WEST VIRGINIA: Black Prisoner Sues Prison Over Aryan Brotherhood Stabbing, Assault by Guards
By Mario Ginesta
Lermon Russell, a Black man imprisoned at Mt. Olive Correctional Complex (“MOCC”) in West Virginia, filed a lawsuit late last year accusing state prison guards of encouraging and assisting the neo-Nazi prison gang Aryan Brotherhood (AB) in stabbing him earlier in 2019. The lawsuit was filed around the same time that a photo of corrections officer cadets and training staff from the area giving a Nazi salute was posted to social media.
In the complaint filed by Russell, he accuses MOCC of placing him in an all-white pod (prison section) which housed several known AB members, according to prison records. Russell has been subjected to continuous racial slurs and harassment by both guards and prisoners during his sentence.
In one incident, two officers were escorting Russell to the shower in handcuffs and leg shackles when an AB inmate, named Jacob Samples, burst out of the shower, attacking Russell with a sharpened object. Both guards stepped out of Samples’s way and didn’t immediately intervene, instead shouting racial slurs at Russell. The guards then sprayed both prisoners with pepper spray despite Russell already being incapacitated. Russell was taken to the medical unit where staff refused to provide any substantial treatment, according to the lawsuit.
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#WestVirginia
AUSTIN: Anti-Imperialist Graffiti Covers Front of Military Recruitment Office
By Mike Talavera
Graffiti recently appeared across the front of the Armed Forces Career Center at 9500 S IH 35 Frontage Rd in Austin, reading “Combat + Resist US Imperialism!” along with X’s over the doors and a large hammer and sickle. The office recruits for all the branches of the US military, including the Army, Marines, Navy, and Airforce.
The action comes as part of a wave of protests against the US military in response to the belligerent US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to backpedal from the brazen act of imperialist aggression, the anger against US imperialism continues to rise both at home and abroad. In Iraq on Friday, hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of Baghdad demanding the US military leave the country.
Earlier this month in Austin, graffiti was spotted close to the state capitol which read “No War with Iran! Death to US imperialism!” In other parts of the country, revolutionaries and activists have also targeted US military recruitment centers. In Charlotte, a banner reading “Combat & Resist US Imperialism” was hung from another Armed Forces Career Center, and flyers reading “Death to US imperialism, Military Recruiters Out of Working Class Communities, No War on Iran” were wheatpasted to the windows.
In Pittsburgh, the Anti-Imperialist Committee led a protest of the local military recruitment center, blocking the entrance and facing off with the police. As US imperialism continues to antagonize and oppress Iran, these militant actions against the domestic US military presence will grow.
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#austin #atx #texas #military #iran #unitedstates #usimperialism #imperialism #antiimperialism
PALM BEACH: Police Brutally Evict Stonybrook Tenant Organizers and Families
By Ben Robinson
On January 16, four families in Palm Beach County were violently evicted by police from Stonybrook Apartments after two years of resistance against their slumlord Frank Sinito, under the name Millennia Housing. All of the evicted families were members of the Palm Beach County Tenants Union, including the family of Crystal Lewis, the union’s president.
The Palm Beach Tenants Union has fought against inhumane conditions at Stonybrook including sewage backed up into tenants’ bathtubs, broken pipes, black mold, pests, and other serious issues. The Union is tenant-led and has utilized various tactics ranging from lawsuits to rent strikes and protests. Previous actions have included tenants barricading themselves in their apartments.
The families evicted last week had been withholding rent legally since July 2018, but in the Union’s words, they were evicted “in retaliation for the recent tenant protests and legal filings.” The raid itself was brutal, occurring early in the morning when the larger community was not present to support the families. Without notice, the police came with axes and sledgehammers, and drew their guns on one family. Lewis stated in a Facebook post that she felt like she “had committed a crime in my sleep, the way they knocked [the door] down in came in,” and that she hid her children in the closet to prevent them from being held at gunpoint.
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#Florida #PalmBeachCounty #eviction #police
Reports Reveal FBI Pressured Apple to Keep Door Open to Customer Data
By Mike Talavera
New reports reveal that Apple canceled a project in development two years ago that would have made it more difficult for the company to access backups of user data after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) complained that the privacy measure would impede its own investigations.
