Cracker Barrel of Bullcrap

Editor's note: as you may have already heard, I am having an incredibly long week and that's why this essay about a story from early Friday morning is only coming to you now. Hopefully life is out of curve balls to throw at me this month, but I've learned to not to promise anything in these situations.

Last Thursday night, the 2019 NBA Finals came to a bizarre if fitting conclusion with the Toronto Raptors' nail-biting 114-110 win over the then-defending champion Golden State Warriors in Oakland, California. It was a majestically theatrical moment for basketball; the fall of a dynasty, the crowning of a new best player in the NBA and the close out contest for one of the high-churches of basketball in Oracle Arena. Triumph and tragedy were on full display as the Warriors finally succumbed to a brutal run of league-altering injuries, the Raptors role-players helped Toronto finally learn to stop shooting itself in the foot and the National Basketball League finally went truly global - Toronto, now the favored sons of an entire country, is the first team from outside of the United States to win an NBA championship.

Inextricably joined to both the rise of the Toronto Raptors and the league's realization of its global ambitions stood team president Masai Ujiri - the Nigerian born world-famous NBA executive, global basketball philanthropist and superstar Camp Director of the league's Basketball Without Borders operation in Johannesburg, South Africa. A close personal friend of former U.S. President Barack Obama and widely considered among the five smartest men in the NBA, Ujiri was watching his team on screen in the tunnels under the Oracle Arena stands when the final seconds ticked down and six excruciating years of high-stakes gambles finally paid off for the Raptors team president and his long-suffering franchise. After hugging a bystander, Ujiri shouted in jubilation before striding triumphantly towards the court and the Raptors victory celebration.  

It was in short, a beautiful and emotional moment shared by millions of people around the globe - that is until some fascist cracker pigs from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office decided to shit all over it:

U.S. authorities push ahead with battery charge on Raptors president Masai Ujiri following Game 6

Well, this whole story is almost certainly some happy horsesh*t but let's try to unpack it anyway. According to Alameda County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly, literally moments after watching his team win the NBA title, Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri assaulted a police officer working security at Oracle Arena who had merely stopped Ujiri because he didn't recognize him and needed to see the Raptors President's on court NBA Finals credentials - credentials which Kelly initially claimed, Ujiri did not have on him (keep this in mind, it will be important in a moment.)

"A spokesperson for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office said Ujiri was making his way to the court when he was stopped by a sheriff's deputy and asked for his credentials.

"This deputy had no idea who [Ujiri] was," Sgt. Ray Kelly said in a phone interview.

Ujiri didn't have the credentials on him, Kelly said, adding that the former NBA executive of the year then allegedly pushed the deputy out of the way in an effort to get on the court.

"Our deputy pushed the man back and told him he couldn't go onto the court," Kelly alleged. "At that point, the gentleman pushed our deputy again, and during that push his arm struck our deputy in the jaw."

Before we go any further here, let's start with something sharp-eyed observers who looked at the header image of this article are undoubtedly already aware of; namely that the Alameda County Sheriff's Office is openly lying about at least one aspect of this story already. As you can see, Ujiri is quite clearly holding his on court credentials in his hand during recordings made both before and immediately after the alleged "battery" incident. Undeterred by mere photographic evidence, police apologists in sports media have since altered the accusation to suggest that Ujiri merely refused to show his credentials (more on this later) or simply lacked the proper credential for the post-championship celebration - specifically an NBA-mandated gold arm band; a detail the ACSO spokesman was quick to emphasize in our lead story above:

"Asked about the appearance of a well-known executive being held back from celebrating a historic win with the team he built, Kelly said optics were of no concern.

"There is a credentialling policy that the NBA has in place. Everybody from the top executives all the way down ... know that you must wear credentials to get on the court," he said. "We would expect more from a team president."

Kelly told CBC News they get a "tremendous amount" of celebrities and VIPs who go to Warriors games and it would "almost impossible" to know every team executive."

Woah boy, this is starting to smell like five day old cod.

