Eighteen-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri

Ferguson ( Michael B. Thomas:Getty Images) August 21 2015

According to police authorities, on Wednesday morning Ferguson, Missouri police executed a search warrant on a house for what appears to be a routine drug bust. They claim two armed young men took off out the back door & when police in the alley ordered them to drop their guns, one of them opened fire. Police shot one “suspect” dead & the other took off. Eighteen-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey was shot four times. Since the other “suspect” is a witness to what actually happened, he better keep running.

Since Missouri has an open carry law which they proclaim “inalienable” & since they allow the Oath Keepers, a white vigilante group from outside Ferguson, to patrol the Black community with AK-47s, it would be necessary for them to explain why they ordered the two young men to drop their guns. If you can carry an open weapon in a coffee shop, why not your own back yard?

There have of course been protests in the Black community against the shooting of Ball-Bey. To justify the shooting, police claim they found four more guns & crack cocaine in the house. Once again, Missouri is an open carry state so those guns are not illegal. To cover their asses, police claimed the guns were stolen. Yeah sure. And since when is summary execution a legal way of addressing drug possession?

Media reports that ‘some protesters express doubt over the police account of Ball-Bey pointing a gun’. All of them do or they wouldn’t be out there protesting while police are moving in armored vehicles, & responding with tear gas & grenades.

Media also reports ‘the city has been on edge’ since a white police officer shot & killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014. The Black community is “on edge” because their civil liberties are being massively & systematically denied–& that was confirmed in a report by the US Department of Justice.

These protesters were out last night chanting during a march surrounded by riot cops. Our fullest solidarity with them because ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬. And because the Bill of Rights in the Black community matters.

(Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

European Union/Frontex crackdown on Greek-Macedonian border

Greek-Macedonian border (Alexandros Avramidis:Reuters) August 21 2015

And so the EU/Frontex crackdown on refugees coming through Greece has begun full-force–not only with aggression against refugees on the island of Kos but now on the Macedonian border with Greece. Macedonia is not an EU member state but the EU has joint operation agreements with non-member states involving Europol & Frontex to police the borders.

Macedonian authorities declared a state of emergency & deployed riot police & the army in armored vehicles rolling out razor-wire fencing to seal the border with Greece. Witnesses reported they used tear gas & stun grenades to drive refugees, including small children & elderly, back into Greece. According to some refugees in the border assault, families got split up with some being driven back into Greece & others managing to break the military cordon & enter Macedonia.

Those refugees who make it through Macedonia pass through Serbia & still face the razor-wire fence on the Serbia-Hungary border which Hungary is racing to construct. Since most of the refugees move quickly through Macedonia to get further north into Europe, they are not a social service burden on the regime–though fortuitously the crisis does deflect attention from the political crisis facing the Macedonian regime over allegations of corruption, illegal surveillance & repression.The primary reason for the crackdown is not however the regime crisis but EU policies & the EU joint operation agreement with Macedonia.

We’re glad to hear UN refugee agencies find the situation deplorable but wish they would move beyond their usual hand-wringing to condemnations of the EU & Frontex & demand Macedonia remove its troops & re-open the border. One UN official said Greece estimated between 3,000 & 4,000 refugees are stuck in a no-man’s land at the border without access to medical & humanitarian services. That will only increase as the crackdown continues & there is a major human rights crisis to deal with. Human rights crises exist on every major immigration route in the world only because political regimes deny human beings the ancient right of asylum from war, occupation, poverty.

This photo is one incident today of a refugee & his frightened child running from riot police firing stun grenades to disperse them. The barbarism against them will only increase without worldwide expressions of outrage.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)