Racism in America.... Is it worse now after the 2016 election?

[China]

The Sneaky, Disturbing World of White-Nationalist Wellness

 

On a cursory scan of its website and Instagram page, Mighty White Soap Co might look like an innocuous, cutesy personal care brand, albeit one with an arguably archaic and tone-deaf name. But a closer look turns up some offbeat offerings mixed in among its seasonal designs, colorful swirls, and floral patterns, like a soap embedded with glow-in-the-dark letters that read CIA. And a review of all their product names reveals a disconcerting mélange of unremarkable odor monikers (“Autumn Caress”), strange references to obscure far-right memes (“Clown World”), and an apparent fixation on white consumers (“Morally White,” “Caucasian Abrasion”).

 

The Mighty White Soap Co website does not have a traditional “About” page, or even a quick list of company values. But a deep dive into their product blurbs and social media posts makes it crystal clear that it is in fact an only moderately veiled white-nationalist beauty brand. The company also winks and nods to a wide array of overarching far-right—and increasingly pandemic- and vaccine-skeptical—conspiracy theories.

 

In a 2019 Instagram post, to take just one example, it noted that a ring-shaped soap, intended—ostensibly jokingly—for penis cleaning, was “now available in three sizes. Regular, Aryan, and Wew Lad!”

Extremist communities widely recognize and celebrate Mighty White Soap Co’s far-right cred, experts told The Daily Beast. Joanna Mendelson, an Anti-Defamation League extremism researcher, said she’s seen “many white-supremacist channels promoting them” for some time now. In 2019, Mighty White Soap Co went so far as to retweet a “ProWhite Christmas Shopping List” assembled by a self-described “advocate for the global awakening of the Aryan Spirit,” which included them.

 

Last month, pandemic and vaccine conspiracy groups started to shout them out on platforms like Telegram as well, after the company briefly offered The Jab, a soap bar with a needle shoved into it.

 

“THE ONLY JAB YOU SHOULD BUY,” one prominent channel crowed.

 

“Mighty White Soap Company has some really funny soaps… It’s important to support small businesses that aren’t woke,” they added.

 

The Daily Beast attempted to contact the people behind Mighty White Soap Co for comment via email and social media accounts associated with the brand, as well as email addresses and numbers associated with an individual linked to the company. We did not receive a response. However, after we reached out they did release a new bar of soap, “Journalistic Integrity,” with a particularly long product description criticizing the press.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 11/1/2021 at 11:35 PM, China said:

Attorney for man accused in Ahmaud Arbery killing says white males 'significantly underrepresented' in jury pool

 

 The attorney for one of the men charged with murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery plans to file a motion saying that his defendant is not facing a jury of his peers.

 

Kevin Gough represents William 'Roddie' Bryan, the man accused of filming the pursuit and killing.

 

“It would appear that white males born in the South over 40 years old without a college degree... which he might also be known as Bubba or Joe Sixpack... seem to be significantly underrepresented," said Gough during jury selection Friday.

 

He says he wants to look at whether they constitute a recognized constitutionally “protected” class of people, who can’t be discriminated against.

 

Gough went on to say he believed thinks there’s a real question whether this demographic is underrepresented. He stated that he intends to submit his motion in writing.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Tensions flare in Arbery death trial as Jesse Jackson visits

 

A judge denied mistrial requests Monday at the trial of three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery after defense attorneys claimed jurors were tainted by weeping from the gallery where the slain Black man’s parents sat with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

 

The morning’s testimony was largely disrupted by arguments outside the jury’s presence over Jackson’s appearance. The judge said he found one defense lawyer’s complaints last week about Black pastors to be “reprehensible” and no group would be excluded from his courtroom.

 

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old in a pickup truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.

 

Tensions flared in the courtroom Monday morning soon after Jackson sat in the back row of the courtroom between Arbery’s parents. Defense attorney Kevin Gough asked the judge to make the civil rights leader leave to avoid unfairly influencing the jury.