First, let's set aside the fact that I have no idea why a Sheriff's Deputy is checking the credentials of court-side visitors while half a dozen members of arena security (who would normally handle this task) are standing within a seven foot radius. Then, let's ignore the reality that it's a little hard to believe the pig in question had no idea who Ujiri is; Kelly's excuse that the ACSO deals with too many important people to remember them all doesn't hold much water given that there were literally only two NBA team Presidents in this Finals and Masai Ujiri had already been inside Oracle Arena with the Raptors during games three and four of this very series. As Sports Illustrated's Michael McCann notes:

"It’s not clear why the deputy didn’t recognize Ujiri, who stands 6’4", was wearing a full suit and was probably being called by players, coaches and staff to join them on the court. At least in NBA circles, Ujiri is a highly-recognizable figure. He has also gained significant media attention during the finals. The deputy works in Oakland and might not be an NBA fan or at least not one who is familiar with the Raptors. Still, it stands to reason that security at games would familiarize themselves with the appearances of high-ranking persons from each team in order to avoid these kinds of situations."

The real problem here however is that a cursory examination of the film reveals that there are an awful lot of people wandering around the court during that post-game celebration, who are absolutely not wearing gold armbands or ribbons - only the media appears to be complying with this "rule." This brings up the fairly obvious question, why was Ujiri targeted for carding in the first place? We'll get back to that in a moment, let's keep moving forward with our original story.

Although it's not mentioned in the above article, it has further been reported that the deputy who attempted to stop Ujiri was taken to a local hospital for evaluation after complaining of a "sore jaw" before being released. Of course, one might be inclined to question why the Deputy did so after reading the testimony of sixty-one year old Warriors season ticket holder Greg Wiener - from Olga Rodriguez and Rob Gillies of the Associated Press, emphasis mine:

"Greg Wiener, a 61-year-old Warriors’ season ticket holder, said Friday he was standing next to the deputy during the encounter and didn’t see Ujiri strike him in the face.

Wiener said the encounter began when the deputy put his hand on Ujiri’s chest and pushed him. Ujiri shoved him back before bystanders intervened, Wiener said.

“The thing about the cops saying the policeman asked for his credentials, that didn’t happen. There was no conversation at all,” Wiener said. “This part about striking him in the face, yeah that didn’t happen.”

Wiener said he hadn’t been interviewed by authorities.

“This looks like somebody trying to embellish what happened to protect what they did, what the policeman did,” Wiener said."

On several fundamental levels Weiner's testimony directly contradicts the story provided by Alameda County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kelly; obviously someone here is lying and from where I'm sitting, it's hard to see how that someone is Greg Wiener. After all, the ACSO is the one with an obvious motive here given the high profile nature of the incident, we've already caught the Sheriff's Office lying about this encounter and while the video evidence remains inconclusive, the aftermath of the incident sure does fit Weiner's description of events more closely than it fits Kelly's - clearly, the Deputy is the one who has to be restrained while Ujiri looks like he's in absolute shock at what has just occurred.

Additionally there are other reasons besides simple self preservation to question the motives of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and by extension, the Sheriff's Deputy. Keeping in mind that Masai Ujiri is black, an internationally famous U.S. migrant, a known friend of former President Barack Obama and has quite publicly repudiated President Trump's racist comments about "sh*thole countries" - would it surprise you to learn that lead by Sheriff Gregory Ahern, the ACSO has a long history of racial profiling, expressing sympathy with white supremacists and supporting hard line anti-immigration policies? Let's dive a little further down that rabbit hole for a moment:

Was Masai Ujiri Falsely Accused? Alameda Cops Have A History Of Racism

Nothing to see here right? Just a fine example of typical police activities like working to promote armed reactionary anti-government militias, harassing Public Defenders for the crime of "driving while black" and following the exploits of known white nationalists on Twitter. Not openly fascist enough for you yet? Then check out the bottom of the article for a brief glimpse of the ACSO's shockingly familiar (and statistically unsupportable) bias in its approach to countering "terrorism":

"And while that might seem like a long time ago, just last year the department was accused of using an anti-terrorism grant from the Trump administration to “focus on Black, Muslim inmates returning to society,” according to the East Bay Express. Specifically, the wording of the proposed use for the grant came into question.

