Looks like "a pile of trash" to me too

- What's dis yere? A pile of trash?
- NO, fool. Dat be a memorial to Mike Brown, killed by the racist Ferguson police!

- But it sho looks like trash. Look, you can even see where it been burned.
- Hey, dat was an accident. Somebody din't know dat if you puts candles next to teddy bears and balloons, dey gonna burn.

- Well why it lyin' all down da middle ob de street like dat?
- Fool! Din't I tell ya, all dem Ferguson people racist! Some honky done drove his car into de memorial.

Well, I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. But "a pile of trash" was what it looked like to Officer Timothy Zoll of the Ferguson MO Police Department. At least, that's what he told a reporter for the Washington Post who called what about a tip that the trash had been trashed on Christmas Day by an unsympathetic (and doubtless white) motorist.

The Post  quoted Officer Zoll as saying, "I don't know that a crime has occurred. But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?"

Seems to Walt like a good question, but the Post characterized the comment as... wait for it... racist. But St. Louis radio station KMOX later reported that Zoll told its reporter he had been misquoted and actually said that the memorial might have been destroyed by a motorist unfamiliar with the area who had mistaken it for a pile of trash.

That explanation didn't wash with the cop's bosses though. They said yesterday that "the officer admitted to Department investigators that he did in fact make the remarks attributed to him, and that he misled his superiors when asked about the contents of the interview."

For his sins of racial insensitivity and political incorrectness, Officer Zoll has now been placed on unpaid leave, while the investigation into the dastardly crime continues. 


City officials were at pains to note that police Chief Thomas Jackson kept investigating the statement even after Officer Zoll initially denied making it. "The City of Ferguson wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location."

A more secure location? Walt suggests the Ferguson Memorial Sanitary Landfill. And my suggestion has nothing to do with the identity or race of the dear departed who was being "memorialized". It's just that I am sick and tired of seeing these unsightly and pointless "memorials" that pile up on the site of any sudden and public death.

The practice of leaving flowers, candles, teddy bears, balloons, crudely lettered signs and other detritus at the scene of  the accident or crime is maudlin, mawkish and pathetic. Pointless, too.

The only people who are made better off by these empty gestures are the sellers of toys, flowers, candles and what-have-you. For them, a sudden death -- particularly of a child or other "innocent" -- is better than Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas all rolled into one!

I don't know how, where or why this sloppy sentimental nonsense started, but I hope one day we'll see memorials, in the more dignified form of flowers and wreaths, confined to the cemeteries in which the victims are buried. Toys, balloons and suchlike dumped in the city streets deserve to be treated as... well... trash.

Justice for Zemir Begic!

You think "the truth is out there"? Hah! If by "out there" you mean "in the mass media", you are sadly mistaken. All you're going to get from the lamestream media in the USA and Canada is "all the truth that fits"  into their secular humanist, politically correct template. Anything that doesn't fit, that contradicts political and social orthodoxy, will be ignored.

Case in point: the murder of Zemir Begic, beaten to death by hammer-wielding assailants on Sunday morning in... wait for it... St. Louis.

You didn't hear about it? Gee, what a surprise! The story has been notably and woefully under-reported by the American meeja. Why? Because Mr. Begic was white -- a Bosnian immigrant -- and the killers were... wait for it... black.

Mr. Begic was driving his car with two passengers, including his fiancée, when something hit his vehicle. When he got out, he was confronted and assaulted by several dark-complected attackers. He was unconscious when emergency personnel arrived on the scene, and later died at a local hospital.

Police have arrested three teenage suspects and charged them with murder. They are still looking for a fourth. Although the suspects are black (or at least non-white), and the victim was white, a St. Louis police spokesthingy says that they have no indication that race was a factor in the attack. And if you believe that, he has some nice bottom land on the banks of the Mississippi he'd like to sell you.

Given that the attack occurred less than 14 miles from the town of Ferguson, which has been under a bright media spotlight since the August shooting of a black teen by a white police officer, local residents have been quick to draw comparisons.

