Unrest Returns to Ferguson After Smear Campaign Launched

Friday's release of video footage alleging that Mike Brown, the young man executed by Ferguson, Missouri cops was fleeing a robbery stinks to high heaven. The first question should be why did the police wait for five days before accusing Brown of something called a "strong-arm robbery" - which sounds like shoplifting run through one of Frank Luntz's focus groups. It is an obvious attempt to denigrate his character or to otherwise "niggerize" him so as to make the cop who murdered him into a victim. We saw a similar tactic used on Trayvon Martin after he was gunned down by the loose cannon, self-anointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting. Zimmerman predictably got off after the scary black criminal bogeyman stigma was pinned to the dead teenager Martin who wasn't alive to give his side of the story.

Very timely in that right when there is a national uproar over the ongoing militarizing of the police that such a surveillance video would just happen to fortuitously pop up to diffuse the outrage, smack down politicians who are speaking out and reincarnate the bread and butter race-baiting strategy of Richard M. Nixon himself. Senator Paul, who drew accolades for his Time column "We Must Demilitarize the Police" will now be relentlessly targeted by the neo-confederate racist scum of the GOP party base until he walks back his statement about Mike Brown from  the piece:

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
 This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.
 Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

The video release and subsequent conflicting statements from the local cops in Ferguson only served to reignite the situation a day after the paramilitary goons were called off in favor of the Missouri Highway Patrol in managing the protests. People should be pissed, this is total bullshit and is such a ham-handed attempt to suppress any attempts to reign in the lucrative miltarization of the police that it is a testament to the thorough systemic corruption of the state-corporate media in bothering to air it at all. The argument now being that as long as it is a young black man or teen suspected of wrongdoing (in America every young black man is a potential target) then it is acceptable to make an extrajudicial murder by the cops a justifiable punishment  for shoplifting. 

The calm was shattered in the aftermath of the video release and conflicting statements, as per a story from The Guardian entitled "Ferguson police clash with Michael Brown protesters againovernight":

Police in riot gear clashed overnight with small groups of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri amid signs of renewed tensions over the shooting of an unarmed teenager by a local patrol officer.
 The flareups, breaking a period of relative calm, came after police released surveillance footage that implicated Michael Brown, 18, in the theft of a packet of cigars from a convenience store a few minutes before he was shot. Brown's family condemned the revelation as a "character assassination" designed to smear the teenager and divert attention from the actions of police.
 One of the flashpoints in the early hours of Saturday came at the store where the robbery was alleged to have taken place. Police fired a teargas canister at a crowd of around 200 people who had gathered there. Some protesters threw bottles at officers in riot gear and shouted "hands up, don't shoot", the chant that has come to characterise the protests. According to some accounts, Brown had his hands up when he was shot.
 A small crowd later looted the convenience store. A meat market was also looted and other businesses had windows smashed. Police did not intervene.

Not that it is ever acceptable to engage in looting - I generally adhere to the concept that looters should be shot - it was ironic that the convenience store from which the surveillance footage was allegedly taken from was one of the targets. Again, I just keep coming back to the question of why did it take five days for the police to release the video, the name of the shooter and their cover story?

Generally when something bears the scent of horseshit that it is generally exactly that. 

The Surveillance State’s Manhattan Firewall

Authoritarians rejoiced as Friday’s bold judicial activism emanating from a New York district court dealt a blow to civil liberties and privacy rights in the post September 11, 2001 Homeland. The smug certainty of a corrupt elite cadre of government officials who knew damned well that the fix was in exalted after the Manhattan miracle allowed an even more corrupt state media to spin away the events of last week, flushing them once and forever down the memory hole.  Judge Pauley’s scathing remarks, scoffing at American’s constitutional right to privacy are a revelation at the extent of the corruption of every institution in this once great country.  With the focus group friendly, bumper sticker two word phrase “Bold Jujitsu” being used to invoke the al Qaeda demon and choke off attempts to bring the NSA surveillance programs under control the judge spewed invective in his defense of the fascist state.

In his ruling, peppered with the sneering disregard for liberty that has become so prevalent wrote:

..it would be an "absurdity" to permit anyone whose records had been collected to challenge the NSA in court, since Congress had allowed only for the phone companies to argue their case in the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"The ACLU would never have learned about the section 215 order authorizing collection of telephony metadata related to its telephone numbers but for the unauthorized disclosures by Edward Snowden," .."It cannot possibly be that lawbreaking conduct by a government contractor that reveals state secrets -- including the means and methods of intelligence gathering -- could frustrate Congress's intent."