 

Gough, an attorney for Bryan, also complained last week when the Rev. Al Sharpton joined Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, and father, Marcus Arbery Sr., inside the Glynn County courtroom. Gough told the judge Thursday “we don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here.”

 

“There is no reason for these prominent icons in the civil rights movement to be here,” Gough said Monday. “With all due respect, I would suggest, whether intended or not, that inevitably a juror is going to be influenced by their presence in the courtroom.”

 

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley declined the request. Courtrooms are generally open to the public, although the judge has limited seating in the public gallery because of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

“The court is not going to single out any particular individual or group of individuals as not being allowed into his courtroom as a member of the public,” Walmsley said. “If there is a disruption, you’re welcome to call that to my attention.”

 

Jackson told reporters outside the courthouse that he came to coastal Brunswick to support justice for Arbery’s family, not in response to the attorney’s previous remarks about Black pastors.

 

“As the judge said, it was my constitutional right to be there,” Jackson said. “It’s my moral obligation to be there.”

 

Jackson acknowledged that Arbery’s mother wept “very quietly” in the courtroom after prosecutors showed a photo of her son to a witness.

 

Gough’s mistrial request was joined by the two other defense teams. Franklin Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, said he fears the defendants aren’t receiving a fair trial in the community.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 10/9/2021 at 9:01 PM, China said:

A slavery petition was the latest racist incident at this school. Parents and lawmakers are fed up

 

Nearly two weeks after a racist petition to bring back slavery circulated at her daughter's school, Julie Stutterheim is still angry.

 

She says it was yet another example of a racist incident at Park Hill South High School in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri.

"She was very upset about it. My daughter's Ethiopian," Stutterheim told CNN this week.

Her daughter has encountered racism firsthand, Stutterheim says and "the more she talked about this, the more upset she got."

Stutterheim did what any concerned parent would do and reached out to the school to find out what happened.

 

What she found was that an increasingly familiar scenario was unfolding at her child's school. Across the US, there are two diametrically opposed conversations about race going on at the same time. In one, some White parents are telling school leaders that lessons about race make White students feel bad. And in the other, there's the racism that is actually happening in schools.

District leaders condemned the petition and Jeanette Cowherd, Park Hill's superintendent, released a video message days after Stutterheim started asking questions.

"Going forward, we have two options. We can react, or we can respond. We are choosing to respond, to create a long-term solution that best meets the needs of our students, our staff our families and our community."

 

Part of that response is the district's search for an expert adviser on race and inclusion. Yet many White parents across the US have pushed back against these efforts and conflated it with the debate over what critical race theory is and isn't.

Park Hill is no different.

At a recent school board meeting, Sally Roller echoed an opinion that many White parents share.

"I would like to address critical race theory, sometimes called culturally responsive teaching. History is what it is, whether we like it or not, and should not be rewritten," she said. "I fear this would cause more division and racism by causing others to be seen by skin color rather than the other individual personal qualities of the person."

Critical race theory is not taught in the K-12 curriculum.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

Parents of Park Hill South students file lawsuit against district

 

The parents of four Park Hill South High School freshmen have filed a lawsuit against the Park Hill School District for how it handled the discipline of the students for their petition to “start slavery again.”

 

In September, the district took action against a handful of students for their role in creating and circulating a petition that included racist statements.

 

The petition generated response from school and district officials, including principal Kerrie Herren, who, in a letter to parents, described the petition as including “racist statements” that are “not tolerated and will never be tolerated in our building.”

 

Herren’s letter indicated the students involved had been “punished.”

 

At the time, the district said it wasn’t able to disclose the punishments made against the students, but in a federal lawsuit filed last week, the parents outline the punishments, including one student who was expelled and three others who received 180 days suspension.

 

According to the lawsuit, a Park Hill South freshman who identifies as Black and Brazilian and is referenced in the lawsuit as Plaintiff A, was on a school bus traveling to a football game and allegedly “bantered” with another student, who the lawsuit identifies as Black and is referenced in court documents Student X, about slavery and needing a job. The lawsuit alleges Plaintiff A drafted a change.org petition, showed it to other students on the bus and then posted it.

