"Black Lives Matter, A Year After Ferguson"

Marking the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at the hand of a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, Professor john a. powell discusses how to create a society in which black lives really do matter in this video from AJ Plus. {h/t Roisin Davis @Truthdig}

Ain't a damned thing holy going on in the "Holy City" for Black folk

"...to be a Negro in this country, and to be relatively conscious -- is to be in a rage almost all the time."

James Baldwin

And rage is exactly what I felt as I scrolled through my Blog List late Tuesday night and came upon this headline at the PINAC site:  South Carolina Cop Arrested for Murder After Video Shows Him Shooting Man in Back.  I clicked on the link and when I got to the second paragraph, I was horrified to find -- this had happened in my own hometown (depending on traffic, a mere 10-15 minutes from where I now live)!

Scrolling through to the end as I sat on the couch with the husband in Florida (my plans to go back to The Gambia this Spring having been sidelined by the IRS, I drove down to see him just to recharge after nearly a year in South Carolina), I said, "Man, look at this shit!!!"  He inched closer, and with our mouths agape, we both watched this:



I counted each report of the firearm to myself as Walter Scott ran away from his murderer.  I could not believe I was seeing this -- on video.  Heart racing and body shaking, I unleashed a trail of epithets (too numerous and w-a-ay too vulgar to repeat here, I assure you).  The husband joined in with his own WTFs, as he snaked his arm around me, pulling me into him.  Though I wished I was home to be a part of whatever had to come after this killing, I was glad I was wrapped up "in the temple of my familiar."

He slowly dozed off, but I couldn't sleep.

As I felt his breathing slow (interspersed with a snort here and there indicating the beginning of a snore-fest), thoughts about the homesickness that had drawn me back to Charleston nearly a year ago by mutual agreement, coupled with the June 20 murder of Denzel Curnell by one of those "Blacks in Blue" less than a month after I'd moved in (particularly those "three missing minutes" from the surveillance tape finally released by the Charleston PD) kept pestering me. I went searching for the initial accounts of what had happened, starting with The Post and Courier, the local  paper of record, and found this: Man shot and killed by North Charleston police officer after traffic stop; SLED investigating:

SLED spokesman Thom Berry confirmed that SLED agents interviewed witnesses and gathered evidence at the scene.“We are investigating the shooting incident itself,” Berry said. “That is the normal protocol whenever there is an officer-involved shooting. ... Once we complete that portion of the investigation, the agents will write up the case file and present it to the 9th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, and someone from that office will determine whether charges should be filed in connection with the shooting.”

James Johnson, president of the local chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, alluded to the officer-involved deaths in Missouri and New York that spurred the “black lives matter” movement when he spoke with reporters at the scene of the violence. He urged the North Charleston community to wait for the conclusion of SLED’s investigation before protesting in the wake of the death.

“I don’t want this to become another Ferguson,” he said, referring to the Aug. 9, 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Three things in the piece worried me immediately: SLED, Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson and Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network -- neither of the three worked out for the Curnell family.

Then I followed the link in the PINAC post to another Post and Courier piece: Day after officer’s arrest, video of shooting death sparks protests, more action:

Ed Bryant, president of the North Charleston chapter of the NAACP, said communication between neighborhood leaders and police commanders had improved since Chief Jon Zumalt left the department in early 2013. But the community’s relationship with the department’s rank-and-file members was still strained, he said.

“There has been a good conversation at the top,” Bryant said. “But nothing has changed at the bottom level.”

Gov. Nikki Haley said in a statement late Tuesday that the shooting “is not acceptable” and not indicative of how most officers in the state act.

“This is a sad time for everyone in South Carolina,” she said. “I urge everyone to work together to help our community heal.”

Why do I get the "Massa, we's sick" feeling from the NAACP guy?  Does he honestly believe the problem is solely "at the bottom level?"  And, given Haley's low people in high places performance during the Baby Veronica, child-trafficking-is-good-for-white-folk case, her statement is ludicrous on its face. She obviously could care less about "community healing" -- although, given her use of $9,355.96 of SC taxpayer money to dispatch two deputies and a SLED agent to Oklahoma, she does know a little about how officers in the state act.

And a little further in, we (not unexpectedly, at least to me) we find this:

Two people filed complaints against Slager during his time with the force, including one man who said the policeman shot him with a Taser for no reason in September 2013. Internal investigators exonerated the officer of any wrongdoing, though the suspect in that case was never arrested.

According to this:  "Documents released by the force show there was one complaint in January 2015 involving failure to file a police report was sustained — though it was unclear what disciplinary action Slager faced, if any...Slager was cleared of another complaint regarding use of force. In that case, a man alleged Slager had used his Taser for no reason and slammed him to the ground in September 2013.  The officer was exonerated upon investigation, documents from the North Charleston Police Department show."

See, this is why I believe in Citizens Review Boards -- because  Internal Affairs is nothing but the fox guarding the henhouse!!  The police get to police the police with no real accountability to the citizens they supposedly serve.

Pastor Thomas Dixon, a community activist, said that he is concerned about outsiders coming into the community to incite violence. He said the outcry of anger so often ends up “tearing down our communities,” and emotions should be diverted to something more constructive than violence.

“Good people get caught up with crazy people,” he said. “The smart reaction is to just gather and peacefully let your voice be heard without any foolishness or craziness.” (emphasis mine)

Careful there Pastor, your words eerily echo those used against Dr. King and the SCLC during both the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Selma -- and I'm sure you recall what he had to say to his fellow clergyman like you about that in his, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  Read it at your leisure, however,  here's a little bit of it to chew on:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. (emphasis mine)

Unlike Pastor Dixon, I proudly and humbly thank the younguns in the struggle today for their  fire this time -- would that plenty more "outsiders," who really get the soul-crushing inhumanity that has, and continues to happen in Charleston, show up in solidarity as they have all over these alleged United States. Until they do, please listen to my beautiful, young sister, Ms. Lauryn Hill explain the plethora of reasons for those "outcries of anger" with her, Black Rage (sketch) below:



Now comes the Mayor's press conference:



There are many point-by-point thoughts I could make about this press conference, but I won't, because I'm tired and it just feels like, "Y'all just need to shut the hell up.  We've fired him, charged him with murder -- what else do you want?!"

But I will say this, all I see it as, is an opportunity for both the mayor as well as the Chief to totally shut down the Black Lives Matter activists -- as if this problem has not been, and still is, an ongoing, far-reaching, INSTITUTIONALIZED and SYSTEMIC one!!  Well, this Salon piece totally debunks that idea, offering a mere smidgen of what's been going on in Charleston just over the last 15 years!  Please do check it out, Family.

