United States – Page 12

Hawaiian independence attracts Chinese interest

China has suggested arming Hawaii’s independence activists in retaliation for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and recently threatened to challenge American sovereignty by making legal claims to the Pacific islands as its territory.

Chinese threats to back several groups of Hawaiian independence activists who want to restore the islands’ constitutional monarchy, ousted in a U.S.-backed coup over a century ago, has raised concerns that military facilities on the strategic central Pacific archipelago are threatened at a time when the Obama administration is engaged in a major shift toward Asia as part of its military and diplomatic rebalance.

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon consultant and author of the recent book 100 Year Marathon, said Chinese military hawks, known as “ying pai,” told him they are ready to provide arms to Hawaiian independence activists in retaliation for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

“Beijing’s extraordinary sensitivity to American arms sales to Taiwan—even one bullet or a spare tire for a jeep—often provokes angry words,” said Pillsbury who has held talks with 35 Chinese generals in recent years.

“A favorite comparison the ying pai has made to me is ‘How would the Pentagon like it if we provide arms to our friends in Hawaiian independence movement?’” he said. “I was incredulous because I had never heard of such a movement in Hawaii, but, after checking I met a few of them.”

Pillsbury said Chinese backing for the independence movement would be a concern. Some U.S. archival material shows U.S. authorities acted on their own in the 1898 annexation, he said, something Congress later investigated.

Pillsbury’s book, published last week, reveals that Chinese hawks in the military and Communist Party are a key part of a 100-year strategy to vanquish and eventually overtake the United States as the world’s leading power in the coming decades.

Another indicator of Chinese interest in fomenting unrest in Hawaii surfaced in 2012, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed Beijing had threatened to assert legal, territorial claims over Hawaii.

Clinton said U.S. ownership of Hawaii came up during talks with the Chinese after she pushed back against Beijing’s destabilizing territorial activities in the South China Sea.

“At one point in one of my long discussions about this, one of my Chinese interlocutors said, ‘Well, we could claim Hawaii,’” she said. “I said, ‘Well, go ahead, and we’ll go to arbitration and prove we own it. That’s what we want you to do.’”

The Hawaii sovereignty movement is made up at least 10 groups that are seeking some form of independence from the United States and the re-establishment of the monarchy ousted in 1893, with the support of the U.S. government and a company of U.S. Marines.

The movement is non-violent and its protests in recent years have been limited to temporary takeovers of government facilities.

Source: freebeacon.com

Public US university polices language

Words declared unacceptable through the campaign include “crazy,” “insane,” “retarded,” “gay,” “tranny,” “gypped,” “jewed”, “illegal alien,” “fag,” “ghetto” and “raghead.” Phrases such as “I want to die” and “that test raped me” are also verboten.

University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The College Fix in an email the campaign aims to “address campus climate by helping individuals understand that their words can impact someone and to encourage individuals to commit to creating a positive campus community.”

Students have been asked to sign a pledge to “use inclusive language” and to help their peers “understand the importance of using inclusive language,” according to campaign materials.

Though only in existence for one semester, the Inclusive Language Campaign has maintained a strong presence throughout the university. Students roaming the campus frequently encounter posters of all sizes reminding them: “YOUR WORDS MATTER,” and asking questions such as: “If you knew that I grew up in poverty, would you still call things ‘ghetto’ and ‘ratchet’?”

Representatives of the Inclusive Language Campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The College Fix.

Junior Kidada Malloy, who helps promote the program on campus, told the Michigan Daily the campaign “is a great program because it will improve the day-to-day language of students on campus by providing education around words that are offensive.”

Fitzgerald told The College Fix the university budgeted $16,000 for the campaign. The program comes at a time when the university has raised tuition and fees for the last two consecutive years.

“This program is intended to be educational, not regulatory,” Fitzgerald said of the campaign. “We hope there is only the understanding that we all participate in, and have the power to influence campus culture.”

ILC’s Facebook page includes a variety of inclusion-based material, inspirational quotes, personal stories, and even a video that details how to address a person by the correct pronouns. It operates in conjunction with two other campuswide initiatives, Expect Respect and Change It Up!, both of which emphasize inclusive words in and out of the classroom.

