This blog is dedicated to the struggles of people everywhere to advance human progress and save this planet from the decline of capitalism. Its focus, since 2011 has been supporting the emerging revolutions everywhere.
After the biggest chemical weapons attack the world had seen since Saddam Hussein in the 1980's, much of the Left opposed the military response that US President Barack Obama had promised the year before. Many of these same people denied Assad regime responsibility for this attack and curiously, they focused exclusively on this attack. They didn't weigh in on the question of responsibility for the months-long siege that proceeded the attack, or the many smaller CW attacks that had taken place in Syria to that point.
Obama never planned to carry out his red-line threat, and so this Left opposition was helpful. Instead he supported a Russian program that required Assad to give up all the CW weapons and production facilities he was willing to admit to having. There was no independent inspection routine like the one imposed on Iraq. Still, he did give up quite a bit and with the likely exception of an incident in Darayya 15 February 2015 in which the United Nations said"that there is a high degree of probability" of sarin exposure, sarin attacks ceased to be a part of the Syrian Civil War landscape.
However, chemical attacks with other agents, including Chlorine and Mustard gas have continued with little notice and less protests. Now we have demands from the UN for Assad to give up the chemical weapons he held back. Charles Liser says that its been known for a long time in high government circles that Assad held back 20% of his CW in the bargain. Probably he had enough to kill everyone in Syria five times over to begin with.
How did this not cause a bigger stir? OPCW all but accuses Syria of lying; US warns Assad may retain CW https://t.co/5mVZOm8mCU v @JPZanders
Syria must explain chemical warfare agents: watchdog
Agence France Presse
13 July 2016
THE HAGUE: The world's chemical weapons watchdog is pressing Syria to explain why it has four undeclared warfare agents, its head said Wednesday, after a U.S. official accused Damascus of continuing to hoard a toxic stockpile.
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons chief Ahmet Uzumcu said despite previous declarations by Syria, OPCW teams have found indications of five additional chemical agents.
After recent consultations with The Hague-based OPCW's secretariat, Syria "declared research and development of one more chemical agent," Uzumcu said in a report released last week, of which AFP was given a copy on Wednesday.
But "at present, Syria has not yet adequately explained the presence of indicators of four chemical warfare agents," Uzumcu said.
The OPCW chief added that "new information" offered by Damascus has failed to resolve outstanding issues on Syria's chemical warfare program.
"In many instances, such new information presents a considerable change in narrative ... from previous information – or raises new questions," Uzumcu said. More...
The BBCreported on another chemical attack on Syrian civilians more than two years after the 21 August 2013 sarin attack on East Ghouta:
Syria civilians still under chemical attack
By Ian Pannell
10 September 2015
The video is painfully difficult to watch. The pale, wet, listless bodies of young children are carried into a hospital as doctors frantically try to save lives. Men choke and vomit and cry out and a grandmother lies peacefully on a gurney. She is dead.
Five others died in the same attack on Sarmin, about 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in March this year - including three small children. None of them had a scar on their bodies.
For the children of Syria, it is not the high seas they must fear but death on dry land.
The footage was apparently taken in the aftermath of a chemical attack.
When it was shown to the UN Security Council it reportedly moved delegates to tears, and is just one of more than 60 incidents in which toxic agents are alleged to have been deployed.
...
The Syrian government has been repeatedly accused of perpetrating many of these attacks, something it vehemently denies.
But when Sarmin was attacked, witnesses say they heard a helicopter overhead and only government forces have helicopters in Syria.
Then people say they heard a roaring sound, like thunder but there was no explosion, just casualties.
Two years ago the UN voted unanimously in favour of the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. It was perhaps the only threat that civilians were supposed to be protected from.
But there have been growing allegations that chemicals, in particular chlorine gas, have been used, mostly against civilian populations in dozens of attacks.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) looked at three of these alleged attacks and reported to the UN they have "a high degree of confidence that chlorine has been used repeatedly and systematically as a weapon" in Syria. More...
By Diana Al Rifai
18 April 2015
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights monitor, has released a report with evidence that strongly suggests Syrian government forces used toxic chemicals in several barrel-bomb attacks in Idlib province beween March 16 and 31, 2015.
Rescue workers reported that the attacks affected 206 people, including 20 civil-defence workers. One attack reportedly killed six civilians, including three children.
In a closed-door meeting on April 17, the UN Security Council heard first-hand accounts from Syrian doctors of the same attack.
Evidence presented during the meeting included a video showing doctors trying to save the lives of three childrens following the attack as they coughed and struggled to breathe due to liquid accumulation in their lungs.
The attacks violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria ratified in October 2013, and a UN Security Council resolution, Human Rights Watch said. More...
The "Courtship"is becoming a marriage of connivance as Obama moves towards military co-operation between the United States and Russia in defense of the Assad Regime.
While the delusional Left was been accusing US President Barack Obama of supporting "regime change" in Syria, I've been saying he's been in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's corner all along and has been playing the "Good Cop" role to undermine the Syrian Revolution. Now. I'll say it again - anybody that still thinks Obama is carrying out a policy of regime change in Syria is an idiot. The Washington Post has published:
Obama’s Syria plan teams up American and Russian forces
By Josh Rogin
13 July 2016
The Obama administration’s new proposal to Russia on Syria is more extensive than previously known. It would open the way for deep cooperation between U.S. and Russian military and intelligence agencies and coordinated air attacks by American and Russian planes on Syrian rebels deemed to be terrorists, according to the text of the proposal I obtained.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to discuss the plan with top Russian officials in a visit to Moscow on Thursday. As I first reported last month, the administration is proposing joining with Russia in a ramped-up bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which is also known as the Nusrah Front. What hasn’t been previously reported is that the United States is suggesting a new military command-and-control headquarters to coordinate the air campaign that would house U.S. and Russian military officers, intelligence officials and subject-matter experts.