However, it seems Mr. Scott's family was relieved at the mayor's announcement.  But I don't think they've bought it all hook, line and sinker -- and they shouldn't. Take a listen:



I didn't know why, but Bobby Blue Bland's song's been playing non-stop in my head since I started writing this post.  Now I know -- I needed to dedicate it to the Scott family, with my sincerest condolences for the brutal, senseless loss, forced upon them by a white supremacist officer in a racist system.  I hope all of you can find some semblance of peace:



Family, in the words of the late, great Fannie Lou Hamer, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" -- aren't you?

Related:
- Media Were Already Running With Police Fantasy When Video Exploded It
- Bystander who filmed Walter Scott shooting: officer 'made a bad decision'
- Walter Scott Shooting: Councilman Says Support 'Hard-Working' Officer
- Walter Scott: protesters demand justice – and an end to police discrimination
- South Carolina police officer who shot fleeing black man 'looked like he was trying to kill a deer in the woods'
- GoFundMe rejects campaign to support officer in fatal N. Charleston shooting
- Walter Scott: Another Senseless Killing Of A Black By Police

"Strange Fruit" -- still just as low-hanging as we ever were

UPDATE: Take a listen as Mychal Denzel Smith from The Nation and former NYPD detective Graham Witherspoon talk some REAL truth to power on Democracy Now:

~#~

Family, Ms. Holiday is singing my heart's song tonight.  Not only is my heart past breaking, it is broken.  From Michael Brown's murderer not being indicted, to 12 year-old, Tamir Rice being murdered by a cop already deemed unfit, to now -- Eric Garner's murderer NOT being indicted (even with a video) -- it has been a soul-murdering week.

I am numbed by the grand jury's verdict in the Eric Garner case -- and enraged.

"Lynchings offer evidence of how defenseless blacks were,  for the defining characteristic of a lynching is that the murder takes place in public, so everyone knows who did it, yet the crime goes unpunished." (emphasis mine)

Lies My Teacher Told Me -- James Loewen

And we are still defenseless it seems.  Here's "A list of unarmed Blacks killed by police" to which we should pay attention.  Family, if you've not ever visited Abagond's blog, please do -- you'll learn a lot of shit!  If nothing else, it should get your minds clicking about the relevancy of Loewen's quote above.  "In public" and "unpunished" -- that's how they roll, because we continue to let them.

I linked to the video of Eric Garner's murder in my 12/01/14 post about the Michael Brown grand jury's, bullshit non-indictment, but I'm posting it now -- because, unless you're a white supremacist, or a "respectability politics" apologist,  there's no way one can look at it and not believe this cop should not have gone to jail:



And after they choked him to death -- they did nothing (WARNING:  You're viewing Mr. Garner's, already dead body in the video below):



Around the 3:20 click, you hear one of the cops ask, "Did anybody call an ambulance?"  Never mind NONE of those charged "to protect and serve," even attempted to perform CPR (Hey, Twitter-verse:  CLEARLY -- Black lives don't matter!).    At the 4:00 click, they're talking to him like he's faking (or covering their asses):  "Sir, EMS is here, answer their questions, Okay?" (so damned respectful -- after they'd all jumped the big, scary Black man and Pantoleo choked him to death, No?).  Then, at the 4:03 click we hear one of them saying, "He can't breathe."  I'm with Mr. Garner's wife -- at WHAT video was the grand jury looking???  Maybe that's why the prosecutors gave all the other officers involved, immunity before testifying.

And what kind of EMS personnel can Black folk expect to respond in NYC, or anywhere in this country for that matter (cute white ones with nice jewelry, it seems)???  From the 4:03 click to the 4:27 click, she's checking for a pulse, and then -- like the officers covering their asses, she talks to him!  "Sir, it's EMS.  C'mon, we're here to help alright.  We're here to help you (inaudible) alright?"  She gave up after that, and by the 5:15 click, Blacks and Browns in Blue standing around should've been ashamed of their damned selves.

By the 5:59 click, they all knew he was dead, trying to get him up on the stretcher.  "Strange Fruit -- Reloaded."

At the 6:35 click, you hear one of them ask, "Why nobody's doing CPR?"  And white bread in the aviator, "I'm a cop" glasses answers, "Because he's breathing (I'm sure he was one of them that got immunity).

Yes, Brother "Sylon R," -- "That's what the f*ck they do."  I'm tired of being low-hanging fruit, Family.  I've raised two sons who look like me -- and I fear for their lives everyday.

The Medical Examiner ruled Eric Garner's death a "HOMICIDE."  Chokeholds have been banned from the NYPD SOP -- and still, this grand jury let this cop evade indictment.  They, and the grand jury in Ferguson, have literally given cops a license to murder us (as if they needed one).

Screw milk dud-head, Charles Barkley, et al!  When will WE  get, that the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy will never make any bones about erasing us after having used us TO BUILD THIS DAMNED COUNTRY???

My beloved ancestor, Mr. James Baldwin addresses it here for me...



Related:
- The Not So Strange Fruit of Racial Murder
- The System That Failed Eric Garner and Michael Brown Cannot Be Reformed
- When the System Provides No Remedies to Torture, You Must Overthrow It
- Tamir Rice
- Can We Stop Police From Shooting Our Boys?
- Protesters decry Eric Garner grand jury vote LIVE UPDATES
- Man That Filmed NYPD Executing Eric Garner Arrested On Gun Possession Charges 
  (hmmmm)

The murders won't stop unless and until, one way or another -- they are made to pay

"First of all, the European reigns; he has already lost but doesn't realize it; he does not yet know that the "natives" are "false natives." He has to make them suffer, he claims, in order to destroy or repress the evil they have inside them; after three generations, their treacherous instincts will be stamped out. What instincts?  Those that drive the slaves to massacre their masters?  How come he cannot recognize his own cruelty now turned against him?  How come he can't see his own savagery as a colonist in the savagery of these oppressed peasants who have absorbed it through every pore and for which they can find no cure?  The answer is simple:  this arrogant individual, whose power of authority and fear of losing it has gone to his head, has difficulty remembering he was once a man; he thinks he is a whip or a gun; he is convinced that the domestication of the "inferior races" is obtained by governing their reflexes.  He disregards the human memory, the indelible reminders; and then above all, there is this that perhaps he never knew:  we only become what we are by radically negating deep down what others have done to us.  Three generations?  As early as the second, hardly had the sons opened their eyes than they saw their fathers being beaten.  In psychiatric terms, they were "traumatized."  For life.  But these constant acts of repeated aggression, far from forcing them into submission, plunge them into an intolerable contradiction, which sooner or later the European will have to pay for."

(Excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's preface to

Frantz Fanon's, The Wretched of the Earth)

I'm sure the title of this post is unsettling for those of you who don't like having your "certainties disturbed" (I could almost SEE the practitioners of the endlessly annoying "respectability politics" clutching their pearls as I wrote it).  However, like Baldwin, Sartre and Fanon in his,  The Wretched of the Earth above (whenever you have the time, please DO read this very important liberation handbook at the link.  Thank you so much Warrior Publications for making it available!) -- it is exactly what I believe.