Students living in university housing are urged to take part in a Change It Up! workshop, which “brings bystander intervention skills to first-year housing residents for the purpose of building safe, inclusive, and respectful communities.”

Before and after completing these workshops, students fill out surveys in which they reflect on internal biases that may pose a threat to an “inclusive campus.”

As the Inclusive Language Campaign has enlarged its influence on campus through various kick-off events, interactive programming and provoking visuals, some students have called into question how it reconciles with the university’s policy on free speech, which “encourages open and vigorous discussion and strives to maintain an environment where the free exchange of ideas and opinions can flourish.”

Asked if the campaign stifles free speech, Fitzgerald said “we believe this program has just the opposite effect.”

“We believe it will make discourse more constructive by respecting the views and perspectives of others,” he said. “A campus conversation about the impact of words is good for everyone.”

The University of Maryland launched a similar campaign three years ago that cost $15,000.

Source: College Fix

Pentagon says Putin has Asperger’s

A study from a Pentagon think tank theorizes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger’s syndrome, “an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions,” according to the 2008 report obtained by USA TODAY.

The 2008 report cites Dr. Stephen Porges, who is now a University of North Carolina psychiatry professor, as concluding that “Putin carries a form of autism.” However, Porges said Wednesday he had never seen the finished report and “would back off saying he has Asperger’s.”

Putin’s “neurological development was significantly interrupted in infancy,” wrote Brenda Connors, an expert in movement pattern analysis at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Studies of his movement, Connors wrote, reveal “that the Russian President carries a neurological abnormality.”

The 2008 study was one of many by Connors and her colleagues, who are contractors for the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), an internal Pentagon think tank that helps devise long-term military strategy. The 2008 report and a 2011 study were provided to USA TODAY as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

Researchers can’t prove their theory about Putin and Asperger’s, the report said, because they were not able to perform a brain scan on the Russian president. The report cites work by autism specialists as backing their findings. It is not known whether the research has been acted on by Pentagon or administration officials.

USA TODAY reported in March 2014 about the Office of Net Assessment’s support for the research, but the Pentagon did not release the details of its studies. At the time, Pentagon officials said the research did not reach Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel or his predecessors. That is still true, said Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The Office of Net Assessment provides long-range plans for the Pentagon and helps shape future strategy. It has been particularly active in developing the military’s “pivot to Asia,” which has emphasized strategies to deal with China.

Connors’ team has done several studies on Putin for ONA beyond those from 2008 and 2011, Henderson said.

Connors’ program is called Body Leads. Military contract records show the Pentagon has paid at least $365,000 on outside experts to work with her since 2009. The two reports mention other work she and associates have done since Putin’s rise to power, including a 2005 study called “An Act of Trust to Move Ahead” and studies in 2004-05 and 2008 by movement pattern analysis pioneer Warren Lamb.

Source: USA Today

Whiteface causes a stir

Azealia Banks is at the center of another racially charged controversy after posting a picture of herself being transformed into an ice princess for a new music video and tagging it “#WhiteFace.” Later explaining herself on Twitter, the outspoken rapper created a firestorm.

In recent months, Banks has frequently made headlines with her Twitter rants about everything from the Bill Cosby rape allegations to slave reparations. She’s repeatedly slammed Iggy Azalea, called out Kendrick Lamar, and generally been a lightning rod for debates about race and society. On Monday, she decided to post her “whiteface” photo. People got upset. Banks took to Twitter:

Lol u crackers wish I cared enough to be doing whiteface. I’m becoming the ICE PRINCESS YAAAAAAS. I use the word crAcker just as much as I use the word n*gger… Don’t get mad now… You lot are all so easily moved… DAMN… Yall really r hype. This is not white face this is my Ice Princess makeup. Calm tf down LOL… And sidebar.. When snoop did whiteface YALL all thought that sh*t was hilarious and funny right? #MISOGYNOIR at its finest!!

Banks then turned her attention to what she claims are the media’s constant, wrong accusations of homophobia. Here’s what she had to say about that:

Gay media has to stop using homophobia as a means to try and victimize itself and scar the names of its opponents… Phobia would imply that I am scared of gay men or dislike them because of what they choose to do sexually… I promise, no one gives a f*ck what u decide to do in your private lives. But I also promise, that no matter how bitchy and clever you think you are.. That I will out-bitch you… But I’m just going to ignore yall from here on out cause YALL are really just reaching and looking for any reason to insert ur selves In the Azealia Banks story.

