REDEYE 8/9/17

Rise of Noose lynching & KKK
NYT, 7/6 — It was the beginning of the night shift…at the United States Mint in Philadelphia…when a white male coin maker strode…to the workstation of an African-American colleague….carrying a piece of rope….looped and twisted into a hangman’s noose, according to…president of the Mint workers’ union….
It is the latest in a series of reports…involving nooses...that point to the return of the hangman’s rope as a potent expression of racial animus.
Nooses, long a powerful symbol of bigotry directed at African-Americans, have been found hanging from a tree outside the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall; in a gallery at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture; outside an elementary school; and on the campus of American University, where bananas with hateful messages were hanging from nooses on the dame day that the first black woman was set to assume the presidency of the university’s Student Government.
“To me a noose is a lynching,” said Taylor Dumpson…who became the…president….
Nooses have also been found in recent months at a middle school in Florida, at a high school in North Carolina and at a fraternity house at the University of Maryland….At the same time, members of the Ku Klux Klan…appear to be stepping up their public activities. Robe Klansmen appeared at a gay pride march in Florence, Alabama…and the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are planning a rally in Charlottesville, VA….
…The rash of noose cases is part of an uptick in such crimes…that began during last year’s presidential campaign and…has continued…over the election outcome….The hangman’s rope…became a particular object of racial terror in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when 4,700 people…— men…women and children — were hanged from trees, telephone poles and bridges across the nation….
Ms. Dumpson said she grew up knowing….“what a noose was. I knew the history, just as much as I knew the history of the Confederate flag.
Racist arrests for smoking while Black and Latin
NYT, 7/17 — …Black and Latino New Yorkers are far more likely to be arrested for smoking in public than whites, who are just as likely to use marijuana.
These arrests have virtually no  public safety benefit and can cause lasting damage to people who often have had no other contact with the criminal justice system….They can be denied jobs [and] housing….
A new analysis…shows that longstanding racial disparities have persisted. African-Americans and Latinos make up about half of the population but…make up about 85 percent of those arrested for low-level marijuana offenses….
African-Americans are arrested at 15 times the rate of whites in Staten Island and in Manhattan and several times the rate of whites in Queens….
…The study said: “The young people arrested for marijuana possession are ordinary high school and college students and young workers, the latter sometimes building families. They are not career criminals.”
Yemen: UN scraps vaccinations for cholera caused by Saudi-Iran war
NYT, 7/12 — The United Nations…was suspending plans for a cholera vaccination campaign in Yemen because…the ravages of war there would make such an effort ineffective….
… [The] conflict…has crippled the country’s health system and hampered access to…areas threatened by the contagious disease….The number of Yemenis afflicted with cholera reached 313,000 and the death toll exceeded 1,700….
…The outbreak…has deepened a…crisis caused by a…war that has raged for more than two years between a [U.S.-backed] Saudi-led military coalition and Houthi insurgents backed by Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival….
The war had killed about 10,000 people and created the risk of widespread famine in Yemen….Nearly three million people are acutely malnourished.
GW, 7/21 — Cholera is everywhere….The Abs district was the scene of a deadly airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition…that demolished a hospital,…killing 19 people and injuring 24. Many other hospitals have been shut down, hit by airstrikes or turned into military barracks….The MSF cholera treatment center in Abs town alone is receiving 460 patients a day….
The country’s cholera epidemic is spiraling out of control, and has reached more than 300,000 suspected cases….More than 1,600 people have died…nearly half of all the suspected cases are children.
U.S. Airstrikes killing thousands in Iraq and Syria
NYT, 6/19 — The United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State since August 2014 has been killing Iraqi and Syrian civilians at astounding rates. The result has been a “staggering loss of civilian life” as the head of the United Nations…Inquiry…said last week….
Estimates by….Airwars, a watchdog group, says coalition airstrikes have killed nearly 4,000 civilians….One reason for the huge increase…is that the United States is dropping more bombs….In…Mosul….a 500-pound bomb aimed at two snipers there…killed 105 Iraqi civilians on March 17….
The Pentagon will no longer acknowledge then its own aircraft are responsible for civilian casuality incidents:…The United States military has been responsible for 95 percent of airstrikes in Syria and 68 percent in Iraq….The air war began some 22,000 airstrikes ago…