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Why were the officers so on edge that they all had their guns drawn? Do you know what happened prior to them drawing their guns?

Over zealousness and dereliction of duty.


You can look up all relevant data yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Timothy_Russell_and_Malissa_Williams

I was just asking you since you said you watched the trial.

I don't really enjoy discussing these things because I know this is a terrible world and I don't assume that there are no bad cops or that everyone who seems like an innocent victim necessarily is one. Still, I don't like speculating about people being criminals after they're dead, either; and even if they were criminals, that doesn't mean they deserved to die; but when guns are drawn and everyone is on edge, one startling sound can cause a trigger to pull and the moment gunshots ring out, everyone with a gun pulled is going to start firing to protect themselves. Obviously I don't know what happened, whether this was just some kind of organized crime execution or whatever, but when this madness happens it's just sad and you can't assume anything because if you do, you could be unwittingly taking sides with the liars; like when a bully provokes an innocent person into standing up for themselves so they can have an excuse to react with excessive violence and blame the other person for starting it and lie about their own role in provoking the conflict to begin with.

Presumption of innocence kinda require a presumption of innocence, doesn't it???? I don't think being shot twenty time each out of a 160 rounds fire indicates much presumption of innocence, do you, especially in light of how many cops went to trial and more were fired after.

What's your problem???

I am not familiar with the case, but if he honestly believed that they were a threat, he would be justified in responding.

Until it hits home for you, you cannot fully understand exactly how it is.

I experienced a minor fender bender a little over two years ago. I was in Downtown Akron going past Akron U and a double right turn resulted in my entire passenger side being scraped. The young, African American driver swung wide and couldn't correct his vehicle away from mine.

We both pulled over. He immediately admitted fault, said he had insurance and asked me not to call the cops. I felt bad but insurance requires a police report for damage claims so yeah, I called the cops.

This kid was terrified. I mean shaking, almost in tears, very apologetic, well mannered. He was a college kid with practically no experience behind the wheel and he just didn't know what to do.

When the cop came, he asked us to get in the back, took both of our licenses and insurance cards. This kid of 19 was now shaking so badly he was shaking the entire back seat. He was so upset. I tried to assure him accidents happen and he's got insurance and everything will be ok.

That's when this kid, a 19 year old African American boy looked at me and whispered, don't let him kill me.

It was then, I finally understood.

The cop explained this could go one of two ways, write a ticket on the kid and his insurance picks up the tab to fix my car or not write a ticket and each of our insurance companies pays for it's own vehicle.

I choose to not have a ticket written. It only took a few minutes after that and the cop let us go. This kid was so shaken up he didn't know what to do. I asked him to call one of his parents and I talked to his dad. I volunteered to meet the dad half way so the kid didn't have to drive alone.

When we got to the meeting spot this kid completely melted down once he saw his dad. His dad put him in the car and thanked me for what I did.

I was only home 10 minutes before his insurance company called to set arrangements to fix my car.

I never saw or spoke to them again.

But now I know what it means to drive while black.



*true story

Kind words from folks in Canada....
Just found this tweet, kinda broke my heart and soothed it at the same time....

To the United States of America. I know you are going through a lot right now. Thinking other Countries are watching you and laughing. Right now, we are not. Right now we are worried, sad, and scared for you. Right now, we are thinking, how can such a great country be going 1/



through this. Your Government failed you, Politics failed you, money failed you but we will not fail you! We will stand with you and support you and carry you as far as you need. We are your friends we are your cousins, we are here for you. Your voice is our voice your fear is 2/

·

our fear. Canada and the US have been beside each other for everything. This is no different You are fighting a war, a war within your own country, in your home land We have seen other countries around the world do the same. We were there for them, and now we are here for you. 3/


I know people are feeling hopeless, that the cloud of doom surrounds them. But, I am here to say, you are not alone in this fight. This will get better because Americans are strong, and Americans are brave! Americans are not alone. We stand with you.


https://twitter.com/CanadianReports/status/1266555513715605504

I don't believe you.

Go take a poo poo in your Stetson....something is terribly wrong with you.

Don't wear hats. Nothing wrong with me, I don't believe him.

OK, so you and the horse you rode in on.........What makes you think anybody cares what you think???

How many times have you asked me that? It does not work. Earth to GB.

Other than the usual right wing lunatic fringe, how many positive responses do you think you've gotten?

Dani Garavelli: Cheerleader for race riots Donald Trump creates perfect smokescreen

To watch the footage of George Floyd dying at the hands of a white US police officer is to shudder at man’s capacity for brutality. For Derek Chauvin to have kept his knee on the man’s neck even after he had passed out, even as bystanders begged him to check his pulse, is an act of depravity.

