aaaawwwwww shit, thetan-clear ain't no joke?

Fist tap Vic

wikipedia |  In 1977, Louis Farrakhan rejected Warith Deen Mohammed's leadership and re-established the Nation of Islam on the original model. He took over the Nation of Islam's headquarter Temple, Mosque Maryam (Mosque #2), which is located in Chicago. Its official newspaper is The Final Call. The Nation of Islam does not publish its membership numbers; in 2007, the core membership was estimated between 20,000 and 50,000, but their following was believed to be larger.^[9] Most of the members are in the United States, but there are minority communities in other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago.

Since 2010, under Farrakhan, members have been strongly encouraged to study Dianetics, and the Nation currently claims it has trained 1055 Auditors.^[10]

Written lessons from 1930 to 1934 were passed from W. Fard Muhammad to his student, Elijah Muhammad. These were collected and entitled The Supreme Wisdom. The Nation of Islam continues to teach its followers that the present world society is segmented into three distinct categories. They teach that from a general perspective, 85% of the population are the "deaf, dumb and blind" masses of the people who "are easily led in the wrong direction and hard to lead in the right direction". Those 85% of the masses are said to be manipulated by 10% of the people. Those 10% rich "slave-makers" are said to manipulate the 85% masses of the people through ignorance, the skillful use of religious doctrine, and the mass media.

The third group is referred to as the 5% "poor righteous teachers" of the people of the world, who know the truth of the manipulation of the 85% masses of the people by the 10%. The 5% "righteous teachers" are at constant struggle and war with the 10% to reach and "free the minds" of the masses of the people.^[28]

why most white people won't speak out against racism

Fist tap Dale

Racism is an element, a large element of the system of elite control. Racism’s connections to the Power Elite (i.e. economic oppression, ‘divide and conquer’ strategy) should be revealed in order to better understand how folks who fervently believe themselves not racist, may be unconsciously abetting the functions of racism as it serves the Elite. The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was not racist, which in part made their philosophy and community services and actions so powerful and dangerous to the Elite’s establishment that rested largely on racism’s effects on individuals’ (of all races) consciousness.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal secuics, Hoover hoped to diminish the Party's threat to the general power structure of the U.S., or evrity of the country",^[10] and he supervised an extensive program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate party members, and drain the organization of resources and manpower. Through these tacten maintain its influence as a strong undercurrent.

<sup>After the Panthers were killed, a huge gap was felt in the communities where they lived, and in a short time, the Elite’s approved purveyor of Black Power, The Nation of Islam, moved in and set up programs and local shops like bakeries and grocers. But the Nation of Islam was nothing like the Black Panthers. They brought hatred with them and the tenor of community race relations where they operated changed drastically.  In addition, the Ford Foundation funded race studies programs began at colleges and universities nationwide. On the street, the NOI and in the universities the Cathedral. The street and the academy had been most effectively and inexpensively divided and conquered. These are living memory political realities. They are real examples of the control exerted by the Elite on what folks think, how they think, how they're perceived and how interacted with.

The bottom-up, communitarian socialism practiced by the Black Panther party and boldly demonstrated for all to see was their crime – empowering the community at the local level - will always be perceived by the power elite as a crime.

The Elite benefit from top-down socialism where they, via corporations and government, control the means of production and the GDP, and fulfill every need of every human to the Elite’s own profit advantage. The Left has been convinced by manufactured consent that top-down socialism is an ideal worth striving for. Bit by bit, the make-believe Left has abetted Elite plans for total control to be brought to fruition.

One of the tactical cornerstones of the consolidating elite is “divide and conquer.” This applies in particular to the psychological capture of individuals and hence whole populations through organized religions, and political “party” maneuvering of governments. People or groups that would rise in dissent to oppose the rulers are effectively stymied by their inability to effectively organize collective bottom-up resistance. This is a very effective tactic because all factions or groups are then pitted against one another to argue about secondary issues like religion or politics, rather than attacking the economic control and ownership of the groups – which of course - is identical across all political and religious factions. The “good guys” and “bad guys” are both economic slaves to the consolidating elite.

We the People should be aware of this singular economic control mechanism regardless of personal religious or political preferences.</sup>

court oks barring high IQ's for overseers...,

abcnews |  A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. 

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test. 

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” 

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action. 

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training. 

Most Cops Just Above Normal The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average. 

Jordan alleged his rejection from the police force was discrimination. He sued the city, saying his civil rights were violated because he was denied equal protection under the law. 

But the U.S. District Court found that New London had “shown a rational basis for the policy.” In a ruling dated Aug. 23, the 2nd Circuit agreed. The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover. 

Jordan has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.

lawyer up all you want, but no vengeance no peace...,

politico |  After police in Kenosha, Wis., shot my 21-year-old son to death outside his house ten years ago — and then immediately cleared themselves of all wrongdoing — an African-American man approached me and said: “If they can shoot a white boy like a dog, imagine what we’ve been going through.”

I could imagine it all too easily, just as the rest of the country has been seeing it all too clearly in the terrible images coming from Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown. On Friday, after a week of angry protests, the police in Ferguson finally identified the officer implicated in Brown's shooting, although the circumstances still remain unclear.

I have known the name of the policeman who killed my son, Michael, for ten years. And he is still working on the force in Kenosha.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either.

media treats white criminals (including murderers) better than it treats black victims

HuffPo |  On the afternoon of Aug. 9, a police officer fatally shot an unarmed, black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. Details remain in dispute. Eyewitnesses have said that Brown was compliant with police and was shot while he had his hands up. Police maintain that the 18-year-old had assaulted an officer and was reaching for the officer's gun. One thing clear, however, is that Brown's death follows a disturbingly common trend of black men being killed, often while unarmed and at the hands of police officers, security guards and vigilantes.

