Month: December 2014

#Mike Brown a case study in institutional racism


mike brownSince 2008 when he was only 12 years old, Mike Brown was doomed to his fate of lying in the middle of a Ferguson, Missouri road with his brains leaking out of his head  for four and half hours while his parents wailed nearby powerless to help him. His journey towards this rather ignoble end began in 2008 when Barack Hussein Obama was elected president and white people the country over who were against the notion that an African-American should be president decided to take matters into their own hands and mete out punishment on any black male they could. Mike Brown Slain 2As a result Mike Brown didn’t stand a chance that day in August, 2014 when he entered Darren Wilson’s world and that brief encounter which ended with his murder would set the wheels in motion of  institution racism  whereby it was absolutely not possible for him or his family to receive justice. Every institution that is supposed to be responsible for justice in American society was irrevocably stacked against him and every one would collude to make sure his rights would forever be trampled upon and would not see the light of day.

darren wilsonDarren Wilson shot Brown because he refused to be intimidated by a white police officer and Wilson seeing his authority being challenged by a disobedient black boy snapped and gave into a centuries old rage of  the authoritarian class driven by the idea that no black man should ever refuse to do what a white man tells him to do. As a policeman Wilson knew he could set the rules and everything else that followed from his interaction with Brown would naturally go the way he wanted because that’s the way it always has been; there are no repercussions to come from a policeman killing a black man, none.  Wilson’s department rallied around him initially refusing even to give his name to the press corp that gathered to cover this storm; Wilson himself did not write a police report for weeks after the shooting, giving him and his department and the country time to concoct a counter narrative to the one being given by the many witnesses who actually saw the execution.

The media and especially FoxNews and talk radio were willing accomplices in exonerating Wilson of Mike Brown’s murder repeating the now discredited stories first offered up by Wilson himself and eventually by others who were persuaded to give credibility to the lie through sworn grand jury testimony. (More on that in a moment.) This is the same media that has taken every chance to discredit the country’s first black president even if it meant practically swearing allegiance to an adversary.  The

FPD chief Thomas Jackson
FPD chief Thomas Jackson

Ferguson police were openly scornful of the Brown family, the media who they were uncertain of would spin their lies and even the federal government, taking great pains to do any and everything they could to show their contempt for whatever it is they were asked to do or provide. In many cases they gave what was not asked, the video of Brown strong arming the items he stole from the convenience store or withheld items they were asked like information on the shooter or Brown’s autopsy.  All of these machinations were done merely to allow the other parts of the white justice system to gear up and pick up where the FPD left off.

Robert P. McCulloch the Prosecuting Attorney for St. Louis County, Missouri,
Robert P. McCulloch the Prosecuting Attorney for St. Louis County, Missouri,

When it was finally announced there would be grand jury proceedings the prosecutor responsible for conducting it, Bob McCulloch whose police officer father was killed by an African-American refused to recuse himself from the role instead insisting he be removed by the governor of Missouri who insisted it was McCulloch’s call whether to step down. A better dance of abdication could not be choreographed and with that spectacle came the coup de grace, the complete and utter exoneration of Wilson set up by  McCulloch who presented testimony from witnesses he himself said he knew they were lying and were not even present at the shooting they claimed to have seen.  Instead what these witnesses did was regurgitate the story initially put out by Wilson and the press in the days immediately following Brown’s murder. To the institutions of racism, fairness is allowing known liars to lie about an event in the name of full disclosure before a court of law.  So it should come as no surprise that Wilson would not be indicted but rather be sent away with a rather large sum of money….bounty money as it were, for killing an unarmed, surrendering boy. And because he wasn’t charged with a crime and resigned instead of being fired, although I doubt that would make any difference, it’s quite conceivable he could go on to find employment in another police department…possibly Cleveland, Ohio where an

Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann
Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann in the middle

officer with an equally disastrous record as Wilson was hired after being FIRED from a police department and went on to kill a 12 year old Tamer Rice……and continue his killing spree unabated.

This is how racism works in the criminal justice system…..it is systemic and widespread.  Black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than whites and in almost all cases police are not indicted for these at times public executions of citizens. Fix this America!

ISIS the purveyor of death and plunder have nothing else to offer humanity.