Overall, the proposal would dramatically shift the United States’ Syria policy by directing more American military power against Jabhat al-Nusra, which unlike the Islamic State is focused on fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While this would expand the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Syria, it would also be a boon for the Assad regime, which could see the forces it is fighting dramatically weakened. The plan also represents a big change in U.S.-Russia policy. It would give Russian President Vladimir Putin something he has long wanted: closer military relations with the United States and a thawing of his international isolation. That’s why the Pentagon was initially opposed to the plan. More...
US and Russia present united front over Syria after attack in Nice
John Kerry points to terrorist ‘incubator’ of war-torn country, as Middle East leaders join condemnation of French massacre
Shaun Walker in Moscow and Ian Black in London
14 July 2016
The US and Russia have united to condemn the Nice attack and to identify the war in Syria as the world’s principal “incubator” for terrorism as they discuss tightening coordination to handle the five-year crisis.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, began a meeting in Moscow with a moment of silence for the victims of the atrocity, with Kerry expressing “absolute abhorrence for the incredible carnage”.
Kerry said: “The problem is that you and I and other foreign ministers and leaders are now doing this almost on a weekly basis, and nowhere is there a greater hotbed or incubator for these terrorists than in Syria. More...
John Kerry Meets Vladimir Putin to Discuss New Syria Plan
By Gardiner Harris and Anne Barnard
14 July 2016
MOSCOW — Secretary of State John Kerry met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow late Thursday night to discuss a proposed extensive military cooperation agreement that for the first time would coordinate American and Russian air attacks on the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
Both men said they were hopeful of reaching an accord. “I hope after today’s consultations you’ll be able to advise him of the progress made and possible headway for us to make,” Mr. Putin said, referring to conversations between Mr. Kerry and President Obama. Mr. Kerry responded: “Hopefully, we’ll be able to make some genuine progress that is measurable and implementable and that can make a difference in the course of events in Syria.”
The proposed agreement calls for the creation of a joint military command center staffed by military and intelligence officers who would share information so as to permit “integrated operations.” It has generated deep unease at the Pentagon and in some quarters of the State Department, where it is seen as too conciliatory to both the Russians and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. More...
It doesn't represent a big change in US policy towards Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Revolution. The Obama administration has been targeting Jabhat al-Nusra for more than three years. I first reported on those war plans back in March 2013, Obama planning drone strikes against Assad's opposition in Syria. The line that he has been opposed to the Assad regime and even a force in support of his removal is one that has been careful cultivated by the friends of Bashar al-Assad, including Barack Obama himself.
What just happened about 12 hours ago? A plane got blown out of the sky and if anything, if anybody thinks it wasn't blown out of the sky you're 100% wrong folks, okay.
- Donald Trumpon EgyptAir Fl 804 crash
It would seem that there is now a full court press to convince all of us that terrorism and specifically ISIS terrorism is problem #1 in the world today. So its not surprising that when EgyptAir Flight 804 mysteriously went down in the Med on 19 May 2016, the media en masse jumped to the conclusion it was another ISIS terrorist attack. In fact, they covered the crash in a way that would seem to make it a forgone conclusion.
While this narrative made the tragic crash useful in keeping up the terrorism scare, some started to question it as weeks went by and no terrorist group took credit for it, not even ISIS and they will take credit for just about anything, even mad dog attacks.
Two days after the crash, when it came out that a remote monitoring system reported smoke in the avionics for minutes before all reporting stopped, Linux Beach went against this trend by asking: Egyptair MS804: What kind of bomb takes 3 minutes to blow up an aircraft? Almost all of the media ignored these telling facts so that they could continue to promote the terrorism angle.
Now some time has pasted, the black boxes have been recovered and analysed and the biggest news is that the crew can clearly be heard talking about a fire on the plane. CNN has reported:
EgyptAir voice recorder indicates fire on doomed plane
By Lorenza Brascia and Catherine E. Shoichet
6 July 2016
(CNN)Investigators trying to piece together what caused EgyptAir Flight 804 to plunge into the Mediterranean Sea now have another clue.
The plane's cockpit voice recorder indicates there was a fire on the aircraft before it crashed -- and an attempt to put it out, a senior source from the airline told CNN on Tuesday.
The revelation adds another detail to a picture that's been slowly emerging since the May 19 crash. But investigators have said it's still too soon to say what happened aboard the flight. More...
Meaning they still have hope that somehow they can call it terrorism. Still, I thought I'd better do a follow up report because for some reason the media has been very quiet about this story. For that reason I fear that the vast majority of those that were told this was yet another terrorist attack will never hear the good news that it wasn't.
If you are intent on owning slaves, you had better arm yourself. The same should be said if you plan on appropriating the lands of indigenous people. These twin realities gave birth to America's special relationship with guns and have insured that the real right to gun ownership in the United States has always been tied to questions of race. Even though we near the end of the second term of America's first black president, current events show all too graphically that in the United States, the Second Amendment - the constitutional right to bear arms, continues to largely be a white skin privilege.