Since time immemorial we've suffered and died (and continue to do both) at the hands of these jack-booted thugs.  Sometimes pleading, sometimes demanding, sometimes helpless -- we keep asking them, hoping they'll just treat us, "Others" with the dignity and respect every human being deserves.  We've marched, we've tried to conform, some of us have sold out, we've berated one another and we've even gone to historically Black churches (on Father's Day no less) denigrating us (simply, IMHO, to assuage our own sense of loss) -- all to no avail.

All of this, Family is the definition of insanity!  We keep doing the same damned things over and over again and expecting different results.  Aren't you tired??  I sure as hell am!!

I've purposely not written about the murder of Micheal Brown until now because quite frankly, I've been overwhelmed -- by so many things.  Though I've briefly mentioned standing in solidarity with all those beautiful, young people who humbled me with their resolve as they gathered in his name for over 100 days and counting in Ferguson -- I needed to wait.  Wait, until I wasn't so overwhelmed by all that's been going on personally this past, almost year and a half; wait, to see if the white supremacists would get a damned clue and prove me wrong for a change (even though I never expected they would) -- I just needed to wait.

Eerily, I was on the road to Florida to see the husband last Sunday for our 34th wedding anniversary (two years ago, I didn't think we'd be here, but that's another story), alternately listening to BBC and CBC Radio.   Switching between each, around 7 p.m. or so, they both began reporting that the Ferguson grand jury had made a decision -- but it wouldn't be announced for a couple hours (more damned game-playin',  I thought to myself).  My youngest called to check on me as he always does when I'm road-trippin' right after that.  I told him to turn on his TV and keep me posted about what was happening because I couldn't' see it, but knew, "those mofos are gonna let Darren Wilson go free."

~#~#~#~

I say eerily because, in February of this year, after having put the house in the "Belly of the Beast" up for sale, the husband and I had two trips to make: a house-hunting trip to Florida for him, and a meeting on the 15th with the builder in South Carolina for me (more on that later).  We went to Florida first, because the day of the builder meeting coincided with the dedication of the Denmark Vesey Monument in Hampton Park in Charleston and I had to be there for deeply felt personal reasons (more on that later too).  Staying in a hotel as we checked out some places, we were also following the Jordan Davis case in Jacksonville, intermittently watching TV and listening to the radio -- constantly asking each other as we checked, "Got a verdict yet?"

We headed to South Carolina on the 14th, and shortly after our meeting, we heard the verdict -- Guilty!  While not totally what he deserved, he'll be in prison long enough to really know -- that shit he did was foul as hell.

~#~#~#~

About two hours or so after his first call,  the youngest checked in on me again as the BBC cut to Ferguson.  Listening to McCullouch's long, drawn out, bullshit spiel on the radio, I already knew -- Darren Wilson had gotten away with murder.  When the phone rang in the car, he didn't have to say anything.  I said, "Baby, I told you."  I listened, as he angrily vented about the unfairness of it all, then --  I just let loose (suffice it to say, not only was it past warm, it was vitriolic and quite profane). After letting me unload, he said, "Calm down, Mom. Pay attention to the road.  Call me when you get to Dad's and -- take it easy on Dad, he didn't kill Mike Brown" (Little did he know I was also listening to reports on the Tamir Rice killing in Ohio during the trip as well -- and it sure was gonna make that, "take it easy on Dad" thing,  a Herculean task!).

Nervous energy abounding, we both burst out laughing at the same time because he knows us as well as we know ourselves and he knew I was pissed. He knew I'd unload on his society-identified white Daddy as soon as I got there.  I said, "Okay, I love you madly, Man," -- and I kept driving the 20 or so minutes until I got there.

And he was dead-on. Not only was I feeling that familiar "quiet riot" roiling deep in my belly -- I was seething. Talking aloud to myself as I pulled in and parked, I said, "When in the hell are we going to see that none of this shit will ever change until we make them feel what we feel??!!  My head was so filled with all that had gone on before and since.

~#~#~#~

Shortly after closing on the house the end of May, I was assaulted by the death of yet another Black young man in June -- in what we used to call Bayside Manor.  Yes, it was then, and still is -- the "projects" (with a new, and white-folk-acceptable-name til they gentrify it and probably turn them into condos or something like everything else) -- but damn!!   This time though, it was one of our own -- a "Black in Blue," protected by a system, led by the same white man who'd been mayor when I left home at 18 -- 40 years ago!

When I was a more of an integrationist, I was always, more or less, a "joiner" (ΔΣϴ, NAACP, US Navy, Teaching Tolerance, BCCLT, blah, blah, blah).  But, as I continue working to decolonize my mind -- I know today, I ain't none of them (that didn't, however, stop the president of the local NAACP chapter at home, from trying to recruit me when I attended the meeting concerning the murder and the three missing minutes from the surveillance tape finally released by the Charleston PD).  The tape showed the time the off-duty, CPD cop working private security encountered Denzel Curnell, then a three-minute blank, then the time he was dead, in front of the officer's car.  I felt so f*ed up about the "insanity" of it all, I had  to say something -- and I did (beginning at the 21:52 click).

Charleston used to be a city with a "Black Majority" when I was growing up -- not any more.  As one of my favorite commenters, "king of trouble" noted, on another of my favorite commenters, "jefe's" guest post, Anacostia over at Abagond's -- the city has slowly and methodically been, and to date, is successfully -- BLEACHED (and it breaks my damned heart).

Considering this child, IMO had been murdered, the attendees at the meeting were way less than I'd expected (and not even a march was planned or executed).  I told my brother later, "It doesn't matter if the killer was Black -- by day he wore blue and was automatically protected by that! -- and no response?!"  He said, "Welcome home, Deb, welcome home."

~#~#~#~

When the pupples and I walked in, the husband was watching CNN.  I said, "Hey, how you doin' -- I'm NOT in a good damned mood."  He said, "I know, I talked to Alan. already."  As I sat down and watched Ferguson on fire, my first words were, "Dammit!  Go burn down their shit, not ours!!  Then I realized, the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy's plan had always been to just LET it burn (plenty cops armed at the ready for protesters, but no fire trucks, no ambulances -- nothin' in the hood.  Wasn't their shit -- Oh well!).

