ANC Calls for Boycott of Israel

From [HERE] AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) members and leaders should not travel to Israel as the party is in solidarity with the people of Palestine, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said on Monday.

"(We are) joining the call for (a) cultural, academic and education boycott of Israel, including travel bans for members and leaders of the ANC, the alliance, members of Cabinet, Members of Parliament and government officials," Mr Mantashe told reporters in Johannesburg.

"Companies that do business in the occupied territory, such as Cape Gate, G4Security and Caterpillar, must not be allowed to do business with the state.

"Goods manufactured in the occupied territory should be boycotted."

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UN: More than 140,000 displaced by Libya conflict/ Oil Slips as Libyan Production Returns

From [HERE] More than 140,000 people have been internally displaced in Libya [press release] as a result of the country's rapidly deteriorating security situation, the UN said Monday. Renewed fighting between feuding militias has caused a new wave of displacement, particularly in the western outskirts of Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi, and has heightened the humanitarian needs of those communities affected by the conflict. A convoy sent by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [official websites] arrived in western Libya on Saturday, delivering a supply of food and humanitarian supplies to families there. Assistance, according to WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and East Europe Mohamed Diab, will be increased in line with what is needed after the WFP assesses the situation there. Access to areas for food and supply delivery is often complicated by blocked roads, and many of the displaced are living in schools and host communities. [MORE]

Oil reserves in Libya are the largest in Africa and the fifth largest in the world with 76.4 billion barrels (12.15×109 m3) as of 2010. Oil production was 3.1 million barrels per day (490×103 m3/d) as of 2010, giving Libya 77 years of reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found.[1] Libya is considered a highly attractive oil area due to its low cost of oil production (as low as $1 per barrel at some fields), and proximity to European markets. [MORE]

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[The White Media calls it the "Loud Music Retrial"]. It's Still Not About Music. White Man who Shot Unarmed Black Teen Nine Times at Close Range Looks to Pick Another All White Jury

From [HERE] A white man who shot dead an unarmed black teenager in a car returned to court on Monday for a new trial, seven months after a mostly white jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge of first-degree murder. The jury was composed of 11 white people. 

Michael Dunn, 47, vice president of Dunn & Dunn Data Systems in Vero Beach, claimed he was acting in self-defence when he fired 10 shots at an SUV containing Jordan Davis, 17, and three of his friends at a Jacksonville petrol station in November 2012.

Although the jury at Dunn’s February trial convicted him of three counts of attempted murder, for which he has yet to be sentenced, they could not agree on the murder charge despite more than 30 hours of deliberations. The minimum mandatory sentence will be 60 years, which, for a 47-year-old man, is a life sentence. [MORE]

Jury selection is expected to last two to three days. Sixteen people will be chosen, 12 jurors and four alternates. A total of 490 potential jurors reported for jury service Monday, and the pool will support all cases picking juries for trial this week. 

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Lawsuit says LA Continues to Seize and Destroy Homeless People's Property in Defiance of Court Orders

Bum Proof Bench in LA. From [HERE] In defiance of repeated court orders, the Los Angeles Downtown Industrial District Business Improvement District and the city continue to seize and destroy homeless people's property, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker claims in court.

Los Angeles Catholic Worker in an unincorporated lay Catholic group that provides meals, hospice care, a dental clinic and other services to homeless people on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

It claims that the city has been restrained three times in the page 30 years from seizing homeless people's property on Skid Row. The latest, nearly identical lawsuit , with different plaintiffs and some different defendants, was filed in April 2013. The Business Improvement District was not a defendant in that case.

The Business Improvement District is a special assessment district of the City of Los Angeles. A third defendant, the Central City East Association, acts as its agent.

"Despite clear language from the court that such behavior is unconstitutional," the complaint states, the defendants continue their "long-running campaign to seize homeless people's unattended property. BID officers take property they have no reason to believe is abandoned or creating a health and safety risk. They do so with no notice of any kind to individuals that their property will be taken. By design, the seizures serve no purpose other than to make life even harder for homeless residents in the BID, and individuals who live on the street cannot reasonably predict when their property will be taken or prevent it from happening. These actions are in clear violation of individuals' rights under the United States Constitution.

