Tag Archives: Ferguson Missouri

RIP Michael Brown

Michael Brown August 25 2014

Michael Brown, the 18-year-old murdered by a cop on August 9th, is being laid to rest today. Our deepest sympathies to his family. May he RIP.

Justice however isn’t even close to being addressed & won’t be unless massive political pressure continues to support the Black community in Ferguson. The Missouri National Guard was withdrawn after the governor claimed the situation was “greatly improved with fewer incidents of outside agitators interfering with peaceful protesters & fewer acts of violence.” The governor claims the National Guard restored order but didn’t admit the unrest was set off by the murder of an unarmed young man & police assaults on the Bill of Rights.

US Attorney General Eric “Hapless” Holder has ordered a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting & a grand jury is hearing the case against the killer cop. Since Holder is still investigating the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin, no one should hold out much hope for justice from those quarters. Holder said, “It’s going to take time for us to develop all the facts, develop all the evidence & see where the case will ultimately go.” Quite a contrast to how expeditious they can be when they’re going after alleged terrorists. They had 9/11 all wrapped up in a week.

As for those “outside agitators”, we have every right under the Bill of Rights to travel to Ferguson, Missouri to express our solidarity with the Black community. And we sincerely hope (Reverend, my ass!) Al Sharpton does not derail this important civil rights & Black power struggle into prayer meetings & the next election for a “lesser evil”. There’s no objection to praying except when it’s used to replace justice.

(Photo is Michael Brown)

Racism: the fatal flaw of Zionism

Israeli meme

Loath am I to post this repugnant meme from the Facebook wall of a Zionist group (Israel’s Voice) but it goes right to the heart of the fatal political flaw of Zionism: racism. While Palestinians rendered solidarity & Buddhist monks from Tibet flew from India to stand with the Ferguson Black community, Zionists were posting this trash.

It is not only repugnant in its racism but profoundly saddening because Jews around the world long played a central part in social justice in disproportion to their numbers–until Zionism corrupted so many. For decades in the US, socially conscious Jews (religious & secular) were central to the socialist, labor, women’s, & civil rights movements.

Many feminists, including especially Betty Friedan & Phyllis Chesler, have distinguished themselves in the rancidity of their Zionist apologetics. Chesler, who is a windbag, has simply gone off the deep end in her hatred & now spends her senior years writing scurrilous tracts ad nauseam. Combining hatred with flatulence has not served Zionism & has made her even less readable than the psychology books she used to write. It’s probably not an accident that many of these same women played key roles in railroading the independent women’s movement into the Democratic Party.

Zionism teaches social hatred & divides human beings on the basis of superiority & inferiority. That’s why it’s destined for the rubbish heap of history–because hatred is an exhausting emotion. Zionism has run roughshod over human solidarity for far too long.

Stand with the Palestinians! Stand with the Black community of Ferguson!

Mind-boggling courage

Ferguson tear gas woman August 22 2014

This is another image of the defiant young woman in Ferguson now kneeling before the barrage of tear gas & a phalanx of armored vehicles. We have not seen this kind of tough, mind-boggling courage in the US since the Civil Rights & Black Power movements of the 1960s & 1970s.

Dare we say a new era is opening up in the historic struggle against racist tyranny in this country? The achievements of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s continue to reverberate around the world amongst those who struggle against social hatred of every kind. A new day is dawning & the future began in Ferguson.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Unflinching courage against police brutality

Ferguson woman in tear gas August 22 2014

Tear gas is raining down on this young woman standing defiantly in the Ferguson street where riot cops & National Guard are violently attempting to deny the Black community their right to assemble & oppose police brutality. This kind of unflinching courage is exactly what the US power structure fears more than anything else in the world. And they fear it because this kind of defiance is the hope of the future & of social transformation.

This young woman along with the Black community of Ferguson are making history & changing the world by ushering in a new civil rights & Black power movement. Don’t let history pass you by; stand with them. Once again, the world you change will be your own.

