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READING THE ROOM: EPISODE 1 OF DECEMBER'S "CHRIS BRADY'S SHOW" in The Lower Chambers...Mesa Council Study Session - 12/1/2021

What's with Hizzoner John Giles eyes lately? He's appearing anxious and pale these days..

New City Clerk  is named after closed-door executive Session -

THE GRID (and grimy details) time-stamp 20:00 into a one hour session

Certain items before that a lot of table-talk.... actions on some other controversial items delayed

Jeff McVay gets some air-time  for explanations

 

READING THE ROOM: EPISODE 2 DECEMBER 2021: Mesa City Council Meeting - 12/1/2021

Much adoooo about Mobile Food Vendor Trucks on Power Road while everything else slides by in the fast passage of time and circumstance all in an enclosed chamber.

MESA CITY COUNCIL Thu 12.01.2021

"The Mesa City Council believes that its people, not leaders, are what makes a City great and actively works to encourage citizen participation in the decision-making process. Whether it is through neighborhood meetings, advisory boards and committees, telephone calls and letters, or email, the Mesa City Council sets policies based on the input and needs of its citizens."

HOLD ONTO THAT STATMENT OF BELIEF AND SEE HOW IT WORKS IN REAL LIFE AND TIMES.... or if it doesn't.

 

 

 

STUDY SESSION

If you know nothing about the Mesa City Council, this is your opportunity to start finding out about your elected government.
Where do you want to start?
Try > click here . 
That will bring you to the official city information source for City Council Meetings
You can find all the Agendas & Minutes by hitting the following link for the calendar
http://mesa.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx 

 

MINUTES FOR A BOARD MEETING WAY BACK IN SEPTEMBER

Meeting Name:

City Council Study Session

Agenda status:

Final

Meeting date/time:

12/1/2021 4:00 PM

Minutes status:

Draft

Meeting location:

Lower Council Chambers

Published agenda:	Agenda	Published minutes:	Not available

Meeting video:

Not available

Attachments:

• Meeting Items (2)

Show: Legislation only Legislation only All agenda items

File # Agenda # Type Title Action Result Action Details 21-1336 4-a Appointment Appointments to the Human Relations Advisory Board, Museum and Cultural Advisory Board, and Transportation Advisory Board.     Not available 21-1292 5-a Minutes Transportation Advisory Board Meeting held on September 21, 2021.     Not available

 

=====================================================================

MUCH MORE

Meeting Name:

City Council

Agenda status:

Final

Meeting date/time:

12/1/2021 5:45 PM

Minutes status:

Draft

Meeting location:

Council Chambers

Published agenda:

Agenda

 

Number of Records on the Final Agenda for the City Council Regular Meeting = 24

 

There are contracts for Wire & Cable $814,000,

5 New Side-Loader Refuse Trucks for a total of $2,862,079.67, Purchase of 2500 Resin Chairs for $122,000, Purchase of 3 Thermal Cyclers for DNA Analysis $25,628.10, Police Console Dispatchers for Queen Creek $41,000, a Dollar-Limit Increase to $575,000 for Mesa PD/Fire and

 

This is Contract 4-f with no dollar amount

File #:

21-1267

Type:

Contract

Status:

Agenda Ready

In control:

City Council

On agenda:

12/1/2021

Title:

Use of a Cooperative Contract for a Two-Year Term and Renewal Options for IDEMIA LiveScan Workstations and Equipment (Replacement) for the Mesa Police Department (Sole Source) (Citywide) The Police Department first purchased these types of machines in 2004 and replaced them in 2012. The equipment is used in the booking process, for identification purposes, and other criminal justice functions. The current software used in these machines will no longer be supported by Arizona Department of Public Safety (AZDPS). AZDPS has only approved IDEMIA software to capture photos and communicate with law enforcement agencies. IDEMIA provides a fully integrated LiveScan solution including an AFIS interface, digital image capture, compliance with AZ-DPS AFIS, FBI IAFIS/NGI EBTS, and ANSI/NIST image standards. The initial purchase will be three LiveScan workstations for the Holding Unit and the Department has requested additional capacity to purchase more units as funds are identified. The Police...

