Showing posts with label Brookings Institution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brookings Institution. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

What seems isn’t – What is isn’t Uttered

Ghetto—always Deteriorative—Reconsidered

W
hether it is the Congress of the United States, the Brookings Institution or the American Enterprise Institute, or some notion of barrio; whether it is obvious or unidentified as such; whether it is physical, mental or psychological— ghetto is ghetto, of the mind or of physical space. And like incest, they each is congenitally damaging to individuals and society; and, by their nature, they are, in their entrenchment, stuck in a backward, corrosive, or deteriorative state.
 Concentrated power exercised over centuries by church and state, mass media, schooling entities have so indoctrinated the minds of the masses that they accept the propaganda that ghetto is a construct and physical condition of “other”: others such as Jews of Germany, Negroes of North America, and Islanders of anywhere, varieties of difference or the notion of difference promulgated by concentrated or entrenched power, itself a ghetto.

Noun Ghetto
  • Formerly the restricted quarter of many European cities in which Jews were required to life (“the Warsaw ghetto”)
  • Any segregated mode of living or working that results from bias or stereotyping (“the relative security of the gay ghetto”; “no escape from the ghetto of the typing pool”
  • A poor densely populated city district occupied by a minority ethnic group linked together by economic hardship and social restriction. [Source WordWeb]
T
he only difference these notions of ghetto and Congress or Brookings is the element of easy choice.  Everyone has a choice— to some making a choice is easy, to some difficult to impossible.

Verb Ghettoize: To put or place or to be placed or put in a ghetto; or to withdraw to a ghetto.
E.g. Jews in Eastern Europe were ghettoized.
Negroes of the US South were ghettoized.

Ghetto also defined as
Venetian dialect ghèto island where Jews were forced to live
  • A quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
  • A quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
  • A an isolated group e.g., a geriatric ghetto
  • A situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity e.g., “the pink-collar” ghetto [Merriam Webster]
Ghettoize: To isolate in or as if in a ghetto

Ghettoization: The permanent state of isolation
Perhaps US president Donald Trump’s aim for the United States of America.

T
hese thoughts are pegged to a recent incident in Oakland, California, which illustrates the harm of ghetto— ghetto of mind or ghetto of place— and how this condition can be compounded and further exploited by ghettoized (towered, privately-funded) media and also privately funded, fraudulent “do-gooders” who peddle dependency and push victimhood in need of their brand of profit-taking “do-gooding.” The persistent call of wolf, police injury to chosen victims is a malicious form of self-serving, and an unethical if not criminal practice that leaves a community in constant conflict with itself and with those who would protect it.

There are many ways that ghettoistic minds can put others in ghettos; and one is by victimization, exploitation, brainwashing, and tools of dependency, tools such as “charity” and various kinds of illicit and legal drugs.

Anger, self-pity, aggression, various degrees of psychological instability, even outright derangement festers in the chambers of a ghetto. This is as evident of the ghettos of California as in ghettos of the towered Trumps and the entrenched inmates of Capitol Hill.

“They are out to get me” (or mine) is a delusional cry displayed daily in the eruptions of Donald Trump, in the epithet-laced screeds of media and members of congress, as emitted in the crime spree dwellers of East Oakland.

In news from Oakland the other day a couple of people whose last names and profiles were omitted, and who were clearly troubled, claimed, apparently from a script, that were “frontline heroes doing good in the pandemic when they were victimized or violated by the police.

This narrative was carried by a “nonprofit” and media that calls itself independent. The piece released in social media read verbatim:
“Oakland Police Department followed and targeted two unhoused outreach workers with The Village. Handcuffing and detaining them in the parking lot of East Oakland Collective. Guns drawn. Threatened to be tased. Police helicopter up. Yanna and Akil had just finished distributing water, food, and supplies to fellow unhoused residents; and were coming to meet with us. The police initially didn’t tell us why they were being pulled over and didn’t ask for ID. Eventually said it was for a lane change. It wasn’t until they pulled off with Akil in the squad car that they finally admitted the real reason- Akil matched the description of a suspect who committed a crime in the area. They racially profiled this ‘brother’ who was simply out serving the people. So this is how OPD treats essential workers during COVID19 pandemic?!”

