August 20, 2019

Cop Who Killed Eric Garner Fired at Last
Garner's Last Words, 'I Can't Breathe', Became National Outcry Against Policy Brutality
By Hazel Trice Edney

Eric Garner

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City cop who held Eric Garner in an illegal choke hold as he pleaded, “I can’t breathe”, was finally fired and stripped of his pension benefits this week – five years after Garner’s plea became a protest chant and rallying cry for thousands against police misconduct, profiling and brutality across the nation.

“As Mr. Garner balanced himself on the sidewalk on his hands and knees, Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado found that Officer Pantaleo ‘consciously disregarded the substantial and unjustifiable risks of a maneuver explicitly prohibited by the department.’ She found that during the struggle, Officer Pantaleo ‘had the opportunity to readjust his grip from a prohibited chokehold to a less-lethal alternative,’ but did not make use of that opportunity,” Commissioner James O’Neill said at a press conference on Monday.

He continued, “From the start of this process, I was determined to carry out my responsibility as Police Commissioner unaffected by public opinions demanding one outcome over another. I examined the totality of the circumstances and relied on the facts. And I stand before you today confident that I have reached the correct decision…In this case, the unintended consequence of Mr. Garner’s death must have a consequence of its own. Therefore, I agree with the Deputy Commissioner of Trials’ legal findings and recommendation. It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”

They were the long awaited words of activists across the country as well as Garner’s family, which includes five children and Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, who has become a familiar face as she fought for justice for her son who was 43.

In response to O’Neill’s announcement, Carr told reporters she is not finished. She says there are other New York officers who were present but did nothing to prevent her son’s death who should also be fired. The viral video of the killing shows several other officers at the scene.

“We have other officers that we have to go after. You have heard the names. We know the wrongdoing that they have done,” Carr said. “So I would like the press to put it out there, show the pictures, say the names, do the roll call because they all need to lose their jobs.”

“But I’m still out here, I’m out here for the long run. You come out here against me, I’m out here,” she said. “And you cannot scare me away. Yeah Pantaleo, you may have lost your job, but I lost a son.”

Garner said the words 11 times, “I can’t breathe”, before collapsing on the sidewalk in Staton Island July 17, 2014. Pantaleo and other officers had approached him for selling loose cigarettes on the street.

After the police press conference, activist Al Sharpton, president/CEO of the New York-based National Action Network, spoke alongside Garner’s family, saying the firing is to be commended, but it is “nothing to celebrate because Pantaleo will go home a terminated man but this family had to go to a funeral.”

Sharpton says he will continue to press for a law banning chokeholds instead of there being just a departmental policy against them.

Monday’s announcement comes nearly two weeks after Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado, who oversaw Pantaleo’s departmental trial last May and June, recommended that Pantaleo be fired, in part, because she said he was “untruthful” during his interviews with investigators about Garner’s death. She wrote in a report obtained by the New York Times on Sunday that Pantaleo’s denials that he used a choke hold were “implausible and self-serving”.

The report also said that Pantaleo’s “use of a chokehold fell so far short of objective reasonableness that this tribunal found it to be reckless — a gross deviation from the standard of conduct established for a New York City police officer.”

Medical experts testified that the pressure place on Garner’s neck by Pantaleo “caused internal hemorrhaging in Mr. Garner’s neck and was a significant factor in triggering the acute asthma attack which contributed to his death,” Maldonado wrote.

Garner’s daughter, Emerald Snipes, also at the press conference, vowed not to stop fighting for justice – not only concerning her father – but concerning what has become an epidemic of high-profiled police injustices again Black people around the nation.

“It took five years for the officer to be fired,” Snipes said. “I will do everything in my power to never see another Eric Garner."

Pantaleo’s lawyers say they will appeal the firing decision, perhaps keeping the case alive for more years. Regardless, O’Neill is hoping for a peaceful outcome after the long wait.

“Today is a day of reckoning but can also be a day of reconciliation,” he said. “We must move forward together as one city, determined to secure safety for all – safety for all New Yorkers and safety for every police officer working daily to protect all of us.”

August 11, 2019

Democrats’ Political Gifts to Number 45
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - After watching and reading about the highlights of the Democratic Party “debates,” I am convinced that the Democrats, at least those on the debate stages, really don’t believe that Number 45 (aka Donald J. Trump) is a threat to vital interests of this country. If they truly believe what they consistently say and write, they wouldn’t have provided Number 45 and his Trumpettes with a basket full of political gifts to use against their eventual candidate for the presidency. Instead they came off, at least to me, as me, myself and I narcissists, striving for personal attention and future big-time positions in the corporate, academic or political arenas. There is also the possibility of book contracts or jobs as television commentators.

The belief of most of them seem to be that most voters in the country live in urban areas such as Washington, D.C., Manhattan, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia etc. Number 45 knows betters. He practically never campaigns in the large urban centers. Instead he focuses on the majority of the White population in the country who share his basic beliefs. Beliefs that white males haves some kind of divine right to be the dominant force in national and international affairs, that the only immigrants who should be allowed to enter and become citizens of the U.S. should be ones from places like Norway, that black folks should be grateful that they were rescued from “shithole” countries in Africa, that intelligent, strong-willed women are a pain in the you know what, that it would be blasphemous to put a photo of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, and that Dr. Ben Carson is the ideal colored man. And on and on.