Alton Sterling's murder
Philando Castile's murder
5 July 2016 - Alton Sterling, 37, was pinned to the ground by two Baton Rouge cops. One yells "he's got a gun" and seemingly in direct response to that, the other cop deliberately removes his weapon from its holster, takes point blank aim at Sterling's chest, and fills him full of lead. Louisiana is an "open carry state" and Sterling's gun never left his pocket until one of the officers removed it after they murdered him. For years, he had been selling CDs in front of this convenience store. Recently he had started carrying a gun for protection. It got him killed.
6 July 2016 - Philando Castile, 32, was shot by police during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. He had a gun, and according to the woman with him, Ms. Diamond Reynolds, a concealed carry permit. She said he told the police that he had a gun. The cop asked him for his license and ID. When he reached for it in his back pocket, the cop opened up on him. Minutes went by while Castile bled out and died. He never received any medical treatment. The police on the scene seemed more interested in stopping Reynolds from live-streaming the incident than in trying to save the life of the man they had just shot.
Some cops can't tolerate armed blacks
The attorney for the cop that shot Castile has come out arguing that it had nothing to do with race, it was merely the presence of the gun:
"This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun,"
What are the odds? Lots of people in Minnesota carry weapons, not just Castile. If the officer was merely reacting to the presence of a weapon during a traffic stop, what are the odds that this rare officer involved shooting in the mostly white community of Falcon Heights would result in the death of a black man? Maybe not as steep as we might think. We now know that Castile had been stopped by police 52 times in the Twin Cities area in recent years for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt. On the fatal night, he had been pulled over for a broken tail light. Family members think he was being racially profiled.
A review of recent and past history makes it clear that we have a problem in this country with the number of black men that are shot and killed by police every year. It also shows that any black man who exercises his Second Amendment right to bear arms runs a special risk of being shot by the police. The attorney is wrong, his client didn't just react to a man with a gun, he reacted to a black man with a gun. What's more, you don't even have to be a black man with a gun to be summarily executed as one.
Tamir Rice, 12, wasn't yet a man and wasn't armed, but he was black. Sometimes that's enough. He was playing with a pellet gun in a Cleveland, Ohio park. Two cops, responding to a report"of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" didn't take time to make another assessment. They shot this child dead two seconds after arriving on the scene.
John Crawford, 22, was shot while handling a toy BB gun on display in a Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart. The Dayton Daily News reported:
Williams [the cop/shooter] said he saw a man with a rifle standing in a store aisle, matching the description dispatchers had given him of a black man waving a weapon at shoppers.
So he shot him. Crawford went down, and when he tried to lift up, Williams shot him dead.
Blogging in Real Time
- I can't make this shit up.
After much research, I started writing this post on Sunday morning. By sometime after noon, I had finished the section above and decided to take a break, get a bite to eat and listen to some music on the boardwalk. While I was on this break, I witnessed and filmed this arrest of a violent black man by the LAPD. I don't know what his story was or what set him off in these tense times. He acted deranged and apparently went into the Candle Cafe, right next to the place where I had just eaten, and started attacking people. By the time I became aware of the commotion, he was fighting everybody in the cafe. It seemed like it took forever for the police to arrived. When they did, it was in force and most were sporting green handled pistols I hadn't seen before. They soon had him in custody and were treating his injuries, which were not caused by them. In that regard, he received far better treatment than Alton Sterling or Philando Castile, and I've seen the LAPD do far worst. All this happened within a hundred feet of were Shakespeare was murdered. And now to return to my narrative...
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America may only be second to the First Amendment in terms of the amount of attention it has received in America, or it may indeed be first. It certainly is receiving a lot of attention this election year in which there have been a number of high profile mass shootings.
The second amendment was never meant to apply to black people. From the earliest days of American history there have been prohibitions against even free blacks carrying firearms, sometimes allowing summary executions. These once written, and now unwritten, laws continue to be enforced today, that is the truth behind the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Since the Second Amendment itself is colorblind, and has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect the right of individual citizens to bear arms, it should equally protect the right of black Americans to do so, and yet time and again we hear about black people who have been shot by the police, not for pulling a gun on the cop but merely for being armed, and many more incidents where the black person shot was in fact unarmed but the excuse given by the cop was "I thought he had a gun."
It would seem we have a problem and that problem has a history.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
One thing we can be certain of is that the framers of the constitution never meant for the Second Amendment to protect the rights of black people to bear arms. They wanted the Second Amendment to protect slavery. While today the courts interpret it as giving the individual the right to carry a gun, it was originally written to protect the right of states to organize militias. As Thom Hartmann said in his well worth reading The Second Amendment Was Ratified to Preserve Slavery:
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the states.
Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus documented much of this history in a 1998 UC Law Review article. He noted:
The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population, anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats.
The amendments that were drafted in 1789 were designed to patch what were seen as deficiencies in the constitution just adopted in 1788. One of the problems with this new constitution, from the point of view of the slave holders, was that while it provided for an armed force to protect the country from foreign invasion, it did not guarantee protection from internal revolt by their "property."Patrick Henry saw the irony of their apartheid situation:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded."
He told James Madison, who drafted the amendments,
"In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone."
For this reason, when Virginia did ratify the US constitution, on 25 June 1788, it was with the submission of a number of proposed amendments, one of which,
11th That each state respectively shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and discipline its own militia, ...
turned into the Second Amendment. Without the Southern slave patrols, I mean "State Militias," the slave autocracy would have collapsed. The Second Amendment was added to the constitution to protect slavery and make the enforcement of white supremacy possible.