By Dani Garavelli
Sunday, 31st May 2020, 7:58 am

Sadly, neither the barbarity, nor the racism that fuelled it, is new. Floyd is the latest in a long succession of African Americans to die at the hands of police officers. Some of their names are well-known: Michael Brown; Tyrone West, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray; many more have faded into obscurity. But the toll keeps mounting. As Chauvin was squeezing the breath from Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters were demanding justice over the killing of Breonna Taylor, shot dead by police in her house in Louisville in March.

Nor are the riots that have swept the US entirely unexpected. It is common for police killings to light a touchpaper in cities with pre-existing racial tensions. As in Los Angeles after the attack on Rodney King, Baltimore after the killings of West and Gray, so too in Minneapolis, where the police precinct was set alight and, Louisville, where demonstrators were shot. The trouble follows a familiar pattern: peaceful demonstrations turn violent, and – once the city is in turmoil – opportunists start looting.

What is unprecedented is that the president should do so much to create the context for the killing and then seek to inflame the violence. When, 72 hours after Floyd’s death, Donald Trump called the protestors “thugs” and told Minnesota governor Tim Walz the military were with him all the way; when he tweeted, “when the looting begins, the shooting begins” – a phrase first used by Miami’s police chief Walter Headley during civil rights unrest in 1967 – he was playing to his volatile alt-right followers, in exactly the same way as when he defended the armed anti-lockdown supporters in the Michigan Capitol earlier in the month.

From the moment Trump announced his candidacy, he has been courting the white supremacist vote. He may have disowned David Duke, but if your slogan is Make America Great Again and you talk about walls and deporting Muslims, then you shouldn’t be surprised by a KKK endorsement. And if your response to the killing of a protester at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville is to suggest “there are fine folks on both sides” you legitimise that rally and justify the KKK’s faith in you.

Furthermore if you tell law enforcement officers not to be “too nice” to suspects, adding that it’s ok to allow them to bang their heads, then you share the responsibility when black suspects die as a result of excessive force.

More:
https://www.scotsman.com/health/dani-garavelli-cheerleader-race-riots-donald-trump-creates-perfect-smokescreen-2869754

May 29, 2020
[b]Newly Released Transcripts Show Michael Flynn Betrayed the United States
His lying is the least of it.[/b]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/05/newly-released-transcripts-show-michael-flynn-betrayed-the-united-states/

David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow

Michael Flynn did something far worse than lie to the FBI. He betrayed the United States. That’s the major revelation of the just-released transcripts of the conversations he had during the presidential transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump and his crew tried to undo reality and whip up a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump has dubbed the “Obamagate” scandal, with a supposedly victimized Flynn in a starring role.

Up until now, the Flynn scandal has generally centered on his criminal case, in which Flynn, Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, was charged with—and pleaded guilty to—lying to FBI about his calls with Kislyak. Flynn told bureau agents that he had not discussed the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 election. Well, he had. And Flynn had even encouraged the Russians to not retaliate severely, suggesting that when Trump took office things between Moscow and Washington could be smoothed over. The FBI knew this because US intelligence had intercepted those calls, presumably part of routine surveillance of the Russian official. Flynn took a deal, and he pleaded guilty to lying to avoid being charged for an unrelated crime (failing to register as a foreign agent for Turkey).

Case closed.

But then Trump and his crew tried to undo reality and whip up a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump has dubbed the “Obamagate” scandal, with a supposedly victimized Flynn in a starring role. They claimed Flynn was unfairly targeted by vengeful Deep Staters who “unmasked” him (by requesting his name, which was redacted in intercepts of his conversations with Kislyak, be revealed to US officials with authority to obtain this information) and who then somehow cooked up the charge that Flynn lied to the FBI. Both halves of this bogus controversy are not supported by facts. Unmasking is a routine action that happens thousands of times a year within the US government. There is no evidence that Obama administration officials were spying on Flynn. (Unmasking is not spying; when an official asks for an identity to be unmasked, he or she doesn’t know who that person is.) But the bottom line, as already noted, is that Flynn had indeed lied.

But here is where the president and his minions screwed up. To promote the Obamagate double-distraction—this phony scandal is meant to draw attention from Trump’s inept response to the coronavirus pandemic and from Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, which was mounted to help Trump—Trump and Co. called for the release of highly classified intelligence documents that would supposedly confirm Flynn was unmasked as part of an anti-Trump plot waged by outgoing Obama officials. On cue, then-acting Director of National Intelligence and ardent Trump partisan Richard Grenell released documents related to the unmasking. They showed no conspiracy against Flynn. That release, though, opened the door to a much more profound disclosure.