Banks concluded by declaring, “The gay white media is so evil, ugly and delusional.”

Trayvon’s father speaks at black excellence gala

Tracy Martin, father of Trayvon Martin, will speak at Texas Tech’s Black Excellence Gala, according to KFYO.

Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012. In a 2013 trail, Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree and manslaughter charges.

The event is being hosted by the Iota Upsilon Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, to commemorate Black History month.

Martin will speak on “the importance of African-American lives and bring awareness about the African-American population in the Texas Tech and Lubbock communities,” according to organizers.

“The commitment the men of Kappa Alpha Psi have made to emphasize the importance of community service, social welfare and academic scholarship reinforces the university’s dedication to student success,” said Harriette Baker, assistant director of Texas Tech’s fraternity and sorority life, according to the news release.

“It is important for the student leaders at Texas Tech to take the time each year to remind the greater university community of our shared responsibility to uphold the principles and values the organization and institution were founded on.”

The fraternity will also be featuring broadcaster Tavis Smiley and former Black Panther and professor Angela Davis.

The February 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Martion might never have happened if school officials in Miami-Dade County had not instituted an unofficial policy of treating crimes as school disciplinary infractions.

Revelations that emerged from an internal affairs investigation explain why Martin was not arrested when caught at school with stolen jewelry in October 2011 or with marijuana in February 2012. Instead, the teenager was suspended from school, the last time just days before he was shot by George Zimmerman.

Trayvon Martin was not from Sanford, the town north of Orlando where he was shot in 2012 and where a jury acquitted Zimmerman of murder charges.

Martin was from Miami Gardens, more than 200 miles away, and had come to Sanford to stay with his father’s girlfriend Brandy Green at her home in the townhouse community where Zimmerman was in charge of the neighborhood watch.

Trayvon was staying with Green after he had been suspended for the second time in six months from Krop High School in Miami-Dade County, where both his father, Tracy Martin, and mother, Sybrina Fulton, lived.

Both of Trayvon’s suspensions during his junior year at Krop High involved crimes that could have led to his prosecution as a juvenile offender.

Miami-Dade School Police Department (MDSPD) in 2010 had implemented a policy that reduced the number of criiminal reports, manipulating statistics to create the appearance of a reduction in crime within the school system.

What was actually happening was that crimes were not being reported as crimes, but instead treated as disciplinary infractions.

Either of those incidents could have put Trayvon Martin into the custody of the juvenile justice system.

In fact, the reason Zimmerman was patrolling the townhouse community the night of the February 2012 shooting was that there had been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.

President Obama addressed the verdict in the Zimmerman trial and declared that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

Obama also said that he had experienced “racial profiling”, and suggested that white Americans express guilt about the shooting. He said the incident required all Americans to “do some soul searching.”

He added: “My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: If I had a son he’d look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are gonna take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

ISIS operative confesses to funding via US

The alleged Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) or Daesh, Yousaf al Salafi – has confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.

Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.

“During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.

Al Salafi is a Pakistani-Syrian, who entered Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. Earlier, it was reported that he crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. However, he managed to escape from Turkey and reached Pakistan to establish IS in the region.

Sources said al Salafi’s revelations were shared with the US Secretary of State John Kerry during his recent visit to Islamabad. “The matter was also taken up with CENTCOM chief General Lloyd Austin during his visit to Islamabad earlier this month,” a source said.

Al Salafi also confessed that he – along with a Pakistani accomplice, reportedly imam of a mosque – was recruiting people to send them to Syria and was getting around $600 per person from Syria.

“The US has been condemning the IS activities but unfortunately has not been able to stop funding of these organisations, which is being routed through the US,” a source said.

“The US had to dispel the impression that it is financing the group for its own interests and that is why it launched offensive against the organisation in Iraq but not in Syria,” he added.

There are reports that citizens from Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India besides other countries are being recruited by the IS to fight in Syria. Posters and wall chalking in favour of the IS have also been seen in various cities in Pakistan.

Source: The Express Tribune

New York fireman to lose his job for wearing a “Merit matters” T-shirt

A T-shirt could cost this firefighter his job.