After news of Brown's death broke, media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting about the teenager and the incident that claimed his life. Wary of the controversy surrounding the media's depiction of Trayvon Martin -- the Florida teen killed in a high-profile case that led to the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman -- people on Twitter wondered, "If they gunned me down, which picture would they use?" Using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, users posted side-by-side photos, demonstrating the power that news outlets wield in portraying victims based on images they select.

On Monday, Twitter user LordSWVP tweeted out a photo driving home another point: Media treatment of black victims is often harsher than it is of whites suspected of crimes, including murder.

News reports often headline claims from police or other officials that appear unsympathetic or dismissive of black victims. Other times, the headlines seem to suggest that black victims are to blame for their own deaths, engaging in what critics sometimes allege is a form of character assassination. When contrasted with media portrayal of white suspects and accused murderers, the differences are more striking. News outlets often choose to run headlines that exhibit an air of disbelief at an alleged white killer's supposed actions. Sometimes, they appear to go out of their way to boost the suspect's character, carrying quotes from relatives or acquaintances that often paint even alleged murderers in a positive light.

b.s. on overseer wilson's broken eye-orbital...,

dailykos | This story just came out in the past two days. It has repeatedly been used as a cudgel by the racist assholes people defending the cop's killing of Michael Brown. This raises MANY questions ...

The claim is that during the alleged struggle through the open window of the police cruiser, Michael hit the officer in the eye so hard that it broke the bone and caused him to almost go unconscious.

Q - How was Michael Brown able to generate so much power in a punch as to break the officers eye socket when his movements were constrained by the tight quarters inside the cruiser window?

Q - Why was no mention made of this injury until ten days after the shooting? We know that the FPD and SLC prosecutor were throwing everything out there they could find in their efforts to demonize Michael Brown and defend officer Wilson. If his injuries were as bad as they claim, there is no doubt in my mind that they would have been parading photos of his battered face all over the TV machine.

Q - In the autopsy report, the doctor claimed that there were no indications on Michael Brown's body of a physical struggle. Unless the doctor is quite incompetent, one would expect that this analysis included an examination of Michael's hands. If he had hit the cop so hard as to break his eye orbital, one would expect to see trauma to his hand and knuckles. No such trauma was reported.

Q - According to a timeline of the incident, there was an ambulance there within a few minutes as it was responding to another call in the area. While it was reported that they stopped to assess Michael Brown, there is no mention of them providing any sort of medical assistance to Wilson.

Q - In Piaget Crenshaw's video of the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Wilson can be seen wandering around the crime scene and conversing with officers. If he was truly so badly injured it should be apparent in how he appears in the video. His face looked clean, and his demeanor was not that of someone who was severely injured. No attention was being given by any of those present to his supposed injuries.

Q - Far from being attended to and taken to the hospital for care - things one would reasonable expect in such circumstances - officer Wilson DRIVES away in his cruiser. For a man who was moments ago almost knocked unconscious, this seems unreasonable as well. Why would the other officers allow him to drive if he had just undergone such a traumatic experience?

So anyway, in considering all of the available evidence, I highly doubt that Michael Brown broke officer Wilson's eye orbital. But rather, I suspect that IF he indeed has this injury, it is the result of him getting good and drunk and asking one of his cop buddies to punch him in the face to give him an alibi. The timing and other circumstances make this a much more plausible theory than what is being presented on FOX News.

Update as of 1:25 PM PST

First, in answer to those concerned that this diary is speculative and/or does not help the situation ... Yes, it is speculative. So what? In the absence of reliable facts and with the kind of unsubstantiated claims coming from the right wing echo chamber, I think some push-back is warranted.

Second, another question has occurred to me which I believe is quite significant ...

Q - If they were struggling for the officer's gun, and Michael hit him so hard as to almost knock him unconscious, how is it that Michael - a big, strong young man who was NOT nearly unconscious - failed to get his gun from him? It just doesn't sound reasonable.

the dog catcher protects and serves better than these serial-killing STL overseers...,

slate | The St. Louis Police Department's release of video showing the Tuesday killing of 25-year-old Kajieme Powell by two officers has set off discussion of whether the decision to shoot Powell was justified. Initial police accounts of the incident said that Powell was holding a knife in an "overhand grip," had moved to within 3 or 4 feet of responding officers, and was acting erratically. The Huffington Post writes that the video "appears at odds" with that account:

... the newly released cell phone footage undermines the statement, showing Powell approaching the cops, but not coming as close as was reported, with his hands at his side. The officers began shooting within 15 seconds of their arrival, hitting Powell with a barrage of bullets.

In the video, several other people are standing near Powell and don't appear to be obviously in fear for their lives. Officers pull their vehicle up close to him and begin shooting soon after getting out of their car with guns drawn. Writes Vox:

The footage is horrifying to watch, in part for the speed with which it turns from comic to tragic. It begins with a man chuckling over Powell's erratic — but seemingly harmless — behavior. Seconds later, Powell is dead.