It went without saying that those "well regulated militias" were expected to be white. When the United States took over Louisiana in 1803, there was a free black militia of New Orleans that had a history going back decades. By 1801 it had grown to two battalions of 496 men. French Creolesexplained how this militia was important to such black power as existed then and why they were allowed to exist under both Spanish and French administrations:
Local militia units commanded by black officers furnished critical support for free blacks and provided them with their most significant political institution. Colonial administrators depended on free blacks to defend their provinces because in Louisiana and other frontier regions able-bodied white men were too few, a situation free men of color used to their advantage.
After Thomas Jefferson appointed William C. C. Claiborne [no relation] governor, this black militia pledged loyalty to him and their new country. This presented this representative of the Second Amendment with a dilemma, with the territory now under US control, the planters expected the black militia to be disbanded, even though it had also done slave catching patrols like the others. So Governor Claiborne refused this early offer to integrate the military. In 1804 he wrote to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn:
"it would be prudent not to increase the Corps, but to diminish, if it could be done without giving offense."
The US was slow to gain control over its new territory and the free black militia hung in there for at least another decade, even volunteering to defend New Orleans when the British began landing troops outside the city in 1814 in the War of 1812.
Police powers used to disarm Black People
Protecting slavery didn't just require the arming of slave patrols and militias. It also required the disarming of blacks. Ironically, this was one of the tasks regularly carried out by these Second Amendment protected militias. Taking the example of Georgia, Dr. Bogus wrote:
"The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
After Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, Virginia made it illegal for free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead...," existing laws that allowed blacks to carry firearms under certain circumstances were repealed and it was made entirely illegal for blacks possess arms. In 1834, Tennessee added the word "white" to Article XI, 26 of the state constitution it had adopted in 1796, so that it would then read:
That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.
Especially after Nat Turner's Rebellion, prohibitions against blacks arming themselves proliferated both North and South in spite of the fact that in addition to all the other reasons people needed to be armed in those days, free blacks had to protect themselves from slavers. Nevertheless, the pre-Civil War courts where able to stomach the legal contortions used to justify not applying the Second Amendment to free blacks.
In 1843, when faced with a challenge to a North Carolina statute requiring free blacks to obtain a license to "keep and bear arms" that was in violation of both the Second Amendment and a similar guarantee in the state constitution, the North Carolina Supreme Court fell back on what can only be described as racist logic to justify the obvious violation of the two constitutions by saying:
Its only object is to preserve the peace and safety of the community from being disturbed by an indiscriminate use, on ordinary occasions, by free men of color, of fire arms or other arms of an offensive character. Self preservation is the first law of nations, as it is of individuals.
So two constitutions got over-ruled by "the first law of nations" in the North Carolina courts. In the Georgia Court decision of Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah (1848), at its heart a question of whether a new Savannah tax could be applied to free blacks, Justice Warner delivered the Court's opinion, which resolved this dispute by declaring that free blacks were not citizens. It also showed that the Court understood Mao Tse Tung's observation that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun long before he was even born:
"Free persons of color have never been recognized here as citizens; they are not entitled to bear arms, vote for members of the legislature, or to hold any civil office."
They saw the right to self-arm as one of the three pillars of political power, one of the essential rights of citizenship. After the Civil War had been fought and won, the drafters of the 14th Amendment also "clearly believed that the right of individuals to have guns for self-defense was an essential element of citizenship."
After the Civil War, the various Black Codes adopted throughout the South required blacks to obtain a license before carrying or possessing a firearm or even a Bowie knife. As you can imagine, these licenses were hard to come by, and these self-defense restrictions were put on free blacks just when they were facing the white terror of the Klan. In January 1866, Harper’s Weeklyreported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state.
The courts continued to find a way to ignore the Second Amendment when it came to blacks and other minorities in the last century. In 1920, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Mexican for "concealed carry of a handgun" while asleep in his own bed! In his dissent, Justice Wanamaker spoke bluntly about the supreme court decisions from Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky his own court cited:
The southern states have very largely furnished the precedents. It is only necessary to observe that the race issue there has extremely intensified a decisive purpose to entirely disarm the negro, and this policy is evident upon reading the opinions.
If this decision shall stand as the law of Ohio, a very large percentage of the good people of Ohio to-day are criminals, because they are daily committing criminal acts by having these weapons in their own homes for their own defense. The only safe course for them to pursue, instead of having the weapon concealed on or about their person, or under their pillow at night, is to hang the revolver on the wall and put below it a large placard with these words inscribed:
"The Ohio supreme court having decided that it is a crime to carry a concealed weapon on one's person in one's home, even in one's bed or bunk, this weapon is hung upon the wall that you may see it, and before you commit any burglary or assault, please, Mr. Burglar, hand me my gun."
In 1941, when the Florida Supreme Court overturned a conviction for carrying a handgun without a permit because the handgun was in the glove compartment of a car in Watson v. Stone, Justice Buford's concurring opinion told us much about the origin and purpose of such laws:
I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.
Malcolm X
In 1962 Robert Williams published Negroes with Guns in which he recounts the struggle of a southern black community to arm itself in the face of growing Klan violence. This is why he said armed self defense was essential to combat the racist system:
The existence of violence is at the very heart of a racist system. The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system--the violence is already there and has always been there. It is precisely the unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say they are opposed to Negroes "resorting to violence" what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists.
The Black Panther Party understood well the relationship between armed self defense and political power and so did the California legislator. In 1967 they repeal a law allowing public carrying of firearms after the Black Panthers started armed copwatch patrols in Oakland. This was a gun control measure supported by the National Rifle Association and signed into law by Ronald Reagan! As black militants continued to assert their right to bear arms, congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years.