And when the powers that be trotted out their Sambo/Quimbo puppet to yet again give his presidential words of wisdom, I was really through (yes Family, do re-read Harriet Beecher-Stowe's, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" -- now I understand how we've been focusing on the wrong Negro all this time.  It was Sambo and Quimbo to whom we should've been paying attention)!!  Family, this man is "skin-folk, not kinfolk."  He's no more our people than any of the white supremacists who've bought and paid for him.  As I listened to his voice, all I could think of was dear, old Maxine saying:

~#~#~#~

As I said in the beginning, they must be made to pay.  Be it hitting them in their capitalist pockets as these wonderful, young folk chose in Ferguson, OR --  read Fanon's chapter, "On Violence" at that link up there and let it sink in.  Either is preferable to nothing at all at this point.  However, the onus is not merely on us to do something.  As Mr. Baldwin so succinctly explains here, starting at the 4:41 click -- they've got some shit to figure out themselves.

Family, I'm pretty full about all this (as well as those other things I mentioned above).  I just had to let some of it out right now.  I do plan to write more later, so please bear with me.  Most importantly though, never forget this:

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity”

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

My young Bothers and Sisters holding' it down in Ferguson still -- again, I'm so damned proud of YOU!

Related:
- Enough Is Enough
- No Indictment for Darren Wilson, No Justice for Black Lives
- Chronicle of a Riot Foretold
- As a white mother, I fear for my black son
- Despite Blacks Killed By Cops Here, Ferguson Reaction Unlikely
- Gaps remain in the Denzel Curnell suicide narrative
- Denzel Curnell case: Read the full SLED report

Mr. Randall Robinson -- a Black man for whom I have the utmost respect

My cousin in Charleston called me yesterday and I was glad.  You see, since those murderers in DC killed Miriam Carey, I've been extremely uneasy -- in a rage really.  I needed to talk to someone who knew me well, so I could sufficiently release it before my head exploded.

We talked about a lot of family and home things (young, Veronica Brown's well-being weighs heavily on my mind still), and she let the raging old, foul-mouthed sailor in me spew forth.  As I was telling her how sick and damned tired I was about plenty on the national front (particularly the murders of Ms. Carey and the diabetic, Jack Lamar Roberson in Waycross, GA, as well as the self-immolation of John Constantino on the Mall in DC), she interrupted me,  reminding me of our departed, "strong, Black woman" grandmother:

"You remember how Grandmama used to say she was just weary when people got on her last, damned nerve?"

"Yes," I said, smiling to myself in instant recollection. "That's exactly how I feel, Verne -- I'm so damned weary!"

We simultaneously laughed out loud, then she said, "I can tell!"

The reason I share that little vignette, is because after we hung up I was pensive. I felt she'd helped me let the air out of the tire a little, but as I sat with myself, I thought about Randall Robinson and his book, Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land and I went to my bookmarks to listen to his soothing, worldly and informative voice for about an hour.  Not quite sated though, I decided to get full.  I opened a bottle of wine, sat on my screened porch, put my feet up -- and listened to this wonderful CSPAN BookTV Interview from earlier this year on my laptop:



As I listened to that calm voice, gracefully telling the fullness of our story (and theirs), I felt the rest of that air slo-o-owly seep out of the tire.

This wonderful, 72 year-old Black man -- in his own first-person account -- was coolly expressing for me, a damn-near verbatim confirmation (albeit with way more couth than I can muster these days) of all the legitimately seething, anger I feel for this country and its procession of insecure and selfish, megalomaniacal pseudo-leaders with their global "military footprint" at home and abroad.

Gotti

Blanca

By the end of the video and that bottle of wine -- me and my pupples, Blanca and Gotti had all calmed down (both of them asleep at my feet in the waning Texas sun); the pounding in my head had stopped; I was full, and extremely happy I'd chosen to spend the evening with the esteemed and absolutely honorable, Randall Robinson.  I hope you will be too!


Related:
- Randall Robinson Interview, The Progressive
- Randall Robinson (Books)
- Georgia Police Kill Diabetic After Family Calls 911 For Ambulance
- The Normalization of Violence Against Black Women
- Freedom Rider: Aaron Alexis, Miriam Carey and John Constantino

The white supremacy collective still imposing their hierarchy of human life after all these years

Update: (h/t Nomad @ ironymous) -- Miriam Carey EXECUTED after Baby Removed from car
Update: (h/t Nomad @ ironymous) -- Report: Miriam Carey was fleeing on foot when shot by police

~#~#~#~

I got nothing for Michael Savage, but I agree with him 100% here:

~#~#~#~

From this do-nothing Congress and puppet of a president, who are all literally playing games with the lives of those they claim to "represent," to their bought-and-paid-for media parrots and badge-wearing murderers -- I think it's safe to say, white supremacy, deciding whose life matters and whose does not, is enjoying their greatest heyday since Jim Crow.

I'm sure everyone's seen the video below with Tom Foreman's noxious, "tremendous amount of training actually, in that circumstance, for police to not fire sooner" commentary.



So Tom, let's just go back to that little scene you referenced from the 2:11 click on.  These Keystone Kops had the car surrounded with weapons drawn.  No matter where they were standing, they were close enough to clearly see that, not only was the driver an unarmed, Black woman  -- but that there was a child in the car!

And if, as you say, she was "truly using the car as a weapon" (same meme used when they murdered Sean Bell), rather than just trying to get the hell out of there -- how come she didn't just mow down ALL those fools who were standing right in front of her?

And tell me Tom, what tremendous amount of training did they have that taught them to fire off seven shots at a fleeing vehicle on a public street with pedestrians obviously present? And don't say there weren't any -- it was a pedestrian that shot this footage! Please, stop being so patriarchal, trying to frame this tragic incident for the "white gaze." Some of us can manage to think for ourselves you know!

Words matter, Family. And how they're used matters even more.  As you peruse the links here, I'm certain you'll see what I mean.

Oh and Tom, about that tremendous amount of training?  Guess we, the people will never really know how "tremendous" it is since according to this,  all the law enforcement folks involved have closed ranks -- letting their own foxes guard the henhouse {smdh}:

Brian Leary, a Secret Service spokesman, declined to provide a copy of his agency’s use-of-force or chase policies. Lt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Capitol Police, did the same.

Leary and Schneider declined to comment on the incident at all, including whether their officers knew that Carey’s 1-year-old daughter was in the car when they fired into it, killing Carey. The toddler was unharmed and is in protective custody as authorities work with Carey’s family to properly place the girl.

The shooting is being investigated by the D.C. police department’s Internal Affairs Division. The Secret Service and Capitol Police will determine whether officers followed their departments’ use-of-force policies. The U.S. attorney’s office will decide whether the agents broke any laws, a D.C. police spokeswoman said.

Miriam Carey, shown in a photo from Facebook

When I read this stupid piece over at Roll Call, talking about how the Capitol Police were "protecting and serving without pay," I immediately uttered a few WTFs as I thought, "Protecting & Serving without pay??!!  How 'bout MURDERING an unarmed woman with her child in the car without pay??!!"