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Keeping rich whites insulated from poor Non-whites: Ft. Lauderdale Declares it Unlawful to Sleep in Public [over 50% Homeless are Black]

Fortress Ft. Lauderdale: In photo another Bum Proof Bench. From [HERE] A city in Florida already notorious for its treatment of the homeless is going a step further. Last week, the Ft. Lauderdale City Commission unanimously approved two separate measures that restrict basic survival necessities for many homeless people, including sleeping in public areas and asking others for money. Ft. Lauderdale is 44% non-white (31% Black and 13% Latino) [MORE]. This report  says at least 50% of the homeless in Broward County are Black. [PDF

The first, Ordinance No. C-14-41, makes it illegal for anyone to sleep in public in the downtown area. According to commissioners, it was necessary because of Ft. Lauderdale’s interest in the “preservation of property values and the prevention of the deterioration in its downtown.”

The second measure, Ordinance No. C-14-38, cracks down on people who ask drivers for money at an intersection. Under the new law, panhandling is now illegal at “busy intersections,” which includes dozens of stops in the city. The measure won’t just apply to homeless people, but anyone trying to raise money for charity, including children. Commissioners justified the move by pointing to the fact that there were 154 pedestrians involved in traffic accidents last year. But notably absent from that statistic is how many of those accidents involved panhandlers.

According to the Sun Sentinel, violators of the new laws could face both a $500 fine and 60 days in jail.

Both measures passed by 5-0 votes, despite overwhelming testimony in opposition to the proposals. One local pastor, Craig Watts, cautioned commissioners against “laws that criminalize misfortune.” He called it “ethically dubious at best,” noting that the religious community opposed these measures.

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Lax Enforcement of Affordable Housing Requirements in D.C.'s Negro Removal/Gentrification Shake Up: But Plush Hotels, condos, and dog spas Abound for White Folks

Now thats Nice. From [HERE] Since 2000, the District has generally required that when it sells publicly-owned land, part of the deal include new affordable housing for lower-income residents. But more recently, that commitment has waned. A bill in the DC Council could rejuvenate it by requiring affordable housing in city land development deals.

The trend of weakening the city's commitment to affordable housing reached a new level last May, when the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) picked a proposal to develop a city-owned half acre at 5th & I Streets NW.

While the bidders who proposed housing offered some affordable housing in the new building, the winning proposal by Peebles Corp. and the Walker Group put a hotel, condos, and a dog spa in the Mount Vernon Triangle while offering to build affordable housing somewhere else—perhaps at a site it owns in Anacostia, about 3 miles away.

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Ebola Lockdown: 92 Bodies Found In Sierra Leone

Sky News

Ninety-two bodies and at least 56 new infections have been discovered in Sierra Leone during a nationwide ebola lockdown.

The three-day measure came into effect on Friday to try to stem the worst ebola epidemic on record.

The country's six million residents were ordered to stay indoors as volunteers circulated to educate people about the outbreak and isolate the sick.

Some 123 people contacted authorities during the lockdown, believing they might be infected.

Of these, 56 tested positive for ebola, 31 tested negative and 36 were still awaiting their results, officials said.

Residents largely complied with the plan, and the streets remained mostly deserted, except for ambulances and police vehicles.

In Kevin Hart's Latest Coin Operated Role he plays a Black Intruder in 'Madden 15' Commercial [How does alleged Black American criminality sustain the American status quo?]

In Kevin Hart's newest gig he gets to the play the role of a Black man who intrudes upon a wealthy white couple in their home as they share a nice evening together. The white folks are cuddled up on their couch when all of sudden they look up and an angry looking Black man is menacingly staring at them through their glass door. Gasp! But luckily its just comical Kevin who pulls out two joysticks sending the relieving message 'I'm a Black man who functions as a child and I'm just here to play video games with you, not rob you!' Get it? It's comic relief when the Black guy pulls out joysticks instead of like a weapon because Black males are inherently criminal but this one . . . 

Black male criminality plays a very important role in defining the collective White American ego and personality. 

According to Amos Wilson, "the existence of Black American criminality, alleged and actual, is a political-economic, social-psychological necessity for maintain­ing White American psychical and material equilibrium. Black American criminality apparently serves fundamental Eurocentric psychopolitical needs and is engendered and sustained for this reason. We will now examine some of these needs.

