Links - 8th June 2026 (3 - George Floyd Unrest)

Hearing What Black Voices Really Say About Police - "Philonise Floyd’s earnest call for reform has been drowned out by an elite-driven narrative about race relations that is empirically weak, counterproductive, and not reflective of most black Americans’ attitudes and wishes... black women in the same age bracket are killed by police at roughly 5 percent the rate of black men; surely if police killings were driven solely by racial animus, then black women would be victimized at a much higher rate. Despite the racial disparity in rates, a study of police-involved homicides between 2009 and 2012 shows that whites constituted a majority (52 percent) of victims. What explains “state violence” against whites? All in all, the evidence paints a murky picture, though still a troubling one. Too many people—including whites—die at the hands of law enforcement, but black men and women are much more likely to be killed by civilians and certain diseases than by the police.   Polling data suggest that most African-Americans do not share Collins’s bleak view of their experiences. In a 2019 Pew survey, 44 percent of blacks reported being “unfairly stopped by police” because of their race; 54 percent said, “No, has not happened to me.” In a Monmouth poll taken after Floyd’s death, 44 percent of African-Americans reported that they or an immediate family member felt “harassed by police,” but a majority did not share this experience. When asked, “How satisfied are you with the job your local police department does,” 21 percent said “very satisfied,” 51 percent said somewhat satisfied, 12 percent said somewhat dissatisfied, and only 5 percent said that they were “very” dissatisfied. These results do not suggest a complete endorsement of contemporary policing, as many blacks report negative interactions. Yet nearly three-quarters of surveyed African-Americans report themselves satisfied with their local police departments...   Polling from New York City in the immediate aftermath of Eric Garner’s death in 2014 is telling. In response to an open-ended question asking them to name the “most important problem facing New York,” only 6 percent of all respondents in a Quinnipiac University survey of New York City voters listed police, and only 1 percent mentioned racism or race relations—far behind the economy, housing, crime, and education as issues of topmost concern. When asked if “being the victim of police brutality is something you personally worry about,” 53 percent of African-Americans said “no” and 46 percent said “yes.” Still, a clear majority of African-Americans (56 percent) described “police brutality” as a “very serious” problem. Another 34 percent called it “somewhat serious.” Among blacks, the approval rate for the New York City Police Department was low: only 35 percent approved while 59 percent disapproved. Yet, when asked about “the way the police in your community are doing their job,” 56 percent of African-Americans approved, and 41 percent disapproved.  Though nearly all blacks called the police actions that took Garner’s life inexcusable, they were split on the details of the encounter. The poll asked, “If someone were selling loose cigarettes in a neighborhood, would you want police to ignore that behavior or try to make that person stop, even if it means arresting that person?” Forty-six percent of black respondents said, “Try to stop,” and 46 percent said “ignore.” Another question asked, “If a person tells police they are not going to allow police to arrest them, should police walk away or use whatever amount of force is necessary to arrest the person”? Only 20 percent of black respondents said that police should “walk away.” Fifty-four percent said, “use necessary force.”  None of this is new. In a 1970 Vera Institute survey of residents of the predominantly black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, we hear familiar complaints about police...   These grievances notwithstanding, these respondents wanted more police presence, not less, in their community... Though aware of, concerned about, and opposed to “state violence,” African-Americans are far more worried about bread-and-butter issues, like jobs, housing, education, and health care. And public safety is also a bread-and-butter issue. Black people consider violence and some street crimes threats to their pursuit of the good life, as they define it. At times, they have even endorsed draconian measures and aggressive strategies to meet that threat. Instead of relating these comprehensible complexities, “explainers” at Vox and opinion pieces in major newspapers have doubled down on a deeply flawed pop sociology that demands the erasure or marginalization of these black perspectives.  We are witnessing the embourgeoisement of racial politics. A reading public not long ago captivated by Hillbilly Elegy is now obsessed with White Fragility. Each day, college-educated millennials race to social media to practice the rituals of wokeness by condemning various cultural artifacts as racist and policing the discourse. Statues are coming down, and the “b” in black is being capitalized. Corporations, private schools, and major philanthropic organizations are declaring that “black lives matter.”   Elite institutions have committed themselves to a theory, program, and performance increasingly detached from the aspirations, worldviews, and everyday concerns of millions of blacks. Activists have secured pledges to “defund” or “dismantle” police departments, but black Americans haven’t received concrete, alternative public-safety plans to curb violence. Most African-Americans clearly desire police reform over abolition. They echo Philonise Floyd’s mournful call. Their perspectives deserve consideration. Any “antiracist” movement that disregards how working and middle-class African-Americans define and pursue the good life is not worth its name."

Thread by @RichardHanania on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "There's this PC argument on the right claiming inner city communities want tougher policing, it's just those white liberals who want to "defund the police."  It ignores the grass-roots political behavior of these communities. Same reason the right also blames rioting on the media Yes I know about the polling, which shouldn’t lead us to override everything we know about activism, protests, and politics in these communities. Polls are narrowest kind of evidence of what people want. I discussed this with @robkhenderson and @ZachG932.
It’s funny how even anti-wokes need a narrative of black innocence and white guilt to make their arguments.  Let’s ignore actual election results because they tell a different story. But I’m sure people will find a way to blame whites for Larry Krasner. phillytrib.com/news/local_new… “Support for Krasner spanned Black voting districts in North, South, West and Southwest Philadelphia…  Meanwhile, the majority of support for Vega was limited to the primarily white neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia and River Wards section.” Let’s not just look at polling data that tells us what we want to hear either.  Here’s one showing blacks only have a 40% approval for the police, compared to 59% of Hispanics and 68% of whites.
How about support for tough on crime policies? In 2012, it was found that 57% of whites in NYC supported stop and frisk, 53% of Hispanics, compared to 25% of blacks. About half of blacks say the prison system, policing, and courts have to be "completely rebuilt" so they can be treated fairly. If you think that means getting tougher on crime, you're delusional. 40% of blacks say that criminals spend too much time in prison, compared to 25-26% of other races.  Only 17% of blacks say criminals should be locked up for longer, compared to 36% of whites, 34% of Asians, and 28% of Hispanics.
I could go on.  Again, Americans of all ideology need a narrative where whites are to blame. Liberals blame "structural racism," while conservatives blame white liberals.  Our racial taboos are very strong, and conservatives and liberals have more in common than they think. On Alameda County, which had two black candidates: "Voters who live in higher-crime areas tend to favor advocates of criminal justice reform, while people living in suburbs with lower crime rates tend to support people promising crackdowns on crime." sfchronicle.com/election/artic…
It's hilarious people keep bringing up Eric Adams. Yes, black voters vote on race first and foremost. Wanting gov to be soft on crime is secondary. When the race is black vs. black or white vs. white, every case I've seen has blacks more in favor of the pro-crime candidate In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin was recalled by a "coalition of Asians and wealthy whites."  Why was Boudin recalled? "Black voters, who played a key role in keeping progressive DAs in Philadelphia and in Chicago in office, make up only 6% of San Francisco’s population."
Ah I see people have pulled the "low turnout" cope. What evidence would these people accept?  I'm sure somewhere deep in the ghetto there's a missing black voter who just happens to agree with you, a tough on crime twitterer, you just have to reach him. Good luck on your journey. If you think you're more in touch with what black voters want than their own elected officials, the way to prove your theory is to run tough on crime candidates and see how they do in black areas. But it's been done, and we have data. But you're in touch with "real" black opinion"

Daniel Friedman on X - "A lot of people don’t realize that Chauvin is like 5’7 and weighs about 160 pounds. Floyd was 6’3 and 340, resisting arrest, refusing to get in the police car and completely out of his mind on drugs.    Chauvin was trying to maintain control over a very large, potentially dangerous suspect. Chauvin had no idea how badly Floyd’s decades of hard drug abuse had damaged his heart, or how fragile Floyd was as a result.  Floyd’s death was unfortunate, but it was not a crime and people like him occasionally suffering health crises due to the stress of being subdued and arrested over their resistance is a perfectly acceptable and inevitable occurrence when you actually police and enforce law and public order."

FBI fires agents seen kneeling in iconic photo during George Floyd protests five years ago | CNN Politics : r/Full_news - "Disgusting that they’d fire them for being human."
"It falls in line of code of ethics violation.  You cannot, under any circumstances, show or give the impression (as any reasonable observer would see), of impartiality.  The act of kneeling, while on duty, is an act of impartiality that cannot be displayed. It became a refusal to maintain a safe and secure environment."
"Sooo… the director of the same agency wrote a children’s book depicting the current president as the king. Would you count that as impartial or cuckoo bananas level of partiality?  https://a.co/d/evh6sAN"
If you support the left wing agenda, you are just "being human" and anyone who thinks government agents shouldn't show political bias is a disgusting person. Of course, if a government agent does something the left disapproves of, that's "fascism"
Clearly, doing something on your own time before you were hired for a job is exactly the same as doing it while working and representing the government

Philonise Floyd Sheds Tears For His Brother George While On The Stand In Chauvin Trial - "Philonise Floyd described growing up in a poor area of Houston with George and their other siblings.  "He used to make the best banana mayonnaise sandwiches. And he used to make the best syrup sandwiches because George couldn't cook, he couldn't boil water," he said."

Why big business loves Black Lives Matter - "One reason Black Lives Matter is so difficult to talk about, and it elicits such a vast range of reactions, is that no one can pin down exactly what it is. No decent human being could disagree with the assertion that the lives of black people matter – and if they don’t currently, then they should. But to agree with the claims made by protesters, activists and campaigners marching under the banner of ‘Black Lives Matter’ is a different question entirely... Confusingly, there are a number of organisations claiming to represent ‘Black Lives Matter’ in some capacity. Khan-Cullors is involved with two: the non-profit BLM Global Network Foundation and the for-profit BLM Global Network. (To make matters even more complicated, another big recipient of donations intended for BLM is the Black Lives Matter Foundation, which has no relation to either of these entities and promotes a diametrically opposed line on the police.)... There are many layers to this relationship. There is the immediate branding boost companies can gain from associating with BLM. According to an Edelman survey of 35 countries, 64 per cent of customers say they would reward firms for taking a stand on social issues. Brands like to win over consumers young so they can stay loyal for life – and many young people are uncritically supportive of BLM.  Woke politics has also been useful for firms hiding all kinds of unsavoury practices. Many firms will proclaim allegiance to BLM one day, while lobbying against curbs on forced labour the next, for instance. Indeed, whether you take the Marxist view, that all firms in a capitalist system exploit labour anyway, or the Adam Smith view, that sellers in a marketplace act out of self-interest rather than kindness, it is surely hard to take any company’s proclamations of righteousness too seriously. But there is more to all this than cynicism and wokewashing. Many of the ideas about race being pushed by BLM – particularly the ubiquity of structural racism – are now part and parcel of corporate culture and the white-collar workplace. Race experts are invited to give workshops and training on diversity and inclusion. Employees are tested for their unconscious bias. An entire race industry worth billions has mushroomed. The most famous and sought-after race entrepreneurs, like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi, can earn vast sums of money in the corporate sector – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per hour. Those BLM protesters setting fire to police stations were not radical revolutionaries — they were more like the militant wing of the human-resources department.  Why has this happened? Clearly, these kinds of workshops are wasting precious work hours and don’t actually produce anything that can be sold. Perhaps what is most useful to the capitalists in these ‘anti-racist’ campaigns is their relentless attempts to re-racialise society. The Coca-Colas and the Nikes of the world are very keen on highlighting the racial differences between working people at every opportunity. According to leaked emails, insiders at Amazon-owned Whole Foods consider the ‘racial diversity’ of its workers in each branch an important metric in determining how likely they are to form unions. Campaigns for ‘racial awareness’ seem almost perfectly designed to foreground apparent differences between their employees, to pit the ‘privileged’ against the ‘oppressed’ among the workforce, to downplay their common interests as workers. The potential for racism in the workplace – whether overt or in the form of microaggressions – has also given management much more authority to monitor workers’ interpersonal relationships, and even their private lives and political activities (particularly on social media). Race has always been relied on by elites to divide and manage people. But where they once drew on racist tropes, now they draw on ‘anti-racism’.  That one of the co-founders of BLM is earning a fortune and amassing a property empire is not a bug but a feature of elite-driven racial politics. Black Lives Matter is the best thing to happen to capitalism in years."
From 2021. The Uighurs definitely support BLM taking the heat off the companies benefiting from their forced labour