On the other side of the argument, it's inarguable that Powell refused officers' orders to drop his knife and then moved toward them. A source told CNN's Jake Tapper that police act under the assumption that a suspect armed with a knife standing within 20 feet will be able to wound them if their weapons are not already drawn:

holding notsee leaders accountable for their heinous acts of aggression...,

quietmike |  Last summer, Inder Comar, Esq. filed a lawsuit against the Bush Administration on behalf of Iraqi refugee plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh. It is a noble attempt to hold the Bush Administration accountable for war crimes and a case that Quiet Mike has been following from the beginning.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice, who is defending the six Bush Administration officials, responded to the lawsuit by requesting that the case be dismissed. The Bush tribe is claiming that the planning of the war occurred within the scope of their employment and therefore they have immunity.

Rather than dismissing the case, the Judge asked for additional information. So Mr. Comar filed a 2nd amended complaint back in June. The amended complaint provides more details about the planning of the Iraq war and when it started.

Comar’s evidence, shows the Bush/Cheney team started planning the invasion of Iraq as far back as 1997. The amended complaint also explains that the war was motivated by personal enrichment and the war was a “crime of aggression.”

if a riot is the voice of the unheard, a beheading is __________________?

salon |  “Is this performance art, at this time, about what it looks like to be out of touch with one’s constituents?” MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry asked a panel of guests on her Sunday program.

“They’re so out of touch,” public radio host Marc Steiner responded. “I mean police brutality and racist attacks against black citizens and people of color are universal in this country. But these folks are so out of touch, they don’t even know how to fake it…. The governor can’t do it. None of them can do it.”

“They’ve never had to,” author Jelani Cobb pointed out. And he’s right—as numerous people have pointed out recently. Ferguson is supermajority black, but its police force is overwhelmingly white, as is its city council. While  some—most notably the renowned MonkeyCage blog—have elucidated the structural forces at work, producing very low black voter turnout in the local, non-partisan, off-year elections (widespread “reforms” of the Progressive Era, during which voter participation fell significantly), Cobb’s recent reporting for the New Yorker took a more critical angle.

First, he took note of the role of felony Missouri’s felon-disfranchisement laws. One local explained, “If you’re a student in one of the black schools here and you get into a fight you’ll probably get arrested and charged with assault. We have kids here who are barred from voting before they’re even old enough to register.” Next, he pointed out that blacks were actually losing ground in terms of political leadership:

Ferguson had, instead, recently seen two highly visible African-American public officials lose their jobs. Two weeks before Brown was shot, Charles Dooley, an African-American who has served as St. Louis County Executive for a decade, lost a bitter primary election to Steve Stenger, a white county councilman, in a race that, whatever the merits of the candidates, was seen as racially divisive. Stenger lobbed allegations of financial mismanagement and incompetence, and worse. Bob McCulloch, the county prosecutor appeared in an ad for Stenger, associating Dooley with corruption; McCulloch would also be responsible for determining whether to charge Darren Wilson. In December, the largely white Ferguson-Florissant school board fired Art McCoy, the superintendent, who is African-American.

As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McCoy’s firing was as shrouded in secrecy as Michael Brown’s killing. Nor was McCulloch’s racial animosity in electioneering anomalous either. Back in 2006, Missouri was ground zero in the GOP’s spurious voter fraud allegations which lay at the heart of the U.S. Attorneys firing scandal. Perhaps most notably, just five days before the election, Bradley Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments against four voter-registration workers—a move contradicting the DOJ’s own guidelines that such actions “”must await the end of the election.”  In short, Republican politics in Missouri have not simply relied on passive racial resentments, rather, they have actively stirred them up.  Such behavior only makes sense in a framework of racial isolation, and hostility.

With all that in mind, it’s easy to follow Cobb’s continuing line of thought on the “Melissa Harris-Perry Show,” as he said, “Being there, the impression you get is that these people remind you of those southern towns in the 1960s who had no idea how their actions looked on television. The television was the thing that made segregation untenable. Because the rest of the world could see and say, ‘This looks barbaric.’”

“ I don’t think that the people here have any sense of how this looks in the broader spectrum, and talking to people in the community about that, and they say, ‘Well, they’ve never had to. If they have control over the power system here, the structure here, who are they accountable to?’ So they’ve never even had to go through the pantomime of accountability before.”

the sins of the fathers on overseer wilson's head...,

NYTimes |  The violence on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., abated on Tuesday night, but hundreds of peaceful protesters continue to gather each day to demand justice in the case of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was shot by a white police officer on Aug. 9. Now it’s up to local and federal officials to show that they are aggressively pursuing that demand. They have a long way to go.

Justice is a process, and it won’t necessarily result in the arrest of Darren Wilson, the officer who fired the fatal shots, as many of the demonstrators say they want. Witness accounts differ sharply on the events leading to the shooting, and it’s impossible to predict whether the grand jury that began hearing evidence on Wednesday will indict Mr. Wilson. But those in charge have an obligation to demonstrate fairness at every step, and that means there cannot be even a hint of bias in the process.

For that reason, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert McCulloch, needs to step aside or be replaced in this case with a special prosecutor by Gov. Jay Nixon. Mr. McCulloch’s parents worked for the St. Louis Police Department, and his father was killed on the job in 1964 by a black suspect while helping another officer. Last week, he gratuitously criticized Mr. Nixon’s decision to put state police officers in charge of the response to the unrest.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that after a shooting in 2000, when two detectives shot two unarmed black men in the town next to Ferguson, Mr. McCulloch failed to bring any independent evidence to the grand jury. He claimed that “every witness” testified that the detectives were defending themselves, but secret grand jury tapes showed that several witnesses did not do so. When the grand jury chose not to indict, he said he supported the decision. That’s why many black elected officials — including Charlie Dooley, the executive of St. Louis County, where Ferguson is — have called for a special prosecutor in the Brown case, and more than 70,000 people have signed an online petition to that effect.