White American Paranoia

To look at the world or a segment of it with a rigid, hyper-alert, and all-consuming expectation — to search reality repetitively only for confirmation of one's suspicions while ignoring aspects of that reality which disconfirm those suspicions; to pay no attention to opposing rational arguments, cogent, well-founded evidence, except to find in them only those features that seem to confirm one's original views; to examine reality with extraordi­nary prejudice, rejecting facts, information and alternative possibilities while seizing on and exaggerating any scintilla of often irrelevant evidence that supports one's original expectations — denotes a driven need: a psychoneurotic, psychopathological need to defend an ego perilously in danger of disintegration and to defend it regardless of cost to oneself and others. Such a suspicious and paranoid orientation speaks to the need to rigidly construct and control reality so as to maintain self-control, to empower the ego and to gainfully exploit a relevant situation. This rigidity of attention, stereotypical viewing of the world; this chronic condition of hyper-alertness, hypersensitivity; this need to create the world according to one's own deluded images, to subject others to one's paranoid views, to exploitatively have them serve that need, bespeaks the greater need to gain ego satisfaction and enhancement, self-definition and material gain through manipulating the behavior and consciousness over others. Paradoxically, this greater need bespeaks a fundamental dependency on a world and others and simultaneously, of a protest against and denial of that dependency. It expresses an ego vulnerability which must remain defensively hidden, an ego weakness which must appear to itself and others as strength, an extremely tense, unstable ego whose tenuous equilibrium can only be maintained by projecting that tension and vulnerability into the world and others. Thus the keeper of law comes to need the outlaw. And needing him, creates him. The keeper of the disturbs the peace by projecting hallucinated hostile threats where they do not exist.

That the White American must see virtually every Black male as criminal or as a potential criminal regardless of facts to the contrary, bespeaks an intense psychic need of White America to perceive him as such. [MORE

The Washington Redskins and their Racist Suspect Fans [the Washington Whites] Can't Wait to Dump Black Quarterback

Racism is a behavioral system of survival. Doug Williams, the legendary Black quarterback, said that after he took the sorry ass Buccaneers to the playoffs for three consecutive seasons and an NFC Championship appearance, a white fan rolled up on him and gave him a gift wrapped, rotten watermelon. Just a way of saying "thanx nigger!" White people are terrified of Black quarterbacks and they run them out of the league. White folks love Black quarterbacks about as much as they love Obama. Black qb's threaten the last bastion of white male leadershipdom on the field or some nonsense. Especially in D.C. home to a bastion of racist suspects. The Redskins dumped Williams also - after he won a Super Bowl they couldn't wait to drop him  - he was replaced by Jay Shroeder the following season, white fans insisted that the new white quarterback was so incredible at the time. Bye RG. 

If Black People could break down racism the way they analyze sports. According to Dr. Welsing, 'Black people [must] finally understand that White people are playing a White survival game [which] has to inferiorize the functioning of Black and other people of color. In other words: what the White Collective is doing on the planet is engaging in behaviors—in economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and more—in order for them to survive on the planet, by any means necessary.' [MORE] and [MORE]

Promoting White Supremacy: White Judge Allows Racist Group to Plaster Anti-Islam Ads on NYC Buses

From [HERE] An anti-Islam, racist white group is preparing to plaster New York City buses with advertisements that defame Islam and use images from the recent execution of American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the latest in the organization’s longstanding effort to recast Islam as an inherently violent religion.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and led by racist suspect blogger Pamela Geller and racist suspect writer Robert Spencer, announced recently that it plans to run six anti-Islam ads on more than 100 buses in New York City starting next week. The Daily News writes that the MTA tried to veto the ads, saying they violate its policy against “demeaning language.” A judge overruled, on the grounds that the MTA was violating Ms. Geller’s First Amendment rights with their prohibition. [MORE]

Yes that is a picture of a Black man rapping. From the ad at the top. He is supposed to be Jihad. Right. More [HERE] on how 'the Stereotype of Black Male Criminality reassures White People of their vaunted self-worth, their assumed innately superior moral standing and their self-congratulatory self-constraint'

“Our ads are designed to raise awareness about the need for Muslims in the US not just to denounce ISIS, but to teach young Muslims why this understanding of Islam is wrong and must be rejected,” Geller wrote on her website. She claimed in another post that the campaign, “boldly tells truths that the U.S. government and the mainstream media seem determined to obfuscate.”

The ads, which make heavy use of shocking pictures and bold text, attempt to frame Islam as a violent religion that radicalizes its followers. One of the more unsettling ads features the now-iconic image of American journalist James Foley, who was recently beheaded by ISIS militants, kneeling next to his executioner. The picture is placed alongside more benign image of a Black man rapping into a microphone with the caption “executioner who beheaded reporter before he became a jihadist.” Both images sit underneath the title “Yesterday’s moderate is today’s headline.”

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Talking Peace, Practicing War: Contradicting its own ruling, Israel's Supreme Court legalizes 'apartheid' communities

From [HEREThe Israeli Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed various petitions against the Admissions Committees Law, which allows admissions committees in hundreds of communities in Israel to reject housing applicants based on their “social suitability.”