Why is Twitter suppressing criticism of Black Lives Matter? - "Jason Whitlock shared a link to the story that Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of BLM’s co-founders, had purchased a $1.4million compound in Topanga, LA. This is reportedly only the latest in a string of high-end buys by Khan-Cullors. Whitlock, a black journalist, tweeted that black people make up just 1.4 per cent of the town’s population, adding mockingly that ‘She’s with her people!’. Twitter then deleted the tweet and locked his account on the spurious charge that he had broken privacy rules. A screenshot shared by another journalist shows that Twitter told Whitlock, ‘you may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorisation or permission’. In other words, you are not allowed to do journalism. Whitlock told the Daily Mail that ‘BLM is one of Big Tech’s sacred cows’. He said, ‘I’ve been harping on the fraudulence and the financial grift of BLM for years’... This case is highly reminiscent of Silicon Valley’s suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal."
From 2021

13+ Studies Indicating No Police Racial Bias + Counterpoint Studies

Meme - On Charlie Kirk: ebbi @itsNOTebbi: "Reminder- George Floyd was also a father and not a single one of you gave a rats ass about his children."
Tony Moon @RoofKorean7: "Neither did he, so what's your point?"

Meme - Andrew Branca Show @TheBrancaShow: "The legitimacy of the "knee on back" technique used by Chauvin upon Floyd was known at the time of the trial--the police academy training manual with the photos of the "knee on back" technique was in evidence. But the entire trial--and I watched every minute of it--was an exercise in racist anti-white hysteria, with a single defense attorney fighting night- and-day against arguments and motions being made and filed continuously by more than a dozen prosecuting attorneys, many of them who volunteered and flew in from out of state for the sole purpose of participating in this lynching of Derek Chauvin."
"Ok they are in handcuffs now what.
.Sudden cardiac arrest typically occurs immediately following a violent struggle
Place the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia
Once in handcuffs, get EMS on scene quickly to monitor and transport
Sign a transport hold on these individuals
Complete a CIC report"
Fischerking @Fischerking64: "So the restraining technique Chauvin used was a taught practice in the police department - more than 50 officers say so. want to know why this wasn't part of the trial, why it wasn't reported by the media. Did no one try to find this out? Were they intimidated to silence?"

Daniel Friedman on X - "During the George Floyd “race reckoning,” US cities implemented “police reforms” that scaled back traffic enforcement, which progressives believed had a racially disproportionate impact and caused dangerous encounters between black people and cops. This killed 20,000 Americans."

Thread by @KatieDaviscourt on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Breaking: I am in Seattle covering the first major trial against the city related to the 2020 Antifa-BLM CHAZ/CHOP.  The City of Seattle is accused of negligence in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Antonio Mays Jr., a 16-year-old black teen who was shot dead inside the Antifa autonomous zone.  Seattle Police had abandoned the East Precinct to rioters, and then officers were prohibited from entering the zone— resulting in numerous cold-blooded killings during the 24 days of sustained violent anarchy.  The lawsuit claims that the city’s failure to provide adequate protection and response to violence in the CHAZ zone contributed to the death of Antonio Mays Jr.  Would the teen still be alive if SPD didn’t forfeit the precinct? Was CHAZ really a “Summer of love?”... Antonio Mays Jr. was shot dead on June 29 around 3 am while driving a vehicle inside the CHAZ with his 14-year-old friend, who was shot in the head but survived. Witnesses reported that armed protesters guarding the barricades (CHAZ security) opened fire on the vehicle.  Video footage taken directly after the shooting shows militant protesters rushing to pick up spent shell casings, tampering with the evidence:  “Hell yeah, no evidence!”
Seattle police did not respond to the scene until hours later due to safety reasons.  A large mob of protesters had violently confronted officers when they were responding to a separate CHAZ killing a few days prior, according to video evidence.  No ambulances arrived on scene.  As a result, protesters shoved the two critically wounded teen victims into separate vehicles and drove them to medical care. CHAZ warlord Raz Simone, who was self-designated head of security and got caught on video distributing firearms to minors inside the zone, transported the surviving teen victim to a nearby hospital.  Other protesters, transporting Antonio Mays Jr., attempted to chase down an ambulance, but it drove away. City medics met with the protesters in a parking lot roughly 25 minutes later. Antonio had already died by that time.
The lawsuit claims that Antonio’s death was the result of Seattle enabling “state-created danger.”  Additionally, the complaint mentions former Democrat Mayor Jenny Durkan referring to the violent deadly uprising as a “Summer of love.”  The complaint states that Antonio Mays Jr. "was shot and left to die without the assistance he was entitled to by the government."  It further claims that he "was alive and conscious after being shot inside the City-created Capitol Hill Occupied Protest area." It also states that the teen "was shot and bled out while trying to escape, while being barricaded at the ‘CHOP’ or ‘CHAZ’ area in the city of Seattle, which the city abandoned without a working plan to provide essential services, creating a danger." The City of Seattle’s defense strategy includes allegations that Antonio Mays Jr. was driving a stolen vehicle, claiming he was committing a felony at the time he was killed. However, the other side has countered that argument claiming that vehicles were being passed around for “security” to patrol. Seattle Police has not yet arrested a suspect in this case. Witnesses told police that the shooting was allegedly committed by CHAZ security, which consisted of armed protesters that included members of the John Brown Gun Club, the Antifa terror group’s militant security arm...
The jury pool appears to be an ideological mixed bag; however, the majority stated during questioning that they supported the 2020 anti-police BLM protests.  Some of them said they participated in the CHAZ/CHOP protests, and made it clear that they dislike Seattle PD.  Some of them stated that they have strong feelings about this case, as it involves the death of a minor. When asked about the defense's strategy in claiming the victim was committing a felony and shouldn't have been prone to medical care, many of the jurors expressed distaste. A few jurors said that they thought the CHAZ protests were criminal and thought Seattle PD abandoning the precinct to rioters was unfortunate. These jurors said that they do not like going to Seattle because they feel unsafe in the city."
Andy Ngo on X - "A civil trial is starting in Seattle where the family of a black teen killed in the 2020 BLM-Antifa CHAZ is suing the city for allowing the violent anarchy. The victim and another black teen were fired upon when they were in a car by CHAZ’s “border security” who believed they were Proud Boy “white supremacists.” CHAZ security had their comrades pick up the spent rounds after the shooting and no one was ever apprehended."
Left wingers are outraged that Kyle Rittenhouse had a gun, but in CHAZ/CHOP, anything went

Oklahoma Black Lives Matter leader indicted for fraud, money laundering - "A federal grand jury indicted the leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Oklahoma City over allegations that millions of dollars in grant funds were improperly spent on international trips, groceries and personal real estate, prosecutors announced Thursday.  Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, 52, was indicted earlier this month on 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering, court records show."

Policing the Police: The Impact of "Pattern-or-Practice" Investigations on Crime - "This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways."
Aka the Ferguson Effect

James L. Nuzzo, PhD on X - "George Floyd's name appeared in the titles or abstracts of 243 biomedical papers indexed in PubMed between 2020 and 2024."

There Is No Greater Political Blunder Than Progressives Calling For Body Cams : r/TrueUnpopularOpinion - "I am convinced that the progressive push for body cams is the greatest political miscalculation of all time.  When progressives and reform advocates pushed for body cameras, the underlying assumption was that constant video monitoring would expose systemic abuse, racial profiling, and unlawful uses of force by police. The expectation was that transparency would confirm their narrative and erode public trust in police departments.  But in the most spectacular backfire in history, in practice, the body cam programs produced the opposite effect. Footage frequently vindicated officers by showing that suspects resisted, attacked, or escalated confrontations with weapons. Studies found that in a majority of controversial incidents, video either supported the officer’s account or at least complicated simplistic narratives that officers were the aggressors. And juries and the public, when shown footage, often sided with officers once they saw the context missing from short clips or secondhand testimony.  Ultimately, progressives armed their opposition with undeniable evidence (videos) that undermined their own case. They institutionalized transparency in a way that ended up strengthening, not weakening, law enforcement’s legitimacy. And, what was meant to be a reform weapon turned into a shield for the very institutions they wanted to weaken."
Of course, the cope is that they turn it off when they want (the best data I found was 92% of use of force incidents being captured by 2H 2015, and it was on an upward trend) and review footage when writing reports so they can't be caught lying (as if what's in a report changes what happened in the past)

Drew Hernandez on X - "A black man attempted to shoot this single mother in her home with her kids in the apartment She called the police and the shooter got shot and killed by police BLM then shows up to support the shooter and call the victim a liar and a b*tch"
Minneapolis police shoot, kill man after 6-hour standoff in apartment building

Zonie🌵🌴 on X - "I'm tired of people saying Police Officers need more training. You had 18 years to train your child not to steal, shoot, stab, burn down buildings, laser people's eyes, flip cars, block traffic and attack people. Police didn't fail you, you failed your child!"

Thread by @DanFriedman81 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "During the George Floyd “race reckoning,” US cities implemented “police reforms” that scaled back traffic enforcement, which progressives believed had a racially disproportionate impact and caused dangerous encounters between black people and cops.  This killed 20,000 Americans.  The open border policy of Joe Biden, which let in millions of unvetted migrants from Central America, also contributed to skyrocketing traffic deaths over the last five years.  These people are on our roads driving on fake licenses, and without auto insurance.  Democrat-governed cities have sanctuary politics that bar police from checking the immigration status of drivers involved in accidents, even fatal ones. The increase in traffic fatalities over the last five years is especially shocking because new cars have revolutionary new safety features that prevent accidents and make accidents less likely to cause fatalities.  But policy is killing people faster than tech is saving them. Of course, progressive policies always disproportionately harm the people they’re trying to protect, and “reforms” to traffic enforcement that were supposed to protect black people from dangerous encounters with cops caused a lot of black people to die in traffic accidents.  The number of white traffic deaths increased 4% in 2020. The number of black traffic deaths increased 23%. abcnews.go.com/Politics/traff…"

San Francisco General Hospital fatal stabbing: Community mourns social worker Alberto Rangel as tragedy reignites safety concerns - "The community gathered to mourn outside Zuckerberg General Hospital Sunday evening, with candles in hand for 51-year-old Alberto Rangel, the UCSF social worker who died after being attacked by a patient earlier this week... "Members have been raising safety concerns for a long time. Workers have been complaining about safety for years. This is something that should never have happened," Suarez said.  The suspect is now in sheriff's custody. The attack happened in the HIV ward of the hospital, a ward that does not have a metal detector.  Hospital staff had already raised safety concerns about a patient and requested deputy protection after a doctor in Ward 86 received threats. according to the union. The deputy was in a nearby room when he heard a disturbance and saw the patient in the hallway stabbing Rangel with a kitchen knife."
Luckily there were no police in the room at the time. If the patient had been killed, that would've been an unspeakable, horrible tragedy and further proof that the police need to be "defunded"

Remembering a CIA Coup in Iran That Never Was

Remembering a CIA Coup in Iran That Never Was

"When anti-regime protests spread like wildfire throughout Iran in mid-October of 2022, the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was quick to lay the blame on the usual foreign suspects. “I say explicitly that these riots and this insecurity were a design by the U.S. and the occupying, fake Zionist regime and those who are paid by them,” he told a class of cadets at a police college in Tehran. He suggested that the ultimate goal of the U.S. and Israel was regime change in Iran.