In "The protesters near Ferguson who are begging for more police", a member of the city's small Bosnian community is quoted thus. "In Ferguson, they want to make a protest about nothing and yet that attracted attention across the nation. We're just trying to keep more police down here because of these little thugs."

The Post's reporter observes that it's police inaction, not action, that has demonstrators angered. He describes the scene at the protests, drawing an implied comparison to the occasionally violent demonstrations that took place after officer Darren Wilson was cleared by a grand jury last week in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

"The protesters did not chant," writes Todd Frankel. "The protesters didn't hurl insults at police. Some huddled around a bonfire on a garage's parking lot. A memorial for Begic with stuffed animals began to take shape in a corner. The protesters only edged into the street whenever police showed signs of losing interest and departing."

Outside of St. Louis, the murder of Mr. Begic has gone largely unnoticed. However, the story has gained traction among conservative commentators and bloggers, who view it as an example of media and liberal activist hypocrisy.

Why is there nation-wide outrage over the death of Michael Brown -- shown on video to be one of the "thugs" from whom the larger community wants police protection -- but silence on the murder of Zemir Begic -- by all accounts a law-abiding immigrant trying to make his way in a land he came to to escape just such race-based violence?

If the episode can somehow be linked to the Ferguson demonstrations, that fact could be used to discredit the protest as a whole. Some might even think that the looting, the vandalism, the mindless violence and attacks on white people are somehow related -- the criminal acts of a lawless and violent... and black... underclass.

It's NOT about "black lives"

Walt waited 24 hours to see if the rioting and looting in Ferguson MO would get worse or better [better rioting? better looting? Ed.] but last night was quiet, by comparison with the night before. Al Sharpton appeared. The Prez said (not in so many words, since the words are copyrighted by Bill Clinton) that he felt the pain of "the community", which Walt understood to mean not the entire community of Ferguson, but the black part of it.

And 1000s of people marched, danced and boogied through the streets carrying signs which read "Black lives matter!" There were relatively small and peaceful marches in other US cities and even in Canada's blackest city, Toronto. Marchers in those places carried the same signs. Walt suspects there's a factory somewhere -- probably in China -- that turns them out for sale at dollar stores. [Now there's an entrepreneurial idea! Ed.]

What's wrong with these pictures? Specifically, what's wrong with these signs? Walt will tell you. It's not about black lives or even the life of Michael Brown. It's about a breakdown of law and order in the black community. And it's about that community being a crime-ridden, undisciplined underclass.

How did it get like that? How did they get like that? Walt will tell you that too. For 50 years the majority (read "white") community has been bending over backwards [and forwards! Ed.] to accommodate the "civil rights" of every minority group ever conceived -- not just blacks, but gays, wimmin, non-English speakers, Muslims, refugees, atheists, etc etc and so forth.

Nowadays everyone -- except straight white males -- has not just rights but "entitlements". They are all "entitled", all "owed" everything from food and housing to preferred admission to college, where their education will, of course, be free. The world owes them a living! Well, not the world actually, but the rest of us -- the majority -- as embodied in The Government. After all, it was The Government who (especially around election time) promised all these minorities the sun, moon and stars. And if those who feel entitled have received only the moon, of course The Government is to blame.

Notably absent from the half-century of yammering and promises about "civil rights" has been any talk of civic responsibility, or civic duty. When I took civics in grade school [long, long ago. Ed.], I was taught that a good citizen had certain responsibilities and duties which he owed to his community. For instance, a good citizen should keep his home and neighbourhood clean and tidy. He should get a job and do his best to support himself and his family, so as not to be a burden on the community or the state. (After all, the tax monies used to support those who could not support themselves came from the community.)

A big part of civic duty was promoting and maintaining law and order. In the 19th century, many parts of the country did not have police forces, as we understand them today. Perhaps there was a marshal or sheriff or chief magistrate who, if there were criminals to be dealt with, would swear in a posse of ordinary citizens to do the necessary. And criminals would be brought before the courts to be further dealt with by judges and juries. Serving on a jury was part of one's civic duty. But who wants to do one's "duty" any more?

