary much and yesterday’s show fit the description. The general script followed historically is that after a period of attempting to control a belligerent leader or an uncooperative regime to obey hegemonic dictates an uprising is manufactured using distressed and disgruntled populations led by trained, armed, and costumed CIA and military assets and agents who organize “pro-democracy” movements and stage special coup events such as the one we saw yesterday. These chaotic riots and aggressive insurgencies lead to calls for not only a new regime but for more “law and order” and increased security state controls to prevent such future incursions. DRN enjoys events that generate more legislation and budget allocations for more police on the streets, Psy-ops, Spy-ops, and surveillance state pay-ops.
The twist in yesterday's script was that the standing president was engineering a coup against the DRN which in turn was being led by DRN operatives (CIA and military) to lead the movement in such a way that the coup attempt would blowback on Trump and regime change would be handed to Old Joe et al who has always been a loyal servant of imperialism.
 
What evidence besides the history of US coups and regime-change operations is there for this thesis?
1. The police allowing the show to go on all the way to a break-in of the Capitol with little to no consequences (a few dead former military assets are worth the price).
2. The police allowing people to leave with no arrests or consequences.
3. No appearances of the National Guard.
4. Little to no media outrage in the corporate press.
5. No sensationalized congressional victim impact statements in the media.
6. The costuming of main assets.
7. A united call for Ole Joe and the DRN to save the people of the US from the mad lunatic leader.
8. A DRN controlled government aka regime change.
 
While my theory of yesterday’s events is in its early stages it will be a difficult plot to follow for those who want to believe the simple but true storyline that Trump incited his followers to attempt a coup and Trump must be immediately drawn and quartered. The more complex plot in this script is one the CIA has been using and perfecting for decades but the bottom line, when imperialists win, is always the same—hegemonic control by the corporate-sponsored Democratic Republic of Neos aka Imperialists aka Exceptionalistan.
EndNote—all elections in the USA are rigged.
 
 
 
 
 

Tags: color revolutions, imperialism, insurgencies, neo-conservativism, neo-liberalism, riots in dc


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