Do you know what I love about conservatives using the word “agitator?” Because it was a favorite word of southern racists back in the 1960s when northerners went to the south to register black voters. It’s what the racists called the people they murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964 during what was called “Freedom Summer.”
Donald Trump talked about “heritage” Saturday night in Tulsa where only 6,200 Trump-supporting racists showed up. When Donald Trump talks about heritage, he’s giving out a dog whistle to racists. And just like he did with taking “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” from a southern sheriff in the 1960s, he’s now using “agitators.”
All Donald Trump is missing is his “sheriff’s star” and white hood. For the record, he also used the racist term “Kung flu” at Saturday’s hate rally.
Donald Trump sent out a hate tweet before his Saturday Tulsa flop that said, “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!”
Turkish army to receive 500 swarming drones with facial recognition feature: report
By Turkish Minute – June 19,- shared with thanks. illustrations, video and comment added.
The Turkish Armed Forces will receive 500 tactical Kargu-2 kamikaze drones with facial recognition feature, Forbes reported, citing local media.
The drones, manufactured by Defense Technologies Engineering (STM), have a high degree of onboard intelligence, and the forthcoming addition of swarming capability takes them to a new level.
STM CEO Murat İkinci told the Hürriyet newspaper that Kargu has facial recognition, suggesting it can seek out and murder specific people. It is described as being engineered for “anti-terror and asymmetric warfare scenarios.”
comment:Turkey’s latest ongoing illegal invasion and occupation of Rojava in NE Syria features heavy use of drone attacks against the local population who are forced to flee, leaving their homes, lands and property to be looted and occupied by the
Turkish paid jihadi mercenaries. Drone warfare in Syria avoids the danger of using Turkish NATO jets in airspace controlled by the US or Syrian air-defense systems, and has been extended to repeatedly attack refugee camps of the fleeing Kurdish civilians, especially the evicted population of occupied Afrin canton now in Shebha. Having learned to kill, destroy and terrorize with drones Turkey has now deployed them massively in Libya, helping to defeat Haftar’s forces, in exchange for illegal oil and gas concessions in the Med.comment
The Kargu-2 is a 15-pound multicopter with a top speed of about 90 mph and an endurance of half an hour. In standard mode it is controlled directly by an operator from up to six miles away; when a target is spotted the drone locks on to it and dives in, murdering or destroying it with an explosive charge.
Recently, a photo of the statue of Charles William Stewart or Lord Londonderry (1778–1854), in Durham city’s marketplace was posted in a local Facebook group.
Someone commented that he “owned many of the coal mines in County Durham and spent lots of money to make them run better.”
Astonishingly, it transpired that this particular piece of misinformation was taken from a website produced by the university for use in local schools. Not wishing to allow this go unchallenged, I responded by making a few factual observations and suggestions.
First of all, Londonderry was brutal even by the standards of his time. On the Tory benches in the House of Lords, he led the opposition to the Mines Act 1842, which among other things, prevented boys under the age of 10 years old from working underground. Thankfully, he failed, although he did manage to get the legislation watered down.
Therefore, the often-heard claim that we cannot condemn historical figures because “people didn’t know any better at the time” simply does not apply. It is no exaggeration to describe Londonderry as a tyrant. In the 1844, when miners went on strike, he evicted them and their families from their homes. He also issued his infamous ‘Seaham Letter’ which warned that any local traders who provided strikers with credit would be driven out of business.
A few years later, he strongly opposed the 1850 Coal Mines Inspection Act which ensured that mines were subject to government safety inspections.
Greta Thunberg defies the wave of climate deniers’ ageism and mockery and unmasks the cynical politicians, shouting out a new wake-up call with the latest scientific facts. ‘The world needs to learn the lessons of coronavirus and treat climate change with similar urgency’.
“People are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things”, says Ms Thunberg, “we cannot keep sweeping these injustices under the carpet”.
She says lockdown has given her time to relax and reflect away from the public gaze.
In recent days, the Supreme Court hearings continue for the crimes of “insulting the Crown” by the twelve rappers of La Insurgencia, Pablo Hasel, and Valtonyc, among others. Meanwhile, the ex king prepares his luxurious exile in the Caribbean.
The Bourbon family were made kings of Spain by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Beginning with little money the ex king Juan Carlos now has over 2000 million euros, according to Forbes, and his legal impunity plays a key role in the continuing looting of Spain by the elite oligarchy. (top Right photo) Prince Juan Carlos of Bourbon and Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco participating in the Victory Parade in Madrid on June 10, 1971, ((bottom R) King Juan Carlos addressing the nation following his abdication on June 2, 2014 at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid. Spain’s former king Juan Carlos, who turned 80 on January 5, 2018, accusedof multiple corruption, has taken a secondary role since his son Felipe ascended the throne in 2014, putting an end to his nearly four decades-long reign.