“The Express found that the words ‘Muslim’ and ‘violent’ appeared 31 times each in the sheriff’s proposal; ‘extremism’ appeared 26 times; and ‘radicalization,’ 12 times,” the local news outlet wrote in October. “‘White supremacists,’ by contrast, is mentioned only once. The application does not mention civil liberties.”

At this point I think we can safely say that the Alameda County Sheriff's Office is a haven for racists and liars, but they're still cops and that means they respect the rule of law, doesn't it? Not so fast my friend:

Opinion: Audit actions of Alameda County Sheriff’s Office

So now on top of the fascist sympathizing, open racism and delusional Isamophobia we can also add excessive use of force, routine violation of civil liberties and objectively inhumane, at times even deadly neglect of prisoners. Disturbingly, none of this really appears to be any sort of secret:

"Since 2015, 41 lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Office have cost $15.5 million for civil rights violations that include a string of in-custody deaths and abuse of prisoners.

There have been 33 in-custody deaths since 2013, and in June two prisoners died at the Santa Rita Jail in three days. That includes the death of Dujuan Armstrong, whose family still has not received an explanation from the Sheriff’s Office.

Moreover, recent reports have detailed how county prisoners are malnourished and provided inadequate healthcare. In one 2010 case, a man arrested for jaywalking and a prior warrant for DUI died in Santa Rita while suffering from alcohol withdrawal.
Sheriff Ahern has also been complicit in the Trump administration’s draconian and racist anti-immigrant policies, facilitating ICE detentions by publishing the release dates of undocumented prisoners and allowing ICE access to non-public areas of county jails."

Naturally, all of this might make a reasonable observer question why much of the mainstream media initially chose to treat a cyrpto-fascist nutjob racist Sheriff's Office's outrageously out of character claims about Masai Ujiri's as objectively true in a vacuum; especially since none of this is happening in said vacuum. We are after all talking about an NBA Finals series that just featured a wealthy white team owner literally laying his hands on African American Raptors guard Kyle Lowry while shouting belligerent obscenities; I don't recall the Alameda County Sheriff's Office recommending any charges after that incident, do you?

Stepping backward to look at the larger league context doesn't improve the picture either. Lead primarily by the players and in the wake of an ugly racist taunting incident in Utah, this past year has represented a watershed moment for the National Basketball League and conversations about targeted racism. Indeed, these very same topics of police racial profiling, white privilege and the inherently racist assumption that those brutalized by the police must have done something wrong formed the central core of a widely acclaimed and deeply moving April 2019 piece by NBA veteran Kyle Korver in the Players Tribune. I guess it only took "professionally white" America and the corporate media a couple of months to forget all those "important lessons" they'd learned from Korver?

Taken together, these stories and other high-profile reports of celebrity civil injustice highlight a growing climate of hostility, contempt and gleefully racist abuse of petty authority by bigoted, militarized American law enforcement agencies who routinely use lethal force without cause, are functionally above the law, and undoubtedly remain fully aware of that fact. How else can you explain the behavior of a Sheriff's Office that will transparently lie about harassing a black celebrity in front of 19,000 people, only to then crassly declare their attempts to criminalize Ujiri for the offense represent an act of magnanimous international diplomacy? From Patrick Redford at Deadspin, emphasis is again mine:

"Spokesperson Ray Kelly said they did not detain Ujiri on the court because they didn’t want to make a spectacle on national TV:

“We decided to take the high road in light of their victory but will submit a report for complaint,” Kelly said. “We’ve got two countries involved in this. It’s not something we wanted to have happen. It didn’t have to go this route.”

Look, let's cut the crap here for a second; I'm just one lone woman with a word professor and a black belt in "search engine-fu" - if I can punch holes you can drive a truck through in the line of bullshit the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office is selling, there is simply no excuse when mainstream media outlets fail to report everything I just told you alongside critical analysis of spokesman Kelly's clearly fraudulent accusations.