The 20 Democrats on those debate stages and most of the American print and broadcast media, progressive and conservative, consistently romanticize the white American voting public as being basically firm proponents of justice and equality for all citizens of the U.S. Again Number 45 knows better. He and those around him are well aware that throughout this country’s history, millions of middle income and working class Whites have voted for their racial biases over their economic interests.

Most of the debaters know damn well that they have absolutely no chance of being elected president of the U.S. in 2020 or any other year. Yet instead of using their time, energy and resources to defeat a con man who they insist is a dire threat to all that they believe in, they will probably continue playing their me, myself and I games. History will judge them harshly.

Finally, a serious Democratic Party would choose Joe Biden as its candidate if he makes a public oath to serve only one term as a transition to the next generation.

August 19, 2019

Zimbabweans 'Reduced to Paupers' Since Mugabe's Departure

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) – It’s hard to believe how far Zimbabwe has fallen since former President Robert Mugabe was ousted in a military-backed coup.

Power cuts now leave citizens without electricity from dawn to long after dusk. Gas is too expensive so families cook on firewood. Bread is unaffordable. Drought has caused failed harvests. And rising inflation has eaten up pensions, leaving the elderly unable to retire with dignity.

Outside Harare, the humanitarian need is greater. The United Nations says more than five million people - almost a third of the population and almost entirely in rural areas – will be in need of food aid. “This year we have more hungry Zimbabweans than ever before,” said Eddie Rowie, the World Food Program’s country director.

Obert Masaraure, the leader of a union that represents rural teachers, said his 30,000 members had been reduced to “paupers”.

“The learners are walking to school on empty stomachs. They are collapsing in class because they are so weak. The teachers can’t pay for their own children’s education. But people are looting millions,” he said.

It is more than a year and a half since Robert Mugabe was removed in a military takeover, and a year since his former right-hand man, Emmerson Mnangagwa, took power after a contested election. Mugabe, 95, has been receiving medical treatment in Singapore since April, an official statement revealed last week.

Most in Zimbabwe hoped that the transition would lead to a change in fortunes for a country once deemed self-sufficient in maize and a major exporter of beef.

Mnangagwa promised democratic reform, a wave of new investment and the prospect of better relations with foreign powers. At rallies, the 77-year-old Zanu-PF loyalist spoke of his country being “open for business” and promised good days ahead.

But exports hit the skids and a terrible drought ended food self-sufficiency. In this week’s NewsDay Zimbabwe, an editorial relayed the author’s emotions. “Some of us feel sad that 39 years after independence – and as we honor this week thousands of our fallen heroes who sacrificed their lives so that the indigenous people regain control of their land - the country is failing each year to feed itself.

“Our gallant brothers and sisters who shed their blood for this land must be turning in their graves - this is definitely not what they hoped for; that we should be going about with begging bowls for food alms in a land of plenty.”

Meanwhile, on the occasion of Heroes Day, opposition leader Nelson Chamisa said demonstrations would soon begin against the ruling Zanu PF to protest the failing economic situation in the country.

Global Information Network creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

Aug. 10, 2019

Uganda Jails Feminist Critic for 'Cyberharassment' of President on Facebook

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) – A prominent university lecturer, poet and gender rights activist has been ordered to serve nine more months in prison for the crime of criticizing President Yoweri Museveni on Facebook.

The sentence outraged rights activists. Joan Nyanyuki, director for East Africa at Amnesty International said: “This verdict flies in the face of Uganda’s obligations to uphold the right to freedom of expression. It “demonstrates the depths of the government’s intolerance of criticism.”

Dr. Stella Nyanzi, a former research fellow at Makerere University in Kampala, drew the government’s wrath for posting comments including one that compared President Museveni to “a pair of buttocks.”

When the decision was announced on Thursday, the scholar gave a passionate speech in which she expressed disappointment with that verdict.

“I intended to annoy Yoweri Museveni. We are tired of his 30 year-long dictatorship. Please find me guilty of offensive communication against Yoweri Museveni Kaguta!” After the sentencing, she lifted her blouse and shook her breasts in a cultural expression of disrespect for the viewer. The audience of women cheered loudly.

Dr. Nyanzi, who has been in jail since November, was acquitted on a second charge, of "offensive communication".

“The mere fact that forms of expression are considered insulting to a public figure is not sufficient ground to penalize anyone,” the Amnesty representative underscored. “Public officials, including those exercising the highest political authority, are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.”

Kenyan photojournalist Boniface Mwangi, writing on Twitter, weighed in: “The Museveni court has jailed Stella Nyanzi but you cannot jail someone who is already free. Stella Nyanzi is artistically free, intellectually free and she is fighting to liberate Uganda from tyranny. She has used the court as a platform for political education.” Her campaigns on issues such as demanding sanitary pads for schoolgirls and gay rights have made her a divisive figure in a country where homosexual acts are illegal.

The troublesome Facebook posts contain profanity-laced vitriol about the president and his wife in a style known as “Radical Rudeness” and the “Necessity of Political Vulgarity” —a  traditional Ugandan strategy for unsettling the powerful through the tactical use of public insult.

“Know our rich history before you think I am the first fighter with words,” Dr. Nyanzi wrote in one post.

“My presence in your Court as a suspect and prisoner highlights multiple facets of dictatorship. I exposed the entrenchment of autocracy. I refuse to be a mere spectator in the struggle to oust the worst dictator.” 

Global Information Network creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.