Are we going to have a national conversation about these horrific racial attacks in Minneapolis?
From The Daily Mail:
Police in Minneapolis have arrested more than a dozen suspected gang members, some as young as 13, accused of preying on drunk people and robbing them of their cellphones and valuables in a series of violent attacks.
One of the incidents took place on August 3 at the Target Field plaza and was captured on surveillance video.
The graphic recording shows a gaggle of about 12 teenagers and young men surround two men playing a game of dice on the sidewalk.
About 40 seconds into the video, one of the ruffians appears to snatch a man’s cellphone. The victim shows resistance, prompting one of the attackers to throw the first punch.
[…] Towards the end of the footage, one of the most aggressive attackers, who is dressed in a light-blue shirt, hurls a potted plant at the victim, before another youth runs him over with a bicycle.
[…] Then on September 6, police recognized one of the suspects from the video and arrested him.
Boris Likuwa Lusmbo, 20, allegedly admitted that it was him in the footage taking part in the violent robbery. He has been charged with first-degree aggravated robbery and faces up to 20 years in prison, if convicted.
Read full article here…
Democrats advanced a new measure this week to encourage states to pass “red flag” laws. These so-called extreme risk protection orders authorize removing guns and ammunition from individuals deemed as dangerous by some anonymous, unaccountable person, but it would not include the ready-made lists of gang members.
Republicans tried to add an amendment including known gang members, but the Democrats will not permit the inclusion of gang databases. It’s odd since gangs are the ones causing most of the so-called gun violence.
They would agree to include the names of white supremacists, but not other terror groups.
The House Judiciary rejected any effort by Republicans to include gang databases since they are worried about people mistakenly taken for a gang member. They brought up the ‘no-fly, no-buy’ list which was filled with inaccuracies, but Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, who hoped to amend the measure to include gang databases, reminded the Democrats the restrictions for placing someone on a gang database are much tougher than the no-fly list.
“This is a situation where the police officers are trained, and there are very identifiable signs, and it isn’t just one sign,” Buck told Chair Jerrold Nadler.
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, of California, offered to support the amendment if Buck agreed to include those listed “individuals affiliated with white nationalism.”
Buck agreed, but said the language should include “any type of supremacy.”
“Let’s add Costa Nostra to this,” Buck added.
Democrats were uninterested and the amendment ultimately failed.
Former NFL non star Edawn Coughman has been arrested on charges of filing a false report, insurance fraud, and “concealing a license plate” by police in Lawrenceville, GA, just outside of Atlanta, after it came to light that he staged a fake hate crime by spraying nazi and racist graffiti on his own restaurant, in hopes of making an insurance claim and most likely garnering public sympathy.
Apparently he graduated from the University of Smollett.
A former NFL player is facing criminal charges after he allegedly destroyed his business near Atlanta to make it look like a hate crime burglary, police said.
Edawn Louis Coughman, 31, was arrested Thursday and charged with false report of a crime, insurance fraud and concealing a license plate, police said in a statement.
Officers first responded to the scene after a caller reported that someone inside Create & Bake Pizza and Coughman’s Creamery was damaging the business. The witness also reported the suspect was driving a black car without a license plate.Authorities confronted Coughman, the owner of the business, after they saw him driving the described vehicle nearby, police said. They noticed “several televisions in the bed of the truck and inside the cab,” some of which were “still attached to the brackets with damaged drywall,” police said.
When they went inside the business, officers saw several words and graffiti symbols on the walls and booth cushions in black spray paint, police said. They also saw “racially-motivated words,” swastikas and the word “MAGA.”“Several booth cushions were sliced open. They also found broken mirrors, cut wires, and a damaged video surveillance system. The smell of spray paint was very fresh. When officers touched it, the paint appeared wet,” police said.
Following the early morning attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility—the largest oil processing plant in the world—and a similar drone attack at the Khurais oil field on Saturday, the neocon senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, has called for attacking Iran.
It is now time for the U.S. to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil refineries if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear enrichment.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 14, 2019
Although the Houthis claimed responsibility for the crippling attack, there is little evidence who is actually responsible. It is just as likely the Saudis did this to 1) ramp up hostilities against their arch enemy, Shia Iran, 2) jack up the price of oil, and 3) in the process make the impending Aramco IPO more lucrative.
In addition, the Saudis fear the end of the illegal war on the people of Yemen negotiated by the US:
US in Direct Talks With Yemen’s Houthis
Talks ‘narrowly focused on trying to end the war’#Yemen #SaudiArabia #UAE #Houthishttps://t.co/5uSQgVnfh8 pic.twitter.com/CL48LIqsHR— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) September 6, 2019
Zerohedge notes:
According to Reuters reports the drone attacks will impact up to 5 million bpd of oil production, which suggests that the price of oil—already severely depressed by the recent news that John Bolton is out, making de-escalation with Iran far more likely—is set to soar when trading reopens late on Sunday, just what the upcoming Aramco IPO desperately needs, which in turn has prompted some to wonder if the “Yemen” attack on Saudi Arabia wasn’t in fact orchestrated by Saudi interests. (Emphasis mine.)
Meanwhile, the corporate media, as should be expected, is placing the blame indirectly on Iran. From the beginning of the Saudi campaign to bomb the daylights out of Yemen, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory, the corporate media has stated as an indisputable fact the Houthis are an Iranian proxy doing the bidding of the mullahs in Tehran.
The attack by the Iranian-backed Houthi militias against the two Aramco pumping stations proves that these militias are merely a tool that Iran’s regime uses to implement its expansionist agenda in the region, and not to protect the people of Yemen as the Houthis falsely claim.
— Khalid bin Salman خالد بن سلمان (@kbsalsaud) May 16, 2019
On the contrary, the Iranians have very little to do with supporting the Houthis, a fact rarely mentioned because it conflicts with the narrative that fallaciously states Iran is the most vicious terror state in the world (that designation is better suited for the United States and Israel).
Thomas Juneau, the assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and an analyst with Canada’s Department of National Defense, wrote for The Washington Post in 2016, “Tehran’s support for the Houthis is limited, and its influence in Yemen is marginal. It is simply inaccurate to claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies.”
Breaking News: Drone strikes set 2 major oil refineries ablaze deep in Saudi Arabia. Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are supported by Iran, claimed responsibility.https://t.co/N8qk7MOdE9
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 14, 2019
Iran’s assistance “remains limited and far from sufficient to make more than a marginal difference to the balance of forces in Yemen, a country awash with weapons. There is, therefore, no supporting evidence to the claim that Iran has bought itself any significant measure of influence over Houthi decision-making.”