The Civil War ended the slave patrols but not the role of armed bodies of white men in terrorizing and controlling the now 100%FREE black population. State militias and local police forces, aided by the outright terror of such groups as the Klu Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils, took over that task. In tandem with this, the criminal justice system was reshaped to replace slavery as the principal mechanism for controlling the oppressed black population. Sometime this was complete obvious, as when former plantations were turned into state run penal farms, and sometimes it wasn't so obvious.
The criminal justice system, and especially the many bogus arrests for drug use and loitering, has been used to aggressively take away the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote and the right to bear arms, from many black people. See The New Jim Crow for details.
The need to disarm black people, and the fear of armed blacks, remained as much a concern for those charged with directly applying the heel of white supremacy to the black masses as it was in the time of slavery, and for essentially the same reasons. After the hundreds of years of the history I have only so briefly outlined here, this almost irrational fear of blacks with guns is thoroughly baked into the DNA of most police departments. The fact that cops still acting on this code regularly get away with murder is doing nothing to curtain its practice. Certainly, its not the only reason so many black people are shot by police, especially since many are unarmed, but I believe it was a big contributing factor in the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
The way to end these police murders is to end the white supremacist system that requires them.
UPDATE 15 July 2016:
@ABC7News dead officer was Black afterall, I mean why would his life matter?
UPDATE 15 November 2016
New York Times is reporting:
Officer Who Shot Philando Castile Is Charged With Manslaughter
By Christina Capwcchi and Mitch Smith. 16
16 November 2016
ST. PAUL — The suburban police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile, the black driver whose last moments this summer were streamed live on Facebook, was charged on Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter and accused of escalating a mundane roadside exchange into a needlessly violent episode.
In outlining the case against Officer Jeronimo Yanez, prosecutors described a traffic stop on July 6 that spiraled out of control when Officer Yanez overreacted to the presence of Mr. Castile’s lawfully carried gun and shot him despite pleas that he was not reaching for the weapon.
“No reasonable officer — knowing, seeing and hearing what Officer Yanez did at the time — would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” the Ramsey County attorney, John J. Choi, said. Officer Yanez, who will appear in court on Friday, was also charged with two felony counts of intentional discharge of a dangerous weapon.
Mr. Choi said Officer Yanez spotted Mr. Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker, driving along a stretch of road near the state fairgrounds with his girlfriend and her young daughter. Officer Yanez believed Mr. Castile matched the description of a suspect in a nearby armed robbery from a few days earlier, radioing a colleague that Mr. Castile’s “wide-set nose” seemed to match the surveillance video from that case, and that his car also had a broken taillight.
Mr. Castile, who had been pulled over dozens of times before, seemed to know the routine: He kept his seatbelt fastened, greeted Officer Yanez and handed over his insurance card, according to prosecutors’ version of events. Then, before his girlfriend said he reached for the wallet that contained his driver’s license and permit to carry a pistol, Mr. Castile said, “Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me.”
Within seconds, Officer Yanez, of the St. Anthony police, had shouted, “Don’t pull it out,” and Mr. Castile and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, tried to assure him that he was not grabbing the gun. But Officer Yanez quickly fired seven rounds, fatally wounding Mr. Castile just 62 seconds after the traffic stop began. An instant later, Mr. Castile moaned and said, “I wasn’t reaching for it.”
“His dying words were in protest that he wasn’t reaching for his gun,” Mr. Choi said.More...
UPDATE 4 May 2017:
Federal Officials announced the closing of their investigation yesterday without filing any charges against the Police. You can read the US Department of Justice press release here.
UPDATE 16 June 16, 2017: The New York Times is reporting,
Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile
By Mitch Smith
16 June 2017
ST. PAUL — A Minnesota police officer, whose fatal shooting of a black motorist transfixed the nation when his girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath, was acquitted of all charges on Friday.
The officer, Jeronimo Yanez, had been charged with second-degree manslaughter and endangering safety by discharging a firearm in the shooting of Philando Castile.
After the verdict, jurors and Mr. Yanez were quickly led out of the courtroom, and Mr. Castile’s family left immediately. When a deputy tried to stop his mother, Valerie, she yelled “Let me go.”
Later, she said: “My son loved this city, and this city killed my son. And a murderer gets away. Are you kidding me right now?”
UPDATE - POST TRIAL SUMMARY - 23 June 2017
Before the trial it could be said that Philando Castile was murdered by a cop. After the trial it can be said that Philando Castile was murdered by the state.
After the shooting there were many who disputed the claim that Philando Castile had a permit to carry they weapon. We now know what the facts are, as reported by the Chicago Tribune:
A letter from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office confirms Castile, 32, got his permit last year. The letter, dated June 4, 2015, says Castile's permit is enclosed. It also says that he must have his permit card and photo identification when carrying a pistol, and must display those items "upon lawful demand by a peace officer."
Allysza Castile said she and her brother took a required gun safety class together last year.
After the trial, they released some important videos:
Police Dashcam Footage Of Philando Castile Fatal Shooting
David French, writing in the National Review, gives us a transcript to match the video and titled his piece:
The Philando Castile Verdict Was a Miscarriage of Justice
17 June 2017
Yesterday, a Minnesota jury acquitted St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez of second-degree manslaughter charges in the shooting of Philando Castile. In considering the rightness of the verdict, pay close attention to the transcript of the fatal encounter. Here it is, via CNN:
9:05:00 p.m. — Castile’s vehicle came to a complete stop.