A judge has recommended the FDNY sack Brooklyn firefighter Thomas Buttaro for wearing anti-affirmative-action T-shirts to work, creating what she called a hostile work environment.

Firemen with "Merit Matters" T-shirts. According to the judge, such a T-shirt constitutes "harassment" — Firemen with “Merit Matters” T-shirts. According to the judge, such a T-shirt constitutes “harassment”

“The FDNY is a para-military organization and may restrict a uniformed member’s appearance so long as the restrictions are rationally related to the department’s legitimate interests,” Administrative Law Judge Alessandra Zorgniotti decided.

She found Buttaro, a 17-year FDNY veteran who earned $111,209 in 2013, disobeyed orders after May 2012 to wear regulation gear and not T-shirts with provocative slogans.

The judge said Buttaro engaged in a “persistent and long-term pattern of harassment” and was guilty of “repeated acts of insubordination.”

Buttaro, of Ladder Co. 123 in Crown Heights, would wear T-shirts on duty bearing the logo and slogans of Merit Matters, a group opposed to altering the FDNY’s admissions test to accommodate minority recruits.

Speaking through his lawyer, Buttaro said he planned to challenge the judge’s findings, which are not binding on the FDNY.

“We’re going to fight this for as long as it takes to get vindicated,” said lawyer Adam Weiss. “There are only two sides to the story, and it looks like [the judge] took the prosecution’s side of the story and ignored ours.”

The Post first reported in September that Buttaro, who is white, was facing disciplinary charges for wearing a Merit Matters shirt to work.

The shirts became an issue after Buttaro got into a heated exchange on May 6, 2012, with a black colleague over a suit filed by the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black firefighters that has called the FDNY’s hiring practices discriminatory.

Weiss, Buttaro’s lawyer, said he expects Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro to make a decision on his client’s fate in the next month.

“Obviously, we disagree with the ALJ’s decision,” he said. “It’s a very skewed version of what happened.” – The New York Post

US a dangerous ally says former Oz premier

In his new book titled “Dangerous Allies,” Malcolm Fraser, the former prime minister of Australia worries that the Canberra’s dependence on the United States will eventually bring the nation into a direct conflict with China. His words echo those of Georgetown University professor Amitai Etzioni in and article he wrote for the Diplomat on Jan. 20.

Australia has always been strategically dependent on other great powers since gaining independence in 1901. It relied on the United Kingdom until World War II and then transfered that dependence to the United States afterwards. The relationship grew stronger with the signing of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty in 1951. Fraser said that the treaty does not require the US to defend Australia, only needing to “consult” it in case of an attack.

In Fraser’s book, he describes how Australia’s blind faith in the UK before World War II left the country unprepared for war. He then goes on to say that currently many feel more vulnerable because of the country’s dependence on the United States. What Fraser and many Australian leaders fears most is that the United States will get Australia involved in a conflict not of its own making. “Australia effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war,” said Fraser.

Fraser labelled the United States a “dangerous ally” as Australia has become progressively more enmeshed in American strategic and military affairs since the end of Cold War.

Just as with the armed conflicts in the Middle East, Fraser said that the conflict in Ukraine took place partially due to Washington’s attempt to include Ukraine in NATO. He went on to blame the United States lack of historical understanding towards Russia on the matter.

Washington’s policy to “contain” China can eventually lead to trouble for Australia. Believing that the United States will eventually use Australia as a base to attack China, Fraser suggested the removal of all American military facilities from Darwin in the north and Pine Gap in the center of the country as soon as possible. The former Australian leader added that the country should be more independent of the United States in both defense and foreign affairs. While recommending that Australia shore up its diplomatic activities throughout Asia and at the UN, he also suggested an increase in defense spending to 3% of the country’s GDP.

Source: China Times

Texas Rep governor nominated two pro-affirmative action regents at UT

The two people nominated by Gov. Greg Abbott to join the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System support affirmative action.

On Thursday, Abbott nominated Sara Martinez Tucker of Laredo, head of an education nonprofit and a former U.S. undersecretary of education, as well as David Beck, a prominent Houston attorney and a founding member of the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a group formed to oppose education reform proposals put forward by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and to defend the university’s president, Bill Powers, from criticism.