I’m glad someone else has figured, although not to the same extent as I have, that ISIS doesn’t have anything to offer.  Like American media it makes its splash with sensationalism but there is no substance attached with it. So says the author of this WashPo piece.

The Islamic State’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.

Services are collapsing, prices are soaring, and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, residents say, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.

Slick Islamic State videos depicting functioning government offices and the distribution of aid do not match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganized, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Islamic State currency has not materialized, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few, and disease is on the rise.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, said a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety. Hepatitis is spreading, and flour is becoming scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, garbage piles up uncollected, and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps on streets crowded with sellers hawking anything they can find, residents say.

The article goes on to say what little this terror group has managed to accomplish is due in large part to western aid groups….those same westerners who are being killed by ISIS for their insane rationale that even this writer can’t fathom.  So there you have it folks a rag tag group of people who offer the world murder and mayhem and not much else that lives on the largesse of people it despises and kills…..almost the perfect recipe for government.

 

An urgent appeal


A US Senate select committee on intelligence today, 12-09-2014 released its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.  Miscellany101 has talked extensively about torture being implemented by America and becoming a form of policy and the report lays it out in startling detail, here. Torture-on-Trial-Waterboard

If you don’t want to read it, the appeal I’d like to make is that you head over to this site and sign the petition that asks the US Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the program carried out by the CIA and all those responsible for it in government and prosecute them under appropriate, relevant and prevailing law.  America must take full responsibility for its role in breaking international law during the debacle that became known as Operation Iraqi Freedom and like countries that have preceded us one way to do that is to bring those within our borders to justice.

Desperation and despair all rolled up into one black male’s pain


I have witnessed far too many times the pain and despair black males have at the realization their lives have no value in America and it’s no more apparent than in this exchange Eric Garner’s step father had with a black citizen of New York city after the announcement by the grand jury there would be no charges against the officer who strangled Garner.  ‘What kind of future do I have’ he asks through his tears  whose presence the question is answered.  It’s a powerful video of hope and despair and gives insight into what drives African-American males

This is Darren Wilson and where he comes from


A lot has been said about the grand jury’s refusal to indict Darren Wilson many saying because of the thuggish reputation of Mike Brown.  However, Wilson has a history of thug like behavior with the civilian population of Ferguson that his supporters conveniently forget.  For them I post this video

Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson police for six years and he worked with colleagues who were as brutal and negligent of citizenship rights as he was.  The story of Henry Davis  and its aftermath is one Darren Wilson was aware since he was working at the FPD during that time.

Henry Davis made a wrong turn from a road leading into Ferguson and his life was changed for the worse. Henry Davis has a first and last name only like someone who is wanted by the FPD but nothing else in common and despite evidence and his own protestations that he was NOT the man FPD was looking for he was arrested and put in a cell late at night where he was brutally assaulted unprovoked by members of the Ferguson police department.

Henry Davis
Henry Davis

He had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for the injuries you see in the photo but to add insult to these injuries the police charged Davis with four counts of “destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him”. Davis spent several days in jail and was released after spending $1,500 for basically doing…………………..nothing but driving down a Ferguson city street, much like Mike Brown was walking down one and all this happened while Darren Wilson was employed by the FPD.  He had nothing to do with this episode of police brutality but he was certainly aware of it.  Why?  Mr. Davis decided to sue the police in a civil case and one of the defendants Police Officer John Beaird testified thusly

“After Mr. Davis was detained, did you have any blood on you?” asked Davis’ lawyer, James Schottel.

“No, sir,” Beaird replied.

Schottel showed Beaird a copy of the “property damage” complaint.

“Is that your signature as complainant?” the lawyer asked.

“It is, sir,” the cop said.

“And what do you allege that Mr. Davis did unlawfully in this one?” the lawyer asked.

“Transferred blood to my uniform while Davis was resisting,” the cop said.

“And didn’t I ask you earlier in this deposition if Mr. Davis got blood on your uniform?”

“You did, sir.”

“And didn’t you respond no?”

“Correct. I did.”

In other words the officer(s) committed perjury, a punishable offense, although he had no problem lying on the stand and directly contradicting his own official police report. This is Darren Wilson’s world; this is where he worked and this is how he expected to be treated and how he expected to treat others and you call Mike Brown a thug?