9:05:15 – 9:05:22 p.m. — Yanez approached Castile’s car on the driver’s side.
9:05:22 – 9:05:38 p.m. — Yanez exchanged greetings with Castile and told him of the brake light problem.
9:05:33 p.m. — St. Anthony Police Officer Joseph Kauser, who had arrived as backup, approached Castile’s car on the passenger’s side.
9:05:38 p.m. — Yanez asked for Castile’s driver’s license and proof of insurance.
9:05:48 p.m. — Castile provided Yanez with his proof of insurance card.
9:05:49 – 9:05:52 p.m. — Yanez looked at Castile’s insurance information and then tucked the card in his pocket.
9:05:52 – 9:05:55 p.m. — Castile told Yanez: “Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me.” Before Castile completed the sentence, Yanez interrupted and replied, “Okay” and placed his right hand on the holster of his gun.
9:05:55 – 9:06:02 p.m. — Yanez said “Okay, don’t reach for it, then.” Castile responded: “I’m… I’m … [inaudible] reaching…,” before being again interrupted by Yanez, who said “Don’t pull it out.” Castile responded, “I’m not pulling it out,” and Reynolds said, “He’s not pulling it out.” Yanez screamed: “Don’t pull it out,” and pulled his gun with his right hand. Yanez fired seven shots in the direction of Castile in rapid succession. The seventh shot was fired at
9:06:02 p.m. Kauser did not touch or remove his gun.
9:06:03 – 9:06:04 p.m. — Reynolds yelled, “You just killed my boyfriend!”
9:06:04 – 9:06:05 p.m. — Castile moaned and said, “I wasn’t reaching for it.” These were his last words.
9:06:05 – 9:06:09 p.m. — Reynolds said “He wasn’t reaching for it.” Before she completed her sentence, Yanez screamed “Don’t pull it out!” Reynolds responded. “He wasn’t.” Yanez yelled, “Don’t move! F***!”
If you read carefully, you’ll note that it appears that the officer shot Castile for doing exactly what the officer told him to do. Yanez asked for Castile’s license. Castile told him that he had a gun, and the officer – rather than asking for his carry permit, or asking where the gun was, or asking to see Castile’s hands – just says, “Don’t reach for it then."More...
This New York Times piece gives us a critique of the dash cam video from a few police experts:
Experts Weigh In on Video of Philando Castile Shooting
By Julie Bosman and Mitch Smith
21 June 2017
The police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile along a Minnesota road was acquitted of all charges last week, but newly released video of what happened that day has opened new debate over the case and how a seemingly routine traffic stop so abruptly turned deadly.
We asked experts in the law, police procedures and officer training to view the dashboard camera video of the encounter between Officer Jeronimo Yanez and Mr. Castile: an episode that lasted only seconds. They offered their takes on what they saw, frame by frame. More...
Here are my comments on this traffic stop:
From the video we can see that Castile was completely compliant from the beginning. His left and right brake lights go on seconds after the flashing police light is seen and he has pulled to the side of the road and comes to a complete stop within 18 sec. of the start of the video. The two brake lights go off @ 28 sec., presumably because Castile stopped pushing the pedal down.
The NY Times reports:
Officer Yanez radios to a colleague that Mr. Castile, a driver inside a car he has followed, matches the description of a robbery suspect from several days earlier
but in the video we can clearly hear Yanez say to Castile @ 39 sec:
Hello sir, ...The reason I pulled you over, your brake lights are out. You only have one activated, active brake light, and that could be on your passenger side one, your third brake light, which that here on the top, and this one back here [pointing to the driver side] is going to be out. [why the future tense?- Clay] You have your licence and insurance?
We can see with our own eyes that Yanez is wrong about the brake lights, although the center high brake light never comes on, we can see the right and left brake lights come on 6 @ sec and go off @ 28 sec. Before the brake lights come on, the right tail light appears to be much brighter than the left one. That may be a bad bulb or a result of the angle of the sun at the time, but Yanez made no mention of tail lights. What is clear is that the left brake light that Yanez said "is going to be out," was not out at the time of the stop.
That Yanez was lying when he said he pulled over Castile because he looked like a robbery suspect. We know that because this killer, who would latter claim to "fear for his life" took none of the safety measures mandated for a felony stop. We also know he was lying about the brake lights - unless he intended to make a prediction come true. The reason he told two lies about the reason for the stop was to cover the real reason. He pulled Philando Castile over to mess with an African American man.
@ 1:12 into the video we can see that Yanez hadn't just "placed his right hand on the holster of his gun," he was already starting to pull it from the holster, by 1:15 he is taking aim and is firing shots by @ 1:16. Within 4 seconds of Castile telling Yanez, that he was armed that the 2nd Police Commandment against African Americans with guns kicked in and he proceeded to murder Castile, yelling "Don't pull it out" most loudly after he had already put two bullets in his heart.
At 2:42 the cop says "I told him not to reach for it, I told him to keep his hands up." If you go back and watch it, the cop never said to put his hands up at all... what a lying bastard
And comments such as this show that there are those who see it as a racist murder and approved of it as such:
Ragnar Loðbrók5: Pink Panther Uhhhh U salty bruh. Don't care, the police officer was in the right. He wasn't convicted. Joke's on u
Jeremy Stahlnoted inThe Slatest that Philando Castile’s Killer Acquitted Despite Forensics That Contradicted His Case:
Castile had informed the officer that he was carrying a firearm, for which he had a permit. Shortly thereafter, Yanez opened fire. In his opening statement, Yanez’s defense attorney claimed that Castile was holding his gun when he was shot.
