David Shadrick “No Fear!”
It’s Sunday and Dave Shadrick is back for another video cast. This week I think the rant is about blue-eyed blonde haired children. Anyway, whatever the discussion, Dave has plenty to say. Enjoy.
It’s Sunday and Dave Shadrick is back for another video cast. This week I think the rant is about blue-eyed blonde haired children. Anyway, whatever the discussion, Dave has plenty to say. Enjoy.
Alexi Navalny is a pain in Putin’s side. Allies of the Russian dissident began protests April 21st, 2021, demanding Putin’s most vocal critic receive proper hospital care. People despite government crackdowns on protests showed up in large numbers. Many supporters believe only mass protests can save Alexi’s life and many people are willing to risk imprisonment and harassment by the police.
Alexi Navalny was arrested the day he returned to Russia after being treated in Germany for what appeared to have been a nerve agent poisoning. During this most recent imprisonment, on March 31st, 2021, Navalny went on a hunger strike, demanding proper medical treatment for loss of sensations in his hands and legs and severe back pain.
Recent news reports indicate an electrolyte imbalance. His high potassium levels increase his risk for a cardiac arrhythmia. His personal physician pleaded that Navalny should be moved to an intensive care unit because of his deteriorating condition. Navalny also risks severe renal impairment. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, said her husband’s weight is down to 167 lbs from 187 lbs when he started the hunger strike at the end of March.
Calamity chose this 2014 tune by writer performer Meghan Trainor for today’s Calamity Politics Jukebox Choice of the Day. She was mumbling something about politicians need to understand their base. I don’t think that’s what Meghan had in mind, but, whatever the clown says I’m with her. So here we go, Meghan Trainor singing “All About The Bass.” Lyrics below.
Everything is going online, the so-called “Digital Revolution” generally considered to be as significant as the Industrial Revolution. For good or ill, more things are moving online from correspondence to media. The terms “old media” and “new media” going from cultural terms to more significant distinctions.
One of the positive impacts of the shift to New Media, and the general reduction in production costs, is the opening up of popular media to traditionally marginalized groups. People are more able to make their own media, free of the censorship, stigma and traditionalist bullshit still rife in the studio system. The sort of attitudes that would have female nominees banned from the red carpet for not wearing high heels.
Neanderthals died out around 40,000 years ago, but traces of them still remain. In the past decade it has become clear that Neanderthals mated with the ancestors of modern humans, producing viable offspring. Studies indicate that almost half of the Neanderthal genome still survives, scattered in small quantities among most modern people’s DNA. (The exception is those with mostly African ancestors, for Neanderthals seem never to have lived in Africa.)
Such genes have been associated with everything from hairiness to fat metabolism. Many seem to be related to the immune system, and to affect the risk of developing diseases including lupus, Crohn’s and diabetes. A pair of recent papers suggest covid-19 belongs on that list as well. Two long sections of DNA, both inherited from Neanderthals, appear to confer resistance or susceptibility to severe covid-19, depending on which is present.
This week Dave Shadrick wants to remind folks not to tear your house down because you are mad about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial; no matter what that verdict is. No matter what the verdict let’s not have any more deaths. Demonstrate if you must, but use courtesy and commonsense.
It is interesting how many ways the phrase OMG can be used, such as in total awesome disbelief seeing a father lift a car off his trapped son, or how about when there is a worm on your lettuce leaf, that’s a whole different kind of OMG. Then we have the OMG escape our lips when we watch the image of a Minneapolis cop slowly, seemingly arrogantly, extinguish the life of another human being on national television. Now, for any living breathing person with a heart who watched that video who wasn’t totally gut wrenchingly appalled needs to seek immediate therapy.
I don’t want to piss everybody off, but as I have watched the prosecution case build on itself I have been disturbed by the brutality and the arrogance of the entire event. Derek Chauvin, according to media reports served for nineteen years on the Minneapolis Police Department and accumulated seventeen complaints of misconduct complaints during that time. In what probably is a backlash response, I look at Mr. Chauvin and see what is bad about American policing. Not only did Mr. Chauvin fail his department and his community, but his department failed him. His is not an unusual case, other than he was memorialized for 9 minutes and 29 seconds by a teenage girl who filmed Chauvin’s left knee pinned to the neck of a black man while the victim pleaded for relief. Derek Chauvin is now on trial for Mr. Floyd’s death.