This elicited a response on Twitter from Iranian rapper Hichkas, who defended foreign support for the uprising, saying that it represented solidarity, not collaboration. He ended his riposte with a taunt that was retweeted or liked more than 50,000 times:

“And you can shove that Mossadegh tale you’ve lived off of for a lifetime.”

The rebellious young hip-hop star was connecting dots that Khamenei had only implied: that in 2022, the United States and its allies were once again seeking to overthrow an Iranian leader, just as in the summer of 1953 the United States had cooperated with players inside and outside Iran to help end the political career of the doomed nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

For anyone who needs a reminder of the significance of that episode, whose 70th anniversary falls this year, let Columbia University’s professor Hamid Dabashi provide one, from his book Iran: A People Interrupted:

As Iranians never get tired of repeating (for this is the defining trauma of their modern history), the CIA, aided by British intelligence, mounted, paid for, and executed a military coup, overthrew the democratically elected government of Mosaddeq, and brought the corrupt Mohammed Reza Shah back to power.

This Ivy League encapsulation of the events of August 1953 in Iran contains at least four remarkable untruths, though “As Iranians never get tired of repeating” is not one of them.

First, the CIA did not mount or execute a coup. Second, Mossadegh was not democratically elected. Third, the shah was not yet corrupt. Fourth, he was not brought back to power, because he had never left it: Assassinations were a fact of life in 1950s Tehran, and having survived an attempt on his life in 1949, Mohammed Reza chose to wait out Mossadegh’s fall in Baghdad and Rome but never abdicated. 

What actually happened in the land which once harvested prime ministers more promiscuously than Henry VIII harvested queens was this: After Shah Mohammed Reza’s Prime Ministers Mohammed-Ali Foroughi, Ali Soheili, Ahmad Qavam, Mohammed-Reza Hekmat, Ebrahim Hakimi, Abdolhossein Hazhir, Mohammed Saed, and Ali Mansur, came Ali Razmara, who was assassinated in March 1951. Following the brief caretaker premiership of Hossein Ala, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi wanted Seyyed Zia Tabataba’i, but in deference to the aged Qajar aristocrat Mohammed Mossadegh, had him offered the job, feeling confident he would decline. To everyone’s surprise, Mossadegh accepted, and the Majlis concluded a brief poll to endorse him. Then the shah gave Mossadegh the job. Again, the sequence of events is significant: The shah chose a prime minister, the parliament consented, and the shah appointed him. 

Between 1953 and 1979, the shah would appoint and dismiss 10 more prime ministers, including Mossadegh twice. Not even the most overheated Iran historian, in Islamic Iran or American academia, describes these changes as coups. The difference is that when Mossadegh’s second government went down in flames in August 1953, there were some American would-be arsonists in the wings who may or may not have shared responsibility, but who insisted on claiming the lion’s share of the credit, however implausibly or unwisely.

Constitutionally, appointing prime ministers in imperial Iran was the sole prerogative of the shah. As Gholam Reza Afkhami wrote, “The Constitution … gave the Crown and only the Crown the power to appoint or dismiss the ministers (Article 46, Supplementary basic Law) …” In George Lenczowski’s Iran Under the Pahlavis we read that “The Shah’s authority embraced the right to appoint and dismiss the prime minister and ministers.” However, according to Afkhami, “over the postwar years it had become the accepted practice for the shah to ask the Majlis to express its preference before he appointed a prime minister.”

Article 46 of the Supplemental Constitutional Law of the Iranian constitution in force at the time was blunt: “The Ministers are appointed and dismissed by the decree of the King.“ The poll noted above to align king and legislature behind a prime minister was “a tentative consent of the majority of the Majlis which was ascertained in the form of a vote of investiture known in Iran as raye tamayel (“vote of inclination”), prior to the issuance of Royal farman appointing the prime minster,” as Iranian American scholar Sepehr Zabih put it in The Mossadegh Era. Mossadegh scholars Darioush Bayandor and Christopher de Bellaigue call it a straw vote or straw poll.

The Iranian parliament’s role in the choice of a prime minister was similar to, but weaker than, the U.S. Senate’s role in confirming presidential appointments, such as, among others, Supreme Court justices, some cabinet posts, and ambassadors. Yet despite this even stronger legislative role, no one refers to “the democratically elected Justice Samuel Alito,” the “democratically elected Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” or “the democratically elected Ambassador Pamela Harriman.”

This fetishistic formulation, applied to Mossadegh is even odder, for reasons that are worth examining. First, though, it’s worth retracing Mossadegh’s steps on his way out of power.

The story of Mossadegh’s departure from power is notorious among Middle East scholars, on par with the JFK assassination or abdication of Edward VIII. Hence retelling it is a little laborious, with sensationalism vying in a death match with numbing familiarity.

Once in power, Mossadegh quickly achieved national hero status by getting a bill through the Majles nationalizing the Iranian oil industry. However, negotiations with the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, AIOC, went in circles over details such as management and future compensation to the British. As the U.S. worked with the British toward a solution, the Brits were annoyed by the Washington upstart’s idealism towards Mossadegh, while Washington was peeved by London’s anachronistic, patronizing greed.

The U.S finally dispatched Averell Harriman to work with Mossadegh toward a resolution. The canny old man’s posturing and slippery illogic inclined the Americans to sense that he plainly did not want an agreement. As the Iranian prime minister himself conceded, he was wary of “my fanatics” in the Iranian polity who would kill him for making concessions. Harriman went home empty-handed, and Eisenhower soon replaced Truman.

The British, having been talked out of military action by the Yanks, pulled AIOC staff out of Iran. The British pullout and boycott, combined with the lack of domestic Iranian expertise to produce or market oil, proved catastrophic for the economy, as increased production in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia made the renamed National Iranian Oil Company, NIOC, irrelevant. Mossadegh and his advisers were blind to these realities amid the nirvana of unanimous domestic support for their anti-imperialist bluster. Worse, his decision to end the oil talks were a signal event for Washington, who now joined London in seeing the prime minister as unstable and untrustworthy.

As the political and economic tides turned against him, Mossadegh sparred with the shah over who had the right to appoint the minister of war. This demand was a red line for the shah, who prized the military as his key constituency. The prime minister resigned in protest, but his brinkmanship got him what he wanted, his job back along with power over the War Ministry. He was quick to rename it the Ministry of Defense and appoint himself to head it, cut its budget by 15%, purge the services of 136 officers, install men loyal to himself, including his nephew General Vossuq (whom he named assistant minister), and obtain six months’ emergency powers, including the power to legislate. He then dismissed the Supreme Court, and, lacking support in the Majles, sought to dissolve it, too—a power that the constitution reserved to the shah.

This was the beginning of the end for the prime minister who spoke eloquently of democracy but, when given opportunities to exercise it, always showed a dictatorial bent. Claiming to seek legitimacy not from the legislature but from “the people,” Mossadegh set up a national referendum on dissolving the Majles, with no secret ballot: Yes and no votes were cast in different locations. Mossadegh’s stacked referendum gave him a landslide victory, which cost him the support of the Shia clergy, the National Front coalition, and even family members. Sattareh Farmanfarmaian, his niece, wrote in her memoir, Daughter of Persia, of how “wretched” she felt over this betrayal. Majles Speaker Ayatollah Kashani denounced him, and his former National Front allies called him a “worse dictator than Reza Shah.”

Having lost nearly all political support except the communist Tudeh party, and with even his pro-oil nationalization supporters split, Mossadegh found himself with a reduced base composed of radical supporters and an increasingly united front opposing him: the clergy, the military, and the bazaar, with the U.S. and Britain now both solidly behind the monarch. Most importantly, the absence of a functioning Majles offered the shah an opening to remove his unpopular prime minister.

Previously, the shah had rejected repeated advice, domestic and foreign, to fire Mossadegh, though it was within his constitutional powers. There had already been 14 recess appointments or dismissals of prime minister, which Mossadegh knew well, but he boasted that the shah would not “have the guts” to dismiss him. His bluff backfired. Absent a parliament, Mossadegh could now be removed from power. All it took was royal will.

Despite the cresting of the feud between Mossadegh and the now less-deferential young shah, the latter hesitated to oust his prime minister. The British succeeded in persuading Eisenhower to connive against Mossadegh...

Long since declassified, TPBEDAMN was an anti-communist covert influence program in Iran. KGSAVOY was the shah, and TPAJAX was the plan for the rather tame machination—far removed from a British military invasion—to remove Mohammed Mossadegh from power legally and constitutionally, by persuading the shah to use his prerogative to replace him.

Enter RNMAKER, true name Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, Teddy’s grandson and no stranger to the sandbox. In his book Arabs, Oil, and History (1949), he devoted a chapter to Iran, which in his telling is one of the “fringe lands,” as a Muslim but non-Arab country in the suburbs of the Middle East (there are Iranians who would punch him in the nose for this alone)...

In a subsequent book, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, published in 1979, Roosevelt detailed the course of his plotting. Like Stephen Kinzer’s 2003 book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, which relies heavily on Roosevelt, it is overly padded and suffers from what H.R. McMaster would call strategic narcissism—the tendency to put the United States at the center of everything, deserving of both glory and blame, whether rightly or wrongly...

A good example of this world view occurred in the movie Shakespeare in Love, where we see the cast of Romeo and Juliet taking a break in a tavern. When the portly actor who plays the nurse is asked by a fellow drinker, “So what’s the play about, then?” he starts to explain, “Well, you see, there’s this nurse … “...

One of the best accounts of the movement to oust Mossadegh is in Ervand Abrahamian’s Iran Between Two Revolutions, and in a dozen dense pages he scarcely mentions the CIA. Having inherited the (still closed) British Embassy’s human intelligence network, the CIA station in Tehran, in the person of Roosevelt, held secret meetings and moved some money around. Yet the already-existing network, meeting in the capital’s Officers Club, lacked neither motivation nor money. Abrahamian notes that Roosevelt’s support did help Major General Fazlollah Zahedi—the declared candidate to replace Mossadegh—win over key allies such as Imperial Guards Commander Nassiri, Air Force Chief Gilanshah, gendarmerie Chief Colonel Ardubadi, secret police Chief Mu’tazed, and the senior tank commanders of the Tehran army garrison.

The TPAJAX plan unfolded on the night of Aug. 15. Colonel Nassiri arrived at Mossadegh’s house with the royal edict, or farman, signed by the shah. This one dismissed Mossadegh as prime minister, another appointed Zahedi to replace him. Despite the weird circumstances—it was nearly midnight, and Nassiri was accompanied by two truckloads of soldiers—this was a legal and constitutional action. But because it was the worst-kept secret in Iran, Mossadegh had been tipped off... Mossadegh signed a receipt for the edict but refused to comply, and his men placed Nassiri under arrest.

The plan had failed, and the Americans had no plan B... the underlying fact was that Zahedi was the legitimate prime minister of Iran.