Aside from the language illiteracy, which happens in the ghettoized state, the claim lacked context, and for that reason may be considered false. Any proper news organization should have known this and would have provided at least some of the context that has created today’s Oakland.
 
As recently as 2009, a known serial criminal was out on bail but had been linked by DNA to crimes of rapes and murders. While at large, he gunned down four police officers and a mob called the return fire by police officers “murder.”

At the time ghetto dwellers claimed theirs a “resistance to police brutality” and egged on by “Uhuru House activists” promoting “African internationalism”, they ignited the community with calls for them to “uphold the resistance” of “‘Brother’ [similar usage to today’s incident] Lovelle Mixon.”

The case involved a 26-year old man who had been in trouble with law enforcement through his teen years, into adulthood. On March 21, 2009, this man shot and killed four Oakland, California, police officers: two officers during a routine traffic stop, and after escaping on foot and barricading himself in a relative’s apartment, shooting and killing two police SWAT team officers attempting to arrest him. Officers returned fire, bringing the total number of deaths to five.

A tribal news outlet reportedly “suggested that the killing of four police officers was a victory for ‘the people’ and referred to Lovelle Mixon’s death as a ‘murder.’”

C
rime in Oakland, California, has been rising for well over half a century and police officers have been fleeing the city.
Ending the 1970s, Oakland’s per capita murder rate was twice that of San Francisco and New York City. In the 1980s and 1990s into the 2000s, Oakland was notoriously known as one of “the most dangerous” US cities.  Violent crime concentration sectors are reportedly East Oakland (Districts 6 and 7) and West Oakland (District 3).
 
As crime increased, law enforcement decreased.
  • “Between 2003 and 2013, the number of police officers in Oakland declined by 91.
  • In 2008, the understaffed police and detective departments brought in slipshod work and had the lowest homicide clearance rate among California’s large cities.
  • Between 2010 and 2011, the number of homicide detectives decreased from fourteen to nine.
  • In 2011, Oakland’s detective caseload exceeded “any other major city in California, except Fresno.”
Spreading over all the problems of rising crime and decreasing police presence and work performance, Oakland has chronic human relations problems among neighbors, and between communities and law enforcement.

T
he history says that when opportunities of the war industrial work years declined after World War II, on through the 1950s and into the 1960s, Oakland’s economic position and its population declined considerably. Inner city became a center of poverty, blight, and crime.

Resentments festered, societal tensions rose; and were exacerbated by separatists movements, provocations, armed conflicts with and retaliation by standard law enforcement at various city, state and federal levels.
  • In 2004, Oakland’s police officers per 10,000 citizens were eighteen. 
  • From 2005, Oakland’s police officers per 10,000 citizens dropped to just over sixteen.
  • In 2013, Oakland employed only 616 police officers, almost half the number of law enforcement personnel needed to patrol the crime-ridden city.
A majority of law enforcement desert centers of high crime, high cost of living, and low caliber of learning institutions. Communities feel injured.

Communities are further weakened by insufficient or warped individual expectations of self, and by self-serving exploiters and do-gooders. Consequently, communities are left bereft of personal power to rise above the fray, transcend old wounds, and mend broken relations.