The Prez, in his mushy and caring plea for calm, said that the black community needs "good policing" -- quite a remarkable statement for him to make, when you think about it. If Michael Brown's lawyers, the "Reverend" Al Sharpton et al. complain that they are getting "bad policing", that the cops a bunch of white racists, could they answer a simple question.

Where are the black police officers? Where are the black National Guards? Why is the black community not able to police itself? Isn't that a part of civic duty -- particularly in Ferguson MO, at this very moment?

Further reading: Walt recommends The Police Officer's Dilemma, a landmark study by Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, and Charles M. Judd (University of Colorado at Boulder) and Bernd Wittenbrink (University of Chicago) published in 2002. Once you get through the academic jargon -- the subtitle is Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals -- you'll learn that participants in the authors' study "fired at an armed target more quickly if he was African-American than if he was White, and decided to not shoot an unarmed White target more quickly than an unarmed African-American target".

And -- here's the "Wow!" -- a test with actual police officers, conducted give years later, showed that it didn't matter whether the cop was white or black! A black cop was just as likely as a white cop to shoot a young black man. Young black men are much more likely to die of lead poisoning (i.e. gunshot wounds) than young white men. And when you look at all the shooters, not just police, the shooter of a young black man is more likely to be another young black man than a white. And that's a fact.

Still more reading (added 29/11): "Progressive Mythography", by  Andrew C. McCarthy, on the National Review website. Mr. McCarthy explodes the myth that white cops kill black kids.

Whuffo everything in Armerica is about blacks? Fred Reed explains

Walt had kind of forgotten about Fred on Everything, a blog of scurrilous commentary written by Fred Reed. Agent 17 poked me (by e-mail) to tell me to read Fred's rant on "Black Power". I'm glad to have done so, and recommend that you, dear reader, do likewise. [He means you should read Fred's blog. Ed.]

To compare Walt's views with Fred's is to compare mayonnaise with five-star chili. I have to think that Fred is somewhere beyond the reach of the PC police [Maybe in Mexico? Ed.], that he gets away saying flat out what Walt only dares to suggest. I'll quote just a bit of Fred's question about why, half a century after the passage of laws guaranteeing "civil rights" (for everyone except us straight white men), "black issues" continue to dominate American politics.

It is curious that blacks, the least educated thirteen percent of the population, the least productive, most criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit.

Indeed. If you want to get down to specifics, click here to read the entire post. Kudos to Fred for being brave enough to call a spade a spade.

Note from Ed.: The only thing missing from Fred's post is a good illustration. Thanks to Agent 6 for this one.

St. Louis cop shoots unarmed (?) teen II

Walt is going to write this very carefully, so that his dear readers don't jump to any conclusions.

On Wednesday night, an off-duty St. Louis MO city policeman shot and killed a young male suspect. Here is how it all went down, according to St. Louis Police Lt. Col. Alfred Adkins. He told reporters that the officer approached four men on the street to question them. Then, "as [the officer] he exited the car [I believe he means "got out". Ed.], the gentlemen took off running. He was able to follow one of them before he lost him and then found him again as the guy jumped out of some bushes across the street. The officer approached, they got into a struggle, they ended up into a gangway, at which time the young man pulled a weapon and shots were fired. The officer returned fire and unfortunately the young man was killed."

Teyonna Myers, 23, of Florissant MO, has a different version. She said the deceased, her cousin Vonderrick Myers Junior, 18, had only been carrying a sandwich. "He was unarmed," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "He had a sandwich in his hand, and they thought it was a gun. It’s like Michael Brown all over again."

Oops. Looks like Teyonna let the cat out of the bag. Walt was just testing to see how long it would take you to conclude that the hooter was white and the shootee black. And so they were.