Martinez Tucker and Beck signed their names to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in a 2013 case before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding affirmative action known as Fisher v. UT. The brief argued in favor of affirmative action at UT, and the list of signers reads like an invite list to a Powers’ Christmas party.

As attorney general, Abbott represented UT in the early stages of the litigation but dropped out in 2012, apparently at Powers’ request. There was speculation at the time Abbott didn’t want to have to explain his defense of affirmative action during a run for governor.

Abbott also nominated Stephen Hicks, another friend of Powers, to serve another term on the board.

The nominees must still be confirmed by the state Senate, which is now run by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called for investigations into UT’s admissions practices.

The pro-Powers nominations come as little surprise, as Abbott sat on an investigation into the UT Law School foundation for nearly two years. When Deputy Attorney General John Scott produced a highly critical report, the Attorney General’s office withheld it until the 11^th hour — Dec. 31 of last year.

Affirmative actions policies at the University of Texas have been the subject of two major Supreme Court decisions. – watchdog.org

Not just a movie: Inciting racial hatred

Watching “Selma” in a theater full of black teenagers, was interesting, to say the least.

Thanks to donations, D.C. public school kids got free tickets to the first Hollywood movie about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday weekend — an effort that was duplicated for students around the country.

The kids did plenty of talking and texting, and plenty of fighting over whether there was too much talking and texting. Slowly but surely, though, the crowd was drawn in by the Scheherazade skills of the “Selma” director, Ava DuVernay.

The horrific scene of the four schoolgirls killed in the white supremacist bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church stunned the audience. One young man next to me unleashed a string of expletives and admitted that he was scared. When civil rights leaders are clubbed, whipped and trampled by white lawmen as feral white onlookers cheer, the youngsters seemed aghast.

In a delicately wrought scene in which Coretta Scott King calls out her husband about his infidelities, some of the teenage girls reacted with a chorus of “oooohs.”

DuVernay sets the tone for her portrayal of Lyndon Johnson as patronizing and skittish on civil rights in the first scene between the president and Dr. King. L.B.J. stands above a seated M.L.K., pats him on the shoulder, and tells him “this voting thing is just going to have to wait” while he works on “the eradication of poverty.”

Many of the teenagers by me bristled at the power dynamic between the men. It was clear that a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.’s role in civil rights through DuVernay’s lens.

DuVernay told Rolling Stone that “I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie.”

Hollywood has done that with films like “Mississippi Burning,” which cast white F.B.I. agents as the heroes, or “Cry Freedom,” which made a white journalist the focus rather Denzel Washington’s anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko.

Instead of painting L.B.J. and M.L.K. as allies, employing different tactics but complementing each other, the director made the white Johnson an obstacle.

“This is art; this is a movie; this is a film,” DuVernay said. “I’m not a historian. I’m not a documentarian.”

The “Hey, it’s just a movie” excuse doesn’t wash. Filmmakers love to talk about their artistic license to distort the truth, even as they bank on the authenticity of their films to boost them at awards season.

On Friday night, the American president screened “Selma” at the White House. Guests included DuVernay, Lewis and Oprah Winfrey, who acts in the film and was one of its producers.

On matters of race — America’s original sin — there is an even higher responsibility to be accurate.

DuVernay had plenty of vile white villains — including one who kicks a minister to death in the street — and they were no doubt shocking to the D.C. school kids. There was no need to create a faux one in L.B.J..

Source: NYT

George Soros funded Ferguson riots

Liberal billionaire gave at least $33 million in one year to groups that emboldened activists

There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.

Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org.

Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.

In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations.

The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre.

“Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, democratic society,” said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. Soros‘ Open Society Foundations’ U.S. programs, in an interview with The Washington Times. “Helping groups combine policy, research [and] data collection with community organizing feels very much the way our society becomes more accountable.”

Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign.

Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive.

The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros‘ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook “likes” and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds.

All were aimed at keeping the media’s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August.

“I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership,” said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October.

“We recognized this movement is similar to the work we’re doing at DPA,” said Ms. Frederique. “The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about.”

Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on DPA’s news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundation’s tax filings.

“I think #BlackLivesMatter’s success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then,” said Ms. Frederique. “Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.”