“Let’s keep this at a level that uh is, even-keeled, okay? Is even-keeled. And then what we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where, where were gonna go, uh, regarding our relationship.”

The next step was to make public the transcripts of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak, which occurred in December 2016 and January 2017. Friday night, newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released these documents—and they certainly reaffirm that Flynn lied to the FBI. In these calls, Flynn beseeched Russia not to over-react to Obama’s sanctions, noting that would make it tougher for the incoming Trump administration to work with Russia. For instance, on one call, Flynn says, “Let’s keep this at a level that uh is, even-keeled, okay? Is even-keeled. And then what we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where, where were gonna go, uh, regarding our relationship.”

But what is most scandalous and damning in these transcripts is what Flynn did not say.

At no point does Flynn castigate Kislyak for Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election. He does not confront the Russian ambassador for Putin’s covert operation to subvert American democracy. He does not tell Kislyak that Moscow will have to pay a price for hacking the Democrats and using the stolen information to influence the election for Trump’s benefit. Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, does not warn Kislyak against any further Russian information warfare targeting the United States. As the Obama administration was trying to impose a punishment on Putin for that attack, Flynn, on behalf of the Trump gang, was sending an utterly different message: We don’t care about that.

Think about this perverse set of interactions: the incoming national security adviser was essentially telling a foreign adversary that the new president wasn’t concerned about an attack on the United States and, moreover, indicating that Trump didn’t intend to do anything about it. In fact, Flynn was signaling to Putin that once Trump took office, Trump wouldn’t be pursuing the matter and, instead, would be reaching out to Russia as a partner. (A few months later, Trump, in the Oval Office, would tell Kislyak that directly.)

There’s been a lot of screaming within TrumpWorld about Flynn being persecuted. Attorney General Bill Barr recently had the Justice Department drop the Flynn case after Flynn pleaded guilty. And Trump, who fired Flynn for having lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak, has tried to transform Flynn into an Obamagate martyr. All this sound and fury is a deflection. Flynn is guilty as charged. But his true crime is against American democracy, and it reflects the original sin of the Trump presidency. The 2016 election was attacked by an overseas power. And throughout the campaign, Trump and his top advisers aided and abetted that attack by echoing Putin’s false denials. They said there was no attack under way and provided the Kremlin cover. And as soon as the election was over, Trump continued to discount the Russian intervention or deny it ever happened.

All this sound and fury is a deflection. Flynn is guilty as charged. But his true crime is against American democracy.

Trump and his henchmen let Putin get away with it. That’s what Flynn was doing during his conversations with Kislyak. He was dealing with the Russians as if there had been no attack. He was abandoning his obligation to defend the United States from foreign assault—as Trump has done. No doubt, Trump and his amen chorus will continue to argue about the details of Flynn’s legal case and insist, without evidence, that he was framed by an evil Obama cabal. But in a way, that’s a sideshow. Flynn’s fundamental transgression is much larger and deeper than his lies to the FBI gumshoes. The transcripts, released due to Trump’s bogus Obamagate chase, show a darker reality: Flynn double-crossed American democracy.

My turn. Motherjones? What does the dailykoz have to say about this?

Mother Jones vs Epoch Times?

Mother Jones is a highly respected source of investigative journalism. Epoch Times is a notorious purveyor of wooooo and misinformation as a mouth piece of Falun Gong.

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Awards and Accolades

Mother Jones recently won the prestigious 2017 National Magazine Award for Magazine of the Year. It has also been nominated for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence nine times in the magazine’s history, winning three times. MoJo continues to win awards for its reporting, illustration, and photography.

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“Undercover With a Border Militia”
Shane Bauer

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Mother Jones

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“Heavens to Betsy”
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Sandy Phillips With Abigail Pesta

American Illustration
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2017

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Mother Jones

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“My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard”
Shane Bauer

National Magazine Award (General Excellence), Finalist
Mother Jones

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“Inside the Race to Stop the Next Mass Shooter” and related coverage
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John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award
“My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard”
Shane Bauer

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“My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard”
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“Black Deaths Matter”
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The Media Consortium’s Impact Award
“The True Cost of Gun Violence in America”
Mark Follman, Julia Lurie, Jaeah Lee, and James West

https://clashdaily.com/2014/02/liberal-rag-mother-jones-despotism-please/

Mother Jones backed up by a real link to the original transcript.

UNCLASSIFIED
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Provided by Mother Jones. You got smiley faces signifying nothing.

Wow. terribly moving.