 

The lawsuit says the students then allegedly shared the petition in a SnapChat Group used by the football team, where other students, including three other students identified in the lawsuit as Plaintiffs B, C and D, commented on the petition.

 

The lawsuit says the student who published the petition was expelled from school, and the three other students who commented on the petition received 180-day suspensions.

 

Arthur Benson, the attorney representing the four students, wrote in the civil suit that the district had long struggled with race relations and it was that history that pressured the district to hand out the punishments.

 

“The expulsion and long-term suspensions imposed on Plaintiffs were imposed for purposes unrelated to the need of Defendants to maintain good order and a functioning educational environment in Park Hill schools, but were instead imposed for the personal or political needs of Defendants to appear publicly to impose harsh punishment on students who had purportedly circulated “racist statements,” Benson wrote in the suit.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[Larry]

7 minutes ago, China said:

“The expulsion and long-term suspensions imposed on Plaintiffs were imposed for purposes unrelated to the need of Defendants to maintain good order and a functioning educational environment in Park Hill schools, but were instead imposed for the personal or political needs of Defendants to appear publicly to impose harsh punishment on students who had purportedly circulated “racist statements,” Benson wrote in the suit.

 

Plaintiff's claim that the punishment was a political publicity stunt might be a teensy bit stronger, if the school had identified the students, and the punishment.  

 

Instead of Plaintiff doing it.  

[tshile]

Also didn’t scotus just rule for a cheerleader that was punished for what they said on snap chat? 
 

they don’t say as a blanket students can never be punished for everything but I think they made it clear it had to relate to impacting school

 

(is that what he’s referencing when he mentions order and function?)

[Larry]

You don't think openly and publicly advocating for the return of slavery might be disruptive in school?  

[tshile]

I think there’s room for either

[China]

Racial covenants, a relic of the past, are still on the books across the country

 

Inga Selders, a city council member in a suburb of Kansas City, wanted to know if there were provisions preventing homeowners from legally having backyard chickens. So she combed through deeds in the county recorder's office for two days looking for specific language.

 

At one point, she stumbled across some language, but it had nothing to do with chickens.

 

"I heard the rumors, and there it was," Selders recalled. "It was disgusting. It made my stomach turn to see it there in black-and-white."

 

What Selders found was a racially restrictive covenant in the Prairie Village Homeowners Association property records that says, "None of said land may be conveyed to, used, owned, or occupied by negroes as owners or tenants." The covenant applied to all 1,700 homes in the homeowners association, she said.

 

"There's still racism very much alive and well in Prairie Village," Selders said about her tony bedroom community in Johnson County, Kan., the wealthiest county in a state where more than 85% of the population is white.

 

The racially restrictive covenant that Selders uncovered can be found on the books in nearly every state in the U.S., according to an examination by NPR, KPBS, St. Louis Public Radio, WBEZ and inewsource, a nonprofit investigative journalism site. Although the Supreme Court ruled the covenants unenforceable in 1948 and although the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed them, the hurtful, offensive language still exists — an ugly reminder of the country's racist past.

 

"I'd be surprised to find any city that did not have restrictive covenants," said LaDale Winling, a historian and expert on housing discrimination who teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

“If Everybody’s White, There Can’t Be Any Racial Bias”: The Disappearance of Hispanic Drivers From Traffic Records

 

In Louisiana, law enforcement agencies have been accused of targeting Hispanic drivers in traffic stops and identifying them as white on tickets. Misidentification makes it impossible to track racial bias, experts say.
 

When sheriff’s deputies in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, pulled over Octavio Lopez for an expired inspection tag in 2018, they wrote on his traffic ticket that he is white. Lopez, who is from Nicaragua, is Hispanic and speaks only Spanish, said his wife.

 

In fact, of the 167 tickets issued by deputies to drivers with the last name Lopez over a nearly six-year span, not one of the motorists was labeled as Hispanic, according to records provided by the Jefferson Parish clerk of court. The same was true of the 252 tickets issued to people with the last name of Rodriguez, 234 named Martinez, 223 with the last name Hernandez and 189 with the surname Garcia.