The community will almost certainly reject a decision not to indict Mr. Wilson if the grand jury is led by Mr. McCulloch, but his office has already begun presenting evidence to the 12-person jury (which includes three African-Americans). Mr. McCulloch said Wednesday that the governor should “man up” and make a decision about who will conduct the prosecution before it proceeds too far. Despite the widespread pleas that he should do so, Mr. Nixon has said he does not intend to replace Mr. McCulloch.

The prosecutor and local police departments have shown a disdain for the public with their reluctance to release the evidence they have. For the better part of a week, they refused to release Mr. Wilson’s name or record, and they would not release the 911 tapes or full details of the county autopsy report. The Brown family commissioned its own autopsy, and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. ordered a federal autopsy.

overseer wilson should have been arrested on august 9th...,

salon |  As numerous commentators have already noted, American police have undergone a massive transformation in recent decades. Militarized police departments are on the rise, with no sign of this trend slowing any time soon. It started with the war on drugs in the ’80s, followed by the now-famous “1033 Program,” a federal program that allows the military to sell discount weapons, supplies and munitions to local police departments, capped off finally by a massive infusion of new resources following the Sept. 11 attacks. (And while the 1033 program has earned the bulk of the attention, it’s important to note that it’s “only” provided local cops with $4.3 billion in new supplies, a number dwarfed by the $34 billion the Department of Homeland Security has provided since 9/11.)

There are plenty of great explainers that you can read about how all of this came to be; the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald recently provided a useful summary, as did Amanda Taub for Vox. But even if these accounts do nothing to change your perception of the police today, one must ask: Where does it end? At what point do cops become so weaponized, so hostile to their citizenry and shielded from responsibility or blame that our suspicions of the institution gain merit? And crucially — who gets to decide?

“Not All Cops Are Bad” is a meaningless concept when taken to its logical conclusion

There are clearly limits to the formulation that “not all cops are bad,” and almost everyone would agree that individual “goodness” can become irrelevant when an individual’s actions are in service of a corrupt institution. That American police forces aren’t nearly as amoral as, say, the Gestapo (the secret police of Nazi Germany) is a question of degree, not one of kind. Once we allow that “Not all cops are bad” can’t possibly apply to the Gestapo in any meaningful way, we tacitly acknowledge that there are limits to the formulation more generally. (If comparing American cops to the Gestapo seems hyperbolic, that’s the point.) Whether or not those limits have already been reached by U.S. police departments is irrelevant here. After all, some might find the abuses highlighted by the press in recent years to be not especially extreme or unacceptable given the difficulty of the profession and the enormous challenge of making snap judgments regarding lethal force … but surely, plenty of residents of Ferguson would disagree. Saying “not all cops are bad,” then, becomes dangerously close to saying “people like me get to determine when the conduct of police officers has become bad enough to merit our attention and concern, but people like you don’t.”

The people saying “not all cops are bad” usually aren’t the ones being victimized by “good cops”  Recently, 125 people came together in Missouri to support Darren Wilson. One hundred and twenty-four of them were white.

overseergofuckyourself ray albers suspended for assault with a deadly weapon....,

mediaite |  If you’ve followed Ferguson coverage at all this week, you’re likely aware of video showing an officer pointing his rifle directly at unarmed protestors while threatening “I will fucking kill you!” When reporters and protestors demanded he give his name and badge number, he responded with an ever-so-subtle “Go fuck yourself!” The Missouri branch of the American Civil Liberties Union was rightfully incensed by such pitifully poor cop work that they submitted a letter to Missouri Highway Patrol demanding that Officer Go Fuck Yourself be removed from duty in Ferguson:

overseer, i'm an american citizen. if you want to remain an overseer, don't violate my civil rights!

HuffPo |  But this idea that cops get to say when and where constitutional rights apply is so very, deeply misguided that I am shocked anyone could type it out without coming to their senses mid-sentence. After all, if you want to get kicked off jury duty, the fastest way is just to say, "If the cops arrested her, she must have been doing something wrong." Our entire system of criminal justice is built around the idea that law enforcement officers are imperfect. 

There's an experience I think every reporter has had, at least once: you are filming or photographing something, in public, and a police officer demands that you stop. It is not a request. It is a demand, made with some show of force. On the second demand, as if by training, they usually indicate that they are explicitly ordering you to stop. (A deputy sheriff once sped his SUV, parked about 20 feet away, toward me as a means of punctuating an "order." I had to jump out of its path.) He or she will likely threaten to take your camera, or arrest you. 

It's hard for the average person to wrap their minds around the fact that this sort of thing is fairly commonplace. Most cops, like most people, are nice enough, and generally just trying to do their jobs. They have our respect, because they keep us safe by doing work that is more difficult and dangerous than most. I know a lot of fantastic cops, and I daresay they far outnumber the bad.

Still, I've been threatened by police officers, for doing my own job, on four occasions. Little ol' me, the last guy to cross against the light, without so much as a speeding ticket (still) on my record. In each of those cases, the police officer backed down after being calmly informed that he was a public person in a public space, with no reasonable expectation of privacy. You know, stuff he should already know. I've been lucky, I suppose. I've certainly never been arrested or tear-gassed. 