According to the former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee who spoke with bourgeois media outlet Reuters, Apple had planned on providing end-to-end encryption for its iCloud backup service by tying the key needed to unlock the encryption to the customer’s passcode and unique information from the customer’s device. Despite hiring a team to begin on this initiative, the whistleblowers said it was dropped after the FBI objected. “They weren’t going to poke the bear anymore,” one whistleblower said.
Often advertising itself as a bastion of privacy technology, Apple historically has not lived up its marketing slogan, “Privacy is a fundamental human right.” Recently, Attorney General William Barr called on the company to access the devices of the Saudi Air Force officer who killed three at a Florida naval base last month. Apple provided the cloud backups (which would have been protected by their previous plan) to the government in this case.
End-to-end encryption is a form of security technology that prevents a third party from accessing data without a key tied to the original data creator. In theory, when it is enabled, Apple would not be able to access customer data, or hand it over to law enforcement, but even with such a service, ‘privacy’ is neither a right nor a guarantee when the state seeks access, whether through technological or other means.
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#technology #apple #datasecurity
LOS ANGELES: Mayor Endorses Imperialist Presidential Candidate Joe Biden
By Audrey Hellenbrecht
In a press conference on January 9, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave his endorsement to former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the 2020 Presidential election. Calling Biden “a close personal friend who has been an incredible partner in delivering progress for LA,” Garcetti also announced he will serve as the National Campaign Co-Chairman for the Biden campaign. “We need Joe Biden to bring our nation and world together during these most divided and dangerous times,” Garcetti claimed. “I know that from day one, he will heal our nation, repair our relationships abroad and get things done — and will be a true partner in solving the national homelessness crisis.” The working class of Los Angeles understand Garcetti’s endorsement as nothing more than one ruling class politician supporting another. Garcetti was elected mayor in 2013 with a historically low voter turnout, with only 23% of eligible voters turning in ballots.
Garcetti claims he worked closely with Biden to pass the $15 minimum wage increase in LA. This accomplishment means little as the city continues to have one of the highest poverty rates in the country and the largest population of unsheltered homeless people. He has consistently deflected responsibility for many issues the city faces, most recently claiming the California wildfires were an “act of god,” while doing nothing to address the city’s dilapidated infrastructure that caused them.
Garcetti has always placed his political career over the needs of the city he is tasked with governing. Over a 12 month period, from 2016-2017, Garcetti spent 112 days touring the country to many swing states, sparking rumors that Garcetti himself would run for President. He consistently speaks on issues like ‘revitalizing’ the Los Angeles River or providing shelters for the homeless, but never fully delivers on any of his promises.
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#LosAngeles #California #ElectionBoycott
US and China Sign ‘Phase One’ of Trade Deal
By Mike Talavera
Last Wednesday, US President Donald Trump and China’s Vice Premier Liu He signed an eight-part agreement that marks a detente in the ongoing trade war between the imperialist superpower US and rising imperialist China. The deal, which saw concessions from both sides, is widely seen as a temporary settlement that fails to resolve any of the fundamental grievances between the two largest economies in the world.
While Trump and Liu lauded the ‘harmony’ fostered by this agreement, the measures taken are mostly quantitative adjustments to trade relations and do not alter the cutthroat antagonism at the heart of imperialist competition. China pledged to buy $200 billion more in US goods by 2021 and to further open up its market to US investment, whereas the US dramatically reduced some of the existing tariffs imposed in 2018, although tariffs for 65% of imported goods will remain in place.
Surrounded by government officials and business executives, Trump used the signing event as a platform for his reelection campaign, echoing the nationalist ‘America First’ promises of his first presidential run. “With this signing, we mark more than just an agreement, we mark a sea change in international trade,” he told the press. “At long last Americans have a government that puts them first at the negotiating table.” Despite Trump’s optimism, even bourgeois economists are skeptical that this deal will divert the US and China from their inevitable collision course. The revisionist People’s Republic of China, like the revisionist Soviet Union before it, is able to compete with US imperialism because its current market economy is built on the foundation of the communist-led development of the country’s productive forces during its New Democratic Revolution. Since the great Chairman Mao Zedong’s death, the Communist Party of China has taken the capitalist road and has since begun exporting capital to Africa and Latin America in the hopes of reaping superprofits and undermining US imperialists’ presence.
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#usimperialism #Trump #tradewar #china