That was Roosevelt’s focus for the next couple of days. He arranged for photostats of the two farmans to be circulated to local newspapers, who published them. Skeptics of the Roosevelt legend point out that the only papers the CIA could suborn were low-circulation organs in south Tehran and thus of limited citywide influence...

A tearful Mossadegh heard the public radio broadcast of Zahedi’s victory speech saying that Mossadegh’s “coup” had failed. He learned, but refused to believe, that his relative, the police chief Col. Daftary, had turned against him. When his house was overrun, he fled and turned himself in to Zahedi’s government the next day. He was treated respectfully. 

Before flying home, the shah sent telegrams to Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi and Ayatollah Behbehani. The more senior ayatollah responded with elaborately polite hopes that the shah could now put an end to the country’s ills and bring glory to Islam. He closed, “Do return as Shiism and Islam need you. You are the Shiite sovereign.”

More than one Iranian historian has derided Roosevelt’s memoir as “prophecy made after the fact,” and Afkhami complained that “[t]his false history, fostered by pro-Mosaddeq Iranians and liberal and leftist westerners, has diminished Mosaddeq, demonized the shah, and turned Iranians into traitors or wimps.”

The highly detailed, if also highly redacted, U.S. government histories of the so-called coup make the same point. While rich on details of secret travels and meetings, money changing hands, successive British and American drafts of the TPAJAX plans, and intragovernmental communications, all of them—the National Security Archives’ “Secret History of the Iran Coup, 1953” of 2000, “Zendebad, Shah!” by the CIA history staff, partially declassified in 2017, and “Planning and Implementation of Operation TPAJAX, March-August 1953,” an archive of documents published by the Office of the Historian of the State Department, all concur that it is impossible to establish who, if anyone, was directing the protests and mob actions on the fateful and chaotic day.

In retrospect, Roosevelt did himself no favors in Countercoup. He places himself at the center of the action, including instances that stretch the imagination. He gives us a shah who spends long evenings listening to him and gushing with praise, as well as a remarkable instance of him lying to the monarch: In a final meeting before the ruler left Tehran and Nassiri would start enforcing the two royal edicts, Roosevelt lacked a message from Eisenhower, so he made one up. “Since [Eisenhower] had failed to send one, I put into words what he must surely be feeling,” he wrote. His fabricated message from the president to the king was, “If the Pahlavis and the Roosevelts working together cannot solve this little problem, then there is no hope anywhere!” That he chose to publish it just as the shah was overthrown provided the nascent Islamic Republic and its partisans with yet more reasons to hate America. Eisenhower, who had died a decade prior, would have been furious.

It is unsettling that the cult of democratic Mossadegh exists, even in the United States. When I asked a friend of mine who served as the CIA’s chief of Iran analysis—albeit more in the Qassem Soleimani than the Mohammed Mossadegh era—to explain this bizarre interpretive slant, he blamed “bias” and “an overinflated view of U.S. power and influence,” which he called “bullshit.” He added, “Whatever the wisdom of U.S. and UK involvement in his ouster—which was likely near at hand even absent foreign involvement—his removal from power sparked mostly public indifference and some celebration. His contemporaries, including many former supporters, were glad to see him go. Mossadegh’s fictional status as a victimized, heroic advocate of democracy was only later cynically conferred by those who sought and supported the decidedly undemocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today.”

Reuel Gerecht, another former CIA observer, but from the operational side, put it this way: “Look, the focus on ’53 among Iranians is primarily a reflection of, one, left-wing, tier-mondiste critique of American power after the Vietnam War went south—starting in the West before it started in Iran—and two, the growing dissatisfaction among Iranian leftists, most tellingly the Islamic left, with the course of the revolution. Imagining Mossadegh triumphing allowed them to see a democratic Iran where the Shah and Khomeini, Khamenei, Rafsanjani, et al, get deleted.”

Back home, there is a thread that runs through the Mossadegh literature, from Roosevelt’s and Kinzer’s wildly tendentious accounts, down to Shahzad Aziz’s In the Land of the Ayatollahs Tupac Shakur Is King, and even the Cambridge History of Iran. The thread combines hindsight versus historical context to connect American villainy, lack of Iranian agency, and an alarmist view of the future, always panicking about the folly of Washington’s next terrible moves but never Tehran’s. And then there is the purely magical phenomenon of those who loathe the CIA and its operatives yet who naively take Kim Roosevelt’s self-centered memoirs at face value. American spies overthrow democratically elected governments, but they never tell a lie.

The enduring myth is that the CIA dispatched its serpent, Kim Roosevelt, into a democratic Iranian Garden of Eden, and everything bad that happened over the next half-century can be attributed to this original sin. (The “original sin” metaphor is everywhere—The New York Times even worked it into Ardeshir Zahedi’s obituary). On this, the tier-mondistes, American progressives, and Qajar memoirists all agree. A quick sampling:

Not only did Kinzer blame Mossadegh’s fall for the Islamic Revolution, he wrote that “From the seething streets of Tehran and the other Islamic capitals to the scenes of terror attacks around the world, Operation Ajax has left a haunting and terrible legacy.” His book is a warning against the U.S. projecting power—fair enough—but not satisfied with blaming the September 11 attacks on the Mossadegh action, his reissued 2018 edition contains a new and unhinged preface titled “The Folly of Attacking Iran.” In it, he slays vast legions of straw men, such as “the idea of attacking Iran and seeking to decapitate its regime,” which, he judiciously informs us, is “dangerous.”...

In a similar but also unhinged and infinitely more turgid work, Going to Tehran, the team of Flynt and Hillary Leverett castigate Washington for overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister. The entire book makes the case for the U.S. to fold to the ayatollahs and for the U.S. president actually to go to Tehran, something the Tehran regime would never dream of allowing. Leverett is a former CIA analyst who has been wandering toward Code Pink territory for years now.

Obama repeats the “democratically elected” canard more than once in his memoir A Promised Land, unsurprisingly from the leader who would use the feckless John Kerry to negotiate the weak JCPOA and seek a legacy of accommodation with the regime. Those who recall Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo will remember that he not only mentioned Mossadegh but used Kinzerian wording.

Also unsurprisingly, Princeton University’s unsavory Hossein Mousavian, who served as Iran’s ambassador to Berlin during the Mykonos Café massacre of dissidents, wrote in his Iran and the United States (in which he denies that Tehran ordered the Mykonos killings or the Khobar Towers bombing), “the 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s first democratically elected government.” His whole book pleads the wounded innocence of the Islamic Republic.

Dabashi, unsurprisingly, lines up with Mousavaian on Mossadegh, with the difference that he opposes the Islamic regime, though he shares the mullahs’ hatred for Israel. He outdoes Kinzer in alarmism, lobbing brickbats not only at “warmongers” but at “native informers, imperial strategists”—Azar Nafisi and Ken Pollack—Bernard Lewis, and “self-loathing Oriental” Fouad Ajami. (He also thinks Salman Rushdie is Pakistani.)

Even innocuous books by writers with no apparent agenda repeat the error. Akbar Ganji, Mark Bowden, and Scott Peterson have all done it. I have a gripe with the monumental Cambridge History of Iran, whose chapter “The Pahlavi Autocracy” by Gavin R.G. Hambly tells us that “Iranians have never had the slightest doubt that the C.I.A. … organized the conspirators and paid the pro-Shah mobs … By 1982 this tenacious rumor had been fully confirmed and is now incontrovertible.” Hambly footnotes Roosevelt’s book, seeming to take its contents at face value.

For neutrality, readers must turn to the relatively obscure work of Diarioush Bayandor—fittingly, a resident of Switzerland—who possesses the most impartial moral sense among all Mossadegh historians. In his fastidiously sourced Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadegh Revisited (2010), he delivers the verdict, that while “It is fair to conclude that even if the Shah’s dismissal order was not stricto sensu unconstitutional … it was a feature of a foreign scheme to bring about a change of government” and thus was of questionable legitimacy.

However harsh that is—and it is distinctly harsh, considering that at no time did the shah ever breach the laws of his country, while Mossadegh did promiscuously, and unapologetically—facts remain: Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was not a democrat. He was not overthrown by the CIA, but by domestic forces he had repeatedly manipulated or misunderstood, and who welcomed a foreign hand of unmeasurable and uneven utility...

Sentimentality toward Mossadegh is understandable. His nationalization project boosted the morale of a proud and often-humiliated country. He did seek a system with a weaker king, although more to gain power for himself than to pass it on to the people. He undoubtedly won hearts and minds with small acts of integrity like making his aristocratic mother pay her back taxes. Even more endearing is the incident when his daughter reported to him an altercation with a policeman who didn’t buy her “Do you know who I am?” defense. She demanded her father act, and he did—rewarding the cop with a promotion for his honesty. But character is fate. The prime minister had a deep strain of decency, but was an inept visionary who overplayed his hand."

Links - 8th June 2026 (2 - Pro-Crime Policies [including Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska])

Man accused of killing Ukrainian refugee is unfit to face trial
Time to let him out onto the streets so he can kill more people

Meme - "Jeffrey Dahmer: Murdered 17 victims, Committed acts of dismemberment and cannibalism. competent to stand trial
Decarlos Brown Jr.: 14 arrests over roughly 18 years, violent offenses. competent for all those charges. Murders Iryna and he isn't competent all of sudden"

Horror video of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska's slaughter on Charlotte train is met with deafening silence - "Liberal media and politicians have been accused of staying silent on the savage murder of a young Ukrainian refugee on a North Carolina train — after a career criminal with no less than 14 arrests was charged with her murder.  Iryna Zarutska, 23, was stabbed to death on a light rail train in Charlotte, with horrifying surveillance footage showing the moment the unsuspecting young woman was brutally attacked.  Decarlos Brown Jr., 35, is allegedly shown pulling out a pocket knife and getting out of his seat behind Zarutska before the video cuts just as he prepares to plunge the blade into her, footage shared by police shows...   Charlotte’s Dem mayor even thanked publications that chose to keep the video from the public... Brown, who is homeless, has more than a dozen convictions dating back to 2014, court records seen by The Post show.  He served five years for a 2014 armed robbery and was released in September 2020, before being arrested just five months later for assaulting his sister at her home in Charlotte. Despite his lengthy rap sheet, Brown was free on the streets when he allegedly carried out the murder."
All those who stand with Ukraine and are against femicide don't care
The solution is to force even more people to use public transport
Time to let him out again

Meme - Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs: "Never thought I'd see the day where leftists targeted murals of a female Ukrainian immigrant."
"Please vandalize this"
They just hate her because she was white

Meme - ""Same 'Creative Capital. Private Property. Totally Different Rules." *No sign over Iryna's face*
PROVIDENCE Murals painted on boarded- up businesses in Providence *George Floyd*"