With the backing of national civil rights organizations and Mr. Soros‘ funding, “Black Lives Matter” grew from a hashtag into a social media phenomenon, including a #BlackLivesMatter bus tour and march in September.

“More than 500 of us have traveled from Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and other cities to support the people of Ferguson and help turn a local moment into a national movement,” wrote Akiba Solomon, a journalist at Colorlines, describing the event.

Colorlines is an online news site that focuses on race issues and is published by Race Forward, a group that received $200,000 from Mr. Soros’s foundation in 2011. Colorlines has published tirelessly on the activities in Ferguson and heavily promoted the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and activities.

Mr. Soros gave $5.4 million to Ferguson and Staten Island grass-roots efforts last year to help “further police reform, accountability and public transparency,” the Open Society Foundations said in a blog post in December. About half of those funds were earmarked to Ferguson, with the money primarily going to OBS and MORE, the foundation said.

OBS and MORE, along with the Dream Defenders, established the “Hands Up Coalition” — another so-called “grass-roots” organization in Missouri, whose name was based on now-known-to-be-false claims that Brown had his hands up before being shot. The Defenders were built to rally support and awareness for the Trayvon Martin case and were funded by the Tides Foundation, another recipient of Soros cash.

Hands Up Coalition has made it its mission to recruit and organize youth nationwide to start local events in their communities — trying to take Ferguson nationwide.

Hands Up Coalition has dubbed 2015 as “The Year of Resistance,” and its outreach program strongly resembles how President Obama’s political action committee — Organizing for Action — rallies youth for its causes, complete with a similarly designed Web page and call to action.

Mr. Soros‘ two largest foundations manage almost $3 billion in assets per year, according to their most recent respective tax returns. The Foundation to Promote Open Society managed $2.2 billion in assets in 2011, and his Open Society Institute managed $685.9 million in 2012.

In comparison, David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers whom liberals often call a threat to democracy — and worse — for their conservative influence, had $308 million tied up in their foundation and institute in 2011.

One of the organizations that Mr. Soros funds, and which fueled the demonstrations in Ferguson, is the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of grass-roots, interreligious and interracial organizations. Mr. Obama started his career as a community organizer at a Gamaliel affiliate in Chicago.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, which is part of the Gamaliel network, said in one of the group’s webinars that clergy involved with Gamaliel must be “protectors of the narrative” of what happened in Ferguson.

Source: Washington Times

The real racial bias: Cops more willing to shoot whites than blacks

It’s widely assumed that white police officers are more likely to shoot black suspects as a result of racial bias, but recent research suggests the opposite is true.

An innovative US study published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology found that participants in realistic simulations felt more threatened by black suspects yet took longer to pull the trigger on black men than on white or Hispanic men.

“This behavioral ‘counter-bias’ might be rooted in people’s concerns about the social and legal consequences of shooting a member of a historically oppressed racial or ethnic group,” said the paper, which went practically unnoticed when it was published online on May 22, but took on new significance in the wake of a series of high-profile police-involved shootings involving black victims over the summer.

The results back up what one of the researchers, University of Missouri-St. Louis professor David Klinger, has found after independently interviewing more than 300 police officers: While they don’t want to shoot anybody, they really don’t want to shoot black suspects.

“Across these 300 interviews, I have multiple officers telling me that they didn’t shoot only because the suspect was black or the suspect was a woman, or something that would not be consistent with this narrative of cops out there running and gunning,” said Mr. Klinger, a former cop and author of “Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force” (2006).

“When it comes to the issue of race, I’ve never had a single officer tell me, ‘I didn’t shoot a guy because he was white.’ I’ve had multiple officers tell me, ‘I didn’t shoot a guy because he was black,’ ” Mr. Klinger said. “And this is 10, even 20 years ago. Officers are alert to the fact that if they shoot a black individual, the odds of social outcry are far greater than if they shoot a white individual.”

In fact, he said, officers involved in shootings have told him that they were actually relieved that the person they shot was white, not black.

“The second things is, I’ve had multiple officers tell me they were worried in the wake of a shooting because they shot a black person, and I’ve had multiple officers tell me that they were glad that the person they shot was white,” Mr. Klinger said. “Because then they knew they weren’t going to have to be subject to the racial harangue.”