 

This kind of misidentification is widespread — and not without harm. Across America, law enforcement agencies have been accused of targeting Hispanic drivers, failing to collect data on those traffic stops, and covering up potential officer misconduct and aggressive immigration enforcement by identifying people as white on tickets.

 

“If everybody’s white, there can’t be any racial bias,” Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill, told WWNO/WRKF and ProPublica.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[China]

So the ol' dirty toenail defense...

 

Defense claims Ahmaud Arbery partly responsible for his own killing

 

The lawyer for one of the defendants in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery‘s alleged killers told jurors during her closing argument on Monday that the late 25-year-old bears some responsibility for his own shooting death.

 

Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, briefly left the courtroom Monday morning after defense attorney Laura Hogue, who represents defendant Greg McMichael, suggested her son’s clothes and hygiene somehow contributed to his demise in the coastal Georgia neighborhood of Santilla Shores on Feb. 23, 2020.

 

McMichael drove the truck that pursued and boxed in Arbery that day before his son, Travis McMichael, confronted and fatally shot the man after a brief struggle.

 

The defense team has argued their clients were making a citizen’s arrest of Arbery, whom they suspected of trying to steal property from an unfinished home in their neighborhood. The trial revealed that the McMichaels tried repeatedly to question Arbery as he ignored them and jogged away.

 

“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long dirty toenails,” Hogue told jurors.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Soledad O’Brien Decries Treatment of Missing Black Women and Children: ‘Why Are They Not So Interesting To The Media?’

 

Veteran journalist and producer Soledad O’Brien told SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah that race is “obviously” a factor in the way the media treats Black people who go missing.

 

On Friday’s edition of The Dean Obeidallah Show, the host talked with Ms. O’Brien, who is the co-producer of the new HBO docu-series Black and Missing. Obeidallah asked O’Brien what inspired the series.

 

Quote

I think for me is how do you tell the story of the women who run the “Black and Missing” foundation. How do you think about elevating a lot of these stories and digging into why, why are the stories about missing Black women and Black people generally, why are they not told why are they not shared, why are they not so interesting to the media? And why is law enforcement seeming to be unwilling to really chase after these stories?

 

So for all those reasons for a long time I’ve been interested, but when we finally were able to get Derrica and Natalie Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation to take part in the doc, then it all came together. But that was about three years ago a lot of people have said to me oh with the Gabby Petito story you know good timing.

 

And I think “Oh my goodness no,” I mean there’s so many versions of this story you could just do it over and over and over again, unfortunately. We know there’s a correlation–or the women from black and missing will tell you–there’s a correlation with domestic violence so there’s been a spike in the pandemic and also we know that sex trafficking, lot of times kids are considered to be runaways are actually being sex trafficked. And so I think that there is a large number, and often it is also because people are not really searching for them and don’t prioritize looking for them.

 

If you look at the coverage in fact in the documentary as you saw, we look at the story of a young [Black] woman right goes missing right just before Natalee Holloway goes missing and you can’t even compare the coverage of those two cases. Because one young woman–the black woman–gets zero coverage, none, literally none. Her relatives are well connected in the media they know how to navigate a system they just cannot get anyone to care. And then Natalee Holloway goes missing and you know there’s tons of coverage. And not just coverage, there are Americans who are literally getting on planes to go to Aruba to search for her.

 

So I think the question becomes why is the “missing white woman syndrome” as Gwen Ifill used to put it you know so contagious. Why is it so inspiring for people to tell these stories and then you know often others just get missed altogether? And I think a lot of that has to do with bias. I think that has to do with who the media thinks is attractive and important and interesting. And so you know obviously race is a factor.

 

Click on the link for the video

[China]

Republican Triggered By Uppity Blacks In TV Commercial.

 

I’d like for you to meet Lisa Leisy, of Idaho. As you can see from her now locked Twitter account bio she is a self identifying patriot and God fearing Christian.  She is also the Power County Campaign Chair for Janice McGeachin’s campaign for Governor. McGeachin is running on a campaign asserting that the current Republican Governor of Idaho is just not Trumpy enough. 