The Post-Dispatch reported that dozens of protesters assembled shortly afterwards in the Grand and Shaw area of south St. Louis. That's only a few miles from Ferguson, which has been the scene of the customary protests -- looting and rioting, you might say -- nearly every night since the fatal shooting in August of Michael Brown, also 18 years old, also unarmed, and also an innocent boy who was getting his life together, yada yada yada.

Memo to Ed.: Save this copy for future use. I'm getting tired of writing the same story over and over again. Walt.

St. Louis County cops kill another black guy, < 5 miles from Ferguson

Ed. here. Walt is sleeping off the effects of the previous post about the millions of dollars being spent to investigate racial profiling by American cops. I don't have the heart to wake him to show him the story that just came over the AP wire via Fox News.

The St. Louis County police are bracing for more allegations of racism and "racial profiling" following the shooting of a 42-year-old black man, as yet unnamed, in Jennings MO, a town of about 15,000 just down the road -- that would be Ferguson Avenue -- from Ferguson MO, where young Michael Brown was shot dead by a policeman back in August. As you know.

The county cops may find it easier to defend themselves this time, seeing as how the "victim" was armed with a .22-calibre rifle, which he attempted to fire at officers who were pursuing him on foot following a 9-1-1 call from a woman who said a man was at her door with a sawed off shotgun. The woman and the man reportedly knew each other and "may have been romantically involved in the past".

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said the man had a lengthy criminal record. Two white police officers fired 25 shots at him, with at least one finding its target.

"Rev." Al Sharpton is expected on the scene momentarily. Riots and cries for "justice" for the poor departed are expected as soon as the nearest liquor store can be located. And Attorney-General Eric Holder will come down from Washington to personally investigate this latest example of unfair and unjust "racial profiling".

Nearly $5 million to be spent proving US police are racists

More good news out of Washington! President Obarmy's Chief Kleagle [Attorney-General Eric Holder. Ed.] announced this week that the US Justice Department is going to spend $4,750,000 of Americans' tax dollars to study police arrest data for evidence of racial bias. The study will look at records from five cities (yet to be chosen) to see if police are using "racial profiling" to determine what kind of people could be described as "the usual suspects".

Putting it another way, "law enforcement experts" will be looking for evidence of bias against decent, law-abiding citizens like these.

Walt wonders who could possibly be biased against people like this, and why millions of dollars needs to be spent to study the alleged problem. Here are some possible reasons.

Item: This project comes after the violent unrest in Ferguson MO last month. The rioters -- for that's what they were -- looked a lot like, errr, the upstanding citizens shown in this picture.

Item: Mr. Holder happens to be a gentleman of the coloured persuasion... not too coloured, mind you. So is his boss.

Item: The study will be conducted by "experts" from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, as well as Yale Law School, the Center for Policing Equity [sic] at UCLA, and the Washington-based Urban Institute -- all fine institutions completely free of any eastern/intellectual/liberal/federalist bias.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that "the researchers involved in the project say they bringing a holistic approach that combines training of police officers on issues of racial bias, data analysis and interviews with community members. They will be reviewing police behavior in the cities in hopes of building community trust and creating an evidence-based model that could be applied more broadly."

Note from Ed.: I regret to advise that Walt was taken violently ill after typing that last paragraph. I have given him a small dish of jellied gin and put him to bed. He may be able to return tomorrow.

VIDEO: Racial violence in the USA: the real story

No news from Ferguson this week. Everything's quiet now, and the lamestream media have turned their righteous indignation in another direction. They've succeeded in spinning the death of "poor, innocent Michael Brown" into a story about the militarization of Armerican police.

That take on the Ferguson race riots -- for that's what they were, just as in Detroit, Newark and Watts -- is right enough and truly worrying to those of us who care about freedom and liberty. But the real issue remains race, and the abject failure of the President Obarmy to deliver on his promise of a "post-racial America". See "Is Ferguson really about race?", post here August 20th.

That's the point made by Bill Whittle in "Ferguson and the Real Race War" -- just over six minutes of solid truth-telling.



You won't see anything like this in the lamestream media because it makes the point that America's real problem is not white racism but black racism! Best quote: "Black racism is the toxic glue that holds the progressive coalition together." And that's the truth of America today.