Attachments:

1. Council Report

 

 

 

MINUTES: Item 2 from 30 September, 14 October and 21 October, and 15 November

File #:

21-1001

Type:

Minutes

Status:

Agenda Ready

In control:

City Council

On agenda:

12/1/2021

Title:

Approval of minutes of previous meetings as written.

Attachments:

1. September 30, 2021 Study.pdf, 2. October 14, 2021 Study.pdf, 3. October 21, 2021 Study.pdf, 4. November 15, 2021 Regular.pdf

 

 

Liquor License Applications Item 3 . . .There are 5 Items 3a - 3e

Contracts Item 4. . .There are 7 4a - 4g

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resolutions Item 5. . .There are 2 Item 5a and Item 5b

Ordinances Item 6 . . .There are 6

Ordinances Item 7 . . .There are 3

 

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TIME TRAVEL: Maybe, like, time doesn’t even exist, dude. Maybe it’s a construct of our human consciousness as a way to organize and synchronize our sensory inputs

Turning-back-time

Look, we’re not totally ignorant about time. We know that the dimension of time is woven together with the three dimensions of space, creating a four-dimensional fabric for the Universe. We know that the passage of time is relative; depending on your frame of reference, you can slip forward into the future as gently as you please. (You just need to either go close to the speed of light or get cozy with a black hole, but those are just minor problems of engineering, not physics.)

No sense in nonsense —

Why the [expletive] can’t we travel back in time?

If the inability to time travel were a fundamental part of our Universe, you’d expect equally fundamental physics behind that rule.

Paul Sutter - 11/30/2021, 5:30 AM

"But as far as we can tell, we can’t reverse the flow of time. All evidence indicates that travel into the past is forbidden in our Universe. Every time we try to concoct a time machine, some random rule of the Universe comes in and slaps our hand away from the temporal cookie jar. And yet, we have no idea why.

The reasons really seem random; there is nothing fundamental we can point to, no law or equation or concept that definitively explains why thou shalt not travel into the past. And that’s pretty frustrating. It’s obvious that the Universe is telling us something important… we just don’t know what it’s saying. . .Perhaps, however, time travel into the past is, indeed, allowed, but your actions are constrained. Maybe the past already exists and is completely set in stone.

What has happened has simply happened.

If you had the ability to travel back in time and monkey around with the past, then the past should already encode those acts—nothing is new, because it’s literally in the past.

[...]

Maybe, like, time doesn’t even exist, dude. Maybe it’s a construct of our human consciousness as a way to organize and synchronize our sensory inputs. Maybe we’re imposing some deep, fundamental preconceived notion on a Universe that doesn’t care, and so this whole discussion is moot.

This is all part of very legit discussions of philosophy. But let’s see if physics can take a crack at it. After all, if we could (even theoretically) build a time machine, then that would settle a lot of late-night bar bets.

So can we?

Closed time-like curves

Physicists use a very particular language when trying to build time machines: the language of gravity, given to us by old Albert himself in the form of general relativity. That’s because the language of gravity as interpreted in GR is a story of the bending and warping of spacetime. GR is a theory of motion in our Universe and how that motion is tied to the underlying four-dimensional fabric of spacetime.

In GR, matter tells spacetime how to bend, and the bending of spacetime tells matter how to move.

To determine whether we can build a time machine, physicists want to know if it’s possible to construct a spacetime—to find a particular and peculiar arrangement of matter—that allows one to travel into the past.

The goal is to find “closed time-like curves,” or CTCs.

“Curve” means exactly what you think it does—a path through space and time. “Time like” means no cheating—at no point are you allowed to travel faster than light. “Closed” means that the curve meets up back with itself—imagine traveling in one direction, always moving forward, never exceeding light speed. Yet at the end of your journey, you find you’ve arrived in your own past.

That’s a time machine. That’s a CTC.