 

Having met Leisy I’d like for you to watch a brief, 15 second, Hershey’s chocolate commercial that originally aired in 2020 but is also going around this year.  The commercial is a derivative of the classic where the holiday wrapped chocolates play as Christmas bells. It features only two people, a father and a daughter, who are celebrating the holidays together by making Christmas cookies.  

 

 

Do you see anything wrong with that commercial?  Alas, Republican Lisa Leisy does.  You see, the problem with that commercial is that it has the effrontery to feature two black people.  Yes, I’m serious, and she actually did this publicly, on Twitter.  See her reaction for yourself. 

 

 

 

Click on the link for the full story

[China]

'Banking While Black': Police video shows how cashing a paycheck led to handcuffs

 

Joe Morrow had just finished a 12-hour shift as an "order picker" at a grocery distributor in Hopkins last year when he stopped at a U.S. Bank branch in Columbia Heights to cash his paycheck.

 

Despite having an account with the bank and showing his ID, that simple transaction led to a call to police, threats of arrest, and Morrow being placed in handcuffs.

 

A bank manager told officers he suspected the check was a fake, but police body camera video shows he only called Morrow's employer for verification after the 23-year-old Black man was removed from his office.

 

The check was, in fact, real.

 

U.S. Bank disputed Morrow's allegations of racial profiling but quietly agreed to a confidential settlement two weeks after 5 INVESTIGATES started asking questions about the incident.

 

Lawyers and advocates say Morrow's experience raises questions about implicit bias and is part of a national phenomenon that more Black Americans have been documenting in recent years with the social media hashtag "Banking while Black."

 

"When I'm coming out of (the manager's) office I was handcuffed… people were looking… like I'm a criminal or something," Morrow said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Reminds me of this:

 

[China]

Louisiana Judge on Footage of Racial Slurs in Home Video: Sorry, I Was Sedated

 

A Louisiana judge is facing a flurry of complaints and calls to resign after home video footage appeared to capture her family using racial slurs in the aftermath of a burglary attempt.

 

Lafayette City Court Judge Michelle Odinet has asked for “forgiveness and understanding” after the video emerged this week. In the footage, which was first reported by The Current, an unidentified voice—apparently a member of Odinet's family—can be heard laughing about “mom” shouting the N-word at a burglary suspect. The video was shot as the judge’s family watched home-surveillance footage of a thwarted car burglary at their home.

 

A female voice can be heard saying, “We have a n -----, It’s a n-----, like a roach.”

 

It was not immediately clear who made the racist remarks heard in the video. Odinet, who has four children, did not directly respond to questions about whose voice was heard calling the burglary suspect a “roach.”

 

“My children and I were the victim [sic] of an armed burglary at our home. The police were called and the assailant was arrested. The incident shook me to my core and my mental state was fragile,” Odinet said in a statement Monday, The Current reports.

 

As for the video, Odinet said she “was given a sedative at the time” and had “zero recollection of the video and the disturbing language used during it.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Claudette Colvin's record expunged 66 years after refusing to give up seat

 

Claudette Colvin was 15 in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama — 9 months before Rosa Parks' act of defiance. Colvin was arrested and charged. 

 

Now 82, Colvin filed a petition to have the record of the incident wiped clean, and a judge in Montgomery has granted the request. 

 

"My record was expunged," Colvin told "CBS Mornings" in an exclusive interview. "And my name was cleared. And I'm no longer a juvenile delinquent at 82."

 

Although she now has a clean record, she said she will be remembered as the girl who, on March 2, 1955, refused to give up her seat on a crowded city bus.

 

Colvin said she was with three classmates and "sitting in the section that was allowed for colored people" when a White woman boarded and moved to the back of the bus, hoping to take a seat. At that time, as Colvin explained, a Black person and a White person could not sit in the same row.