In Minneapolis, after 19 years authorities finally took ‘quick’ action against Mr. Chauvin, and three other officers who were on the scene when Mr. Floyd died. This does not mean all of them are gone for good. Public employees can appeal their dismissals and in many cases, police officers win their cases and municipalities put them back on the job every day. Despite community outrage nationwide over the deaths of black men at the hands of police it is notoriously difficult to hold police officers accountable in the United States. Some of the problem is because of the political power police unions wield, the hesitancy of investigators, and the reluctance of prosecutors and juries to second guess a police officer’s split second decision and the wide latitude the law gives the police to use force.
The events have played out against, and in some ways have reinforced the racial divisions in America, as largely white police forces are accused of bias and brutality in black, Latino and other minority communities. The Floyd death came within weeks of killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. These deaths have unleashed a wave of protests unlike anything since the 1960’s.
Police Departments around the country are often the core of resistance against change. Departments have consistently resisted civilian review or balked when it comes to overhauling officer disciplinary practices. Police chiefs in cities which have been the sites of high profile deaths of black men by white officers, have failed to punish or remove bad actors. Where civilian review boards are operating most are notoriously weak. Often they do nothing more than collect information, but have no power to make recommendations or enforce recommendations.
Several sources including Minneapolis Police Department Internal Affairs have released information on Dereck Chauvin conduct during his service. We do know that Mr. Chauvin has been involved in at least three shootings in his career. In addition he left a trail of misconduct complaints and a reputation for aggression. Chauvin’s combative reputation extended to his second job as a security person for a nightclub in the area. It has been demonstrated that Mr. Chauvin has operated in disregard for the particular circumstances of a given situation in determining appropriate reasonable force and simply fully restrains suspects with no regard for their well being.
I believe that Derek Chauvin is also a victim. We hear TV commentators laud other cops who are testifying against him, like police chief Medaria Arradondo for “breaking the blue wall of silence.” As if these ‘good cops’ are coming out to punish a ‘bad cop.’ Well, I think that is a pile of horse puckie. All these good cops had nineteen years to stop the bad activities of Derek Chauvin and thousands more like him. He is now on trial because no one was interested in stopping him before his actions were so repulsive and appalling that millions hit the streets to demand better. But, until then, shove it under the rug, ignore it, hide it.
So, here I am today, Sunday 4/18/2021 saying Derek Chauvin is now, just as he always was, just one of the guys. Derek Chauvin was allowed to manifest into a killer within the Minneapolis Police Department. In a warm protective environment. I doubt Derek Chauvin would have ever killed anyone if he had not been wearing a badge. America’s policing is on trial. It is time that police departments sell off their tanks and invest in psychiatric interns, and marriage counselors to accomplish community ‘needs-based’ services.
Calling the cops is not the right answer for every stressful situation. But, the way our 911 system functions, cops are often the first dispatched personnel. Frequently such calls spiral out of control because the appropriately trained individuals have not been dispatched for the call. And often these mishandled calls end up in death. Personally I don’t think the needed changes will happen from the inside. I think we as a nation need to protect the Floyd George’s who are victims of police racism and brutality.
Calamity decided on today’s Calamity News and Politics Jukebox Choice. It is none other than, Supertramp performing the “The Logical Song,” from 1979. From the first time I heard this song I EMBRACED it. It is my story. It was my story. Enjoy! Lyrics below. DSM.
Supertramp
Journalists are supposed to be impartial. A basic course in every journalism school is ‘journalistic ethics.’ Students with other educational backgrounds who want to write journalism are also encouraged to take a course in ethics. This was the path I took after my degree in History. Sadly, it can be difficult to tell sometimes whether mainstream reporting has lost its sense of ethics or if it ever had any at all.
During the continuing coverage of the Derek Chauvin Trial on CNN I have heard the defendant called a “murderer” and the incident called “murder” in connection with the case. Not in the metaphorical sense or that of potentiality, using qualifiers such as “alleged” or “accused” but as a statement of fact. Except the trial is ongoing and Chauvin hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. To refer to him as a murderer as a statement of fact is at best a gross breach of professional ethics and could be grounds for a defamation case if he is found not guilty.