Disagree if you want, but I don't, for a second believe, this woman intended to deliberately breach any barriers with malicious intent toward the Changeling or Congress -- but it sure was Joseph Clifford Reel's intent in June of this year!  Family, the video at the link is a definite, must-see. I promise you, it leaves no doubt at all about his intent (not posting it here because that's exactly what he wanted).

Joseph Reel, 32, of Kettering

This 32 year-old white male, purposely rigged his Jeep to breach those same barriers Ms. Carey was accused of trying to breach on Thursday.  But,  unlike the nothing found in Ms. Carey's car, they found 100 rounds of live .45 caliber ammunition; 100 rounds of live .22 caliber ammunition; eight knives of various sizes; two machetes and one hand-held spotting scope, in his Jeep-- at the damned scene!!

And again, unlike in Ms. Carey's home, where they found a letter to her boyfriend which purportedly contained a white powder and discharge papers listing medication for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and an anti-depressant -- when they searched HIS home, they found those items over there on the right, which included two handguns (a Glock and a Taurus); a baseball bat with spikes on the barrel; a sword; a spear; two ballistic vests; four hunting knives and a gas mask!

While Reel faces 10 years in jail and fines, at least he's alive -- and his now, seven or eight-month old son will one day get to know him.  Not so in either case, for Ms. Carey.

Over at OpEdNews, Rob Kall wrote the interesting and on-point, Another Murder by Police which raised questions that no one in the MSM even saw the need to ask as they blabbed on incessantly as if they actually had an original thought, ie:

...whether this was the right thing to do.
...who gave the orders to shoot to kill.
...what efforts were made to determine whether there were any other passengers, let alone a one year old child, in the car.

He made this very astute observation as well -- "Today we live in a police state, where the police, every day, get away with crimes, get away with killing people, usually poor, often black."

Truer words have never been spoken.

In a nutshell, Mr. Reel's white life merited a restrained response.  But, as usual, they decided -- after her car was stopped -- Ms. Carey's Black life did not. Tell me Family, what more will it take for us to recognize that, from top to bottom and from sea to shining sea -- we continue pledging allegiance to a nation run, and "protected" by murderers for whom the lives of "Others" are expendable?

Related:
- Shot Down Like a dog -- Why We Should Not Forget Miriam Carey
- As Police Tactics Questioned, 'Threat of Terrorism' and 9/11 used to justify Miriam Carey's Death
- Capitol Shooting Suspect Miriam Carey's Sisters Come to Her Defense: 'She Was on Medication'
- Post Partum Depression and Miriam Carey: Stopping the Silent Scourge
- Source: Mental health paperwork found at home of Miriam Carey after Capitol chase
- Possible Clues in Fatal Chase, but No Motive
- Miriam Carey: Did the Capitol Hill Police Have to Kill Her?

This, my fellow Americans, is what terrorism looks like -- recognize it? You should, since it continues in our names

Thank you so much Dr. Kohls.

~#~#~#~

The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Un-Censored Version
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

68 years ago, at 11:02 am on August 9th, 1945, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan. That bomb was the second and last atomic weapon that had as its target a civilian city. Somewhat ironically, as will be elaborated upon later in this essay, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan and ground zero was the largest cathedral in the Orient.

These baptized and confirmed airmen did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride. There was no way that the crew could not have known that what they were participating in met the definition of an international war crime (according to the Nuremberg Principles that were very soon to be used to justify the execution of many German Nazis).

It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst considerable chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government had been searching for months for a way to honorably end the war. The only obstacle to surrender had been the Roosevelt/Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese that prolonged the war and kept Japan from surrendering months earlier.

The Russian army had declared war against Japan on August 8, hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war represented a powerful incentive for Japan to end the war quickly and they much preferred surrendering to the US rather than to Russia. A quick end to the war was important to the US as well. It did not want to divide any of the spoils of war with Russia.

The Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had made a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional fire-bombing (using napalm) campaigns that had burned to the ground 60+ major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. That list of protected cities included, at one time or another Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. These relatively undamaged cities were off-limits from incendiary terror bombings but were to be preserved as possible targets for the new “gimmick” weapons of mass destruction.

Scientific curiosity was a motivation in choosing the targeted cities. The military and the scientists needed to know what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead. Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as much as other cities. Little did they know.

Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress that had been christened Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s plutonium bomb was in the bomb bay, code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston Churchill.

The only field test (blasphemously code-named “Trinity”) of a nuclear weapon had occurred just three weeks earlier (July 16, 1945) at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lava rock that resulted from the heat of that blast (twice the temperature of the sun) can still found at the site today. It is called trinitite.

The reality of what had happened at Hiroshima was only slowly becoming apparent to the fascist military leaders in Tokyo. It took 2 – 3 days after Hiroshima was incinerated before Japan’s Supreme War Council was able to even partially comprehend what had happened there, to make rational decisions and to discuss again the possibility of surrender.

But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council was meeting that morning in Tokyo, Bock’s Car and the rest of the armada of B-29s was already approaching Japan – under radio silence. The dropping of the second bomb had initially been planned for August 11, but bad weather had been forecast, and the mission was moved up to August 9.

With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at the primary target, but Kokura was clouded over. So after futilely circling over the city three times, there was no break in the clouds, and, running seriously low on fuel in the process, the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

The history of Nagasaki Christianity

Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest catholic church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral (completed in 1917), but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.

Nagasaki was the location where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549. The Christian community survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of the church in Japan, it became obvious to the Japanese rulers that Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan, and it didn’t take too long for all Europeans to be expelled from the country – as well as their foreign religion. All aspects of Christianity, including the new Japanese converts, became the target of brutal persecutions.

By 1600, being a Christian was a capital crime in Japan. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their new religion suffered torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.

However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the growing Japanese Christian community had built the massive Urakami Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.

Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that the massive Cathedral was one of two Nagasaki landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site 31,000 feet overhead, he identified the cathedral through a break in the clouds and ordered the drop.

At 11:02 am, during morning mass, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. Ground Zero was the persecuted, vibrant, surviving center of Japanese Christianity.

The Nagasaki Christian death count

Since the Cathedral was the epicenter of the blast, most Nagasaki Christians did not survive. 6000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 died as a direct result of the bomb. Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school disappeared into black smoke or chunks of charred remains Tens of thousands of innocent Shinto and Buddhist Japanese also died instantly and hundreds of thousands were mortally wounded, some of whose progeny are still in the process of slowly dying from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium.

What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, destroy Japanese Christianity, American Christians did in 9 seconds. Even today those who are members of Christian churches in Japan represent a fraction of 1% of the population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services is 30. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a thriving church.

"Reasonable fear for his life?" -- a pack of skittles, and a can of tea vs. a damned gun with a bullet, racked in the chamber? Please!