 

"In segregated law, a colored person couldn't sit across the aisle from a White person," she said. "They had to sit behind the White person to show that they were superior and the colored people was inferior."

 

The bus driver asked the school kids to move and three did — Colvin refused.

 

"I said I could not move because history had me glued to the seat," she recalled. "And they say, 'How is that?' I say, 'Well, it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth hand was pushing me down on the other shoulder.'" 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

As parents protest critical race theory, students demand end to classmates' racial slurs

 

During the first week of October, Brooklyn Edwards was in the school gymnasium during her lunch period when she said a classmate took a piece of cotton out of his pocket, tossed it on the ground and told her to pick it. 

 

Brooklyn, 15, described the incident a month later at the Johnston County, North Carolina, school board meeting. She said she’d dealt with racist bullying frequently as a Black student at Princeton Middle/High School, in a majority-white small town southeast of Raleigh. Classmates called her racial slurs, she said, including in front of teachers who failed to react. One classmate suggested she kill herself, so she might be reborn as a white girl, Brooklyn said. 

 

“It’s bad enough we have to deal with racism in the real world. We shouldn’t have to deal with it in school,” she told the school board, pleading with them to investigate racial harassment in the district. “I’m speaking up for the ones that are too scared to speak up for themselves.”

 

After sharing her experiences at the board meeting, “I felt relieved and glad they finally knew what was going on,” Brooklyn said in a recent interview, “but I had a lot of doubt they were going to do anything.”

 

Kaiulani Moses, Brooklyn’s mother, said it was disheartening to see the Johnston County school board focused on a different issue this fall: ensuring that critical race theory, an academic concept that examines how racism is perpetuated through policies and institutions, is not taught in schools. She believes that sent the wrong message to students who bullied their classmates and the teachers and administrators tasked with ensuring safety. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

Here's my morning coffee fueled rant take on this............

 

Racism is NOT worse than ever in America

Racism is exactly what it always has been

We're seeing it more now because more people are opting out of the lying/denying reflex about it

More people are actively engaged in the conversation than ever, meaning more discordant conversation

Generationally the burden of carrying that **** forward is being foisted onto to the boomer+ gens, the kids are done with it

The actual battle against it is yet to be joined, all that talkin don't do ****, retweeting someone else's wit don't do ****

Everyone is showing signs of PTSD when it comes to even discussing it amongst themselves, doG forbid we talk across the lines between groups

Change is frequently nasty hard ugly dirty disorganized and messy, but this IS how change happens

(Never thought I'd see that statue come down in Richmond though)

Get in the game, even small moves are moves

Trying, or even wanting, to do the right thing has one immediate return- you deny the enemy one more member in its ranks

Stop being so ****ing scared

Cross the street TOWARDS those young black guys

Don't just say hello a neighbor, knock on their door, take the initiative

Treat this **** like a Xmas account, put away a lil bit every day, don't count it/spend it now

We're all in this together, we always were no matter what falls out of some dumbass's noise hole

Let that kid you used to be out now and then, fa la la la la even when they do laugh atcha

Get off yer azz and stop waiting for someone else to do it all

Don't be a dick

[Ball Security]

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

Probably CRT though

[China]

Decades of DOD Efforts Fail to Stamp Out Bias, Extremism

 

In February, with the images of the violent insurrection in Washington still fresh in the minds of Americans, newly confirmed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took the unprecedented step of signing a memo directing commanding officers across the military to institute a one-day stand-down to address extremism within the nation’s armed forces.

 

The stand-down came in response to the participation and the subsequent arrests of several veterans and at least one active duty service member, who along with thousands of supporters of former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a melee that sent lawmakers scrambling for safety, left one person fatally shot by Capitol Police and caused millions of dollars in damages to the building largely seen as the symbol of American democracy.

 

Austin’s order, which also came as America as a whole was grappling with how to address systemic racism, was the latest in a series of decades-long efforts by the military to purge its ranks of extremists and white supremacists. Last week, in response to the order the military issued new rules to deal with extremism that included social media usage policy updates where “liking” and reposting white nationalist and extremist content could result in disciplinary action. The DOD also updated its screening of recruits and is looking at how to prepare troops who are retiring from being targeted by extremist organizations.