E
xample of ongoing self harm

2018
  • “Toddler reportedly shot in East Oakland” July 12, 2018: reports of a young child being shot in East Oakland, just before 10 pm near 81st Avenue and Holly Street. 
  • Police confirmed: “3-year-old boy struck in head by bullet fragments” The boy was hit in the head by bullet fragments … while sitting in his mother’s car around 9:30 pm 1600 block of 80th Avenue. “Oakland Police Deputy Chief LeRonne Armstrong delivered a teddy bear and well wishes to the shooting victim at Children’s Hospital.” The officer “also wanted to let the family know the department is doing all it can to find the shooter.” Deputy Chief Armstrong said the family had been “attending a memorial for a victim in a homicide when the shooting happened and the child was hit.” https://abc7news.com/3-year-old-boy-struck-in-head-by-bullet-fragments-in-oakland/3751060/ https://abc7news.com/toddler-reportedly-shot-in-east-oakland/3749390/
2019
  • “Police investigate deadly shooting in East Oakland” May 1, 2019 Police responded to San Antonio Park area around 3:28 pm, found a man suffering multiple gunshot wounds, victim  pronounced dead at the scene, despite efforts from paramedics. https://abc7news.com/police-investigate-deadly-shooting-in-east-oakland/5280967/
2020
  • “Trailer with toxic waste found dumped in Oakland neighborhood….” January 3, 2020 “Illegal dumping went to a new extreme between the Christmas [mid afternoon December 27] and New Year’s holidays  in Oakland. Hazmat crews responded to a 20-feet trailer with more than a thousand buckets of toxic material dumped on a residential street in East Oakland. A nearby surveillance camera was available but did not capture the action, as it was spray-painted all over with lacquer thinners.” https://abc7news.com/society/tackling-oaklands-illegal-dumping-problem/5812397/
T
here is a sense of insanity about such actions.
Nothing good comes of festered rage, provocation by exploiters. 
Isolation of place or mind
Ghettoization.
Bump-stocked semi-automatics turn on neighbors
Neighbors the same turn on left-right-center /blue-red-purple US states
No doubt Jews turned on each other.
The towered and shack dwellers turn on their wives
The cloistered eat their own.
No good comes in the ghetto, or to ghettoized mind. No good comes from ghettoization.




Sources

The East Oakland Collective East Bay Sunday Update. Sunday April 26, 2020
https://linktr.ee/eastoaklandcollective
https://www.gofundme.com/f/emergency-shelter-for-unhoused-elders-in-oakland
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_dfrQJB-2R/

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/04/24/18832633.php
https://twitter.com/situationist/status/1253912761513291776
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_aYASjheTE/

The East Oakland Collective (EOC) is a member-based community organizing group invested in serving the communities of deep East Oakland by working towards racial and economic equity. http://www.eastoaklandcollective.com/
http://www.eastoaklandcollective.com/about-us.html

The East Bay Collective claims among its funders
Akonadi Foundation (2018 donor): founded in 2000, according to the latter’s website, “a year after California voters approved Proposition 21, a racist ballot measure targeting and criminalizing young people of color.” https://akonadi.org/akonadi/history-2/

Wikipedia
California Proposition 21 (a.k.a. Prop 21) “was a proposition proposed and passed in 2000 that increased a variety of criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth and incorporated many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice system.
Major provisions of Prop 21:

  • Increased punishment for gang-related felonies; death penalty for gang-related murder; indeterminate life sentences for home-invasion robbery, carjacking, witness intimidation and drive-by shootings; and a new crime of recruiting for gang activities; and authorizes wiretapping for gang activities.

  • Adult trial requirement for juveniles 14 or older charged with murder or specified sex offenses.

  • Informal probation eliminate for juveniles committing felonies.

  • Registration required for gang related offenses.

  • Additional crimes designated as violent and serious felonies, thereby making offenders subject to longer sentences.

Voter support of Prop: 62.1 percent (4,491,166); voter opposition: 37.9 percent (2,742,148)
Wikipedia page last updated September 10, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_California_Proposition_21

East Bay Collective website lists as “major supporter”
Bagchi Law Firm, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Corporate and Transactional, India Advisory, Mergers and Acquisitions, Tax and Securities Law, BLGlobal Advisors is a division of Bagchi Law that helps businesses establish and grow operations in the United States and around the world. Works “with entrepreneurs in the startup phase of a venture or with a well-established public company in need of daily counsel, [helping] clients achieve immediate and long-term objectives.” https://bagchilaw.com/
https://bagchilaw.com/practices/corporate-and-transactional/

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California
Wikipedia page last updated April 4, 2020

2009 shootings of Oakland police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_shootings_of_Oakland_police_officers

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Impeachment Inquiry: Performing Ideologues and sycophantic Propagandists, Partisans and Personalities


Old-liners Protecting Private Interests

Filling the Minds of
Poorly Educated,
Intellectually Lazy Americans with
Lies,
Half truths,
Misrepresentations of Russia and USA

Setting some of the Record Straight

T
here is no greater Global  interventionist than the USA

  • There is no greater regime changer in the world than the USA. 
  • There is no greater stockpiller of bombs, no greater bomber of nations and peoples than the USA. 
  • There is no greater arsenal of nuclear bombs, not greater seller of and trader in lethal weapons and promoters of world wars and conflict than the USA. 
  • There is no greater peddler of propaganda than the USA. 
  • There is no greater executor of global (including domestic) surveillance than the USA.
There is not greater threat to the world than our country, The United States of America, under entrenched and inept leadership.