March 8, 2000 marked a unique moment in Israeli history. In a major decision, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the town of Katzir, which was established on state land by the Jewish Agency, could not deny the right of the Arab Ka’adan family to live in the town simply on the basis that they were not Jewish. This was the first time that Palestinian citizens of Israel successfully challenged the legality of “Jewish-only” communities in the state, generating cautious optimism that it could set an important precedent for Palestinian rights in land and housing.

Fifteen years later, on September 17, 2014, these hopes came to an abrupt end. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court dismissed various petitions filed by human rights groups against the Admissions Committees Law, enacted by the Knesset in 2011. The law allows admissions committees in 434 communities in the Negev and the Galilee (about 43 percent of all towns in Israel) to reject housing applicants based on their “social suitability” and the communities’ “social and cultural fabric.” In effect, these committees are now legally permitted to refuse residency based on any “undesired” identity, including Palestinian, Sephardic, African, gay, religious, secular and others.

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Oklahoma asks court to dismiss lawsuit filed after botched execution of Black Man

From [HERE] Oklahoma on Wednesday requested that the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma [official website] dismiss a lawsuit filed after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The Guardian and The Oklahoma Observer [websites] filed the lawsuit in August [JURIST report] in reaction to the state's decision to draw a curtain midway through the execution, blocking witnesses from seeing what was happening in the death chamber. The complaint argues that bearing witness to executions is a right granted by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the state's decision to block access to the execution violated that right. Oklahoma assistant attorney general M Daniel Weitman filed a motion for dismissal [text, PDF] of the lawsuit on the grounds that "[t]he general lack of utility of the salacious details of an execution shows that press presence does not play a particularly positive role worthy of a First Amendment right of special access." Prison officials closed the curtains to the execution room 27 minutes into Lockett's execution. Lockett's execution took approximately 43 minutes and witness accounts state the prisoner showed signs of intense pain. [MORE]

President Meets with White Man Cured of Ebola. State Department orders 5,000 Body Bags for African outbreak

Dr. Kent Brantly, who was Cured of Ebola met with Obama in White House yesterday. [MORE] From [HERE] The U.S. Agency for International Development ordered 5,000 body bags from a Florida company last month as part of its planned response to an outbreak of the Ebola virus in western Africa. 

And as President Obama prepares to enlarge America's aid to affected countries, a company that makes protective clothing says the State Department, which oversees USAID, has invited bids for 160,000 hazmat suits.

The body-bag purchase came on August 19, just after the World Health Organization said the epidemic had killed 1,000 people. That death toll is now greater than 2,400.

The size of the contracts indicates how seriously governments are taking the threat, especially considering that all 5,000 body bags were destined only for Liberia – one of three countries whose citizens have been hammered with new disease cases and paralyzed with fear.

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Annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau: The Poverty Rate for Blacks is Three Times Higher than Whites

From [HERE] When it comes to income and health insurance coverage, the average U.S. household is doing about the same as it was last year — but today’s annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that we are living in a time of historic income inequality. 

Households in the 95th percentile (whose incomes exceed those of 94 percent of U.S. households) earned an average of $196,000 in 2013, while those in the 10th percentile brought in only $12,400. The median household: just $51,900. 

Examining this data since 1967, when the Census Bureau began measuring real household income — just a few years into then-President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty policy initiatives — incomes for the bottom half of Americans have stagnated, while those of the top 10 percent have enjoyed a more than gradual ascent, particularly since the late 1980s.

The most commonly used measure of income inequality, the Gini ratio or Gini coefficient, has surged since 1967, from 0.36 to nearly 0.46. (This index ranges from 0 — representing a state of perfect equality, where everyone has the same amount of resources — to 1, a state of absolute inequality in which one individual owns everything). South Africa is among the world's most unequal countries, with a 0.63 ratio. Sweden among the most egalitarian, with a 0.23 ratio.

Today's census data reveal other disparities as well. For example, in 2013:

  • The average full-time female worker earned just $0.78 for every $1 paid to a comparably employed male. 
  • The poverty rates for blacks (27.2 percent) and Hispanics (23.5 percent) far surpassed those of Asians (10.5 percent) and non-Hispanic whites (9.6 percent).
  • Children (19.9 percent) and working-age adults (13.6 percent) were far more likely to live in poverty than those 65 and older (9.5 percent), many of whom qualify for Medicare and Social Security.
  • On the flip side, thanks in part to public health insurance programs for minors, children were much more likely to have health insurance than working-age adults. Just 7.6 percent of children were uninsured, compared to 18.5 percent of adults under 65. Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the overall rate of uninsured has dropped from 15.5 percent to 14.5 percent.