Artist fumes after tribute honoring slain Iryna Zarutska gets scrubbed amid woke blowback - "The Providence, Rhode Island artist commissioned to paint a mural of slain Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska said he feels his freedom of expression has been curtailed after left-wing backlash to the project caused it to be shut down.  “So, we installed the mural, and, as it started to evolve, the gay community spoke loudly about their displeasure that Elon Musk donated to the project, and that has reached a fever pitch, and the result is that the business owners have decided to remove the mural,” Ian Gaudreau, who was working on the project before its abrupt cancellation, told Fox News Digital  “I’m saddened by the fact that the mayor has called for the work to be removed before I was allowed to finish speaking,” he said. “I think that it is stifling my freedom of expression, my freedom of speech, and it’s unfortunate.”...   Gaudreau explained that he wasn’t taking sides politically when he took the job painting the mural.   “I think that some people are not able to view the work for what it is — for the work that I have done — because they’re allowing their disdain for Elon to cloud their judgment of the work as itself, because the work as itself is a response to the entire conversation,” he said.  He said he was incorporating symbolism into his work that was itself a critique of the political flashpoint caused by Zarutska’s death that he thinks overshadowed her memory...   Gaudreau also said his work was a response to how works of art depicting Zarutska, and their artists, have been treated. In early March, a mural of the young woman was defaced in Chicago.  “I’m making this work in reaction, post all of the conversation,” he said. “I have the benefit of being on the tail end of this project, in a sense, because I’ve seen how these murals have been treated in the past. I’ve seen that they’ve been defaced, I’ve seen my fellow artists get dragged through the mud for making the choice to paint her, and my work is a reaction to all of that.”  The mural was set to be displayed on the exterior of The Dark Lady, an LGBT bar in Providence.   When the bar received blowback, it first defended itself from criticism, noting on Instagram that “Any of you who know us personally—even just for five minutes—realize the illicit intentions being portrayed here are completely false.”  As pressure mounted, the bar paused the project, and then later canceled it completely.  Amid the scrutiny, Providence’s Democrat Mayor Brett Smiley slammed the mural.  “The murder of the individual depicted in this mural was a devastating tragedy, but the misguided, isolating intent of those funding murals like the one across the country is divisive and does not represent Providence,” he said in a statement, later adding that he wants to “encourage our community to support local artists whose work brings us closer together rather than divide us.” He later doubled down in an interview with WPRI.  “I regret the state of where we are in politics today where absolutely everything is political and controversial and hard,” he said in the interview. “There’s nothing we should be doing to take away from the tragedy of the loss of life represented here, but then it was distorted by an erroneous tweet by our president and then a movement was funded by some right-wing billionaires, and it found its way to our community.”"
If Elon had really donated $6 billion for that one time project to temporarily feed people, left wingers would still be viciously attacking him. And maybe the project too, since it would be associated with him
Politicians influencing private actors is only a threat to free speech if it hurts the left wing agenda

Rhode Island Republican Party | Facebook - "A 23 year old Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska was brutally stabbed to death on a Charlotte NC light rail train in 2025. A private nonprofit with funding ties to Elon Musk commissioned a simple memorial mural of her face on the exterior wall of The Dark Lady a downtown Providence LGBTQ plus nightclub as part of a national project. The mural was nearly finished on private property. Then the outrage started. Public criticism poured in. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley a Democrat publicly demanded its removal calling the project misguided and divisive. The owners caved and are now painting over it. Here is the hypocrisy that should shock every Rhode Islander. In 2020 and 2021 multiple large George Floyd and Black Lives Matter murals went up all over Providence on private storefronts and public streets. Then Mayor Jorge Elorza a Democrat personally participated in the unveilings the city spent taxpayer money and Democratic leaders celebrated them as art and healing. Not a single government official complained or called for them to be removed. But a portrait of an innocent murder victim? Suddenly it is divisive and must be erased. Same state. Same Creative Capital. Same private property rules except this time the victim does not fit the approved political narrative. This is not about art. It is about selective outrage and two tiered standards for free expression. If we truly believe in honoring victims and protecting private property rights the standard must apply equally or it applies to no one. What do you think Rhode Island? Should a memorial mural on private property be censored because politicians do not like who funded it or who the victim was? Drop your thoughts below and keep it respectful. GOP"

Xenocosmography on X - "This has been such a luminous revelation about the true nature and commitments of the Left (including even its most mainstream politicians)."

wanye on X - "I try not to spend too much time ridiculing hypocrisy, which is amongst the lowest forms of criticism, but seeing people on the providence subreddit who spent the last 10 years learning the word “systemic” and working it into every possible conversation ask, “what does her murder have to do with us?” is just too much"

Because We Live Here 🇺🇸 on X - "Reflexive Anti-White Hatred. Whether a Pavlovian response conditioned via 24/7 anti-White programming, or an innate animosity to a higher ideal."

Kyle Shideler on X - "Of course they do. Because they understand that murals can function as iconography which generates what the Marine Corps Combat Hunter program calls a “proxemic push or pull”. That is it attracts certain people and repels others."

If your house is burgled, don’t call the police. They’ll only blame you for having nice things - "Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, was speaking at the International Mobile Phone Crime Conference in Bloomsbury, London. He explained how his force wanted to see tech firms and manufacturers make the resetting of phones harder, to block devices from functioning and to implement multi-factor authentication and time delays, so that once phones have been stolen, it is much harder to sell the devices on.  He even got quite cross, issuing a threat that, in his words, “If by June 1, the industry has not come to the table in a genuinely serious and solution-focused way, with concrete commitments on stolen mobile phones… the Met will formally write to the Home Secretary to ask that she legislates.”... For there we were, thinking the onus, when it came to theft, might be on the police to catch the criminals. That resources might be focused on detaining thieves, punishing them miserably and even, while we’re at it, investing in education and within society to deter would-be criminals from even considering lives of crime.  But that would be tedious work – it might require plodding the streets, tracking the hooded gangs and nicking wrong’uns. None of which is glamorous.  Rowley and his colleagues want to make the stealing of phones unprofitable – in his words, he wants devices to become “unusable bricks”. So he blames the phone companies for leaving their customers at risk. Which is basically a catastrophic admission that this country’s authorities have simply given up seeking to address the underlying causes of crime... As to our burglary, there was a strong feeling within our family that the police considered any insurance payouts as adequate compensation for the theft of things that we were in so privileged a position to have inherited. And the suspected thieves? They had a documentary made about them on the BBC, and the subject matter became dinner party fodder in our part of the country."

Daniel Concannon on X - "Jayvon Hatchett “wanted to kill a White man,” so he went to AutoZone and stabbed a White man seven times. That White man survived.  No “hate crime” charges.  Ten days later, while awaiting trial for the stabbing, Jayvon Hatchett fulfilled his desire to “kill a White man” and choked his White cellmate to death with his bare hands in an unprovoked attack.  No “hate crime” charges.  Because the “justice system” feels the same way about White people that Jayvon Hatchett does."

Dinesh D'Souza on X - "This classic headline illustrates “progressive logic.” The author thinks it’s ironic and strange that prison populations are growing even though the crime rate has dropped. It simply does not occur to him that the crime rate has dropped because more criminals are locked up."
Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops - The New York Times

Subversive Force on X - "🚨 Morons from the group Take Back Power are now shoplifting en masse — but it’s “activism” in Britain 2026…"
Mike Jones on X - "If anyone doubts the dark future that awaits us, take a look at the mass shoplifting spree in Exeter today, dressed up as “activism”. The reason these communists feel emboldened to behave like this is simple: they do not fear the police, and they believe they are effectively immune from serious consequences. Frankly, it’s hard to blame them for thinking that. Even if they are arrested, I suspect they will face little more than a slap on the wrist.  Remember The Colston 4?"
𝐀𝐤𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐬 on X - "Also, the way Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil have been treated basically says "if you say you're doing it for a good cause, the law doesn't apply""

i/o on X - "Beginning in the late-60s and then accelerating in the 1970s, "reforms" were made to the justice system in more "progressive" areas of the country and unsurprisingly crime exploded. It took Democrats until the early-90s to finally become tough on crime, and when they did cities became safer than they had been in decades and people looked back on the 60s-80s as a mistake that would never again be repeated.  Then in the 2010s a new generation of progressive reformers — moaning about "systemic racism" and promising "depolicing" and "decarceration" and seemingly unaware that you can't change basic laws of human behavior — once again established their political influence and power, and predictably once again made cities less safe.  It's an endlessly repeating cycle."
Left wingers pretend to care about history, but they ignore it when that would hurt the left wing agenda

Johannes M. Koenraadt on X - "Oh my god! 😂 There's no crime gene, but there is a "propensity to shoot and stab someone gene". It's the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene. African-Americans are 50 times more likely to carry this gene.  Ahahahaaaaaaaaaahaha  "Analyses revealed that African-American males who carry the 2-repeat allele are significantly more likely than all other genotypes to engage in shooting and stabbing behaviors and to report having multiple shooting and stabbing victims.""
Will Tanner on X - "Europe selected against this gene for centuries by hanging about 1% of each generation in a continual, harsh effort against crime  All serious crimes were capital crimes, and centuries of effort meant eventually this gene, which amounts to a crime gene, was selected against  Notably, the fact that the time this process completed, around the late-18th century, was the start of the second great imperial period in European history, and hardly a peaceful period, so they managed to remain warlike and bold fighters...just without the "criminal behavior" gene  The paper on this is called "Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification""

Hunter Ash on X - "Many liberals just don’t know the gritty details of what they’re talking about. I was a soft-on-crime guy when I was picturing a starving orphan stealing bread. When I learned that death-row criminals are mostly guilty of things like “raped a 72 year old woman to death” I stopped caring about their rights or feelings."
"The Death Penalty Is Even More Horrifying Than You Think" - NYT
Of course, the article doesn't talk about how left wingers keep trying to release murderers into the wild and just blandly claims that the chance of wrong conviction is "far too high", without giving what that number might be

NYPD captain accused of choking man, 67, who allegedly groped teen girl: DA
John D. Macari Jr. 🇺🇸🗽 on X - "The Emasculation of the NYPD
NYPD Captain Kai Bowen, who by all accounts is respected by his supervisors, peers, subordinates, and the community, was arrested by the NYPD for allegedly choking a 67 year old man who is accused of groping a teenage girl.  For more than a decade the NYPD has been run by left leaning academics from the mid west who never wore the uniform and never policed the streets of New York City.  They like to call themselves “leaders without badges.”  I call them classroom cops.  For years the NYPD’s politically appointed, upper management pushed diversity, equity and inclusion ideology while repeating the slogan:  “We don’t want warriors in policing, we need guardians.”  What that phrase really means is they want emasculated security guards who react after the crime, not proactive police officers who prevent it.  They want robots, not human beings with judgment.  Through policy, training, and discipline they have created a generation of officers, many now supervisors, who are afraid to think for themselves and can’t distinguish right from wrong in real time.  I saw this firsthand over 10 years ago when I was a Sergeant in Brooklyn.  I responded to a scene where I observed:  A male white Con Edison worker in handcuffs, an attractive asian woman who appeared to be distraught, holding a small white dog and an ambulance treating a belligerent intoxicated mexican male with what appeared to be minor injuries.   The moment I stepped out of my vehicle, the woman ran up to me frantically yelling:  “He saved me.”  She pointed to the Con Edison worker who was handcuffed.  She explained that the intoxicated man had been following her while she walked her dog. At one point he grabbed her and attempted to drag her down a staircase beneath a large apartment building.  She began screaming and fighting back.  The Con Edison worker, who was elevated in the bucket of his work truck, heard the screams and immediately lowered the bucket and ran to help.  He physically subdued the man while the woman called the police.  When the officers arrived, they handcuffed the worker and called an ambulance for the perpetrator because he had a bloody lip and some scratches.  I walked over and asked the officers what happened. They repeated the woman’s account almost word for word.  So I gave them a simple instruction:  Remove the handcuffs from the worker and place them on the perpetrator.  The worker had just prevented what very likely would have been a rape.  Instead of receiving a medal, he was handcuffed.  I shook his hand and apologized to him. I said to him:  “We need more men like you in this world.”  What I remember most was how the officers seemed so confused by the situation.  They were so focused on the minor injuries to the perpetrator that they struggled to understand the obvious reality of what had happened.  At the precinct later I explained it clearly:  The worker committed no crime.  He intervened to stop a violent assault on a woman.  But that moment always stuck with me.  I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I wasn’t the supervisor on that scene.  That man deserved recognition.  Instead he got handcuffed.  Now I wasn’t present for the incident involving Captain Bowen, but based on what has been reported and what I know about policing, I can say this:  Arresting the Captain probably isn’t the decision I would have made.  But then again, the NYPD made sure to force out hundreds of “uneducated and unvaccinated” men like myself, cops who grew up in New York City, understood its streets, and were unafraid to make decisions.  Some will ask “who wants that kind of “toxic masculinity” in the NYPD ? The answer is simple, Crime Victims."