The interviews, which he conducted for a book he’s planning to finish this year, run directly counter to the prevailing view pushed by social justice groups, politicians and others: that shooting victims such as 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson were victims at least in part of racial discrimination against blacks among cops.

“Police officers — at least the ones I interviewed — are very sensitive to the race issue, but not in the way this popular narrative is running, i.e., cops are out there trying to find young black men who don’t have guns so they can shoot them down like dogs in the street,” Mr. Klinger said. “That just isn’t anything I’ve found in any of the research that I’ve done.”

The study, “Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations,” was conducted by Mr. Klinger and Washington State University assistant research professor Lois James and criminal justice and criminology professor Bryan Vila.

For their research, the authors used a pioneering WSU simulation involving full-size, high-definition video instead of photos and handguns modified to shoot infrared beams instead of the “shoot” buttons typically used in deadly-force studies.

About a third of the scenarios in the study were “no shoot” situations in which perpetrators of different races held cellphones or wallets, while the rest were “shoot” situations in which suspects were armed with knives or guns.

The study found that the 48 participants waited longest before firing on black suspects in “shoot” scenarios, even though the participants exhibited “stronger threat responses” when facing black suspects than with white or Hispanic suspects.

Eighty-five percent of the participants were white, and none was a police officer. At the same time, a 2013 study led by Ms. James using active police, military and the general public found the same phenomenon: All three groups took longer to shoot black suspects, and participants were also more likely to fire on unarmed whites and Hispanics than blacks.

“In other words, there was significant bias favoring blacks where decisions to shoot were concerned,” the 2013 study said, according to WSU News.

The findings challenge not only popular assumptions but also previous social science research suggesting that whites, including police officers, have an “implicit bias” against blacks. The drawback with such implicit-bias studies is that they use the push-button model and less realistic scenarios, said Mr. Klinger.

“That’s important research. It’s good research,” Mr. Klinger said. “The problem is it bears absolutely no relationship with actual shooting events. And people are not reading all the caveats that the authors put into the article saying, ‘This is not real life, this is a laboratory, we don’t know about external validity,’ and so on.”

So why are blacks shot more often by police? While the FBI’s national database has been widely criticized as incomplete, data compiled by Mr. Klinger in St. Louis over the past decade shows that 90 percent of police shootings involve blacks, even though they only make up 49 percent of the city’s population.

At the same time, he said, that figure is commensurate with the percentage of blacks involved in violent crime. Roughly 90 percent of those killed each year in St. Louis are black, and 90 percent of them are shot by other blacks, he said.

What’s more, he said, black SWAT officers make up about one-third of the St. Louis force — and they commit on average about one-third of the shootings each year.

“And this is consistent with every other study that’s ever been done,” said Mr. Klinger, who, as a rookie officer in Los Angeles, fatally shot a black man armed with a knife who had stabbed his partner, Dennis Azevedo, in the chest.

“Once you start looking at levels of violence, levels of threat, blacks are not shot in manners that are disproportionate to their involvement in illegal activity,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if the cop is black, white or Hispanic, police officers presented with deadly threats use deadly force. Period, paragraph, end of story.”

Source: www.washingtontimes.com

Thousands of US policemen turn their backs on NY mayor De Blasio

Tens of thousands of police from cities across the United States filled a New York City church and nearby streets on Saturday for the funeral of one of two policemen shot by a man who said he was avenging the killing of unarmed black men by police.

The service for Rafael Ramos was one of the largest police funerals in the city’s history, with US Vice President Joe Biden among the dignitaries. But the tradition-bound ceremony was marked by an unusual protest against Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As he rose to deliver the customary mayoral eulogy, thousands of uniformed officers outside silently turned their backs on him in a pointed display of disrespect as his image filled the large screens broadcasting the service.

Angered by the mayor’s qualified sympathy for nationwide demonstrations calling for police reform, some New York police officers had similarly shunned Mr de Blasio as he arrived a week ago at the hospital where Ramos and his police partner, Wenjian Liu, were declared dead.

“He believed in protecting others,” Mr de Blasio said as he stood behind Ramos’ coffin, which was draped in the police department’s flag and bathed in blue light, “and those who are called to protect others are a special breed.” Singled out for their uniforms, the slaying of Ramos, 40, and Liu, 32, as they sat in their patrol car has become a rallying point for police and their supporters around the country, beleaguered by months of street protests accusing police of racist practices.