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics the total U.S. prison population grew in 2013

If you don't understand white supremacy you will only be confused by Racial Disparities in the Criminal "justice" system [MORE].

From [HERE] Due to expanding prison populations in the majority of states, the total U.S. prison population grew in 2013, according to a new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The 1,574,700 inmates in state and federal prisons at yearend 2013 represent an increase of 4,300 prisoners since the previous year. (The rate of incarceration declined from 480 prisoners per 100,000 population to 478 per 100,000 during the year due to increases in the overall U.S. population.) The new figures come after three years of modest decline from a high of 1,615,500 prisoners in 2009.

“These figures challenge premature and overly optimistic forecasts of the end of mass incarceration,” stated Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. “Tackling the prison juggernaut will require broader reforms to reduce prison admissions and sentence lengths.”

An analysis of the new figures by The Sentencing Project documents the following:

  • Prison populations affected in large part by trends in California.

The three-year decline had in large part reflected a substantial reduction in the prison population in California, as mandated by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Although many states experienced at least modest prison declines in recent years, between 2009 and 2012 the California population reduction accounted for 84% of the national decline. The California decline stalled in 2013, with a 1.1% rise in the state’s inmate population.

  • Substantial reductions in three states in the past decade.

Three states – New York, New Jersey, and California – have achieved prison population reductions of about 25% in recent years (1999 – 2012 in New York and New Jersey, and 2006 – 2012 in California). During this period crime rates in these states generally declined at a greater rate than the national average.

  • Racial disparities in incarceration rates are profound, but declining.

Black men were 6 times as likely to be incarcerated as white men in 2013, and Hispanics were 2.4 times as likely. Among women, blacks were 2.2 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites, and Hispanics were 1.3 times as likely.

These figures, particularly for women, represent a substantial shift in the racial dynamics of incarceration since 2000.  The rate of incarceration declined by 19% for black men from 2000 to 2013, and by 45% for black women. Conversely, incarceration rates for white men rose by 4% and for white women by 50% during this period. Changes for Latinos were modest: a decline of 7% for men and a rise of 10% for women.

Racial impact statements will help Oregon lawmakers evaluate effect of proposed legislation on Non-whites

From [HERE] Calling them "a good first step toward justice," state Sen. Chip Shields on Tuesday outlined how he hopes new "racial impact statements" will address racial disparities in criminal sentencing and child welfare cases in Oregon.

Shields, a Portland Democrat, said Oregon now joins only a handful of states in allowing legislators to get an assessment of how legislative proposals might affect minorities [what's that?].

"The idea is that more information is better," he told about 100 people gathered for an informational forum on the topic. "These will help determine if a child welfare bill or sentencing proposal has a disproportionate effect." A bill allowing two legislators to formally request a racial impact statement easily passed during the 2013 legislative session. Bills introduced into next February's 2015 session will be the first batch for which the new law will apply.

Momentum behind the effort to draft such statements is drawn from statistics showing that, among other things, African Americans make up about 2 percent of Oregon's general population, but about 10 percent of the state's prison population.

African Americans are nearly six times as likely to be in prison than whites in the state, according to Oregon Department of Corrections statistics. [MORE]

LA Mayor Supports LAPD Use of Drones for "hot pursuits" and "emergency situations"

From [HERE] A few days after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signaled his support of a state bill that would allow limited use of drone technology by law enforcement agencies, a community group was protesting at City Hall Monday in opposition to what it called the “militarization” of LAPD and the proposed police use of drones. In photo, Garcetti is seen wearing his US Navy camouflage while speaking at an event in 2012. The now-mayor of Los Angeles gave the military notice that he would move to inactive status, Garcetti announced last year [MORE].

Members of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and the Drone-Free LAPD, No Drones, LA! Campaign held banners and signs on City Hall’s south steps beginning at about 9 a.m.

Supporters of the group said the risk of the police abuse is too great to allow LAPD to use the two drones it owns, the Los Angeles Times reported shortly after the campaign was launched last month.

The drones were obtained in May from the Seattle Police Department but had been locked up in federal care while the department crafts a police for their use.

In a news release sent out just minutes before the planned protest Monday, the Los Angeles Police Commission said the LAPD’s two Draganflyer X Unmanned Aerial Vehicles had been transferred Friday from federal custody to that of the LAPD’s Office of Inspector General. The drones won’t be used until the Police Commission has approved their use, according to the statement.

“I want to assure all that there has been no decision that UAV’s will be utilized in the city of Los Angeles,” said commission President Steve Soboroff in the release.

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