Tara Servatius on X - "This NYPD officer arrested illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra for child endangerment.  New York Democrats refused to turn him over to ICE and released him.  He never showed up for court.  The Biden administration then paid for him & his illegal immigrant friends to fly to Georgia as part of a taxpayer-funded internal movement program disclosed at his trial.  In Georgia, he murdered Laken Riley when she fought his rape attempts.  The Democrats let Riley's murderer into the country, released him back onto the streets after his first arrest despite an ICE request to pick him up,  helped him evade his court date and finally flew him to his victim at taxpayer expense to commit his crime.  Democrat policies killed Laken Riley. Please don't ever give them power again."
If you release a murderer, that is at very best gross negligence. Reasonably foreseeable outcomes don't matter when they push the left wing agenda
Of course, if you sell someone a gun and that's used in a crime, you should be found guilty of a crime. Because gun control is in the left wing agenda

Garry Tan on X - "California parole told officers to stop tracking a felon with 91 prior felonies. Weeks later he killed Hanako Abe and Elizabeth Platt. Now there's a civil rights lawsuit naming the officials who gave that order."
A parole officer sent an email: "Agents must not search for violations." Then two women died. - "Ninety-one prior felonies. Five arrests in six months. Eleven combined days in jail. On December 31, 2020, Troy McAlister was high on methamphetamine, armed with a firearm, and behind the wheel of a stolen car fleeing a burglary when he ran a red light at 2nd and Mission Streets. He killed Elizabeth Platt, 60, and Hanako Abe, 27. This week, attorney Anh Phoong filed a civil lawsuit against California state parole alleging both deaths were preventable. At the center of the case: a whistleblower email from inside CDCR that told San Francisco parole agents to stop doing their jobs."

Meme - Into the Memory Hole: ">beat 3 year old white girl to death
>aggravated child abuse
It happens again and again and again every day"
"Rural village of Citra, Florida in shock over brutal killing of three-year-old girl. Police say Paisley Brown, 3, was beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend Jeroen Coombs, 32. Coombs is currently only facing aggravated child abuse."

Meme - Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters: "Crime is not random  Only 0.2% of people ever commit murder, yet **67% of all murders**are committed by people with prior arrests   When the crime-inclined people are stopped, the crime stops.  You can literally just fix crime by not tolerating people who show a history of being destructive to society.   El Salvador is a great example of this"
"Murder Rate vs Incarceration Rate in El Salvador (2000-2024) *negative correlation*"

Meme - Carl @HistoryBoomer: "Yes, the problem in the 80s and 90s was POLICE violence."
"Two-Plus Centuries of Murder in New York City. Homicides per 100K population *spike in 80s and 90s*
Sources: Eric Monkkonen, "Homicides in New York City, 1797-1999"; New York Division of Criminal Justice Services; NYPD; US Census Bureau. Note: Victims of Sept. 1, 2001 terrorist attacks excluded; 2025 rate is if 28.7% decline through May 25 holds up for the full year."
Ross Barkan @RossBarkan: "We probably need woke to come back because everyone getting nostalgic about NY in the 1980s and 1990s overlooks how violent and corrupt the police were relative to today, and how most of the mayors then proudly presided over a police state that menaced nonwhite and gay people"

Meme - WholesomeDave @BostonFren_88: "In 150-200 years, we've gone from a country where you could string up horse thieves to: "We're sorry this Haitian refugee raped and murdered your daughter, but his IQ isn't high enough for him to understand what he did was wrong.""
Since he can't understand murder it's wrong, the right thing to do is release him so he can murder more people

Co-op threatens to sack staff who tackle shoplifters - "Co-op store staff have been warned that they face disciplinary action if they intervene to prevent shoplifters from stealing goods.  Bosses at the supermarket chain have told staff not to challenge shoplifters because of the risk that it could lead to violent confrontations with thieves... The move has provoked a backlash from staff amid record rates of shoplifting last year, with nearly three store thefts a minute being reported to police... Shoplifting has soared since a 2014 law change meant anybody stealing less than £200 of products would not be jailed. Labour has ditched the limit as part of a crackdown on retail crime."

Meme - Diane Yap @RealDianeYap: ""You literally voted for this" is such a stupid argument. "Schizophrenic criminals stab people on the subway" was never literally on any ballot. *Guatamalan illegal immigrant setting person on fire on subway car*"
""I never thought leopards would eat MY face" Sobbed the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

Meme - Andrew Quackson @AndrewQuackson: "Aren't you a prison abolitionist? It says it right there in your bio."
evan loves worf @esjesiesj: "I think you should go to prison for blindly gunning down a teenager"
Anarcho tyranny - commies want to abolish prisons: but only for those they don't disapprove of

Collin Rugg on X - "NEW: San Francisco judge Linda Colfax has released a man who fatally assaulted an 84-year-old because the prison sentence would have a "poor impact" on him.  25-year-old Antoine Watson was granted probation just two months after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and assault.  Watson violently assaulted Vicha Ratanapakdee in 2021, which resulted in his death just two days later.  He was acquitted of first-and second-degree murder charges and instead convicted of involuntary manslaughter.  Colfax says Watson being in prison would have a "poor impact" on him and didn't think he should be there because he "expressed remorse," according to the SF Chronicle.  Colfax is accused of hiding details from the jury in an apparent effort to help Watson escape prison time.   Infuriating and evil."

parks on X - "If bartenders can go to jail for over-serving alcohol to someone who then kills another person, judges should go to jail for releasing criminals who do the same."
Aakash Gupta on X - "A bartender in Galveston, Texas was arrested for serving a drunk customer who killed someone. She makes $25 an hour. A federal judge makes $236,000 a year and has absolute legal immunity for every decision on the bench, including releasing violent offenders who kill again.  42 states have dram shop laws. The bartender’s causation chain has two links: pour drink, person crashes. Exposed window? Sometimes three hours. She can be charged with criminal negligence, sued in civil court, and lose her livelihood. All for failing to eyeball whether a guy at a crowded bar was too drunk for one more round.  The judge has a pre-sentencing report, a criminal history score, a risk assessment algorithm, victim impact statements, and a prosecutor arguing the case in front of them. Every tool the system can produce. And when they get it wrong? Nothing. Absolute judicial immunity, codified since Bradley v. Fisher in 1871, means a judge cannot be sued for any act performed in judicial capacity.  How absolute? In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Stump v. Sparkman that a judge who signed a petition to sterilize a 15-year-old girl without her knowledge or consent was fully immune. The court acknowledged the act was reprehensible. Didn’t matter. Judicial act, judicial immunity, case closed. That precedent still controls today.  The recidivism data is where this gets obscene. The U.S. Sentencing Commission tracked violent offenders released in 2010 across eight years. 63.8% were rearrested. Median time to rearrest: 16 months. These numbers haven’t moved in two decades. The 2005 cohort and the 2010 cohort produced statistically identical outcomes. Judges aren’t making unpredictable calls. They’re making well-documented bets with other people’s lives, and the base rates have been published and available the entire time.  The bartender gets three hours of ambiguous signals. The judge gets the full weight of the federal data apparatus. One of them can go to prison for getting it wrong. The other can’t even be named in a civil suit."

Hunter Schafer 2018 Instagram Post

Transcribed by /ot/ (with some formatting corrections from me):

"TO BE CONSUMED…
MY SEXUAL ORIENTATION WAS NOT GAY. IT WAS NOT STRAIGHT. NOR PAN. IT WAS AN ATTRACTION, IS AN ATTRACTION ALWAYS TO MISOGYNY.
(TO NEVER KNOW A WORLD WITHOUT MISOGYNY IS TO NEVER KNOW YOURSELF WITHOUT IT AS WE ARE ALL MIRRORS)
WHY DID i WANT/NEED TO BE A WOMAN
MY GENDER WAS SO INFLUENCED BY A NEED TO BE USED BY MEN.
-INFANT
-STRAIGHT BOY -→ AN ASSIGNED PLACE NOW REALIZED. WEARING MISOGYNY IN DISCOMFORT BUT BENEFITING FROM ITS HEIGHT(?) WEIGHT(?)
-(BI)
-GAY BOY -→ AN ATTEMPT AT FEMME. THE BEGINNING OF SHRUGGING MISOGYNY OFF MY SHOULDERS AND STABBING MYSELF WITH IT. AN iNABILITY TO BE FEMME, BUT AN ABILITY TO FEEL THE HURT OF FEMME (WOMANHOOD)
-STR8 WOMAN -→ FINDING \FEMME\ UNDER THE CONDITIONING OF BEING GAY. NOT FEELING FEMME ENOUGH W/O BEING A VICTIM OF RAPE
-GAY WOMAN -→ RELEASiNG GAY CONDITIONING BUT FINDING COMFORT IN THE BOX AND PADDED PRISON OF WOMANHOOD
-QUEER PERSON -→ THE MOST LIBERATED FROM GENDER i HAVE FOUND MYSELF. STILL DEALING WITH THE RUINS(?) OF SEXUAL BRAIN WASHING BUT ALLOWING MY OWN FEMININITY TO FLOURISH AND(?) A VOID(?) OF MEN.
-DEATH -→ ⚫
LOOK UP "THE ACT OF EATING" →
CONSUMPTION → "THE IDEA OF BEING EATEN USED TO AROUSE ME"
→ iS THIS MISOGYNY
→ i THINK i USED TO (STILL DO?) INTERNALIZE MISOGYNY BECAUSE i THOUGHT i WANTED TO BE A WOMAN AND SAW THAT MEN ATE WOMEN WHOLE. THAT MEN DOMINATED. HENCE MY FORMAL AND CURRENT AROUSAL TOWARDS DOMINATION AND NOT TO MENTION HUMILIATION.
→ WHY IS IT THAT SEX IS ALL TO COMMONLY AN ACT OF VIOLENCE
→ WHY IS IT THAT RAPE IS FETISHIZED BY BOTH SIDES OF THE BINARY.
→ HOW DID i TAKE ON THIS SEXUALITY SO EASILY AND WITHOUT THOUGHT
→ WAS i GAY BECAUSE i WAS TRANS
→ DID MY YEARNING TO BE FEMININE, TO BE A WOMAN, TO ESCAPE THE PRISON THAT IS BEING A MAN, MAKE ME WANT TO BE EATEN BY MEN SO THAT i COULD FEEL LIKE A WOMAN. WAS BEING GAY THE ONLY ANSWER TO THIS. i REMEMBER NOT LINKING GAY PORN BECAUSE i COULD NOT FIND THE "BIG VS. SMALL" CONTRAST. THAT EVEN WHEN I WAS GAY i LIKED STRAIGHT PORN BECAUSE IT LACKED MISOGYNY -> ABUSE -> OPPRESSION"

Links - 8th June 2026 (1 - Two Tier Policing in the UK [including Koran Burning])

The Free Speech Union on X - "BREAKING: Moussa Kadri, the knife-wielding Muslim who repeatedly assaulted Hamit Koskun as he burned the quran outside the Turkish Consulate, has been spared jail.   Despite pleading guilty to assault and being in possession of a 'bladed article', Kadri was handed a suspended sentence of just 20 weeks. No jail time. The judge said he had “lost his temper".  Hamit, meanwhile, is living in hiding, having been warned by the police that there are several credible threats to his life.  This sentence will do nothing to dispel the suspicion that Britain has a two-tier criminal justice system. Had a knife-wielding white male pleaded guilty to attacking a Muslim for breaching a Christian blasphemy code, you can bet your bottom dollar he would have gone to prison."