In any just and truly merit-based system, the British woman known as Fiona Hill would never have been given a high level position in the U.S. government or in the U.S. foreign relations domain.
She is British (we fought a revolution against these people) born, bred and educated (she did not come her as an infant). And she is an old-line anti-Russia (anti-Putin) sycophantic propagandist who should never have been given a position of advisor or officer to any American about any issue bearing on domestic or foreign affairs.
This is an especially critical issue — the issue of incompetents, propagandists and sycophants kowtowing, ingratiating themselves, to one or another personality or ideology inside Washington — at a time when the greatest and most compelling global matters confronting the world are  international relations and genuine and long-lasting cession of hostilities; instead of deepening hostilities and repeating Cold War and past wars, old-line aggression.

T
he United States with other nations (particularly past empires, world war hawks and colonizers, e.g., the USA, the Russian Federation or former USSR, Britain, France) should be leading forward, leading critically important 21st century change:

  • ending Western and Eastern aggression
  • leading diplomatic verbal engagement
  • talking resolutions
  • principled (not partisan) rapprochement between and among nations; recommitting to nuclear disarmament;
  • ending landmine use and clearing landmines of past conflicts;
  • drafting and ratifying peace treaties (and sharing instead of plundering resources, aiding in basic infrastructures such as running water and energy and mending entities and relations destroyed by war and conflict).
Instead of persisting in the old mold of aggression and propaganda and provocation; conflict in the service of empire, an elite establishment, special interests including think tank, NGO and weapons industrial interests — 

  • the way forward must be characterized by peaceful measures demonstratively engaged in mending relations and improving conditions across cultures and languages, within, among and between nations and peoples of the East (Eastern Asia and Eastern Europe including Russia), the Near East (Middle East, North and Eastern Africa), the South (Americas, Australia New Zealand, including sub-Saharan Africa), the North (Russia, Canada, Greenland), and the West (Europe, USA, Central and Caribbean Americas).

W
ho is Dr. Fiona Hill?
Harvard University gave Fiona Hill a place in the early1990s and, with virtually nothing to offer except Ivy League “connections,” the United States, just over a decade later, granted her a citizenship card. 

She took a degree at Harvard and Harvard gave her a research job at its JFK School of Government (where even drug abusers get entry). And with connections still in hand and a newly minted citizenship card, Fiona Hill landed a position (2006-2009) focused on “Russia and Eurasia” on the U.S. National Intelligence Council. 

And in less than a decade, she hopped up to the White House’s National Security Council staff as “Deputy Assistant to the U.S. President and Senior Director for European and Russian.”

Between times, Hill’s connections connected her with the think tank Brooking Institution and they published a couple of her books, which are not considered university faculty scholarship but would fall into a category of anti Russia / anti-Putin propaganda. And with her penchant or malleability for propaganda, the British lady took (or was given) membership in the controversial foreign-country- meddling Council on Foreign Relations and Eurasia foundation.

F
iona Hill’s Old-line interventionist memberships
CFR, ER 

The post-World War I era neoconservative, neoliberal-leaning Council on Foreign Relations has included among its 4,900 members: senior politicians, dozens of U.S. secretaries of state, Central Intelligence Directors, bankers, lawyers, professors and senior media figures.
Because of the number of high-ranking government officials (along with world business leaders and prominent media figures) in its membership and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, the CFR has come under scrutiny concerning matters of “sovereignty” and “undue influence on US foreign policy.…”

The Eurasia Foundation is a public-private United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-supported “privately managed grant-making, program implementing, private-enterprise advancing, public policy/administration promoting organization — that is a meddler attempting to influence internal affairs of “former Soviet Union” countries: “Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.”
Fiona Hill’s Brookings Institution

Among the Ivory-towered Washington, D.C., think tanks is post-World War I era Brookings Institution, sporting a treasure chest of “nearly half-a-billion (with a B) dollars in assets and deep ties to political leaders.”