What has always troubled me most about these incidents -- if you can believe it -- is the inescapable impression that officers really believe they have the right to issue these "orders," under threat of arrest. As if a law meant to allow cops to direct traffic somehow trumps the Bill of Rights. First Amendment? Fourth Amendment? They don't need no stinking constitution. They have guns and handcuffs. And I knew each time that the only reason I wasn't being arrested was because I came across as the type of person with means of recourse.

about facking time: gov. nixon calls for a vigorous prosecution of murdering overseer wilson

thedailycaller |  Not content with a regular prosecution or a vigorous investigation, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said he hopes that Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson will receive a “vigorous prosecution” in the shooting death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

“A vigorous prosecution must now be pursued,” Nixon said in a five minute video address posted to his website Tuesday.

“The democratically elected St. Louis county prosecutor and the attorney general of the United States each have a job to do,” said Nixon, a Democrat.

“Their obligation to achieve justice in the shooting death of Michael Brown must be carried out thoroughly, promptly, and correctly,” said Nixon of investigators.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to visit Ferguson on Wednesday to meet with federal law enforcement officials and community leaders. Forty FBI investigators traveled to Ferguson over the weekend to interview witnesses.

Nixon has not directly justified his call for a strong prosecution. He has not indicated that he has any information on the shooting that has not been made public.

Wilson, a six-year police veteran with a clean disciplinary record, has not even been arrested or charged with a crime. A grand jury is set to convene on Wednesday to determine if he will be charged.

Wilson, who is on paid leave during the investigation, has reportedly claimed that he shot Brown after the man hit him in the face and struggled to gain control of his service weapon.

after choosing not to arrest and charge him, st. louis prosecuting attorney not going to indict overseer wilson...,

cnn |  Bynes said McCulloch's ties with police in the county could cloud his judgment.

McCulloch's father was a police officer and was killed on the job in 1964 by an African-American man, when McCulloch was 12, Magee confirmed to CNN. In addition to his father, McCulloch's brother, an uncle and a cousin all served with the St. Louis Police Department, and his mother worked as a clerk at the department, Magee said.

McCulloch, who as a teenager lost a leg to cancer, made it his career ambition to become a prosecutor. He was quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as telling a reporter, while first campaigning for the office: "I couldn't become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing."

McCulloch has no plans to step aside and Magee said it doesn't have any impact on how he will handle the current case.

"Mr. McCulloch is going to continue to do his job as he was elected to do," Magee told CNN.

While the Justice Department is conducting its own civil rights investigation, Ferguson elected officials are concerned about the local investigation. McCulloch has overseen controversial cases before, some including police officers and black suspects.

The petition being circulated points to a 2000 incident in which two suspected drug dealers were killed by two police officers, McCulloch never brought charges against the officers, concluding they acted in self-defense. A subsequent federal investigation found that the men were unarmed and not moving in the direction of the officers, but because the officers felt endangered, the investigation found that the shootings were justified, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

"He doesn't have the fortitude to do the right thing when it comes to prosecuting police officers," Nasheed said on CNN's "Newsroom" on Tuesday.

Chris King, editorial director at the St. Louis American, an African-American publication, said McCulloch has already "manipulated" the Brown case by the way he is releasing information. The St. Louis County Police released a convenience store video from just minutes before Brown's death that showed a person who resembled Brown stealing a box of cigars.

"All of this information should have come out all at once in group. By leaking out in pieces, he is encouraging this kind of speculation," King said on CNN's "New Day."

Concerns about McCulloch arose again after Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon replaced the St. Louis County Police with the Missouri State Highway Patrol for security last week because he said the initial law enforcement response to the shooting was excessive. McCulloch told CNN affiliate KMOV that the governor had "no legal authority" to make such a move.

lt. governor says kick-ass and impose anglo-american just-us in ferguson...,

mediaite | Missouri’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder called into Fox News with Shepard Smith Tuesday night and expressed his criticisms over the way Governor Jay Nixon (D-MO) has been handling the situation in Ferguson over the last 10 days. 

After playing a clip of Nixon called for “justice for the deceased’s family and a vigorous prosecution,” Smith asked Lt. Gov. Kinder if the officer who killed Brown, Darren Wilson, does not also deserve “justice.” 

“It’s really heartbreaking to see a man elected to an office that high in our state government, the chief executive of Missouri state government, come out with a statement like that that does prejudge the case,” Kinder said. “It would be wrong for a prosecutor to say what the governor said here tonight and it’s wrong for the governor of Missouri to have said it,” he added.

Later, Kinder said he thought the midnight curfew enacted by Nixon was too lenient and he would have pushed for an earlier curfew had he been in charge. He also denounced the “heated rhetoric” from those who have warned that the protesting in the streets will only get worse if the officer is not indicted for murder.

racism in ferguson? what racism?!?!

HuffPo |  The mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, says there's no racial split in his community and that nearly all residents would agree with him, despite over a week of violent clashes between protesters and police over the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white police officer.

"There's not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson," Mayor James Knowles said Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC's "NewsNation" with Tamron Hall. "That is the perspective of all residents in our city. Absolutely."

He later put the level of community support "in the 95th percentile" in terms of how local leaders have been responding to the situation.

A visibly perplexed Hall pressed Knowles on how he could say that, given the week's events: a militarized and mostly white police force has been turning up nightly -- with tear gas, armored vehicles and rubber bullets -- to counter a group of mostly peaceful black protesters furious about the lack of answers surrounding Brown's death. In a city that is 67 percent black, just three of the city's 53 officers are African-American, and reports have found a high incidence of racial profiling. In 2013, 86 percent of Ferguson police stops and 92 percent of their searches were of black people, according to a 2013 report from the Missouri attorney general.