“He has his hand on the gun,” Engh reportedly said during opening arguments. “The next command is, ‘Don’t pull it out.’ … [Yanez] can’t retreat … But for Mr. Castile’s continuous grip on the handgun, we would not be here.”
The prosecution argued that the 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor with no violent criminal record was reaching for his driver’s license—as Yanez had instructed—and not his gun when he was shot. The forensic evidence and Reynold’s testimony would both seem to back up the prosecution’s account and rebut the defense’s version. Reynolds testified that he was trying to unbuckle his seatbelt so that he could get out his wallet and driver’s license when he was shot. As the Associated Press reported, this was supported by forensics:
Prosecutor Jeff Paulsen highlighted autopsy evidence in his closing argument, reminding the jury of a bullet wound to what would have been Castile’s trigger finger — and that there was no corresponding bullet damage nor wounds in the area of Castile’s right shorts pocket, where he carried his gun. He also cited testimony from first responders who saw Castile’s gun in his pocket as he was loaded onto a backboard
The jury—which included ten white jurors and two black jurors—took 27 hours to deliberate and asked to review dashcam footage of the incident along with Reynolds’ harrowing cell phone video.
During the stop, Castile volunteered, "Sir, I have to tell you, I do have a firearm on me."
Yanez told Castile, "OK, don't reach for it then" and "Don't pull it out."
On the squad-car video, Castile can be heard saying, "I'm not pulling it out," as Yanez opened fire. Prosecutors said Castile's last words were, "I wasn't reaching for it."
The verdict "tells African-Americans across the country that they can be killed by police officers with impunity, even when they are following the law," said Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The verdict also tells blacks that "the Second Amendment does not apply to them" because Castile "was honest with the officer about having a weapon in the car, and there is no evidence that he attempted to or intended to use the weapon against the officer," the Louisiana Democrat said.
Heartbreaking Video Of Diamond Reynolds’ 4-YEAR-OLD Daughter after Philando Castile Shooting
This piece, republished by Yahoo News, asks a very good question:
If Philando Castile Was Legally Carrying a Gun, Why Has the NRA REMAINED Silent?
by Perri Konecky
21 June 2017
On Friday, June 16, a jury declared former Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty for the shooting and killing of 32-year-old Philando Castile. Last year, Castile was pulled over with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter in the car for a broken taillight. He told the officer he was a licensed gun owner and had his weapon on him, yet when he was reaching for his wallet, Castile was fatally shot by the officer. During a recent segment of "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, Noah points out why it's so bizarre that the National Rifle Association has remained silent following the verdict.
"Philando Castile wasn't just a man shot at a traffic stop," Noah said. "He was a legal gun owner whose family was in the car and who had committed no crime. At all."
Noah explains that "you would expect [the NRA] to be losing their goddamn minds about this," because "according to their rhetoric, this is everything that they stand against, right? An officer of the state depriving a citizen of his life because he was legally carrying a firearm?"
He then showed a 2014 clip of the NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, adamantly defending the right for individuals to protect themselves with guns. But, for some mysterious reason, the group has remained silent since Yanez's verdict was announced. In Noah's opinion, it's no mystery - it's about race.
"It's interesting how the people who define themselves by one fundamental American right - the right to bear arms - show that once race is involved, the only right that they believe in is their right to remain silent," Noah said. More...
Anyone who has ever worked up dialog for screenplay can tell you that it is often necessary or useful to modify that dialog from what existed in the novel or might more creditably take place in real life so as in include in the conversation context or definition that is clearly already known to the parties to the conversation but necessary for the audience. Speaking of these divergent requirements for movie dialogue, screenwriter and novelist Chuck Wendigexplains:
One of dialogue’s functions is to convey information within the story (to other characters) and outside the story (to the audience).
Dialogue designed to convey information to the audience is known as expository dialogue. One would not expect to find "expository dialogue" in a private conversation between co-conspirators in a political plot in real life, it almost certainly would make one suspicious of the other ("Why is he saying this? Who's suppose to be listening?"), although you would expect it in the movie version.
Today we are going to look at the story that the Black Lives Matter leaders are conspiring with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to bring thousands of violent protesters to the Republican and Democratic national conventions and create a Summer Of Chaos. According to this theory's promoters, the ultimate aim of the #SummerOfChaos, is to give President Obama an excuse to declare martial law, cancel the elections, and continue his presidency. That right! According to these right-wing deep thinkers, the Black Lives Matter movement is planning to overthrow the constitution and take over the United States government this summer!
This story first surfaced in June after Black Lives Matter activist and Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay McKesson had his Twitter account hacked. The Baltimore Sunreported it, 10 June 2016:
The Twitter account of Black Lives Matter activist and former Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson was hacked Friday morning, sending out a series of uncharacteristically Mckesson tweets, including an endorsement for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
It is also important to remember that the hacker that claims to have downloaded a document from a particular site also had the ability to upload that document first. Generally speaking, the data made public by groups like Anonymous or WikiLeaks is so massive and specific as to make fabrication extremely unlikely, but it a case like this, when the data is slight and we are provided only screenshots, the screenshots provide no "proof" beyond the word of the presenter that they are genuine.