Thanks to Agent 17 and his man in Belgium for passing this along, together with this quote which makes a good PS: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Can you guess who said it? None other than Jesse Jackson.

For more from Bill Whittle and other unPC commentators, check out Truth Revolt. If you want to join the revolution and help defeat the left, it's FREE. Just follow the links on the site.

NOT a picture of an innocent young black guy

One of Walt's agents sent this along.

Was it photoshopped or otherwise faked? Dunno. Was it really lifted from the Facebook page of a recently deceased unarmed black teenager? Ditto. Who arethese guys, anyway? Surely not the late Michael Brown and his accomplice in the Great Cigar Heist!

Hey, I said "NOT the late Michael Brown". Shame on you (and 1000s of others) for thinking what you thought. According to the NewsOne website (for Black America), one of these guys is Micus Brown and the other one is his cousin Joda Cain, both of Portland OR. (Walt's not sure which is which.)

NewsOne reports that Joda, 17, is accused of murdering his great-grandmother at her home in Portland, Oregon then stealing her car to flee the area. He and his cousin, Micus Ward, 19, allegedly killed the 71-year-old grandma after a party they threw at her home. When Cain was planning the party, friends asked him would the noise bother his great-grandmother and he allegedly said, "Don’t worry, I’ll hit her. I’ll knock her out."

How did this picture get all over the Internet, then? Apparently it was posted by Marc Catron, an officer of the Kansas City police. Officer Catron is reportedly under "internal review" following Facebook posts about Michael Brown, including this photo.

Was there any text? Errr, yes. The caption above the photo reads "I'm sure young Michael Brown is innocent and just misunderstood. I'm sure he is a pillar of the Ferguson community." For good measure, Officer Catron added, "Remember how white people rioted after OJ’s acquittal? Me neither."

Is Ferguson really about race?

Arentcha getting sick of reading about the riots and looting in Ferguson? Walt is getting tired of writing about this subject, but thinks Americans need to understand what's going on there, in the broader context of the half-century struggle for "civil rights" and "equality".

Today's post is prompted by "Is Michael Brown's shooting death really about race?", by veteran CBC News reporter Keith Boag, on the scene. There's a short video too, in which Mr. Boag steps away from the scene of the crimes to ask some "normal" citizens of Ferguson what's really going on.

In the article, he describes watching two white people having their cellphones snatched, in broad daylight, by young black thugs -- the kind of trash who might well deserve the N-word epithet. Says the reporter, "I have had race relations and "crime and punishment" issues buzzing around in my head constantly since I arrived in Ferguson. Suddenly, some things I thought were settled in my mind came loose and started to float around again. All because of foolish young men behaving like caricatures."

"Foolish" young black men, dressed in their saggy pants uniforms, grabbing stuff they want without regard to law, decency or morality. Call it a caricature. Call it a stereotype. That's how the rest of America -- including older blacks -- sees African-Americans today. And not without reason.

The USA today [Hey, that could be the name of a newspaper for 5th-graders! Ed.] is beset by a large and growing back underclass -- ignorant, uncouth, loutish, drug-ridden, welfare-dependent bastards. (Nearly three-quarters of births to black mothers in the USA are illegitimate.) This in spite of half a century of civil rights and other US government laws designed to ensure that all Americans would be "equal"...and integrated too.

Americans were promised that the civil rights acts of the mid-60s would usher in an era of racial harmony and equality, not just equality of opportunity but equality of result for the hitherto disadvantaged members of society. African-Americans -- or "Negroes", as they were called in those days -- thought they were going to get white jobs, white cars, white houses and [that's enough. Ed.]

Affirmative action programmes were devised to put blacks at the head of the line for government jobs, admission to college, and just about everything else. That was supposed to pull them up out of the ignorance and poverty which white Americans supposedly forced on them. But that's not what happened. What happened was that the rest of society was mongrelized, debased and degraded. And still African-Americans are not "equal" -- not the same as white Americans. Should we be surprised?

