Saturday, August 16, 2014

Ferguson

There must be accountability. Innocent people have experienced tear gas even on their own front yards. I will give him or the President credit for talking about how the journalists and the protesters should have their rights respected. I have no issue with the DOJ being involved. He can do much more than he is doing now. His words are similar to his other words on such matters. I expected him to say what he has said. He can easily create a task force to force authorities to prosecute any officer who has done any injustice against a protester, journalist, citizen, etc. The system is corrupt and the system must be radically changed. Also, the events in Ferguson are part of a national crisis. This crisis exists nationwide and all levels of government have the responsibility to address this issue. No one oppressed should be calm in a token way in the midst of oppressive conditions. Militarized police using over policing and unwarranted ARRESTS ought to be fully condemned. Tear gas used on innocent people ought to be condemned. This militarization of the police and the police using Gestapo tactics makes the truth plain that the police ought to be calm not law abiding, peaceful protesters. The police should be calmer. These Gestapo tactics utilized by many police officers are nothing new. PEOPLE have suffered these tactics during Bloody Sunday, during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and during other times throughout American history. Many police officers have killed black people for a long time. We have the responsibility to do what is right and the law enforcement has the responsibility to follow real laws. The West funding puppet regimes overseas using violence against people ought to be condemned too. Imperialism is evil and it is supported by members of both parties. Ferguson has been suffering for decades and they need economic and political solutions. The overarching theme is that we should have healing, but there can be no true healing without justice and liberation. That is why the journalists and the protesters who were unlawfully ARRESTED ought to sue. I have no issue with legitimate federal government involvement to not only investigate and monitor the situation, but they should prevent any injustice done by local law enforcement. Crooked police have gotten away from it for a long time. I only hope that radical change can come. This event is unique, because of the people standing up (and folks are not taking it anymore. You can see it in the eyes of the protesters and the real activists).

According to a new study done by Lancet, Black and Hispanic kids have about a 50 percent chance of developing diabetes over the course of their lifetimes, and Americans overall have a 40 percent chance. The study was done by epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they used mortality data of 600,000 Americans from 1985 to 2011 to determine the risk that Americans face of developing type 1 or TYPE 2 DIABETES, categorized by race. Such studies have been in existence for a long time. We have to learn about our family histories too, because if our relatives have it, then we can take precautions now as a way for us to decrease our chances of having diabetes. Regardless, we should eat healthier and exercise for building our IMMUNE SYSTEM, our bodies in general and our intellect as human beings. Big Agra and Big Pharma advance many unhealthy foods all of the time. Some folks in those entities even reject the common sense action of labeling GMO foods. We have seen the growth of independent farms, organic foods, and localized markets that seek to bring more choices for consumers. Not to mention that this is a socioeconomic matter too. Richer communities have greater access to healthier foods than poorer communities and that must change as well.


The police forces in Ferguson have shown a lack of respect and a lack of transparency. They refuse to release the name of the murderer of Michael Brown immediately when we know the identities of the murderers of Eric Garner. Some have made an excellent point about how the Klan, Neo-Nazis, Aryan Nation, and other white supremacist terrorist organizations have infiltrated the police for years and decades. The President should use a task force to root out these terrorists from all law enforcement. The President should take immediate, radical action as a means to address this crisis found in Ferguson. As for Iraq, it is a complicated situation. A lot of the chaos came about by the Western backed coup in 1963, the evil sanctions, and the Iraqi 2003 war (which I opposed). The humanitarian aid is fine, but the military intervention is tricky, because it will CONTINUE for weeks or months at least. People have said that only a political solution is needed to address the needs of the diverse religious and ethnic groups in Iraq. In Ukraine, the puppet regime is destroying areas found in Eastern Ukraine. The big point is that post racial ideologies are fantasies. We have to be real in dealing with race and class if we want real changes in the world. We need healing, but we can never have true healing without justice & liberation. The issue in Ferguson is indicative of economic issues found nationwide (the causes of these problems have been occurring for decades because of deindustrialization, institutional racism, and police oppression against people) and there must be revolutionary solutions. The police had occupied Ferguson. People have courageously stood up against the racism of a system that slanders the value of young men or black people in general. People have every right to disagree with some police officers using riot gear, armed with assault weapons, attack dogs, and militarized vehicles for “crowd control.” In early Wednesday, the police shot and critically wounded another young man in Ferguson, not long after the night’s protests have dispersed. Steve Walsh was an innocent bystander. He was walking home to the home of his child’s mother when he got caught up in a police attack on protesters. Walsh told the Guardian that he was struck in the neck by a "wooden pellet" which left "a bloody, coin-sized wound behind his left ear," THE ARTICLE stated. Walsh told the reporter "I almost fainted. Blood just started coming out." The police fired rubber bullets into the crowds of unarmed citizens. Some police demanded that people turn off their cameras. While law enforcement tries to paint protesters as violent thugs, CNN cameras caught one white cop on camera taunting demonstrators: "Bring it!" he yelled, "All you f___ animals--bring it!" The words of “Hands up. Don’t shoot” have been said by the protesters as well. Other protesters march with signs that draw a parallel to the assertion of basic HUMANITY during the civil rights struggle only a few hours south of Ferguson in Memphis, Tenn.: "I am a man," "I am a woman."