These hackers, or someone close to them, then posted what they said were direct messages between Deray McKesson @deray, Johnetta Elzia @Nettaaaaaaaa and Samuel Sinyangwe @samswey in which they are plotting with Loretta Lynch to basically overthrown the government. Theses tweets were first published in an article on 14 June 2016 by Shepard Ambellas on IntelliHub with the provocative heading:
Operation “Summer of Chaos” exposed: Obama Admin, Soros, Black Lives Matter, plan to activate martial law before General Election revealed 10,000 bought and paid for BLM dissidents to create chaos at the Philadelphia Democratic National Convention in late July
The lowly regarded DC Clothesline then came out with this on Wednesday:
Hacked messages of #BlackLivesMatter leader reveal Obama admin’s plan for ‘summer of chaos’ and martial law
6 July 2016
Dr. Eowyn
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is coordinating with Democratic activists to so disrupt the upcoming Republican and Democratic National Conventions that martial law will be declared.
That’s the stunning discovery revealed in a series of direct messages between three activists. More...
After the Dallas Police shootings, this story gained new life. Now we have these updates:
8 July 2016 from the Memory Hole: Hacked Messages of #BlackLivesMatter Leader Reveal Obama Admin’s Plan for ‘Summer of Chaos’ and Martial Law 9 July 2016 fromInvestmentWatch: "Obama-engineered Summer of Chaos begins in Dallas"
Now this trash is being re-published and re-distributed faster than I can keep up.
This is being circulated as a transcript of the direct messages. I have made bold some of the passages I find strange in a private conversation between co-conspirators:
JE: “Have you spoken with Mrs. Lynch [Attorney General Loretta Lynch] recently about the plan for the summer and fall leading up to the elections.”
DM: “We spoke two weeks and they want us to start really pushing how racist Trump is now instead of waiting so the others can start getting the protesters ready to shut both conventions down.”
DM: “If we can get both conventions shut down for messing over Bernie and for having racist Trump, then get martial law declared so Obama can stay in office we will win. Call you soon when I get to my dads so I can use his landline and we can talk more on this.”
DM: “We have to make sure that we use our voices to keep people disrupting Trump all summer and through the fall so martial law can be declared….”
S: “I wanted to touch base with you about the summer of chaos. So far we have over 2,000 people bused in from different cities and another 6,000 to 8,000 expected to drive into Cleveland for the Convention.”
S: “They will not be ready for the crowds we are bringing and they will blame Trump for it, especially if we shut it down. The GOP will have to replace him at that point or we will continue the disruptions nationwide.”
DM: “I will pass the info along. Good work, Sam. You never let us down. It’s so important we stop Trump. He can not be president.He will destroy everything we worked so hard for and we can’t trust….”
DM: “…today and he [Sam?] confirmed that there will be around 10,000 protesters disrupting the [Republican] convention. Plans are being made for other cities as well for upcoming Trump events. Ads have already been placed looking for people to help. I know you don’t care for them [white people] but this is the time we need our white allies doing a lot of the work for us. They are the ones who listen the best.”
JE: “That will put fear into the GOP and the country when they can’t have their convention for all their racist supporting Trump. We’ve worked too hard and closely with the Obama administration to have that racist ass take it all away and Hillary…. You know I can’t stand those white allies, but yo right this is the best to use them. They hang on every word you say and will do whatever is asked. I just hate all that kiss ass they try to do. Like that changes who they are.”
DM: “We have a lot of white allies volunteering for Trump’s campaign to pass along information to us before it’s made public so we know when rallies are coming up before they are announced. That way we can plan major disruptions in those cities in advance. We just have to keep our names out of this and let these [white] people do the work for us by pushing how Trump’s racist ways will destroy….”
JE: “That’s all those white people are good for in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine even pretending to like that racist ass Trump even to get info on his events. I’ll be glad when we shut his ass down.”
DM: “With the support we have from Mrs. Lynch and the help we’ve got from Sam and others it won’t be hard to cause enough….”
The fact checking website Snoopes.com looked at these messages, declared the story FALSE and filed it under Conspiracy Theory. They said:
The transcript and messages contained an implausible level of detail for ongoing discussions (of which those involved would already be apprised), involving hard-to-swallow exposition ensuring those who read them weren't left wondering who the players involved or desired outcome of the plotting might be. Had Mckesson and his collaborators truly been engaged in complex, high-level planning with the assistance of the Obama administration, the messages would likely involve broad terms used among individuals already immersed in the plots. Referencing Lynch by name was unnecessary save to create the connection desired, and presumably a conspiracy of that level would occur on a far more secure channel of communication.
Damn right! You don't see any private conversations from WikiLeaks Central or Anonymous being spread all over the Internet, and they don't waste words telling each other stuff they already know. But as implausible as this story is, that doesn't mean its not having the desired effect. According to @TheSaintNegro29, the Trump supporting twit that first published these alleged DMs, "the FBI, DHS and the Secret Service began knocking on the doors of BLM activists and community organizers in Cleveland asking about their plans for disrupting the RNC."
This right wing conspiracy theory, as loonie as it is, has a curious unity with a certain widely held left wing conspiracy theory. The promoters of this theory envisions BLM activists setting up a situation were their own people, the peaceful protesters, are exposed to police violence in the hopes of creating a situation that will bring Obama into the fight on their side. After Bashar al Assad carried out the most deadly of all his many chemical attacks against his Syrian opposition, many on the Left adopted one or another variant of a theory that said the Free Syrian activists were using sarin on their own people in the hopes of getting Obama to come into the fight on their side. This only goes to show that warped minds think alike and there's really little differences between Left and Right demagoguery when it comes to conspiracy theories.
Syria is still the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
for #BlackLivesMatter.