Though Brookings bills itself as a group (a) engaged in “in-depth research” leading to “new ideas for solving problems facing society at local, national and global levels”; (b) valuing “the independence of its scholars” and (c) priding itself on “open-minded” inquiry — independent reporting has found that Brookings is instead “swayed by ‘open-wallet’ inquiry.”

Brookings’s massive collection of money, Adam Andrzejewski reported in 2017, is not “just dollars provided by private donors”; they “are (U.S.) tax dollars funding partisan advocacy projects and papers.”

One former fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar was quoted saying “If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware that they are not getting the full story.” This scholar recalled his employment interview with Brookings in which he was told “he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers.” Reports produced by Brookings and peddled to the U.S. Congress and Executive leaders “‘may not (convey) … a false story; … (but) they are not the full story.”

Public funding shows that “Brookings is less of a think tank and more of a public affairs shop for establishment-left donors and allied government officials; and while what they are doing is “not illegal under current federal law…, the question is whether it’s ethical to secretly coerce taxpayers into supporting partisan causes.”

S
ome of Andrzejewski’s findings

2008-2014 “Brookings amassed from 50 government agencies (including the Obama Administration’s Office of the President) nearly $20 million in contracts and grants. Brookings’ assets in Fiscal Year 2014: $496 million (IRS990, FY2014)

2008 – 2017
  • Billed $1.8 million to the Agency for International Development (USAID) in taxpayer-funded grants to provide generic ‘humanitarian assistance’
  • 2016: Brookings published a white paper funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark touting the veracity of the USAID public/private partnerships. But, Brookings paper did not disclose its conflict-of-interest -- USAID direct funding of the organization during the period covered by the study.
  • $1.2 million in grants (2008-2018) flowing from the National Science Foundation into the Brookings vertical “Brookings Papers On Economic Activity” – an academic journal published twice a year on a range of macroeconomic topics impacting public policy debates.
  • $719,102 in grants (2009-2011) from the Department of Energy flowed to Brookings for their “climate and energy economic policy research.” This Brookings project advocates a domestic cap-and-trade tax and thanks California for taxing carbon.
  • $25,000 in National Endowment of the Arts grants (2013) funded Brookings for “promotion of the arts.” Presto! Brookings published research on the Arts and Economic Development. If taxpayers want a copy of the report, Brookings sells it for $30.99.




Sources
Forbes Media “Brookings Institution — The Progressive Jukebox Funded By U.S. Taxpayers” Adam Andrzejewski, senior contributor June 2, 2017
Adam Andrzejewski (say: And-G-F-Ski) is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of OpenTheBooks.com – a database containing 3.5 billion captured spending transactions from federal, state and local governments across America.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2017/06/02/brookings-institution-the-progressive-jukebox-funded-by-u-s-taxpayers/#3a828d035e53

Wikipedia
Council on Foreign Relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations
Eurasia Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia_Foundation

Brookings Institution: “INDEPENDENCE & INTEGRITY POLICIES”
“The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent, in-depth research that leads to pragmatic and innovative ideas on how to solve problems facing society. Brookings’s commitment to institutional independence is rooted in the individual independence of its scholars. Therefore, the Institution does not take positions on issues.” https://www.brookings.edu/about-us/

Today’s Impeachment Inquiry News
Business Insider “LIVE: Former NSC official Fiona Hill told EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, ‘I think this is all going to blow up’” Sonam Sheth, John Haltiwanger and Grace Panetta’
  • “House investigators leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump are hearing testimony from Fiona Hill and David Holmes on Thursday.
  • “Hill, the former top Russia adviser on the National Security Council, offered a scathing picture of shadowy efforts to urge Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rivals.
  • “Holmes is a top staffer at the US Embassy in Ukraine and worked closely with Marie Yovanovitch while she was serving as the US ambassador to Ukraine.
  • “Hill and Holmes said they were ‘shocked,’ ‘saddened,’ and ‘disappointed’ after they read a summary of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
  • “They also forcefully defended Yovanovitch’s record and said Trump's and Rudy Giuliani’s ‘smear campaign’ against her was ‘shameful.’
 https://www.businessinsider.com/impeachment-hearing-updates-fiona-hill-testimony-2019-11
 


Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved


 


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