Our deepest respect to this young woman & our fullest solidarity with the Black community of Ferguson.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images; Olson was one of the several reporters arrested in Ferguson)

All this military gear to protect the convenience store? Who’s kidding who?

Ferguson trooper August 19 2014

Even if you buy the official police rap that a handful of looters & “outside agitators” (we haven’t heard that epithet since the McCarthy era) are the problem in Ferguson, is this the kind of equipment you use to save a convenience store or the local pizza joint?

Anyone in this country who believes in the Bill of Rights (which is the only salvageable part of the US Constitution, a slave owners document) had better speak now or forever hold your peace because if this isn’t stopped in Ferguson it will become the face of lawlessness in all the US.

(Photo from BBC video)

Streets of Ferguson flare up with police violence

St. Louis Post-Dispaatch August 20 2014

The narrative justifying why Israel used excessive barbarism against Gaza is echoed in why the US is using excessive barbarism in Ferguson. All you have to do is substitute looters for Hamas. State trooper Captain Ron Johnson, the soft cop in the Ferguson operation, is spouting pieties to the media a mile a minute. His latest: “A small number of violent agitators….hide in the crowd & then attempt to create chaos.” It’s a version of the human shield defense used so ignominiously by Israel to justify bombing Gaza into smithereens. Media also reports the protests have been infiltrated by violent looters from as far as New York & California. Is there now an internal passport system in the US to travel from New York to Missouri to render solidarity?

Obama is saying the same tripe from his pulpit in the White House. He’s preaching that the mistrust between Black communities & local police require Americans “to listen & not just shout.” Golly, it would be a whole lot easier to listen if the National Guard weren’t deploying noisemakers & bullhorns to deny residents of Ferguson their right to assemble.

So if it’s only a handful of troublemakers why the hell did the governor send in the National Guard–not to replace local riot cops, but to augment them? Why are they using noisemakers, armored vehicles, tear gas, stun grenades against unarmed protesters just for a handful of people? Why are officials flouting the US Bill of Rights & making it null & void in Ferguson?

Claiming there’s “a dangerous dynamic in the night,” Captain Johnson “urged” protesters to demonstrate during the daytime hours. This is the first we’ve heard the right to assemble is only a daytime right because thousands of vigils & protests are held at night, especially in the summer to escape blistering heat. But Captain Johnson, who talks out of both sides of his ass, claims violent protests “are erupting” at night. From the West Bank in Palestine to the streets of Santiago, Chile to Ferguson, Missouri, it’s an observable phenomenon that when riot cops & soldiers lob tear gas canisters & stun grenades & point loaded assault rifles at unarmed protesters, anger is provoked.

US Attorney General Eric “Hapless” Holder is headed for Ferguson to meet with the FBI & local officials (to get their stories straight) & mount an investigation into the murder of Michael Brown. Don’t hold your breath for justice. After George Zimmerman was acquitted in the vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin, Holder & the Justice Department launched a review to see if Zimmerman could be prosecuted for criminal civil rights charges. That investigation remains buried somewhere in the bowels of US justice. Meanwhile Darren Wilson, the killer cop is still walking the public streets, suspended with pay. A grand jury just began hearing evidence to see if he should be charged with murder. A kangaroo court trial may follow where he’ll walk away scot-free.

This is the front page of yesterdays St. Louis Post-Dispatch; it’s another picture worth a thousand lies. If there are only a handful of looters from New York & California, why all the firepower against unarmed protesters asserting their rights of free speech & assembly under the US Bill of Rights? And if you notice the subtitle here, why are ‘pastors locking their arms to break up crowds’? Why aren’t those pastors (the Reverend, my ass!) Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson–in the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Rev. Ralph Abernathy–leading the popular movement to assert democratic rights? Why aren’t they calling national protest rallies in defense of the Black community in Ferguson or even asking people to converge on Ferguson in a massive show of solidarity & power?