I swore to myself that I would not write a single word about this trial until it was over, and I won't.  But I just cannot hold it all in.  Hell, I have society-identified Black sons -- older than Trayvon, but Black nevertheless.  My soul and heart are just completely overloaded with the fear that this murderer will go free.

Why?  Because it gives the "legally recognized" stamp of approval to a genocide that's been operating in plain sight, but ignored, for eons.

I won't be long here but, my oldest son said to me today, "How is it legal, that a person, carrying a gun, with a bullet racked in the chamber, can follow you, walk up on you (a citizen in these alleged united states) -- and shoot you dead,  just because??!!  Why isn't the state continually hammering the plain illegality of that point??  What about Trayvon's right to defend himself??"

Sadly, all I could say to him was, "Because of the game that is the just-us system in this country, Son."  Lauryn absolutely nails what's happening in the Zimmerman trial right here...



...which is why, like Sister Lauryn:

"If I have to die, oh Lord, that's how I choose to live."  

Slowly but surely, I've realized there is no other alternative...

Nkrumah's, "Challenge of the Congo" an instructive read for the Black Diaspora

"Since CHALLENGE OF THE CONGO was first published in 1967, conflict between progressive and reactionary forces in Africa has sharpened. A point has now been reached where armed struggle is the only way through which African revolutionaries can achieve their objectives. Recent events in Africa have exposed the fallacy of trying to banish imperialism, neocolonialism and settler regimes from our continent by peaceful means. The aggression of the enemies of the African masses continues, and has become more ruthless and insidious. The evidence is all around us."

Kwame Nkrumah -- "Challenge of the Congo" (Conakry, 1 June 1969)

Due in large part to Sis. Affiong's insistence here, I'm finally reading Kwame Nkrumah's, "Challenge of the Congo." It took a little while to locate, but I got it right after I got back from home (which is why I haven't finished that post yet, Amenta!).

But it's a slow read for me because, while the overwhelming depravity and machinations of these self-described, supposedly "civilized" white folk is not surprising, it does tend to conjure up an inordinate amount of anger and yes -- pain, so I have to keep putting it down.  I came across the documentary, "The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba" last night and decided to watch it during one of those reading breaks. Difficult to watch (for a myriad of reasons), but I'm glad I did.  I'm sure it'll help me better focus on what I'm still reading.

Embedding is disabled by request so I can't post it here, but please, if you have 45 minutes, do go to YouTube and watch it. The hubris, barbarity and detachment, with which these murderers discuss Lumumba's death, coupled with their perceived, God-given right to control the world -- is sickening. However, it's also extremely illustrative of the days in which we currently live, where the "usual suspects" are continuing to do what they've always done.

More Nkrumah:

"We must combine strategy and tactics, and establish political and military machinery for the prosecution of the African revolutionary war.  It is only in this way that the aspirations of the African masses can be achieved, and an All-African Union Government be established in a totally free and united Africa."

Family, if we are to culturally survive as a people (some of us are already too far gone), we have GOT to wake the hell up and stop our complicity in this madness and concentrate -- on us! As Nkrumah said, "The evidence is all around us."

Related:
- NEW REVELATIONS POINTS TO THE HAND OF THE bRITS IN THE MURDER OF PATRICE LUMUMBA
- Kimani Gray
- No Country for young, Black men...
- Ramarley Graham
- Sean Bell
- The NYPD Declares Martial Law in Brooklyn

"Burn that m-----f----r down!!"

Like I said before, they had no intention of brining Christopher Dorner in alive:





I suppose this was their idea of a fitting prelude to "Ash Wednesday" {smdh}

Related:
- Is This Fucking Afghanistan?!?!
- The LAPD Got their Man How They Wanted Him: Dead
- LAPD will reopen investigation into 2009 firing of Dorner
- Police seeking Dorner opened fire in a second case of mistaken identity

Does this look like the LAPD is trying to bring Dorner in -- ALIVE?

The photo above is from this article over at Your Black World: Police Shoot 71-Year Old Woman, Mistaking Her Truck for Alleged Cop Killer During Manhunt.

Two women were shot in questionable circumstances after the truck they were driving appeared to be similar to the vehicle driven by a former police officer who is now on the run. One of the women was shot in the hand and the other was shot in the back. The pickup truck they were driving was riddled with bullets as police officers thought the car was being driven by Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer who has been on the run from police. (emphasis mine)

Questionable circumstances?? Given that last sentence above, can somebody please tell me what the hell is questionable?  All those shots came from behind the vehicle!  They couldn't even tell who was driving!  These cops plan on murdering Christopher Dorner (and you too if you have a vehicle that kinda, sorta "matches the description") -- and there's no question about that.

In her, "This man (Chris Dorner) needs to be brought in alive and he needs to be heard."- Michael Ruppert, Ruth Hull over at OpEdNews begins with this:

News helicopters have been banned from viewing the chase. This means law enforcement (is it rogue law enforcement?) doesn't want anyone to see what they are doing. To some, that spells plans for a possible extra-judicial killing. (emphasis mine)

And there's nothing questionable about that either.  Los Angeles doesn't intend to make the same mistake they made in Newtown during Sandy Hook -- that'd be having news helicopters showing, up-to-the-minute reports of something altogether different than what the state was feeding to a gullible public.

My sister, Cynthia McKinney also wrote this over at OpEdNews: Chris Dorner:  "The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it's the police officers."  It contains both Dorner's censored and uncensored manifesto which she categorizes as an "indictment" -- and I agree with her:

I am still digesting. I have read most of his so-called "manifesto" which is posted here. It is not a manifesto. It is an indictment. It makes complete sense to me. I believe all of his allegations and I suspect that Shamar Thomas and Captain Ray Lewis do too. While not condoning, but absolutely understanding his reasoning, I think he is being taken with the utmost seriousness because he can do real damage to institutions and "the s...ystem" as a whole. (emphasis mine)

I'm telling you, I'd take a Cynthia McKinney over a Barack Obama any day of the week!  Why?  Because, just like the LAPD, he takes his orders to kill folk from his puppet masters extremely seriously, as proven by his hubristic "kill lists," drones and warmongering all over the world.  Sister Cynthia on the other hand, has proven  that regardless of the cost to her career, or her very life -- she will stand for something, rather than fall for anything.

The "History of Iniquity"...

Though James Byrd's killer was executed in late 2011 for his brutal dragging death behind a pick-up truck in 1998, the legacy of white supremacist hate behind the wheel endures -- as the faces of the perpetrators get younger and younger: Anthony Hill in June 2010, James Craig Anderson in June 2011 and most recently, Johnny Lee Butts in July 2012.