The conflict between Israel and Gaza continues. There have been war crimes in Khuza’a. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asked the U.S. for help in combatting charges of war committed over the last month in Gaza. There has been well documented accounts of war crimes have poured out of the Gaza Strip from journalists and human rights advocates. Some might see an United Nations team being tasked to investigate war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Many of these accounts focus on Khuza’a or a village near Khan Younis. This was a place where there is the site intensive Israeli bombardment in late July. Khuza’a is near Gaza’s border with Israel, and Israeli forces battled Palestinian fighters there. Many accounts (from Palestinians and journalists), the village suffered from indiscriminate shelling and firing, leading to the deaths of many Palestinians civilians. There are also reports that Israeli soldiers shot unarmed civilians at point blank range. Mondoweiss is a site where accounts from Palestinians on the apparent massacre in Khuza’a. The Daily Beast’s reporter Jesse Rosenfeld was among the first to document with his own eyes of what look like blatant war crimes in the village. On August 1, he published a harrowing account of a mass execution in the village. What was left in the village, Rosenfeld wrote, is “rubble, bombed-out buildings and the all-encompassing, sickening smell of death.” Rosenfeld broke the story of how there were at least six rotting, dead bodies piled together in a small home. He’s careful not to assign blame, but he does report that “the house is filled with casings from the bullets used in assault rifles. They are marked on the bottom as ‘IMI’ (Israel Military Industries).” Human Rights Watch added this information to their report three days later. The human rights organization said that the Israeli soldiers shot and killed civilians who were fleeing Khuza’a, which is a blatant violation of international law. Even on July 23, Israeli soldiers ordered about 100 Palestinians to leave a residence they had gathered in for shelter. When Shahid al-Najjar left the residence, he was shot in the jaw by an Israeli soldier. Then, Human Rights Watch reported, soldiers detained all of the males over the age of 15. They brought some of the detainees into Israel for interrogation. The Israeli forces let some of them go, but fired on one unarmed group while they were walking to Khan Younis, killing one Palestinian and wounding two others. There was another incident of Israeli war. It was published by the Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights. The Electronic Intifada’s Rania Khalek has covered this information. In Euro-Mid’s August 10th release, the group relayed Palestinian accounts of being used as human shields–a particularly important charge given that Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. Ramanadan Muhammad Qadeeh said that on July 25th Israeli soldiers raided his home in the village. They killed his 65 year old father at point blank range after he tried to tell the soldiers they were just civilians. Then, Qadeeh said, “They ordered us to take off our clothes and tied our hands up. They took us to one of the rooms and used us as shields, making us stand at the windows as if we were looking outside…I was at one WINDOW and three children from my family at another. The soldiers then began firing around us.” There are many other accounts of how Israel has used Palestinian civilians as human shields during past military operations in Gaza.

Brother Edud is right in that we need to develop new strategies. Dr. King, before he died, wanted massive civil disobedience in America and the shutdown of cities in order for us to fight oppression. Malcolm X before he died wanted armed units of black people to counteract the Klan and other white racists in the South. We need a combination of not only protests, but we need civil disobedience, and the organization of armed, TRAINED, intelligent, disciplined, and independent black people to protect the black community (using rational tactics, strength, and if necessary self-defense). We all reject violent gangs too including the vicious violent gang of crooked officers. We need other political strategies as well. I reject random rioting, because rioting will only empower tyrannical, crooked officers not the people. The people need to be empowered with political and economic solutions, because Ferguson has suffered racism, deindustrialization, and other forms of class oppression. The actions done by the old school BPP are relevant in our time. Also, I heard Kevin Jackson speak on this issue. A nice Sister wanted me to look at the CNN video of him in order for me to see the ignorance of him. She is absolutely right on her views on him. People like Kevin Johnson have it totally wrong. The truth is that the blame for the murder of Michael Brown rests on the murdering cop alone. He is a liar too, because tons of organizations then and now are working all of the time to address crime in the black community in general. He fails to see that the peaceful protesters including journalists have been assaulted by militarized police. The extrajudicial murder of unarmed black people is the issue and the anchor refuted Kevin Jackson at every step of the way. This PERSON mocks the protests as just "parades." He is a disgrace. What he fails to get is that we need radical social, political, and economic changes in this country. People should address class oppression also. A person can be the most moral person in the world and we need more than that. We need community development (that deals with collective organization), economic justice, and racial justice too. There must be a radical change in the SYSTEM since the problem is found heavily in the SYSTEM as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has said. A crooked cop will try to kill a Brother or a Sister regardless, so we have to use policies to combat police terrorism. Once again, the Sister has shown great information and she is a Great Woman. The murderer is named Darren Wilson.


By Timothy

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