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Title: Unjustifiable De Facto Martial Law in Ferguson, MO
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Published: Aug 11, 2015
Author: Stephen Lendman
Post Date: 2015-08-11 05:30:46 by Stephen Lendman
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Views: 71
Comments: 4
Unjustifiable De Facto Martial Law in Ferguson, MO by Stephen Lendman US federal, state, county or city authorities circumventing constitutional protections with de facto or de jure martial law based on exaggerated state of emergency conditions reveals police state America in plain sight - enforced against the nation’s most vulnerable, grievously abused, justified in demanding redress. Killer cops murder Blacks in America with virtual impunity hundreds of times a year - on city streets, in rural areas, private homes, commercial spaces, jail cells among other places. Jim Crow flourishes in America - with full support from federal, state and local authorities. Racial profiling is rife. African-Americans are ruthlessly abused - arrested for driving, walking, speaking, chewing gum or doing virtually anything legitimate while Black. The state of Black America is appalling by any standard - political, social, economic or personal safety. Authorities at all government levels paid to serve and protect instead abuse, terrorize and murder with no accountability. Constitutionally guaranteed rights exist for America’s privileged alone - benefitting at the expense of most others, making the nation unfit and unsafe to live in for its most vulnerable and disadvantaged. Ferguson, MO is Exhibit A. Last August, officer Darren Wilson murdered 18-year-old African- American Michael Brown - in cold blood without probable cause. Would he have shot or otherwise abused him if he was Caucasian - especially if he lived in a privileged neighborhood? Would he have been exonerated for murder? He’s one of hundreds of killer cops free to kill again with impunity. Brown was unarmed. He threatened no one. He had no criminal record. Yet an independent autopsy showed he was shot six times - assassinated by a killer cop knowing he’d be unaccountable. At the time, ACLU staff attorney Nusrat Choudhury said killing Brown raised disturbing questions about how often police brutalize unarmed African-American and Latino men in America. "(F)ar too often," she stressed. Police violence and abuse are systemic in America. What happened in Ferguson is epidemic nationwide with nothing done to stop it - plenty done encouraging it, to crush justifiable outrage over government ignoring the public welfare as constitutionally mandated. During an August 9 peaceful march in Ferguson commemorating Michael Brown’s murder a year ago, shots were fired. Police wounded 18-year-old Tyrone Harris - a good friend of Brown. He remains in critical condition following emergency surgery. Both youths graduated together in the same Normandy High School class. Two other protesters were shot. Harris’ father said “(w)e think there’s a lot more to this than what’s being said.” The official police account is “all a bunch of lies.” Witnesses told him his son was unarmed. He was “running for his life” when police shot him multiple times, the same brutality resulting in Brown’s death a year ago. Harris clings to life precariously in intensive care. He committed no crimes. Yet county prosecutors outrageously charged him with 10 felony offenses - including shooting at a motor vehicle even though he had no gun. Two days of nonviolent protests expressed justifiable anger over no redress from continued out-of- control police abuse (with likely more coming). Dozens of arrests were made. Cops attacked crowds violently - tear gas and pepper spray used against peaceful demonstrators. St. Louis County executive Steve Stenger declared a state of emergency - circumventing rule of law principles, violating constitutional protections, authorizing police to “exercise all powers and duties necessary to preserve order, prevent crimes, and protect the life and property of our citizens” - code language giving them authority to crush legitimate activism for justice and kill with impunity. Homeland Security officers were involved - collaborating with local police, part of Obama’s war on freedom, using legislative and street brutality tactics, including cold-blooded murder to suppress the constitutional right to petition government for redress of grievances. On Monday, nonviolent demonstrators declared a “day of civil disobedience.” They marched from St. Louis’ Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral to the Thomas Eagleton federal courthouse. Dozens formed a living chain - chanting “No justice, no peace.” “The people united shall never be defeated.” They expected police brutality, including multiple arrests. Prominent academic/activist Cornel West was abused like a criminal, handcuffed and arrested. So were Black Lives Matter activists Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie for filming the peaceful protest. Americans today are threatened by state terror, police state injustice, hot wars, financial ones, anti- populism, mass incarceration, erosion of fundamental rights, killer cops murdering with impunity, and increasing tyranny heading toward becoming full-blown. Justifiable resistance more than ever is needed. Abuses at all governmental levels are too great to tolerate. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