At the very end of Coming of Age in Mississippi (Dell, 1970), Anne Moody, a civil rights activist in the `60s, quotes the last two lines of "We Shall Overcome" and adds, "I wonder. I really wonder." Walt wonders what Anne Moody thinks about racial equality and the "events" in Ferguson. Sadly, we won't be able to ask her. According to Wikipedia, Ms Moody does not appear in public or grant interviews.

Top MO cop says Ferguson chaos is going to "make us better"

It's been a quiet week in Fort Mudge, where the men are good-looking, the women are strong, and the children are just about average. Garrison Keillor beat you to that lead-in. Ed. OK, it's been a quiet weekend in Fort Mudge, but not so far away, in Ferguson MO, things just go from bad to worse.

Walt is checking out reports of yesterday's protests and demonstrations. When not busy looting stores and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the cops, the protesters are chanting for "justice", meaning, it would seem, "justice" for Michael Brown and only Michael Brown. If there were any justice for the looters they'd be shot on sight. But of course that would be yet another example of Armerican racism, since the looters are 99.99% black.

Last night's curfew seems to have been more or less observed, perhaps because the looters were sleeping off their hangovers after the effects of Saturday night's looted hooch wore off.

Or maybe the rabble were in church, listening to the "Reverend" Al Sharpton rouse them. Here we see a picture of the Rev coaching Michael Brown Junior's parents -- Michael Brown Senior and Lesley McSpade [Ed., please check spelling.] -- to make sure they've got their stories straight about what a good boy "Junior" was.

Too bad that the videos and still pix released by the Ferguson P.D. give the lie to the contention that the young man was nothing more than a hulking innocent -- a "gentle giant" as one speaker called him. He didn't look so gentle beating on the shopkeeper as he stole the box of cigars.

But really, you know, it was bad of the cops to show those pix. An NAACP spokesthingy appeared on TV to call doing so "posthumous character assassination". And Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called the publication of the pictures -- the veracity of which is unquestioned -- "unhelpful", which is what liberals always call any message which disagrees with their party line. He said the release of the footage "appeared to cast aspersions" on the dead man -- tsk tsk! -- and "made emotions raw".

That was just before Governor Nixon called out the Missouri National Guard, to restore order, which the militarized police and state patrol had failed to do. Sure. When the paramilitary types can't get the job done, call out the "real" military.

Mr. Nixon's speech wasn't helpful either. Walt wonders if the gov has any feeling at all for the reality of life in places like Ferguson. But today's award for proficiency in putting lipstick on a pig goes to that Master of Political Correctness, Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Patrol. Preaching at a Ferguson church, he said "We need to thank the Browns for Michael.... It's gonna make us better.... Let's continue to show this nation who we are.... We need to thank Michael for his life [and for] the change he's gonna make.... I'll stand tall wichya and I'll see ya out there!"

Click here to see the video clip [preferably before eating. Ed.] and ask yourself, was this helpful? Yeah, Ron, see ya on the street!

Ferguson "protests" - read "looting" - continue

Yesterday Walt wondered if any cigars had been found on the body of Michael Brown, the young black man accused of robbing a Ferguson MO convenience store a few minutes before he was shot dead by a local cop. Later yesterday, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said that "evidence of the stolen merchandise" was indeed found in Brown's possession.

The police also distributed copies of surveillance video showing a large black man throttling a smaller Asian shopkeeper before leaving the store with some ill-gotten goods. (A montage of stills from the video is in yesterday's last post on WWW.) You have to admire the chutzpah of the Brown family's attorney, Algonquin J. Calhoun [Daryl Parks, surely! Ed.] who admitted that the man shown in the surveillance footage "appears to be" Brown. But he and others said the family was "blindsided" by the allegations and release of the footage. Even if it was Brown in the video, they said, the crime didn't justify the shooting of a teen after he put up his hands in surrender to the officer, as his friends are saying.