The local District Attorney's comments at the 6:20 click, made me think of a recent discussion I had with a young brother about, depending on "the courts,"as a means for us to see justice served.  I told him:

"Does it work? Yes, sometimes it does -- but wa-a-ay less than it doesn't. Can it work more? Absolutely! But that depends again, on KNOWING that crooked system and using what we KNOW to fight against the injustices built into it! But trust me, there are plenty of us who are lawyers, more than willing to buy into that system for them "dollar, dollar bills," instead of, fighting its injustice (Exhibit A? The Changeling)!"

And as noted toward the end of the video -- there are probably more attempts, and successes than we can imagine. As I told my young brother in another, earlier conversation, I'm squarely in Lauryn Hill's "court" when it comes to the judicial system in this country:



I'm convinced she's onto something very important to consider, as she beautifully follows-up at the end of the above, with this:



(My young Sister, I hope you're still writing powerful words like those above -- because Lord knows, I miss you!)

Related:
- Kentucky neo-Nazis charged in gruesome murder, dismemberment

The Newtown massacre: crocodile tears, a culture of violence, the hierarchy of human life and -- possible politricks

"People who treat other people as less than human, must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."

James Baldwin

It's amazing how Mr. Baldwin's words, always succinctly capture what I'm thinking.  No matter which meme blanketing the internet into which you buy, the real reasons for the undoubtedly disturbing shootings in Connecticut will, most definitely relate to Baldwin's words.  More disturbing though, were the Changeling's words on Friday (delivered while wiping away tears that I, at least, could not see), along with his follow-up, hypocritical "performance,"  in Newton on Sunday.  And what stellar performances they both were (I won't bother posting the videos.  I'm sure the whole world's seen them both)!

I've been trying to write this post on the shootings since Saturday, but for some reason, I just couldn't get through it (too many glaringly, contrasting thoughts running through my head).  But I was reading about it all, voraciously -- so much so that, rather than y'all listening to my droning, I've been able to knit together an expression of exactly how I feel, through what I've read.  Here's what I came up with:

Lucinda Marshall's,  "A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill:

"The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay."

Ye-e-e-p, she's right on the money there.  I stumbled upon a six-part series on You Tube awhile ago entitled, "Violence:  An American Tradition."  It shows, quite uncompromisingly, how this country's culture of violence -- since its founding -- absolutely confirms Ms. Marshall's statement.  I'm only posting Part 1 - but as the disclaimer says on each part, "Caution:  Contains scenes that may be disturbing to young or sensitive viewers" -- because it, and the other four parts linked here -- are not for the faint of heart!:



Arthur Silber's, God Damn You, America, and Your White, Privileged Grief is one of the closest renditions of my thought, ever.  While there's one section of his post, with which I totally disagree, I can't, not post this:

We've had Cool Obama, and No Drama Obama. Now we have Weeping Obama. Does Weeping Obama "meet privately" with the families of those he has ordered murdered in Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen? Does he even acknowledge those murders -- murders that he himself ordered? Does the "nation reel" in response to these regular, systematic murders of innocent human beings -- many of them children? Does the "nation reel" in response to the Obama administration's repeated public announcements of its Kill List and its Murder Program, a program which intentionally, repeatedly murders innocent people? Does America react with horror to the fact that Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone they want, anywhere in the world, for any reason they choose or invent out of nothing? (emphasis mine)

I'll save my one point of disagreement with Arthur for a later post, because for me -- it requires a "writing about," all its own (and I won't even tell you what part it is right now).  That said, he knocks it out of the damned park on everything else IMO.

This, "Child Casualties as a Result of U.S. Drone Attacks" video, embedded in Glenn Greenwald's, Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate reactions? -- is a stark reminder of the "hierachy of human life" being practiced by many, if not most, of my countrymen:

There's just no denying that many of the same people understandably expressing such grief and horror over the children who were killed in Newtown steadfastly overlook, if not outright support, the equally violent killing of Yemeni and Pakistani children. Consider this irony: Monday was the three-year anniversary of President Obama's cruise missile and cluster-bomb attack on al-Majala in Southern Yemen that ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children: one more child than was killed by the Newtown gunman. In the US, that mass slaughter received not even a small fraction of the attention commanded by Newtown, and prompted almost no objections (in predominantly Muslim nations, by contrast, it received ample attention and anger).

It is well worth asking what accounts for this radically different reaction to the killing of children and other innocents. Relatedly, why is the US media so devoted to covering in depth every last detail of the children killed in the Newtown attack, but so indifferent to the children killed by its own government? (emphasis mine)

If these strikes are as precise, as surgical, as targeted, as the voices of both Panetta and the Changeling adamantly proclaim in the background, what does that say about them, seeing there's more than ample evidence to the contrary?  I don't know about you, but I say they're both -- bald-faced liars.

Next, Khadija Patel of South Africa's, Daily Maverick gave me one helluva V-8 moment about "hierarchy of human life" here, in her, From Gaza to the Congo: Whose blood is more worthy of attention? (do click on her name and read her mini-bio -- gotta love it!):

Three years on, I no longer lay claim to sanity – I sleep too little to qualify – but these same niggling questions about a jaundiced media focus are spilling out in heated verbiage across the world. And it says something about our collective failure as a world that three years on we’re once more talking about Gaza and Goma. These things really do go on and on and on.

On Sunday, British columnist Ian Birrell noted that coverage of the recent conflict in Gaza had eclipsed another deadly conflict happening simultaneously in the eastern Congo.

Birrell described the Democratic Republic of Congo as a “scene of massacres, of mass rape, of children forced to fight, of families fleeing in fear again and again, so many sordid events that rarely make the headlines.”

“It can seem a conflict of crushing complexity rooted in thorny issues of identity and race, involving murderous militias with an alphabet of acronyms and savagely exploited by grasping outsiders. But consider one simple fact: right now, there is the risk of another round breaking out in the deadliest conflict since the Second World War,” he wrote.

Birrell is not alone in his sombre assessment. Others describe the situation in eastern Congo as “the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today.” The charge of a lack of media attention is also not unfounded. Since 1999, when Doctors without Borders first began issuing its top 10 underreported humanitarian crises in the world, the DRC has featured nearly every year.

Just over one week of bombing in Gaza and everybody was up in arms. There were rallies and protests right across the world. In the media, pages and pages of reportage, analyses and testimony. Hundreds of journalists made the trip into Gaza to record first-hand the death and destruction. Together with them, the reports of ordinary Palestinians on social media lent us some clues of the scale of human tragedy unfolding in the homes, the media offices and the refugee camps in Gaza.

And then there’s the Congo...

Two of my friends are currently tramping around Goma wielding recorders and cameras, doing their bit to bring the crisis there to the attention of the world. It’s not that what’s happening there is going altogether unreported. All the major wires carry updates on the situation several times a day. The crisis is certainly not being ignored. It just is not exciting the same kind of fevered attention that Gaza did.