“The person of the King is inviolable and is not subject to liability.”
The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of nine months in prison for rapper Pablo Hasel for the crime of insulting the Crown and the Security Forces. Regarding the twelve rappers of The Insurgency, the Supreme has met this week to decide on the sentence of nine months in prison.
Generalised Corruption: Of the hundreds of Spanish politicians charged with corruption in the last decade NONE are now in prison.
The rapper Valtonyc escaped and is in exile iun Belgium. The Belgian Court of Appeal will announce the final decision next September 8 after meetings on Tuesday with the defense of the Mallorcan rapper. Valtonyc fled the Spanish State with the aim of avoiding a sentence ratified by the Supreme Court of three and a half years in prison for, among other things, insulting the Crown.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Supreme Court has finally agreed to take up the investigation opened by Anticorruption on the role of ex King Carlos in the construction of the High Speed Train lines in Saudi Arabia, without considering, however, the clarification of corruption cases.
If the money laundering resulting from those commissions occurred before 2014, Juan Carlos will remain, once again, unpunished as a consequence of the “inviolability” of the monarchy.
Several sources affirm that the judicial investigation on the former Head of State may be accelerating his decision to leave Spain to settle in the Dominican Republic.
While the recent rebellion against the police and white supremacy has been historical, it has also been coupled by an attempt by the State to drown the uprising in a sea of tear-gas and rubber bullets. While demonstrations and actions continue, the State is now gearing up for a more long-term strategy of repression, as a vast network of FBI agents, attorneys, and local police comb through hours of footage and social media, looking for targets.
Already, over 10,000 people have been arrested across the so-called US and around 75 currently have federal charges; many of which carry extensive prison sentences. Moreover, there are reports of FBI door-knocks and visits to those that have recently been arrested. Often times people are being asked if they are involved in “antifa” while some are even propositioned with becoming informants.
As the Pentagon readies for the rebellions to come, its important for us to begin to map out and prepare a strategy of long-term movement defense of all rebels swept up during the uprising. Reaching out to our legal correspondent, we sat down to discuss just what is happening and what we can expect.
IGD:Broadly speaking, what has happened, repression wise, since the rebellion? We know that there has been a slew of federal charges and lots of door knocks by the FBI, can you talk about both?
So much has happened. Across the country, police have unleashed incredible violence against protesters, rebels, journalists, and bystanders. Countless people have been arrested and are facing all sorts of state charges in local courts. I read that the number was over 10,000 arrests nationally.
Additionally, at least 74 people across the country are facing federal charges for their alleged roles in the uprisings. This is particularly concerning because federal charges tend to carry much more severe penalties than comparable state charges, and are less likely to get lenient plea bargains. So that’s 74 uprising participants who are facing very serious prison time, just in a couple weeks. Countless more people have been visited or contacted by federal agents, usually FBI or ATF but also Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, or DEA.
There’s a long history of this repression, especially against Black liberation movements and to a lesser extent anarchist movements. The FBI has always been a political police force. Their headquarters is named for J. Edgar Hoover who founded the FBI to fight communists and anarchists, and then orchestrated COINTELPRO to destroy the Black freedom movement for close to three decades. Crushing this uprising, this movement, is in their very DNA.
People are arrested in Hollywood, California, on June 1st, 2020. So far, more than 10,000 arrests have been made. AFP via Getty Images, shared with thanks
But the more we understand their repression, the better we can fight back against it. So I started compiling information about all the uprising-related federal prosecutions and sharing it with other people involved in legal support and anti-repression efforts around the country.
IGD: How are these investigations unfolding? What tactics and strategies are being used to identify people?
Most of the cases I first reviewed seemed like pretty low-hanging fruit, prosecutions of opportunity. But this week I’ve seen cases where the feds together with local law enforcement put in quite a bit of effort to investigate and identify people. One example was a case out of Philly where a woman is accused of burning two cop cars. The lengths they went to in order to connect this unidentified person at the protest to an identifiable person through online shopping records, social media accounts, promo videos from work, government and commercial databases, etc. surprised even me.
BLURRING faces on your photos helps, easily done free on GIMP
I think this is where we see a significant connection to the J20 inauguration prosecutions in 2017-2018. The government is willing to invest a lot of resources into scouring the internet for photos and videos from protests, analyzing them in excruciating detail to find any unique identifying features that they can, and then scouring social media and other sources for a match. This is the full weight of the surveillance state bearing down.
Other ways they’ve been able to allegedly identify people recently include:
Graffiti artist Banksy has created a sketch for a slavery memorial in Bristol that would incorporate slave-trader Edward Colston and the protesters who tore his statue down.
The Free 