Offering a counter-narrative to the anti-police chants at many protests, Vice President Biden made the first of several speeches that touched on the marked increase in the racial diversity of the city’s police force, which only a few decades ago was almost entirely white.

“I believe that this great police force of this incredibly diverse city can and will show the nation how to bridge any divide,” Mr Biden said during the service at Christ Tabernacle Church in the suburban Queens neighborhood in which Ramos lived with his wife, Maritza, and their two teenage sons.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the department had officers hailing from more than 50 different nations and included speakers of 64 languages. He went on to criticise some of the protesters who have held rallies in the city on a nearly daily basis.

“The NYPD protected the right of free speech even though they themselves were the targets of false and abusive tirades by some,” he said.

Sorrow mixed with anger

Streets outside the church were filled for blocks with neat, quiet crowds of officers in blue uniform, including delegations from Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and New Orleans. Mr Biden said some 25,000 people were thought to have come.

Before joining the police department relatively late in his career, Ramos, known to his friends as Ralph, had worked as a school safety officer.

“He knew how to handle people, and the younger guys looked up to him,” said Bill Bratton, the city’s police commissioner. A regular face as an usher at Christ Tabernacle, Ramos had nearly completed a course to become a police chaplain.

Mr Bratton, a far more popular figure among police than the mayor, announced that he had posthumously appointed Ramos to the position.

The officers’ killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, was described by city officials as an emotionally troubled man, and fatally shot himself soon after the attack.

Brinsley, who was black, had written online that he wanted to kill police to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown — unarmed black men killed by white policemen in New York and Ferguson, Missouri, this summer.

Their deaths and the decisions not to prosecute the officers responsible ignited nationwide protests, renewing a debate about race in the United States that has drawn in President Barack Obama.

In his first year as mayor after campaigning for police reform, Mr de Blasio has struggled to balance the interests of police critics who helped elect him and the officers who now work for him. This week, he was assailed by voices on both sides, with activists angered by his call, which they ignored, that they pause their protests.

Ramos’ family said the mayor was welcome at the funeral, but even many officers who did not turn their backs said they sympathised with the gesture.

“A lot of people feel he has taken a side, and that side is not ours,” a New York police officer said on condition that her name be withheld because of a department ban on unsanctioned media interviews.

Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s largest police union, said within hours of the deaths of Liu and Ramos that there was “blood on the hands” of the mayor.

“We have to understand the betrayal that they feel,” Lynch, in an interview outside the church with CNN, said of the officers’ protest. “The feeling is real, but today is about mourning. Tomorrow is about debate.”

International movie audiences ‘racist’ – leaked Sony email

An unnamed producer wrote in an email to Sony chairman Michael Lynton that films with black actors — using Denzel Washington in The Equalizer as an example — don’t perform well because the international audiences are “racist,” according to documents found in the Sony hack.

The producer suggested that the two-time Oscar winner should not star in big-budget films as the international audience will not accept him in a leading role because of his race.

“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist — in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas. When Sony made Equalizer they had to know that Denzel opens pics domestically, however the international gross would be somewhat limited,” the producer wrote in an Oct. 27 e-mail.

Lynton wrote back asking if he was saying The Equalizer “shouldn’t have been made or that African American actors should be excluded?”

“No, I am not saying ‘The Equalizer’ should not have been made or that African American actors should not have been used (I personally think Denzel is the best actor of his generation),” the producer responded. “Casting him is saying we’re ok with a double if the picture works,” the producer wrote, using a baseball analogy.

Washington is “reliable at the domestic [box office], safe, but has not had a huge success in years. I believe whenever possible the non event pictures, extra ‘bets’ should have a large inherent upside and be made for the right price. Here there isn’t a large inherent upside,” the producer wrote.

The producer also wrote that he or she hoped the statement wasn’t “inappropriate or provocative.”

The Equalizer grossed about $191 million worldwide. Approximately $90 million was earned overseas. The producer said this figure would have been higher if a black man wasn’t in the lead role.

According to the emails, a sequel to the movie was set for 2017, but would be “a double, with a remote chance of a home run.”

Calls to Denzel Washington’s publicist were not immediately returned. – buzzfeed.com