Rallies continue around the US to protest the murder of Michael Brown & the truncation of democratic rights in Ferguson. Grab a placard & join a rally in your town.

(Image from St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Hands up, don’t shoot: Tibetan monks travel to Ferguson to stand with Black community

Tibetan monks in Ferguson August 20 2014

Hands up, don’t shoot!: Buddhist mob violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has been making international news for a while now because hundreds of Rohingyas have been massacred, thousands have had their homes burned down, & hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee for their lives to other countries. (Hundreds were drowned in the exodus, thousands were refused entry to other countries, & many survivors were sent back to Myanmar where anti-Muslim violence continues & includes non-Rohingya Muslims.)

Buddhism cannot be judged by politics in Myanmar. Many remember that in the 1960s Vietnamese Buddhists actively opposed the series of military juntas ruling South Vietnam & were prominent in opposing the US war against Vietnam. Their opposition helped counter anti-communist rhetoric used by the US to justify it’s barbaric war.

It only goes to show you theology has less to do with tyranny than the heritage of colonialism & the often misguided attempts to overcome it–or the accommodation modern regimes are making to neoliberal plunder in hopes of getting in on the take. Those regimes use religious intolerance to enflame sectarian conflict.

Buddhism is as Buddhism does–which is just as true of the Papacy. These Tibetan monks traveled from exile in India to stand with the Black community in Ferguson, Missouri. That placard reads: “From Tibet, Justice for Mike Brown.”

(Photo from the Huntington Post)

Talking truth to power without groveling

Ferguson; taking on the man in charge August 18 2014

Protesters are taking on Capt. Ronald Johnson (in blue uniform), the state trooper who took over police operations in Ferguson. He’s the guy doing the “mea culpa” thing at church services while the National Guard terrorizes the Black community with military occupation & extreme violence.

You can see here the fearlessness & insolence that tyranny hates so much in young people. Does anyone else see disrespect written all over those young men’s faces? You can also see here why Palestinians identify with Ferguson; they’re made of the same tough stuff. Most of all, you can see solidarity isn’t just posturing & well-wishes but a bone-deep affinity–not just in spirit of defiance & demand for justice, but because they stand in opposition to the very same forces of oppression. From Ferguson to Gaza, to Afghanistan & Iraq, to the Central American immigrants coming over the US-Mexico border, there is a common enemy. Oppression thy name is USA. And when you see things that way, that nexus of solidarity goes much deeper & far wider, involving us all.

Don’t let history pass you by. This is the historic moment when Gaza & Ferguson put “an injury to one is an injury to all” back in center place in social transformation.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Obama preaches from the Book of Zionism

Obama on Ferguson August 18 2014

As for Obama on Ferguson? He sounds just as abstract as the Pope on Gaza & the West Bank. According to Obama, “It’s clear that the vast majority of people are peacefully protesting. It’s also clear a small minority of individuals are not.” Not to be outdone by his own banality, he added, Violence “undermines, rather than advances, justice,” & “We must listen, & not just shout. Let’s seek to heal rather than wound each other.”

What a lovely homiletic; stirs the paltry soul–but the protesters are standing up to systematic violence against the Black community, against the summary execution of one of their kids, to overturn the martial law & curfew that denies them their democratic rights to assemble & protest under the Bill of Rights.

Nice try, Prez, but you’re pulling a trick from the Book of Zionist Operation Ethnic Cleansing, Chapter 7: Verse 4: “The word of the Herzl came unto me, saying, I won’t shed a tear for ye or show any pity. Instead, I’ll turn my murderous weapons against ye & my detestable practices will all be blamed on ye who dare to defy tyranny. No media will asketh questions for they have their snouts up my butt & all human rights violations will all be blamed on looters. Amen, sayeth the Prez.”

(Photo of the Prez from Yahoo)