Another family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, said police "are choosing to disseminate information that is very strategic to try to help them justify the execution-style" killing. Attorney Crump also represented the family of Trayvon Martin, the teenager fatally shot by a Florida neighborhood watch organizer who was later acquitted of murder. Walt wonders how the Brown family can afford to hire not just one but a team of lawyers.

Meanwhile, on West Florissant Avenue, la loota continua.

Just before midnight, some in what had been a large and rowdy crowd of "protesters" broke into the same small store which Brown was accused of robbing, and began looting it, according to Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson. Oh yeah, they broke into a liquor store too. A little brandy to go with the cigars, perhaps.

Capt. Johnson said police backed off to try and ease the tension. No arrests were made. "We had to evaluate the security of the officers there and also the rioters," Johnson said. "We just felt it was better to move back." In other words, the looters were allowed to get away with it. After all, the FBI is on the scene, and we wouldn't want to see anyone's civil rights infringed...right?

Protests over death of an "innocent" black youth continue

Walt presents, without much further comment, a video clip from CBC News, showing how serious the "black community" is in its demand for "justice" in the shooting of Michael Brown.

Note from Ed.: You'll have to take my word for it, there really was a video showing black yoofs boogyin' down the street doing the "hands up, don't shoot" dance. What a great sense of rhythm they have! But the video seems to have disappeared from the politically correct CBC News website. It's "unavailable" now. But here's the rest of this morning's news from Ferguson.

While the party continues, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson identified Darren Wilson as the shooter. Chief Jackson said Officer Wilson -- a six-year veteran of the force -- was called, along with other officers, the area after a 911 call reporting a "strong-arm robbery" at a nearby convenience store. Apparently a couple of yoofs of the coloured persuasion grabbed a box of cigars. It is not known whether any cigars were found on the body of Michael Brown.

UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE: The Ferguson Police Department has just released a montage of stills from surveillance video shot at the convenience store on August 9th. And what do we see here? A large black boy behaving badly towards a smaller shopkeeper who appears to be Asian. Do the stereotypes never end? Can't see the box of cigars. And is the large boy not just black but Brown? Even if he is, executing him seems a little severe. After all, scenes like this occur 100s of times every day, right across Armerica.

Paramilitary police rule the Paranoid States of America

Walt is a year older. [Than what? Dirt? Ed.] I'll answer that... I'm so old I can remember when people could write and speak grammatical English. I can remember when popular music had melodies you could hum and lyrics you could sing in decent company. And I can remember when children were taught that policemen -- there were no policewomen or policepersons in those days -- were our friends, human and caring people, the sort who would take a runaway kid back home. [Remember the kindly beat cop in Going My Way? Ed.

But times have changed. Cops have changed. Now, whether as a result of the War on Drugs or the War on Terror -- or the War on Poverty ?? -- North American police see themselves as warriors, "serving and protecting" by keeping "law and order" in our cities by using deadly force against terrorists, criminals and, errr, the rest of us... whenever and wherever they feel like it.

Why do they do that? For the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because they can! Police in the Paranoid States of America [Canada too! Ed.] have been thoroughly militarized. What the lamestream media are now calling the "unrest" in Ferguson MO is just the latest example of how that militarization can play out in city streets.

The cops occupying the St. Louis suburb are -- like most state and local police forces -— outfitted with the armoured vehicles, battering rams and flashbang grenades once reserved for troops. Police and "protesters" have clashed every day and every night since Michael Brown, an apparently unarmed black kid, was shot by an as-yet-unnamed policeman on Saturday. Vandalism and looting broke out the next day. A store was set on fire. Al Sharpton arrived.

As noted here two days ago, police responded in full riot gear. Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down the airspace above Ferguson as a precautionary measure. Against what, for heaven's sake?! You'd think war had been declared. Oh, wait... Surely a more appropriate response to riots -- for that's what they are -- would be officers armed with pistols and billy clubs, not M-16s and grenade launchers.