Knowles conceded that more needs to be done to diversify the police force. But he pinned the nightly violence on the streets on a small group of people and said it isn't representative of the community of roughly 22,000.

"The city of Ferguson has been a model for the region about how we can transition from a community that was predominantly white middle-class to a community that is predominately African-American middle-class," Knowles said. "We're all middle-class residents who believe in the same shared values. Those are the things we've been focusing on."

the reality evasion and normotic denial battleships just got sunk...,

Fist tap John Kurman

how the rest of the world sees uhmurkah's shitty drawls....,

WaPo |  In many ways, the chaotic situation in Ferguson, Mo., seems like something that shouldn't happen in America. As WorldViews has noted, many of the hallmarks of the conflict are reminiscent of scenes from the Arab Spring and the Ukraine crisis – our former colleague Max Fisher has even wondered how American journalists would cover Ferguson, if only it weren't happening "here."

There are plenty of foreign journalists reporting on Ferguson, however, and for them, Ferguson is international news. Their coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent unrest can offer a refreshing viewpoint on America's many problems. They can also reveal a lot about how such disturbances are viewed at home.

For most Americans, the most familiar foreign news outlets covering Ferguson will probably be the British ones: Not only is there a shared language, but some British outlets, most obviously the Guardian but also the BBC and the Daily Mail, have made big pushes into the U.S. news market. Notably, some publications are treating the conflict as they might a war zone — the Telegraph has sent its Afghanistan correspondent, Rob Crilly, to cover the protests, for example (he was arrested while reporting this weekend).

British coverage of Ferguson has emphasized the racial drama that lies behind the riots and the scale of the police response. And while Britain has had its own problems with race and riots (most notably the 2011 events in London and elsewhere, also caused by a police shooting involving a young black man), some journalists are struck more by the differences than the similarities. "While the [London riots] were at their worst, people were calling for rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to be used against the rioters," Abigail Chandler of the free newspaper the Metro writes. "Ferguson is a living example of why we should be immensely grateful that those tactics were never used during the U.K. riots."

The German media leveled harsher criticism. Zeit Online, a centrist news site, saw the death of Brown as testimony of deep-rooted racism in the United States and concluded that “the situation of African-Americans has barely improved since Martin Luther King.” The publication went as far as to say that the “dream of a post-racist society, which flared up after the election of [President] Obama, seems further away than ever before.” Such criticism was echoed by its conservative competitor Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of  the biggest newspapers in Germany, which also specifically singled out the U.S. president for his failures: “It seems like mockery that [Obama] is still called the most powerful man on earth.”

Spiegel Online, a centrist, left-leaning publication, discussed Ferguson with Marcel Kuhlmey, an academic who studies police reactions. Kuhlmey told the site that in Germany, “weapons are the last resort, but in the U.S. police officers make use of them much faster” and went on to say that the “last time the German police owned assault rifles [which are being used in Ferguson] was during the Cold War.” The expert concluded that police officers “would never proceed like this in Germany." Fist tap Vic.

zero-sum politics in this beast: dollar dollar bill y'all....,

NYTimes |  POLITICS, wrote the political scientist Harold Lasswell in 1936, is about “who gets what, when, and how.” If you want to understand the racial power disparities we’ve seen in Ferguson, Mo., understand that it’s not only about black and white. It’s about green. 

Back in 1876, the city of St. Louis made a fateful decision. Tired of providing services to the outlying areas, the city cordoned itself off, separating from St. Louis County. It’s a decision the city came to regret. Most Rust Belt cities have bled population since the 1960s, but few have been as badly damaged as St. Louis City, which since 1970 has lost almost as much of its population as Detroit. 

This exodus has left a ring of mostly middle-class suburbs around an urban core plagued by entrenched poverty. White flight from the city mostly ended in the 1980s; since then, blacks have left the inner city for suburbs such as Ferguson in the area of St. Louis County known as North County.

Ferguson’s demographics have shifted rapidly: in 1990, it was 74 percent white and 25 percent black; in 2000, 52 percent black and 45 percent white; by 2010, 67 percent black and 29 percent white. 

The region’s fragmentation isn’t limited to the odd case of a city shedding its county. St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.

Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.

With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people — despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

the issue is about a policeman shooting an unarmed teenager six times while he had his hands up, period.

That's the point that the releases of the "robbery" report and the video were intended to obscure. A nicely calculated effort to derail the conversation, take the spotlight off the unjustified killing, and taint the jury pool. A shrewd piece of political feces-flinging, if not, perhaps, in the public interest. 

  

Based on eyewitness accounts, police statements and the recently released autopsy diagram - here's how that shooting went down:

a.. Wilson sees Brown and Johnson walking in the street and gets a little pissed off.

b.. As he drives by he orders them back onto the sidewalk, using profanity.

c.. Brown mouths off in response to the tone of the order.

d.. Wilson hears that and gets even more angry.

e.. He throws the truck into reverse and races backwards toward the pair.

f.. When the truck stops beside them, a now enraged Wilson throws the the door open with extreme force.

g.. It hits Brown, bounces back and smacks Wilson on the side of the head.

h.. The sudden pain triggers Wilson and all his residual self-restraint evaporates.

i.. He grabs Brown through the open window.

j.. Brown pulls free and starts to run away.

k.. Wilson jumps out into the street, aims at the running Brown, fires and misses.

l.. Brown hears the shot and realizes the danger he's in.

m.. He stops running suddenly (i.e. with a jerk), turns and raises his hands.

n.. Wilson is now fully in the grips of the adrenaline rage.

o.. Wilson aims for the head of the now-stationary Brown and continues firing until he goes down. This is supported by the autopsy diagram of the bullet wounds - if Brown had his hands up when shot, the diagram show a clear clustering of wounds at head level, slightly off to the left

p.. The fatal would in the crown of the Brown's head was probably the result either of Brown falling forward as a result of the earlier shots, or of him being shot while on the ground, as reported by eye witnesses.