Is burning the Koran a more serious crime than assault? - "If there were any doubt that the UK now has both a two-tier justice system and Islamic blasphemy laws, then the cases of Kadri and Coskun surely put this to rest. Back in June, Coskun was convicted of a ‘religiously aggravated public-order offence’, after he burned the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in protest against Turkey’s President Erdoğan. In Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Coskun was found guilty and fined £240. Worse, the judge cited the knife attack and held it up as proof that Coskun’s Koran-burning had led to public disorder. Apparently, he had all but brought this violence on himself. The contrast with Kadri’s treatment could not be more stark. In sentencing him yesterday at Southwark Crown Court, the judge bent over backwards to minimise the seriousness of the attack. Kadri, who pleaded guilty to common assault and possession of a bladed weapon, was spared jail. He was instead fined just £150 and handed a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. The judge accepted he had merely lost his ‘temper and self-control’ as a result of being ‘deeply offended’.  The judge even saw fit to lavish praise on Kadri during the sentencing. Apparently, it was a ‘tragedy’ that he had ended up before the court despite leading such a productive life. He was a ‘loved husband and father’, a ‘hard worker’ and a man whose colleagues ‘cannot praise highly enough’, we were told. The message sent by these two court decisions is chilling. The English justice system has made it clear that it will punish blasphemy against Islam. Worse, it considers physical violence – even slashing at someone with a knife – to be an almost understandable response to those who besmirch Islam’s honour. So much so that attacking a blasphemer attracts a smaller fine than the act of blasphemy itself. The British justice system has taken a dark turn. It is not only criminalising those who blaspheme against Islam – it is also putting a target on their backs. It has given a green light to the use of violence to silence Islam’s critics"

Connor Tomlinson on X - "If you want to know how bad things are in Britain:  The man holding the Quran, Hamit Coskun was convicted and fined for causing Muslims "harassment, alarm, and distress, with the fact that he was almost stabbed used as the proof.  The man doing the attempted stabbing was just set free, without prison time, because the judge described him as "someone of hitherto exemplary character" and "much respected in your work with charity."  The Deliveroo cyclist who kicked while he lay in the street Coskun has not been charged.
> Upset Muslims? Get charged initially with “intent to cause against the religious institution of ISLAM harassment, alarm or distress”, and fined £240.00
> Attempt to STAB SOMEONE TO DEATH? Get praised by your judge for how "You are a loved husband and father.""

The Free Speech Union on X - "This decision sends a green light to any Muslim who wants to enforce an Islamic blasphemy by taking the law into their own hands. The court is effectively saying that if you attack a blasphemer with a knife, he will be convicted of causing you harassment, alarm or distress and you won't have to spend a day behind bars.  Moussa Kadri has been let off with a suspended sentence after repeatedly slashing Hamit Coskun with a knife while shouting that he was going to kill him. Kadri had been enraged that Coskun was protesting against Islam.     Hamit is still living in hiding having been convicted of a “hate crime” for burning his own copy of the Quran.  Read more below ⬇️"

The Stark Naked Brief. on X - "The judge that overturned Hamit Coskun's criminal conviction for burning a copy of the Koran.  We finally found a good one. His name is Justice Joel Bennathan.  Bennathan said at Coskun's hearing: "There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset.   The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb."  He then went on to cite Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, pertaining to freedom of expression.  It's long past time we scrapped and reviewed our incredibly contradictory speech laws.  Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Met Police have deservedly ended up with yet more egg on their face."

Sky News on X - ""I think President Trump has shown he is racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic, and he is Islamophobic." London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has responded to a series of verbal attacks from Donald Trump."
Steven Barrett on X - "I think this exposes the bullying nature at the heart of the modern left. He is allowed to attack Donald Trump. But if Trump attacks him, Trump is racist. We have Two Tier because fundamentally these people are two tier."
As left wingers proclaim, the violence of the oppressed is not the same as the violence of the oppressor. Which means that "oppressed" people can do anything they like and if the "oppressors" defend themselves, that's literally genocide

South Yorkshire Police gave 'no arrest' deal to Rotherham grooming gang ringleader
Jailed: Teenager with firelighters who waved England flag near North Yorkshire Islamic centre

Meme - "21st century British justice
Posted racist comment on Facebook. Shaun Tuck. 15 weeks prison
Sold anti Immigration stickers. Sam Melia. 24 months prison
Raped 12 Year old girl. Al Soaimi. 180 Community hours no prison time"

Police stopped Tommy Robinson because of his political beliefs, rules judge - "Tommy Robinson was stopped by police and charged with a terror offence because of his political beliefs, a judge has ruled... He was stopped in his Bentley at the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone in July 2024 and accused of “frustration” of police counter-terrorism powers after refusing to give police his mobile phone password.  District Judge Sam Goozee found Robinson not guilty of failing to comply with the counter-terrorism powers during the incident on July 28 last year.  Mr Goozee said: “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your political beliefs that acted as the principal reason for this stop.” He also said Pc Mitchell Thorogood’s decision to stop Robinson was based on a “protected characteristic”, adding: “I cannot convict you.”

Kate Ferguson on X - "Shabana Mahmood admits that she does not have the power to ban the Palestine Action protest this weekend."
Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 on X - "Yes she does. This is a blatant lie by The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood . 12 such orders were implemented in a 7 year period between 2005 and 2012. Why would she lie?!…"
Daniel Stoten. QPM. on X - "Correct -   Yes, the UK Home Secretary has previously prevented public demonstrations from going ahead, primarily through powers under the Public Order Act 1986. These allow the Home Secretary to consent to police requests to prohibit marches or processions (and, in some cases, trespassory assemblies) if they are deemed likely to cause serious public disorder that cannot be mitigated by lesser restrictions.
### Key Historical Example In August 2011, Home Secretary Theresa May approved a Metropolitan Police request to ban an English Defence League (EDL) march planned for September 3 in Tower Hamlets, east London. The ban covered all protest marches across five London boroughs (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Hackney, and Redbridge) for a three-month period starting September 3. This was due to fears of serious public disorder from the EDL event and anticipated counter-demonstrations. Static demonstrations (non-moving protests) were still permitted, but the marching element was halted. This was the first such ban in the Metropolitan Police area since the 1986 Act entered force.
### Broader Context
- Such bans are rare and require evidence that conditions like route changes or size limits would not suffice to prevent disorder. Prior to 2011, similar Home Secretary consents enabled bans on EDL marches in Bradford, Leicester, and Telford in 2010–2011.
- The power extends to prohibiting trespassory assemblies (e.g., on private land) for up to four days within a 5-mile radius, again with Home Secretary consent.
- These measures balance the right to peaceful assembly (protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated via the Human Rights Act 1998) against public safety, but they have faced criticism for potentially chilling free expression.
While recent governments (2019–2024) have expanded police powers to impose conditions on protests via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Public Order Act 2023—such as "Serious Disruption Prevention Orders"—direct bans by the Home Secretary remain exceptional and tied to imminent disorder risks."

Police arrest pro-Israel supporters holding placard saying 'we stand with Britain's Jews' while pro-Palestine protesters chant 'death to the IDF' - "Police have arrested pro-Israel supporters who were holding placards which read 'we stand with Britain's Jews', while pro-Palestine protesters were filmed chanting 'death to the IDF' elsewhere in central London... six other people holding a banner saying '"Globalise the intifada" is a call to murder Jews' were also taken into custody... A Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson said: 'A week after Jews were murdered at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, protesters have called again with impunity to 'Globalise the intifada', while brave and decent people daring to stand with Britain's Jews have been abused and arrested on the streets of London, because the 'Free Palestine' mobs cannot stand the sight of them. 'Holding signs saying "We stand with Britain's Jews" should not be controversial, but we have had to provide solicitors to represent those who held them in jail.  'There is a ceasefire now, but these marches were never really about a ceasefire. The marchers say that they are 'anti-Zionist', but this was never really about 'Zionists'. 'This is London just over a week after the Prime Minister said he would do 'everything in my power' to protect the Jewish community.  'This is the same Prime Minister who swore that he would tear out antisemitism by its roots. 'These are hate marches, this is two tier policing, and this must stop. We want actions, not words from the Prime Minister, so we are asking him, what are you going to do? We have yet to hear any answers.' The pro-Palestine march, which was attended by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, made its way through central London one day after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect. It marks the 32nd national demonstration in support of Palestine since October 2023, according to organiser Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), with protesters setting off from Embankment at midday for a march ending in a rally in Whitehall."

Kelvin MacKenzie on X - "Remember the huge row when Hertfordshire police sent 6 uniformed officers to detain two parents who complained about their local school via WhatsApp? Well, now the police have admitted the arrest was unlawful and paid each of the parents £10,000.  In April Chief Constable Andy Prophet defended the arrest of Maxie Allen, 50,  and Rosalind Levine, 47, in front of their children and holding them for 8 hours in a police cell.  Now the force has said the criteria for arrest was “ not made out” and accepted liability for wrongful arrest and detention.  The dispute began when the parents fell out with Cowley  Hill Primary school which their daughter Sacha, 10 attended. She’s registered disabled.  Incredibly the school contacted the police about the content and volume of the parents’ complaints.  I find that unbelievable. The cops turned up in two vans.  Mr Allen , a Times Radio producer, called in the Free Speech Union ( founded by Lord Toby Young) which does marvellous work in such cases. They have trumped again. Hard to understand why police thought turning up in force to arrest these parents was a good use of their time and limited resources. Following this case I can’t imagine the cops will ever again want to be involved in a parent-dispute.  Thank God for that."