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#4. To: Stephen Lendman (#0)
'Racial' Cop Stories That Didn't Make The Cut By Larry Elder By Larry Elder, Dec. 18, 2014 In 2012, according to the CDC, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, the CDC reports that 2,151 whites were killed by cops -- and 1,130 blacks were killed by cops. Police shootings, nationwide, are down dramatically from what they were 20 or 30 years ago. The CDC reported that in 1968, shootings by law enforcement -- called "legal intervention" by the CDC -- was the cause of death for 8.6 out of every million blacks. For whites the rate was was .9 deaths per million. By 2011, law enforcement shootings caused 2.74 deaths for every million blacks, and 1.28 deaths for every million whites. While the death-by-cop rate for whites has held pretty steady over these last 45 years, hovering just above or below the one-in-a-million level, the rate for blacks has fallen. In 1981, black deaths by cop stood at four in a million, but since 2000 has remained just above or below two in a million. So what's driving this notion that there is now an "epidemic" of white cops shooting blacks when in the last several decades the numbers of blacks killed by cops are down nearly 75 percent? Where's the evidence suggesting race had anything to do with the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, who was pointing a pellet gun at bystanders before being shot and killed by police? What's the racial nexus to the death of Eric Garner, the large, obese man who died after being taken down by several NYPD cops? While the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case became another racial thermometer of America, the jury found Zimmerman not guilty, and several jurors later said that during jury deliberations "race never came up." The Ferguson, Missouri, shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson is yet another case where there is absolutely no evidence that whatever happened occurred because of Michael Brown's race. Did officer Wilson display racial animus? Does anyone know if this officer Wilson had some racist background? With the desire by media for a scalp, such information would have long ago been made public by somebody. This white-cop-out-to-get-black-civilian narrative advances the interest of many. The media loves what Tom Wolfe called the "Great White Defendant" -- a bad white guy everybody can agree to dislike. For the Democrats, it furthers their assertion that race remains a major problem in America, that Republicans/tea partiers/black conservatives are out to get them, and you must vote for us. For "activists" like the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and local wannabes, it gives them continued relevance. That this "epidemic" is imaginary can be demonstrated by the recent stories that never became national news. In Mobile, Alabama, a black cop shot and killed an unarmed white teenager. As with Michael Brown, the Alabama teen was later found to have been under the influence of marijuana at the time of the shooting. The teen had also recently taken a hallucinogen, and was so stoned he thought he was on fire ?- and literally took his clothes off. Nude -- and obviously unarmed -- he was still later shot by the cop. Despite public pressure, a Mobile grand jury decided not to indict the black police officer, believing he acted in self-defense. Not national news. In Salt Lake City, Utah, just two days after Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, a "not white" cop shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old man whose race has been described as Hispanic. The family of the dead man believes that the cop is a murderer. Not national news. In Pennsylvania, a state trooper named Kelly Cruz was accused in 2009 of stomping on the head of a handcuffed suspect laying on the ground, resulting in facial fractures, a broken nose and damaged teeth. The trooper, at the time, was attached to a local drug task force and was part of a raid on a suspected meth lab. One of the men inside escaped during the raid, and the victim -- who, according to another officer, was seen running from the scene and found five houses away -- was thought to be the meth lab escapee. Turns out the victim was not a meth lab escapee. The local grand jury decided not to indict the trooper. The feds, however, filed civil rights charges against the cop. He was found not guilty by the federal jury. Not national news. It is rare for a cop to shoot and kill any civilian. Excluding practice on the gun range, 95 percent of officers never discharge their firearm while in the line of duty, including those who work for big-city departments. The first time -- and only time -- officer Darren Wilson used his firearm while on duty was in the Michael Brown case. The facts do not support the narrative that there is an epidemic of white cops shooting unarmed blacks. We are being manipulated.
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