Writing in Business Insider, Paul Szoldra, asks "Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants?", referring to the pattern designed for the US Marine Corps, or MARine PATtern. When he was serving in Afghanistan, Szoldra says, they used big trucks and uniforms intended to project an image as occupiers. When, he asks, did this became OK on domestic soil?

As Walt told you last spring in "SWAT teams abuse your right -- 1000s of times a year!", studies by Prof. Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, show that between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the percentage of cities of 50,000 or more, like St. Louis, with a paramilitary unit almost doubled to 89 per cent.

Smaller cities, with populations of 25-50,000, saw an even greater jump –- from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. "These trends would mean little if these teams were relatively inactive," he wrote, "This was not the case."

Once the police are equipped and trained in the ways of the military -- the art of war -- they naturally want to put all that training and all those big-boy toys to use. Cops like bullying people! Cops like shooting people! It is their nature... like the dog mentioned above...

Prof. Kraska found that between 1980 and 2000, there was a 1,400% increase (!!) in police "paramilitary deployments". The majority of the deployments were for drug raids in private homes, not the intended goal of a SWAT team, which is emergency situations like hostage takings and shooter scenarios where the extra weaponry might be required.

Two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report ominously titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing". Their statistics for the years 2011-2012 confirm the trend identified by Prof. Kraska.

Of more than 800 SWAT deployments in those two years, 79% were to search the homes of private citizens, largely in drug probes. If it hadn't been the police carrying out these operations, we'd call them "home invasions", for that's what they are -- "legalized" home invasions.

The ACLU criticizes US policing for becoming unnecessarily and dangerously militarized. "Neighbourhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," said the report. Any further comment from Walt would be superfluous.

Ferguson MO: La loota continua!

Walt doesn't usually run more than one picture per post, but the race riot -- for that's what it is -- in Ferguson MO deserves more. These three, from the online edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tell you all you need to know about race relations in America, or at least in this typical mid-west American city.

The first two were taken at the QuikTrip in the 9400 block of Florissant Road. We see members of the black underclass -- for that's what it is -- helping themselves to whatever they can carry away. Why? To protest racism and police brutality of course.

Notice that the young buck pictured here is wearing the traditional baggy pants costume of his people.

When all the mess is cleaned up, and the stores are boarded up, leaders of this "community" will doubtless be heard complaining that there's nowhere to buy food or clothing or anything else because the racist white business establishment is disciminating against their 'hood.

And here's the response of the establishment. The Post-Dispatch says the police, now turned into soldiers, are firing teargas. Walt is no expert, but the weapon being aimed by the cop (soldier?) in the centre looks more like an assault rifle. Yes, just another example of racist police shooting at poor innocent black folks.

Click here to see the entire gallery from the Post-Dispatch. La loota continua!

St. Louis African-Americans protest racist police brutality

Summertime...and the lootin' is easy... This AP photo was taken in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis. The thief pictured is protesting in the traditional African-American manner and against the racism of American society and the brutality of the local police.

A white police officer shot non-white Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday afternoon, after encountering Mr. Brown and another man on a street in Ferguson. According to County Police Chief Jon Belmar, one of the non-white men shoved the cop into his cruiser and a struggle began. At least one shot was fired inside the cruiser, presumably from the cop's gun, since the black kids were unarmed. Several more shots were fired, as a result of which Mr. Brown died from exsanguination.

Mayor James Knowles said he understood that people of the African-American community would "want to vent their frustrations. We understand they want to speak out." Quite right. It only took a couple of hours for John Gaskin, speaking for the NAACP, to shout "We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement."

Following the ensuing candlelight vigil, people of the darker persuasion looted shops, vandalised cars and stores, and set a gas station on fire as police tried to block off access to several areas of St. Louis. Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to arrive today to urge his people to even greater feats of peaceful demonstration. Stay tuned.

Notes from Ed.: (1) Walt has been waiting for decades to use the word "exsanguination" in a sentence. (2) If you can't remember what NAACP stands for, please rest assured the first word is not the N-word. Anyway, as demonstrations such as this show, the NAACP doesn't stand for very much.