This looks to me like a "vengeance execution" fueled by Wilson's steroid use (or something similar), compounded by a massive adrenaline rush that was triggered by the pain of being hit in the head by the police car door.

To put it bluntly, it looks to me as though Wilson got hit in the head by the door and then aimed for Brown's head in retribution.

But one thing is for sure, focusing on the subsequent police riots as "looting" is missing the point.

recall the burning man of tunisia bouazizi?

These humans have a biological limit on how much social inequality they will tolerate. Which means the centuries old econonarrative project will soon crash in the fire of instinctual moral directives of  fairness. Resource extracting banksters and their bought and paid for politicians and overseers should be on notice regarding what's just beyond that signpost up ahead.

why these cats had to be shut down 25 years ago....,

kcpd vs. kcfd political patronage parasites at odds over fatal firefighter niggerization by cop...,

kcfop |  Brothers and Sisters,

By now many of you have heard what happened this morning. A few members of the Kansas City Fire Department hung very large red ribbons with the name Bruno stenciled on them. Those ribbons were hung around the neighborhood belonging to the officer involved last year. Thankfully that officer and his family were out of town and did not have to witness the event. On duty members responded to the scene, but so did a large number of our own FOP brothers and sisters even though they were off.

What happened this morning is unforgivable and I understand how an event like this can bring up emotions that are difficult to deal with. I responded to the scene and met with a number of you. I have read each of your messages and understand the anger. I too am greatly upset about the events that happened today, along with the other events that have happened.

I met with the presidents of Local 42, 3808 and a representative of FOP Lodge 102 on Thursday morning to work out some sort of resolution. I have also been in constant contact with Mayor James, and Chief Darryl Forte'. Everyone involved understands our anger, but we need to try to be sensible about our reactions. I do NOT believe that either of the IAFF unions had anything to do with the recent issues, but their members have.

I am asking each of you to remember that there is a court process to deal with these issues, and we will be using that avenue. We believe that using city resources, shirts and symbols to harass anyone are violations of law and the appropriate measures will be taken. Lastly, I am not asking you to not be upset...you have that right. Just as you have the right to extend professional courtesy in your traffic stops and interactions. Should you choose not to, I understand, but please be polite when you contact any member of KCFD.

We choose this profession our families did not, bringing this fight to our homes is unforgivable. I stand by each of you and ask that you share this message.

political leadership not focused on that parasitic patronage army is no leadership at all!

Governing

NYTimes |  Night after night the streets have attracted disparate groups, some from within Ferguson, and some from hundreds of miles away. As demonstrators gather each evening, it is not unusual to see some people carrying handguns while only a block away parents push their toddlers in strollers. Neither the peaceful protesters nor the hotheaded elements appear to have any direction or a unified leadership.

Many of those on the street say they have shrugged off guidance from elders in the African-American establishment, and even from the Brown family, which has repeatedly pleaded for calm.

One protester, DeVone Cruesoe, of the St. Louis area, standing on Canfield Drive last week said, “Do we have a leader? No.” Pointing to the spot where Mr. Brown was killed, he said, “You want to know who our leader is? Mike Brown.” 

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson arrived at the protest on Friday night. “People were so warm,” he said. “It was that kind of celebration.”

But he said on Saturday morning that the violent tone of the protest reflected anger over police tactics. Ferguson, he said, is “a metaphor for urban America,” where many minorities and poor whites lack access to jobs, transportation and health care. 

Many African-American civic leaders in St. Louis said they were frustrated by their inability to guide the protesters. 

At an emotional meeting at a church on Thursday, clergy members despaired over the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the protest movement and the flare-ups of violence that older people in the group abhorred. 

“We had the so-called power brokers here on Tuesday,” said the Rev. Robert C. Scott, pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Louis, referring to a meeting earlier in the week. “Nothing has changed. It has exacerbated. We should not be on the news looking like Iraq or Beirut.” 

Derrick Robbins, another pastor in attendance, said there had been no negotiations between the police and protesters. 

“Everybody’s trying to be a leader, but it’s not working,” he said. “I wish we could come together and have a unified front. That is not happening.”

Some people have suggested that there is a generational divide. George Richardson, who works for the building department in East St. Louis, said the younger protesters were acting independently, ignoring advice from their parents.

chief struggley's occupation army is a patronage make-work project for what would otherwise be unemployed l00z3rs...,

buzzfeed | Over at the Prime Time Beauty & Barber Shop, a social hub in the black part of town, folks see it differently. “They treat us like criminals,” said barber Branden Turner, who’s worked at the shop for a few years. They described officers routinely waiting for customers to leave so they could give them traffic tickets, search for drugs, or ask them for identification so they could run a background check.

“Everyone knows the statistics,” said Turner, referring to the now well-known figures showing a disproportionate amount of traffic stops and arrests for blacks. “Ask anybody from the city,” he said, meaning St. Louis. “Don’t nobody come in from the city because they know this is one of the most racist places there is.”

In this city of about 21,000 people, the national spotlight has forced residents to grapple with dueling narratives of their relationship to each other and to their government. It’s a tale of two cities that happen to exist in one town: Ferguson. More largely, it’s a tale of two Americas, black and white, that seem to exist in totally different realities and have sharply divergent views on race.