This isn't a question of intelligence, resources or an honest mistake either. As traumatizing video after traumatizing video piles up, it has become virtually impossible for any credible observer to deny the staggering reality of overtly racist police harassment, targeting and brutality any longer; and that certainly includes folks who work in the media. In the age of the smartphone camera, everyone with a a Wi-Fi connection is now constantly inundated with reams of video evidence that fascist pig cops routinely lie under oath with impunity; in such an environment spreading police lies verbatim is not an act of nativity but rather an open embrace of cowardice and complicity.

Today I find myself still among the living nearly five years after Ferguson, four years after the murder of Sandra Bland and a mere two months after the NBA's "Kyle Korver" moment... "and still I see no changes."

We all deserved better than this media minion, cop-sucking clown show; not just the NBA and Masai Ujiri, but every single person who tuned in to get the straight dope and instead left with an ear full of reactionary Gestapo lies the (primarily white) talking heads were too afraid to challenge. For one brief but beautiful moment, the 2019 NBA Finals transcended traditions, borders and all of our wildest expectations; then almost as quickly as it came and amid a cacophony of moronic collaborating stenographers - the cracker fascist establishment snuffed it out with a barrel full of old-fashioned, racist American pigshit.

God damn you Amerikkka. 


- nina illingworth



Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.

Blast From the Past: Human Rights & Pig Empire Imperialism

Editor's note: as part of the writing I do, I frequently find myself collecting and cataloguing thousands of links for later use when I'm sourcing arguments in my articles. Most of those links really only have value in the moment, but some of them (like today's story) are so important and worthwhile that I thought I'd start sharing them from time to time here on this Media Madness blog.

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While I would certainly be the first person to criticize the suggestion that there is any sort of upside to the Trump presidency, it would be foolish to argue that electing an uncouth, petulant fascist who says the quiet part out loud hasn't altered the behavior of mainstream liberal media in some beneficial ways.

For example: when presented with the riddle of how to engage in a perpetually running war of words with the President of the United States, while still supporting the ongoing (and lucrative) imperial project that President is ostensibly running - mainstream corporate media in the Pig Empire has largely responded by creating two Trumps and refusing to acknowledge the existence of both at the same time. Thus, domestic and economic policy Trump is (rightfully) criticized as an unstable, monstrous amateur whose fascist beliefs represent a very real threat to millions of Americans and their democratic institutions. In contrast, foreign policy Trump is praised as decisive and presidential when he supports aggressive military action, and eviscerated as a pathetic pawn of Russian president Vladmir Putin when he doesn't.

Once in a while however, in their efforts to falsely portray Trump and his administration as aberrant outsiders, the media will get its wires crossed and accidentally allow damaging truths about the Pig Empire to slip briefly into the public discourse. Such was the case on December 19th, 2017 during the waning moments of Rex Tillerson's time as Downmarket Mussolini's Secretary of State, when Politico of all outlets published the following (shockingly candid) piece:

Leaked memo schooled Tillerson on human rights 

Let me start by saying that if the entire sad history of Politico was just a run-up to this article, I'd be forced to admit that it was probably worth it. Here you have a US State Department official, with longstanding ties to the Pig Empire propaganda machine across multiple governments, telling Trump's SecState to shut up about Human Rights because we don't really give a crap and it's just a tool to manipulate our "enemies." This is without a doubt one of the most significant moments in US media history, and yet it largely passed by without much note at the time it was published. 

Let's look at some of the juiciest quotes from the article for a moment:

"The May 17 memo reads like a crash course for a businessman-turned-diplomat, and its conclusion offers a starkly realist vision: that the U.S. should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

“Allies should be treated differently—and better—than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,” argued the memo, written by Tillerson’s influential policy aide, Brian Hook."

So - you caught that right folks? The United States absolutely does not give even half a damn about Human Rights except in terms of weaponizing it against state adversaries. Let's keep going:

"Hook’s memo “tells Tillerson that we should do exactly what Russian and Chinese propaganda says we do—use human rights as a weapon to beat up our adversaries while letting ourselves and our allies off the hook,” said Tom Malinowski, who served as an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the administration of former President Barack Obama."