The weird thing is, CTCs exist! Over the decades we have managed to uncover many solutions of general relativity that allow for backward time travel:

• The (in)famous mathematician Kurt Gödel (yes, that Kurt Gödel) discovered if a universe is filled with uniform dust that was slowly rotating, you could find trajectories in that universe that wind up in their own past.
• You know wormholes, right? Those shortcuts through space? They can also act as time machines. The trick is to take one end of the wormhole and hold it still. Then take the other and accelerate it close to the speed of light. Keep it at that speed for however long you want. Now bring that end back to the original one. The two ends of the wormhole now no longer have synchronized clocks because of the time dilation effects of the near-lightspeed travel. Since one end is in the past of the other end, you can just hop on in and travel back in time.
• Let’s say you had an infinitely long cylinder (maybe you pick it up at your local home improvement store). Rotate that cylinder to nearly the speed of light. If you follow a careful, corkscrew path around the rotating cylinder, then, by golly, you’ll wind up in the past.
• The inside of a rotating black hole is a pretty interesting place, where the competing countercurrents of gravitational and centrifugal forces meet to open a throat in the center of a black hole, creating the possibility of CTCs.

READ MORE -- https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/why-the-expletive-cant-we-travel-back-in-time/

ENTRENCHED CULTURES: It's Never "Just A Few Bad Apples"...A Damning Indictment of Law Enforcement's Unwillingmess To Police Themselves

Intro:  "Plenty of people try to minimize police misconduct by claiming what we witness day after day after day is just the work of a few "bad apples."

That's only half of the adage, though.

The rest of it notes that bad apples spoil the whole bunch.

Keep bad apples around long enough and you're going to have to throw out the bunch eventually.

The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops

Failures

from the mediocre-cops-aren't-helping-out-either dept

Tue, Nov 30th 2021 3:40pm — Tim Cushing

 

SAY Apply this phrase to cop shops and you'll see why cop proponents only half-quote it. Apply this phrase to cop shops and you'll see where it completely fails: not only do bad apples make the good apples worse, but the bad apples have the power to rid the bunch of as many good apples as possible.

An investigation by USA Today shows why it's easy to keep good cops down and enable bad cops to do their worst.

Law enforcement culture has dictated a thin blue line -- one that shields bad cops from accountability and allows even the best of cops to assume the public's unwillingness to turn a blind eye to misconduct makes them the enemy.

But the most dangerous enemies are those behind the blue line. And they must be removed by any means necessary. (Non-paywalled link here.)

To many in law enforcement, snitching against another cop is a betrayal that can’t go unpunished.

Those who enforce this code – the blue wall of silence – have stuffed dead rats and feces into fellow officers’ lockers. They’ve issued death threats, ignored requests for backup, threatened family members and planted drugs on the officers who reported wrong.

Department leaders often condone these reprisals or pile on by launching internal investigations to discredit those who expose misconduct. Whistleblowers have been fired, jailed and, in at least one case, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric ward.  

USA Today has receipts, thanks to public records requests and information given to it by law enforcement whistleblowers.

There are good cops out there. But they're up against a system that equates reporting of misconduct to be a form of treason.

Bad cops and their employers/enablers ensure no good deed goes unpunished.

 

The same silencing of whistleblowers we've observed at the federal level also occurs in state and local law enforcement agencies.

Retaliation abounds.

The "official channels" for reporting wrongdoing often involve officials whose wrongdoing is being reported. And if none of that works, a perverse form of peer pressure is deployed -- one that ensures whistleblowing cops will never have backup if they need it and will be frozen out of transfers and promotions.

> No one is exempt, according to this USA Today investigation. Agencies large and small engage in these unofficial practices.

> Departments well-represented or run by minorities are no better than agencies with white leadership or whose workforce contains mostly white males.

> The presence of a police union may make things worse in terms of accountability, but even agencies without unions regularly punish whistleblowers.

> The only thing that ultimately matters is the profession: an equalization that serves the badge rather than the public.

> This loyalty to each other, rather than their true employers (the general public), aligns law enforcement agencies with the criminal world, where snitching is an unforgivable sin that demands swift and brutal retribution.

Officers who've abused their power are protected by a system that ends the careers of officers who want to see their agencies live up to the ideals they profess.