Take Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic school student seen in the notorious video in which he seems to be smiling and mocking a Native American elder. Sandmann, who is a minor, received multiple threats of violence and death after publication of the video. Some of those threats came from high-profile celebrities, who faced no backlash, or legal ramifications, for making such threats against a minor. Turns out everyone got it wrong. The inflammatory chants were apparently coming from a group of Black Hebrew Israelites off to the side of the school group. And, the elder had gotten into Sandmann’s face, rather than the other way around. Sandmann and his family sued several media outlets including CNN and The Washington Post for slander and defamation.
The root issue in the case of the “Covington Kids” was that mainstream news outlets were reporting information that was going up online without checking it. A clear, and dangerous violation of the trust the public up in them to be a impartial and reliable media source.
The Court of Public Opinion can be a powerful force in society, possibly turning dangerous when applied to actual court cases, particularly in terms of jury trials. A factor brought into sharp focus by the case of the Central Park Five. There was a wide-spread fear of black youth crime in New York in the late 1980s. The problem magnified by the news media, which could also can be said to be a contributing factor to the guilty verdict. In addition to such outrage as full-page “ads” by Donald Trump demanding the death penalty. Five African-American and Latino youths ended up falsely convicted of raping a female jogger, during a string of sexual assaults in Central Park in the summer of 1989. The youths served sentences of six to twelve years, only to have their charges dropped and records expunged when someone else, a known criminal confessed.
One of the most egregious cases of mistrial by media is that of the West Memphis Three. A trio of teenaged Metalheads with the misfortune to live in West Memphis Arkansas in 1994. The teens were convicted of murder. This was done toward the end of a media driven Satanic Panic. A stupefying case of mass hysteria, almost on par with Salem, which saw everyone from elected officials, to media outlets and parent’s groups believing that there was an organized Satanic conspiracy gripping America. Geraldo Rivera stated on his show that there were “over one million Satanist in America,” Not least because the news media were reporting on utterly debunked claims such as *backmasking and Satanic Ritual Abuse, most of which were associated with Metal music at the time.
Such reports directly influencing the jury when they found Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin guilty of the killing of three young children the year before. Echols was sentenced to death. Misskelley Jr. was sentenced to life plus to twenty year sentences and Baldwin was sentenced to life. All on evidence so flimsy as to be considered laughable, much of which revolved around the three dressing in black and listening to Metal. They we’re essentially convicted of being Metalheads.
At least that was how it was suppose to be. In an interesting case of fighting media lies with media truth, Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky produced a trilogy of documentaries on the case. Those productions included, Paradise Lost, Paradise Lost: Revelations and Paradise Lost: Purgatory. Each film was strongly critical of the case, and make it abundantly clear that Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were basically railroaded by a system dead-set against them. The three were released in 2011 on plea deals which basically amounted to time-served, their convictions still standing, despite new physical and DNA evidence points to two other men.
The media and its influence are incredibly powerful, and need to be held to account. If not by their parent companies or advertisers, then the public they seek to influence and manipulate rather than inform. If you are wondering why you should trust me, when I am part of the media myself, keep in mind I am not a journalist. I’m a historian and I have a firm grasp on how bad things can get.
Definition:
*Backmasking is a recording technique where by a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. Backmasking is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional. Wikipedia
“Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one.
Don’t like cigarettes? Don’t smoke one.
Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one.
Don’t like sex? Don’t indulge.
Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.
Don’t like porn? Don’t watch it.
Don’t like alcohol? Don’t drink it.
Don’t like guns? Don’t buy one.
Don’t like your rights taken away? Then don’t take away someone else’s.” (Unknown)
Short and sweet for a sunny Monday. I’ve seen this statement shared and I think the statement sums it up. Stop yelling about the actions of others and adjust your behavior and attitude. It is none of your business who I sleep with. It is none of your business if I can’t break the cigarette habit. It is none of your business if I want an abortion. Frigid ? Don’t like sex, well again, just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to abstain. Drugs, again, not good for you, but none of your business. When we get to porn, well, here we go again, if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Don’t like alcohol? Easy; stay away from it. Don’t like guns, don’t buy one. But, most of all my rights are guaranteed by the constitution not your opinion.