We'll talk more about Malinowski and the overall tone in the article in a moment, but let's keep mining this verdant field for the kind of quotes the propaganda machine isn't supposed to let slip:

“The classic dilemma of balancing ideals and interests is with regard to America’s allies. In relation to our competitors, there is far less of a dilemma. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them,” Hook wrote.

"For this reason," Hook continues, "we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to U.S. relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically."

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"Hook approvingly writes that Ronald Reagan’s "first instinct was always to back allies against adversaries, even in controversial cases, including through his second term." But Jimmy Carter, Hook states, damaged American interests because he "badgered" and undermined U.S. allies like the shah of Iran.

Today, "in the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the [Trump] Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights," Hook writes. "It is not as though human rights practices will be improved if anti-American radicals take power in those countries."

Holy sh*t my friends, this entire piece is a clusterf*ck of truly massive proportions on the propaganda machine's part. Although any fool who observes American foreign policy at work could tell you that the U.S. government doesn't care about human rights, it is truly a rare and momentous occasion to see it laid out so plainly in an official Pig Empire document.

Naturally, the author does provide the war machine with a fig leaf of sorts; the memo is painted as a possible response to a Tillerson speech in which he failed to affirm Pig Empire support for human rights. Furthermore, Politico happily allows Malinowski and an anonymous senior official in the Bush administration to state that Hook's analysis is wrong, or "disappointing" without serious challenge. Finally, the overall tone of the piece seems to strongly imply (as have other media outlets) that the problem is a uniquely Trumpian affair.

This is all, to put it bluntly, utter goddamn hogwash and even a cursory look at US human rights violations or the monstrous behavior of countless Pig Empire allies makes that abundantly clear. Even the piece we're quoting is forced to admit that Hooks is a long time conservative foreign policy wonk who previously served in the Bush II administration:

"Long a familiar face in conservative foreign policy circles, Hook held several positions under President George W. Bush, including assistant secretary of state for international organizations.

Hook's decision to join the Trump administration surprised some in Washington because so many other mainstream conservative foreign policy experts publicly distanced themselves from Trump during the 2016 presidential race. His disproportionate influence at the State Department has unnerved some lawmakers who note that he never had to endure the confirmation process."

In other words, the emperor isn't just naked - he's shaking his testicles up and down Main Street while shouting "I'm a bare-asssed, corpse merchant fraud!" Keep that in mind the next time the US foreign policy establishment (on both sides of the supposed political divide in America) tells you we need to enact regime change in Venezuela and invade Iran to "protect human rights."

- nina illingworth

 

A Brief Thought: Obama, Wall Street & Weaponized Identity Politics - Link

Well my friends; I promised myself we'd shoot for 15 posts and over 20K words this month - here we are on the last day of April, with our 15th post. Hopefully, you've all enjoyed reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing them and May is roughly as productive.

Thank you for all your support guys.

Read "Obama, Wall Street & Weaponized Identity Politics" here.

 - nina

Info-Meme of the Week: El Sid’s Birther Gambit

Editor’s Note: despite the world having gone objectively crazy in the past few days (again) I’ve been battling to catch up on what is now becoming a staggering backlog of topics in a variety of forms. I can’t exactly say I’m winning, but progress is being made; albeit slowly and at the cost of great energy. In the meantime, I’ve decided to take a break and drop today’s Info Meme of the Week a little earlier than I expected to.


What’s the “Info meme of the Week?” Each week, we take a look at one issue or scandal largely being misreported in the media in the form of a single, easy-to-share meme that’s backed up by a few verifiable sources underneath the photo. No fuss, no pontificating pinko blogger telling you what this might all mean – just the facts, in one quick snapshot you can show your barely-literate roommates to force them to stop repeating mainstream media deceptions. 

Today’s IMotW is a two-for-one special including one older meme and one newer meme designed to tell a connected story; we’ve got longtime intelligence trading, rumor-mongering Clinton “ghoul” Sid Blumenthal in our sights as dirt from eight years ago finally spills out and potentially answers an old question – “why did Obama absolutely refuse to let Sid Blumenthal work in Clinton’s State Department?”

Check out the rest of the article today on ninaillingworth.com...