And, as if the point of this investigation needed to be driven home, a police union has stepped up to confirm the implications of the USA Today report.

Not only is this officer no longer welcome in his own department, but his union has now basically stated it's willing to throw its (paid for by union dues) legal weight behind cops accused of all sorts of malfeasance but will have nothing to do with a cop who has exposed wrongdoing.

An Illinois police union on Wednesday ousted from its membership an officer facing criminal charges for exposing a squad car video that showed his fellow officers slapping and cursing a man dying of a drug overdose.

The case of Sgt. Javier Esqueda, a 27-year veteran of the Joliet Police Department, was featured in September as the first installment of the USA TODAY series “Behind the Blue Wall,” an investigation involving more than 300 cases of police officers over the past decade who have spoken out against alleged misconduct in their departments.

 

Say And as for the constant insinuation that law enforcement agencies harbor millions of "good" cops, contrary to public opinion, it would be nice if bootlickers and police officials could explain anything reported above, much less this damning indictment of law enforcement's unwillingness to police themselves.

Esqueda was one of 30 police officers who signed a letter to congress this summer urging lawmakers to pass protections for police whistleblowers.

Thirty. Out of nearly 700,000. Saying you're for police accountability means nothing if you're not willing to even sign your name to a letter asking federal legislators to stand by those who report wrongdoing.

If you need a better argument for defunding police agencies, this is it.

When a culture is so entrenched it can't be rooted out with gradual reforms, perhaps the better solution is to burn it to the ground and rebuild with better policies and protections in place."

Filed Under: bad apples, blue wall of silence, law enforcement, police, police misconduct 

SOUND-AND-LIGHT SHOW: Cenotaph for Josephine Baker Entry Into The Pantheon in Paris

Readers of this blog site might like to note this is the third post in just one day to honor and celebrate Josephine Baker,

Josephine Baker, music hall star and civil rights activist, enters Panthéon

Angelique Chrisafis

the Guardian

". . .the French-American civil rights activist, music hall superstar and second world war resistance hero, has become the first Black woman to enter France’s Panthéon mausoleum of revered historical figures – taking the nation’s highest honour at a moment when tensions over national identity and immigration are dominating the run-up to next year’s presidential race.

The elaborate ceremony on Tuesday – presided over by the French president, Emmanuel Macron – focused on Baker’s legacy as a resistance fighter, activist and anti-fascist who fled the racial segregation of the 1920s US for the Paris cabaret stage, and who fought for inclusion and against hatred.

Members of the French air force carried a coffin containing handfuls of soil from four places where Baker lived: the US city of St Louis where she was born; Paris, where her music hall performances subverted racial and sexual stereotypes and made her the highest-paid performer of her time; the Château des Milandes, where she lived, in south-west France; and Monaco, her final home. The coffin was placed in a tomb reserved for her in the Panthéon’s crypt. Her family has requested that her body remain buried in Monaco, where she died aged 68 in 1975. Projections outside the hallowed Parisian monument recalled scenes from Baker’s life, which the Élysée Palace called “incredible”, describing her as an exceptional figure who embodied the French spirit. Macron’s office said this was recognition that Baker’s “whole life was dedicated to the twin quest for liberty and justice”.

In a speech, Macron said: “She was on the right side of history every time – she made the right choices, always distinguishing light from obscurity.” He detailed the racist violence of her childhood in Missouri, when as a young child she had to serve rich white families, and was brutally mistreated, in order to provide food for her brothers and sisters. He hailed the comic genius of her Paris cabaret performances that “ridiculed colonial prejudices”.

He said during the second world war she had served France “without seeking glory” and that as a civil rights activist “she defended equality for all above individual identity”. Though born American, Macron said, “no one was more French” than Josephine Baker.

Baker was born in Missouri in 1906, left school at 13 and as a child had witnessed terrifying riots and violence against Black people that resulted in thousands being displaced. She later said her birth city “had a terrible effect on me”. Like other Black American artists arriving in Paris at the time, she moved from the US to escape racial segregation.