 

But an AP investigation found that despite the new rules, racism and extremism remain an ongoing concern in the military.

 

The investigation shows the new guidelines do not address ongoing disparities in military justice under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the legal code that governs the U.S. armed forces. Numerous studies, including a report last year from the Government Accountability Office, show Black and Hispanic service members were disproportionately investigated and court-martialed. A recent Naval Postgraduate School study found that Black Marines were convicted and punished at courts-martial at a rate five times higher than other races across the Marine Corps.

 

The AP investigation also shows the military’s judicial system has no explicit category for hate crimes — something the federal government, 46 states, and the District of Columbia have on the books — making it difficult to quantify crimes motivated by prejudice.

 

As a result, investigative agencies such as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service or Army Criminal Investigative Division also don’t have a specific hate crime category, which impacts how they investigate cases.

 

“While it’s possible hate crimes have occurred, our investigations are not titled as such,” the NCIS said in an email. “For example, an assault on a person, regardless of the reason for the assault, would still be categorized as an assault…regardless of what motivated the crime.”

 

The new National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by President Biden on Monday directs the Secretary of Defense to make a recommendation to Congress within 180 days if a new statute is needed to address violent extremism, but does not address hate crimes or racial disparities in military law.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

[China]

NYPD Hunts for Woman Who Told Jewish Kids: ‘Hitler Should Have Killed You All’

 

The NYPD is trying to identify a woman who marched up to Jewish children standing outside a Brooklyn synagogue and shouted at them: “Hitler should have killed you all. I’ll kill you and know where you live.” The New York Daily News reports that the suspect capped off her antisemitic rant—against kids as young as 8 years old—by spitting at them. She was caught on surveillance video and cops ask that anyone who recognizes her contact Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

 

[China]

Patriot Front Fascist Leak Exposes Nationwide Racist Campaigns

 

The detailed inner workings and operations neo-Nazi organization Patriot Front have come to light after a massive leak from their chat servers. The exposed communications show coordination with their leader Thomas Rousseau to deface murals and monuments to Black lives across the United States, and intimate struggles to bolster morale through group activities like hiking and camping. 

 

Patriot Front, known for its disconcerting masked ‘flash rallies’ and racist sticker campaigns, was organized by Thomas Rousseau in the immediate aftermath of 2017’s Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, VA. Rousseau gained power within the group’s predecessor organization, Vanguard America, in the fallout from the nationally orchestrated event. After James Alex Fields, seen sporting a Vanguard America shield during the march, murdered Heather Heyer, Rousseau moved to split with Vanguard America, taking with it most of the members as well as the website domain name “bloodandsoil.org.”

 

Vanguard America’s ‘bloodandsoil.org’ domain was reconfigured to support Patriot Front’s main internal communications system: a self-hosted instance of RocketChat, an open-source chat server software similar to Slack and Discord; messaging platforms with multiple channels.

 

Information security in this centralized communications project failed almost entirely. Sources provided Unicorn Riot with screenshots, audio recordings of meetings (self-hosted on another system called Mumble), extracted texts of group chats and even the private direct message system. Chat messages contained dozens of links to unlocked, public mega.nz cloud storage directories, which hosted more than 400 gigabytes of raw videos and photos of Patriot Front events, gatherings, scouting for vandalizing Black monuments, and much more. Most of the materials come from the latter half of 2021, including a rally in Washington, D.C.

 

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[China]

Racial slur charge costs NH Democratic lawmaker committee seat

 

A Democratic member of the New Hampshire House has lost her committee assignment after being accused of using a racial slur and intimidating a young Black man at the Statehouse.

 

Rep. Nicole Klein-Knight, of Manchester, was removed Monday from the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee at the request of Democratic leaders. A dozen Black, brown and Indigenous community organizers issued a letter saying that they once worked well with her but that her behavior has become alarming. They say she verbally abused the young man this month and called security on him.

 

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[LD0506]