Many black locals welcome the unflattering attention, hoping it might lead to change in a city where whites are only 29% of the population but five of the six city council members, six of the seven school board members, and — as repeated ad nauseam this week — 50 of the 53 police officers.

“We’re tired of being bullied,” said Jayson Ross, a 25-year-old native who has been a regular presence at the nightly protests.

Those demonstrations weren’t just a reaction to the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. They were also a fiery response to years of grievances that were routinely ignored by most of Ferguson’s white residents and by its predominantly white government. It’s the same pent-up fury that sparked protests in small towns made infamous by previous race-related controversies that went national: Sanford, Fla.; Jena, La.; and Jasper, Texas, notable among them.

Regardless of the geographic region, the community response follows a predictable script: White residents almost always find themselves surprised by the simmering discontent of their black neighbors. And why wouldn’t they be? They usually live in a different part of town, no longer segregated by law but by history, custom, and sometimes policy. What’s more, the police and other arms of government treat them with respect. Many white residents don’t think there’s much racial discontent because they just don’t see it.

red ribbon protest: cops were busy cutting these down last night...,

I had to come down to the data center last night, and to my surprise there were thousands of Bruno ribbons tied around lamp posts, parking meters, street lights etc..., downtown in Kansas City. As I sat at a bus stop waiting to catch my ride home, a pair of cops came sauntering up the street arms fully loaded with the red ribbons where they'd been busily walking along and cutting them down.

Adhering to the "don't start none, won't be none" principle, I simply nodded my head in greeting to them as they passed by, because my highest priority was to get home without incident. I did manage to take a few pictures of some of the ribbons. Somebody with deep pockets paid for this substantial act of graphic speaking truth to power. 

judge struggley backpeddling quicker than chief struggley...,

pitch |  Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan Round will not preside over a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Anthony Bruno, who was shot to death by an off-duty Kansas City police officer last December.

Round, who had been a Kansas City police board attorney for about eight years, was assigned last week to preside over the controversial Bruno lawsuit.

But Round recused himself Wednesday after The Pitch published a story in which legal experts criticized him for comments made during a trial that appeared to be protecting the Kansas City Police Department. Round filed the case transfer order but did not say why he was recusing himself. He also did not provide a statement.

The Pitch reported Wednesday that Round had found Nicholas Rose not guilty of resisting arrest in June but guilty of disturbing the peace and careless driving. Rose and about 50 friends were riding motorcycles and doing stunts on Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 40 last year and causing a traffic hazard.

Between the June trial and the July 30 sentencing hearing, Round had learned that Rose was considering an excessive-force lawsuit against the police department and officer Donald Hubbard, who arrested him. (Videos show Rose doing a wheelie and bumping the back of Hubbard’s patrol car. Videos also show Hubbard jumping out of his patrol car, grabbing Rose and throwing him to the ground. Hubbard later told officers that Rose was trying to flee the scene and trying to hit him with his helmet.)

Round, who was appointed to the bench this year, called Rose a “vulture” and sentenced him to two weeks of shock incarceration. He also told Rose that he would not have found him not guilty of resisting arrest if he had known that Rose was planning to file a lawsuit against the police department.

you are not nearly scared enough about ebola?

foreign policy |  Attention World: You just don't get it. You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly aburd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?

Wake up, fools. What's going on in West Africa now isn't Brown's silly Inferno scenario -- it's Steven Soderberg's movie Contagion, though without a modicum of its high-tech capacity.

Last week, my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos -- which has a population of 22 million -- would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis, thanks to the chaos, size, density, and mobility of not only that city but dozens of others in the enormous, oil-rich nation. Add to the Nigerian scenario civil war, national elections, Boko Haram terrorists, and a country-wide doctors' strike -- all of which are real and current -- and you have a scenario so overwrought and frightening that I could not have concocted it even when I advised screenwriter Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Inside the United States, politicians, gadflies, and much of the media are focused on wildly experimental drugs and vaccines, and equally wild notions of "keeping the virus out" by barring travelers and "screening at airports."Let's be clear: Absolutely no drug or vaccine has been proven effective against the Ebola virus in human beings. To date, only one person -- Dr. Kent Brantly -- has apparently recovered after receiving one of the three prominent putative drugs, and there is no proof that the drug was key to his improvement. None of the potential vaccines has even undergone Phase One safety trials in humans, though at least two are scheduled to enter that stage before December of this year. And Phase One is the swiftest, easiest part of new vaccine trials -- the two stages of clinical trials aimed at proving that vaccines actually work will be difficult, if not impossible, to ethically and safely execute. If one of the vaccines is ready to be used in Africa sometime in 2015, the measure will be executed without prior evidence that it can work, which in turn will require massive public education to ensure that people who receive the vaccination do not change their behaviors in ways that might put them in contract with Ebola -- because they mistakenly believe they are immune to the virus.

We are in for a very long haul with this extremely deadly disease -- it has killed more than 50 percent of those laboratory-confirmed infections, and possibly more than 70 percent of the infected populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Nigeria is struggling to ensure that no secondary spread of Ebola comes from one of the people already infected by Liberian traveler Patrick Sawyer -- two of whom have died so far. That effort expanded on Wednesday, when Nigerian health authorities announced that a nurse who had treated Sawyer escaped her quarantine confinement in Lagos and traveled to Enugu a city that, as of 2006, has a population of about three million. Though the nurse has not shown symptoms of the disease, the incubation time for infection, which is up to 21 days, hasn't elapsed.