When superstorm Sandy ripped through the Caribbean and then the east coast of the US last month, many media analysts complained that coverage of the hurricane was overwhelmingly skewed in favour of how it affected Americans. No matter that people in Cuba and Haiti as equal citizens of the world also braced the hurricane and also suffered loss and a disruption to their lives, it was the effect of the storm on the US that filled the world’s media. Some analysts and observers of American dominance on the rest of us meek creatures used the asymmetry in media coverage of the storm in the US and outside as the US as proof of the warped focus of global media. (emphasis mine)

It is important that I own my own complicity in not talking about what's happening to people who look like me in the DRC.  All of my writing, with the exception of my limited coverage of Cote d'Ivoire, and the Marikana massacres, have had nothing to do with Congo.  But I have written about pseudo-sister, Susan Rice, so I don't feel too bad. The one statement Rice made, as Slick Willy's Under Secretary of State for African Affairs which forever rests in the nether reaches of my consciousness, is one Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report nails right here:

“We say hands off Ambassador Susan Rice!” Dr. Ron Daniels’ Institute of the Black World, a proudly Afro-centric organization, would do better to demand that Rice and the rest of the Obama administration keep their bloody hands off Africa. Republicans are “hypocrites “ who “have no moral or political authority to stand in judgment of Ambassador Susan Rice!” One can make that argument, but the Institute of the Black World and the rest of us certainly have the right and obligation to stand in judgment of a political operative and ideologue who, according to an article by Michael Hirsch in the Ethiopian Review, cavalierly dismissed the Rwanda/Uganda-sponsored M23 rebel group’s murderous rampages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “It’s the eastern DRC. If it’s not M23, it’s going to be some other group.”  Rice delayed for months publication of a United Nations panel of experts report documenting M23 as a front group for Congo’s neighbors, who have all but annexed the mineral-rich eastern part of the country since invading in 1996, leaving 6 million dead in their wake, half of them below the age of five. Rice and her then boss, Bill Clinton, supplied the money, arms and political cover. As Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, Rice left it up to Washington’s Rwandan and Ugandan puppets to safeguard against genocide. “They know how to deal with that,” Rice is quoted as saying. “The only thing we have to do is look the other way.”

Rice’s African American boosters also choose to look the other way. They shame us all." (emphasis mine)

'Nuf said.

H/T to Sis Carolyn over at Perspectives -- Another Way to View for this great piece by Sikhvu Hutchinson -- Nice White Boys Next Door and Mass Murder:

“Standing in line at the California Science Center the day of the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary school, my students wondered aloud about the race of the shooter. More than likely he was white,” they agreed. As the only people of color waiting to be admitted to the exhibit, their open question about race elicited visible unease from a group of elderly white women across the line from us.

In high school when my friends and I found ourselves at the business end of Inglewood PD officers’ rifles because someone in our car “looked” like a burglary suspect, it was a rite of passage initiation...

But contrary to the rap stereotype of Glock-toting men of color, an overwhelming majority of people of color are pro-gun control, while the majority of the white electorate is not. The high school assailants in the Littleton, Colorado, the Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Santee, California shootings were steeped in a NRA besotted gun culture that fetishizes readily available firearms as the ultimate medium for violent white masculinity.

However, these youth were instantly transformed into symbols of troubled, tragically “misunderstood” teens. National conversations about the perils of bullying dominated the airwaves. It was accepted that these tragic figures were “our boys,” our recklessly wasted youth. It was conventional wisdom that preventive mental health resources could have minimized their inner turmoil. As the bloggers Three Sonorans note in their piece, “White Privilege and Mass Murder in America,” “whenever white men commit mass murders it is just a freak isolated incident, but when we look at other crime statistics for minorities the reason given is that it is something innate to their culture, to their family. It is those people.”

With Columbine there was tacit understanding that these boys’ acts were symptomatic of a potentially imperiled national heritage. Conversely, any time violence erupts in a black or Latino context it’s a racial indictment, an indictment of a community, not a reflection on the rogue acts of lost boys from salt of the earth homes.

As my students and I left the Science center, bracing for more news about the scope of the attack, it was clear that the tragedy would dominate the news for weeks to come. The senseless slaughter of children from the “perfect” town may finally prompt serious bipartisan legislation to curb the barbaric gun lobby. But it will not prompt analysis of the violent masculinity at the heart of whiteness. And if any of these nice white boy shooters had been black the national sentiment would have echoed the biting comment made by my student Jamion: “Send those niggers back to Africa.” (emphasis mine)

Biting is right, and totally on-point IMHO.

On a final note, as I talked to my youngest about the shootings during "family dinner time" last Sunday,  he told me about this -- Libor scandal grows as the fathers of two mass murderers were to testify:

One interesting connection to the tragedy that took place at the Sandy Hook school is that the father of Adam Lanza has a connection to the theater shootings that took place in Aurora earlier this year by James Holmes.

Both fathers of the shooters were allegedly expected to testify in the Libor scandal that rocked the banking world in June.

The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. 16 international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested. (emphasis and interior link on HSBC mine)

While I knew about the Libor scandal, I wasn't aware of any connection whatsoever to either the Aurora or Newton massacres (funny how you think your kids aren't really paying attention to what's going on in the world in which they live -- but they are).  I told him I knew there was a reason I couldn't get this post finished, and this unknown information was probably why!

This story hasn't been officially investigated -- and why would it, if it is, in fact true? After all, the Changeling's appointment of GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt to lead his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness would certainly nip any meaningful digging by the MSM in the bud, no?

I just have to say that I don't believe in coincidences.  And while I still haven't found any smoking guns, the fact that Nancy Lanza had also been previously employed -- on Wall Street, coupled with this, most interesting fact pointed out by commenter, Peter Hyoguchi in the afore-linked piece that:

"Three of Peter Lanza's financial associates from GE Capitol headed to prison because of this fraud. Why would Peter Lanza not be called to testify? James Holmes' father designed the software that assesses national credit scores which is the focus of this Federal trial so why would he not be called to testify? It's unlikely just a coincidence."

Adding to that -- there were, in fact, hearings scheduled (and had) in Congress regarding America's involvement in the Libor scandal (neither Holmes, nor Lanza mentioned, far as I can see)!  Hell, despite the fact that it all may sound circumstantial,  it's certainly enough to have me scratching my head about the murders in both, Aurora and Newton.

Yes, the Changeling has quite a few things regarding human life about which he needs to sincerely squeeze out a tear or two, but I won't hold my breath that he will.  Why?  Because he's a perfectly cast, risk-averse, deus ex machina who always sticks to the dog-whistling, photo-op script he's been given.

Related:
- UBS Libor-rigging settlement exposes pervasive bank fraud
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- Gun rights advocates: Arm our teachers to help stop school shootings
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