Jewish protester charged with ‘racial harassment’ over anti-Hezbollah sign - "A Jewish man was arrested and charged with "racially aggravated harassment" after holding a placard at a counter-demonstration depicting a Hezbollah leader... The placard featured a drawing of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah holding a pager to his face, with the words "beep, beep, beep"... an officer asked the counter-protester: "Do you think that showing this image to persons protesting who are clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel that by doing so would stir up racial hatred further than it is already?"  The man's lawyer then asked: "Are you saying that there were pro-Hezbollah people there? Because it is a proscribed terrorist organisation."... The protester was later charged under the Public Order Act of causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress by words or writing.  The man, who was not named, told the newspaper: "It beggars belief that police could think that this placard may be offensive to supporters of Hezbollah.  "If there are Hezbollah supporters at these marches, then why weren't charges brought against them for terrorist offences, rather than me being charged for holding a sign that can only be construed as political satire?... police officers searched his home in an attempt to find the placard, which he claimed was not his.  He described how two police vans and six officers arrived to conduct the search, which he said was "invasive" and "totally ridiculous".  But eight months later, on May 10, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case, saying there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction"
Mocking Islamist terrorists is racist. Ironically, Hezbollah is banned in the UK. Of course calling for Jews to be slaughtered is free speech and arresting people for that is anti-Palestinian racism

Police released race and ethnicity of Liverpool parade suspect ‘with unprecedented speed’ - "Merseyside Police confirmed they had a arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area around two hours after the incident that left dozens of people including four children hurt... Former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu said this morning: "What we do have, which is unprecedented, is the police very quickly giving the ethnicity and the race of the person who was driving the vehicle"

The police’s selective silence on the ethnicity of suspects - spiked - "It won't have escaped most people's notice that the details the police are willing to release about a suspect tend to be based on that suspect's ethnic background. Contrast the caginess of Warwickshire Police in revealing Mulakhil and Kabir's immigration status with Merseyside Police's response to the Liverpool parade crush back in May. Within just two hours of a motorist driving into a crowd of people in central Liverpool, injuring 50 people, the police were eager to let it be known that they had arrested a '53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area'... Of course, we all know that the real reason the police are reluctant to reveal details about ethnic-minority suspects is not for fear of contempt of court - it is really out of a contempt for the public. The police and the authorities see ordinary people, especially the white working class, as a riotous mob-in-waiting, ready to erupt in violence at the earliest news of a crime committed by a non-white Briton or a new arrival. And so they try to brush these crimes under the carpet. This might involve withholding information. Or worse still, as in the grooming-gangs scandal, the police may even refuse to investigate them at all. The result of this is a mutually assured suspicion between police and the people. Whenever details of a suspect are withheld, the public now suspects - with ample justification - that the offender is from an ethnic-minority background. The constant cover-ups from the police and local authorities, all supposedly in the name of cooling communal tensions, are doing as much to inflame matters as the crimes themselves. We must trust the public to hear the truth."

Sunday World on X - "Aged 18 to 66, the accused are mostly unemployed and include students, men on disability allowance and a landscaper"
Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 on X - "The name, age, street address, job and photograph of every arrested protester is published here. But none of that information for the foreign migrant accused of raping the ten-year-old girl. The regime media will do anything to avoid that conversation."

Police disclosing suspects’ ethnicity is fuelling prejudice, say campaigners - "The warning comes from the Runnymede Trust and 50 other groups demanding that the policy in England and Wales is scrapped, in a letter sent to the home secretary and police chiefs on Friday.  Their research shows that the policy introduced in August led to the term “asylum seeker” appearing in articles on serious crime five times more than before the policy change. The groups say the public is being given a harmful impression that falsely links criminality with ethnicity or migration status. That in turn is helping to further tear at society’s fabric by feeding prejudice... The call for the policy to be scrapped is supported by Amnesty International UK, the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, the chair of the Independent Scrutiny & Oversight Board for police, the National Police Race Action Plan, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Jewish Women’s Aid, Liberty, the Muslim Council of Britain and Inquest."
Damn hate facts!

Mike Amesbury’s sentencing is two-tier justice in action - spiked - "Is punching someone in the face a less serious crime than sharing offensive jokes on WhatsApp? This seems to be the view of the British justice system, at least if this week’s sentencing of former Labour MP Mike Amesbury is anything to go by.  Back in October, Amesbury, who is now an independent MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was captured on CCTV brawling with a man in the street. The altercation began as a drunken row between Amesbury and one of his constituents. It ended with the MP punching the man in the head and knocking him to the ground. For this, Amesbury was handed a 10-week jail sentence yesterday by deputy senior district judge Tan Ikram. Judge Ikram may by now be familiar with regular readers of spiked. As Laurie Wastell noted last year, Ikram’s sentencing record often reflects the biases of the woke establishment, particularly its penchant for punishing speechcrimes.  Astonishingly, in 2022, when former police constable James Watts was convicted for sending racist messages to a private WhatsApp group, Ikram sentenced him to 20 weeks in jail. That’s twice the jailtime he gave to Amesbury this week for a physically violent crime. Ikram described Watts’s WhatsApps, which included memes mocking Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd, as ‘the most serious offences’. As abhorrent as those messages will have been, most of us could probably think of far more serious offences. The problem goes much deeper than just one judge. In Britain, you can be imprisoned for two years for producing offensive stickers, and yet committing a violent offence, such as stabbing someone or stamping on someone’s head, might not result in any jailtime at all. Of course, Amesbury’s drunken brawl is nowhere near as serious as those crimes. But in what world is it less serious than sharing grim jokes?  There is something deeply broken about a justice system that treats offensive words more harshly than actual violence. Clearly, the judicial establishment cares more about policing people’s opinions than protecting the public."

Allison Pearson on X - "Britain in 2025. Police arrest a man for calling someone “a Muppet”. It caused her “distress” apparently. Officers have no business trying to eradicate “offence” from our society. They are not guardians of morality and manners. Solve some crimes, you Muppets!"

Yossi BenYakar on X - "In the UK, an Islamist tells police they must not bring dogs into “his area” — and openly threatens to kill any dog that comes near him. And as always with the UK police, they listen… letting him spread fear and hatred, toward Jews and even toward innocent dogs. For those who don’t know: in Islamist doctrine, dogs are considered “Najis” (impure)."

Man arrested over anti-Hamas social media post - "A man has been arrested over posting an image online that said “F--- Hamas”.  Pete North, 47, was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence on Thursday night over a meme that he posted on X... “The officer in the interview said, ‘Well, firstly, let’s start with the meme. You posted a meme that said f--- Hamas’.  “I said, ‘yeah, I did post a meme that said f--- Hamas, because Hamas are a proscribed terrorist organisation internationally, including in Britain. Just so we’re on the same page, you do know who Hamas are?’ And he just looked gormlessly and shook his head.  “‘And so you don’t know anything about Oct 7?’ And I briefly explained to him what happened at the Nova music festival. He was totally oblivious. If you’re going to arrest people for memes, you probably need to pay more attention to current affairs.”"
Tom Slater on X - "If this account turns out to be true, it is truly chilling. Right-wing activist Pete North says he was arrested last night over an anti-Islam meme. He was asked about Tommy Robinson. Hate-speech law is just political censorship by another name. (H/t @ShipleyWrites @spectator)"
Once again, to the left, Islam is a race

Dr. Maalouf ‏ on X - "In the UK, a Muslim police officer wants to arrest a British Christian preacher because his preaching caused Muslims anxiety and distress. The world is upside down!"

Two-tier policing is not a myth - spiked - "The widespread claims that Britain has a problem with ‘two-tier policing’ have clearly touched a nerve with the establishment. Earlier this week, when a Sky News reporter asked Mark Rowley, Britain’s most-senior police officer, if he would ‘end two-tier policing’, Rowley grabbed the mic from the journalist’s hand and dropped it on the ground. He later issued a statement claiming that it is ‘complete nonsense’ that police would treat anyone differently according to their race, religion or political leanings. I dare say Sir Mark doth protest too much. The media have also declared, in unison, that there is no bias to be found in our police. Almost every major media outlet has carried an article purporting to ‘fact-check’ and ‘debunk’ the claims around two-tier policing. The Times ran with ‘Two-tier policing: the claims fact-checked’. ‘How has the “two-tier policing” myth become widespread?’, asks the Guardian. ‘What is two-tier policing? Nigel Farage and Elon Musk’s claims debunked’, announces an Independent headline. That ‘two-tier policing’ is a myth, invented and spread by the far right no less, is simply taken as a given.  This is a bit strange, no? In some cases, the very same outlets that, until now, have been running near weekly articles on how the police are institutionally or structurally racist, riddled with some ‘-ism’ or ‘-phobia’, proclaim that any suggestion of unfairness in policing is preposterous. Apparently, if you dare to use the words ‘two-tier policing’, or ‘two-tier Keir’, then you have probably fallen under the malign sway of Tommy Robinson... Just two weeks before the race riot in Southport, riots broke out in Harehills, a diverse suburb of Leeds. This was sparked when social services attempted to take a Roma child into care. Yet while the police were out in force in Southport and in other English towns over the past two weeks, in Harehills, the police simply ran away. Rioters then overturned a police car, set fire to a bus and wreaked havoc for the rest of the evening. The police essentially allowed the rioters to tire themselves out. Tellingly, most of the ‘fact-checks’ on two-tier policing don’t mention the Harehills unrest at all. The Guardian at least nods to it, but claims that the ‘circumstances in Harehills were very different’, although it does not really explain why. Of course, a key difference in ‘circumstances’ was the rioters’ ethnic backgrounds. Strikingly, the day after the Harehills unrest, Leeds City Council issued a joint statement with ‘representatives of the Roma community’ praising that community’s contribution to the ‘diversity and richness’ of the area. Might this be a hint that the identity of those rioters was at the forefront of the minds of the authorities?  What the deniers of two-tier policing miss is that differential treatment for different ethnic groups is an unseemly, but inevitable outgrowth of the system of multiculturalism. From the late 1980s onwards, the British state has increasingly related to its ethnic-minority subjects via self-appointed ‘community leaders’ who, in turn, can have a great deal of influence over police and local-authority decision-making...  We saw this system plainly in action in Birmingham earlier this week, when masked Muslim men were allowed to roam around Bordesley Green with weapons. An LBC journalist was chased away with a metal poll. A Sky News broadcast van had its tires stabbed at. A man was badly beaten outside a pub, leaving him with a lacerated liver. The police knew that large crowds were planning to gather here but they decided not to show up. The next day, Emlyn Richards of West Midlands Police explained why. Speaking to Sky News, he said that his officers had met with ‘community leaders’ to ‘understand the style of policing we needed to deliver’. The ‘community’ (ie, Birmingham’s Muslims) ‘were trying to make sure that [this gathering] was policed within themselves’. So that’s okay, then? Some communities are free to ‘police themselves’ and can decide how certain men with weapons should be policed? That sounds an awful lot like two-tier policing to me. Perhaps the most egregious examples of two-tier policing relate to the ‘pro-Palestine’ marches that have been held almost weekly since 7 October last year. The Metropolitan Police – usually keen to bundle Londoners into a van for using offensive language – haven’t just been turning a blind eye to much of the rank anti-Semitism on the streets. No, they have also actively tried to appease and excuse the most hateful Islamist elements of these marches.  Back in October, members of Hizb ut-Tahrir – now a proscribed terror organisation – gathered outside the Turkish Embassy in London screaming ‘jihad, jihad, jihad’ and calling for ‘Muslim armies’ to invade Israel. In response, the Met put out an extraordinary tweet trying to reassure the public that jihad ‘has multiple meanings’, while chiding those who associate it ‘with terrorism’. In this instance, the police didn’t just turn a blind eye to this call for terroristic violence and war, they were effectively doing the Islamists’ PR for them. Meanwhile, the Met seem to have a zero-tolerance approach towards anything that might cause offence to Islamists and anti-Semites. Niyak Ghorbani, an exiled Iranian dissident, has been arrested on multiple occasions for holding up a sign that accurately describes Hamas – the anti-Semitic terror group behind the 7 October massacre – as ‘terrorists’. Clearly, the police are aware that opposing Hamas is a provocation to the many anti-Semites and Islamists who attend these ‘peace marches’.  Similarly, last year, volunteers for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism were threatened with arrest for a ‘breach of the peace’ over a mobile billboard displaying images of the children who had been kidnapped by Hamas. Police officers have even been photographed tearing down posters of Israeli hostages. The excuse for this anti-Semitic vandalism? To calm ‘community tensions’ – a cowardly euphemism for appeasing Islamist bigots. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that none of these obvious and unambiguous examples of policing double standards feature in the many media ‘debunkings’ of the ‘two-tier-policing myth’. Not for the first time, the ‘fact-checkers’ are less interested in establishing the truth than in defending the establishment narrative. Let’s be frank, two-tier policing is not only real – it is also impossible for any honest person to ignore."
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