> “I just couldn’t stand America, and I was one of the first coloured Americans to move to Paris,” she told the Guardian in 1974.

> “The simple fact to have a Black woman entering the Panthéon is historic,” the Black French scholar Pap Ndiaye, an expert on US minority rights movements, told the Associated Press. “When she arrived, she was first surprised like so many African Americans who settled in Paris at the same time ... at the absence of institutional racism.

There was no segregation ... no lynching. [There was] the possibility to sit at a cafe and be served by a white waiter, the possibility to talk to white people, to [have a] romance with white people,” Ndiaye said.

“It does not mean that racism did not exist in France, but French racism has often been more subtle, not as brutal as the American forms of racism,” he added.

>> Later, as a civil rights activist, she was the only woman to speak at the 1963 March on Washington before Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. She was wearing her French military uniform. In France, she also waged a fight against discrimination, adopting 12 children from different ethnic backgrounds and countries across the world to form what she called a “rainbow” family, who she raised at her chateau in the Dordogne region. She said she hoped their lives would show that “racial hatred is not natural. It’s an invention of man.”

Baker was 19 when she arrived in Paris and became famous for her music hall appearances including dancing the Charleston at the Folies-Bergère cabaret hall wearing a skirt made of fake bananas. France was a colonial power and Baker’s routines are hailed now for the way she subverted colonial fantasies about Black women and the stereotypes they had to face.

[...]

> The ceremony was held on 30 November because that was the date Baker chose to take French nationality through marriage, on the day of her wedding. The process to gain French nationality has been made more difficult since then.

The Guardian view on Josephine Baker: a timely addition to the Panthéon | Editorial

Read more

The ceremony – led by Macron, who chose to give Baker France’s highest honours after her supporters and families had petitioned for years – is seen as a move of political symbolism regarding France’s role as an inclusive society. The debate ahead of next spring’s presidential election has been dominated by hard-right rhetoric over national identity and immigration. The far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who holds convictions for inciting racial hatred, has declared he will run for president to “save” France from being destroyed by immigration.

> Macron’s office said it was a sign of the universal affection for Baker in France that there was complete political consensus around her honours.

Baker died from a brain haemorrhage days after a final smash-hit cabaret show in Paris celebrating her half-century on the stage. She had told a French TV interviewer:

"I don’t like the word hatred … We weren’t put on Earth for that, more to understand and love each other.”

RELATED CONTENT

Josephine Baker Becomes First Black Woman Inducted Into France’s Tomb of Heroes

President Emmanuel Macron hailed the American-born dancer and French resistance fighter as a symbol of unity in a time of sharp division.

By

nytimes.com |

PARIS — Josephine Baker, born in Missouri and beloved of France, whose life spanned French music-hall stardom and American civil rights activism, on Tuesday became the first Black woman to be inducted into the Panthéon, the nation’s hallowed tomb of heroes.

On a gray afternoon, 46 years after her death in Paris, soldiers from the Republican Guard bore a flag-draped coffin up the red-carpeted stairs of the Panthéon, where Ms. Baker joined 75 men and five women, including the author Émile Zola, the scientist Marie Curie, and the resistance hero Jean Moulin. . ."

 

Josephine Baker is first Black woman inducted into France’s Panthéon

By Rick Noack

Washington Post | | Nov 30, 2021

PARIS — More than four decades after her death, American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker made history on Tuesday as the first Black woman to be inducted into the Parisian Panthéon.

In a symbolism-laden procession, soldiers lifted her cenotaph, draped with the French flag, and carried it along a red carpet to the country’s national mausoleum. The coffin contained soil from St. Louis, where she was born; Paris, which she adopted as her home; and Monaco, where she is buried.

Thibault Camus/AFP/Getty Images

Addressing audiences watching on TV and in person, President Emmanuel Macron honored Baker as a woman who was “devoted to our ideals” and stood out as a “war heroine, fighter, dancer, singer, a Black person defending Black people, but first and foremost a woman defending humans.”

Even though Baker was “born American,” Macron said, at heart there is no one “more French than you.” . . .