What is truly horrifying about this ruling is evident and I excerpt from a Washington Post column by Andrea Peterson entitled “The most Kafkaesque paragraph from today’s NSA ruling” comments on that particular paragraph:

Re-read that a few times and let it sink in. Pauley is essentially saying that the targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection of their personal data because Congress never intended for targets to ever know that they were subject to this sort of spying. And that the fact that everyone knows about it now, thanks to Edward Snowden, doesn't change the targets' ability to challenge the legality of the order.

That suggests a troubling possibility: that even if there were clear-cut evidence that the government was sending out illegal 215 orders, the people harmed by the government's illegal conduct might not have any way to stop it. Instead, the only recourse may be for the recipient of an order (such as Verizon) to challenge it in the notoriously secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But Verizon isn't the one whose privacy is harmed by the order, so why would it expend legal resources to fight it?

Pauley’s ruling and the promulgating of its legitimacy using their mighty Wurlitzer not only ensures that all who challenge the rogue state will be not only denied any future recourse but that those who do not heed this last warning and undertake the efforts to fight back are doomed in the most existential sense of the term. None more so than Snowden himself though.

On the morning propaganda circuit the typical array of ghouls were dragged out to defend the mass state criminality. A favorite these days seems to be former NSA director Michael Hayden who is on the cutting edge of the coming search and destroy campaign against former government contractor Booz-Allen employee Edward Snowden. Hayden, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation pushed the envelope in labeling Snowden a “traitor” and without proof nor challenge served up this escalation in rhetoric: "I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason". It matters not that there is no proof whatsoever that Snowden ever sold a damned thing to any other government and when it comes to traitors selling out America then Hayden need only look into a mirror as the worst stuff is yet to come about the NSA Stasi and what they are doing with all of that information. Industrial espionage is a certainty and when that is the case then the selling secret information to the highest bidder for blackmail and competitive advantage and front running markets based on insider information gleaned by surveillance is inevitably going to follow. That is just the way that things work in The Homeland and men like Hayden belong standing in the dock answering for their crimes against the republic rather than appearing on government propaganda organs to deliver their lies and unproven accusations.

With the counter-offensive shifting into overdrive following Judge Pauley’s wiping his ass with the U.S. Constitution and the bought and paid for media providing the new false narrative the focus is going to soon turn to Snowden himself. It is a perfectly reasonable question to ponder on whether President Barack Obama has taken a break from golf and luaus over his Hawaiian Christmas vacation to consult with those who manage his kill lists. Snowden’s poke in the eye mission accomplished” and “I already won” braggadocio are literally the last straw. I would expect that a hellfire missile now may be in his future if the almost inevitable negotiations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to expel him from Russia for torture and a show trial fail. It is for delicate tasks such as this that JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the executive branch’s assassination arm exists, for extrajudicial killings. The precedent has already been set with the killings of radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi's denial of due process when he was taken out by a drone in 2011 in Yemen. Obama and the government crossed the Rubicon with that one and while the man was calling for jihad he still was an American and therefore entitled to a trial.

The story of JSOC is one that is chilling given the potential for abuse. The elite military command was at one time referred to as Dick Cheney’s assassination squad and operates with the same degree of impunity that the NSA Stasi does in the world of secret an unaccountable government that we now live in. Just because Snowden isn’t a Muslim calling for violence doesn’t mean that JSOC will not be sent after him similarly. There is another much more ominous question on the NSA surveillance and the secret state in which it operates that has not to this point been asked and that is to what extent does the assassination program extend to?  The NSA program’s enemies list has little to do with preventing terrorism, that is all bullshit for the rubes and the government knows this but it is increasingly likely that it has everything to do with targeting enemies of the surveillance state itself. Michael Hastings anyone?

The gloves are now coming off, Hayden and his fellow miscreants on this morning’s Orwellian two minute hate disinformation broadcasts are the vanguard of what now looms as the empire strikes back.

Spinning the Botched Seal Team Six Raid

Politicians never hesitate to hide behind “the children” when it comes to seeking cover, the little ones are right up there with old glory and the troops.  This week while spinning the botched Somalia raid by the hallowed  Seal Team Six, a military unit that is critical to the phony war on terror mythology the establishment quickly went to the well. After the most ass kicking military unit in the land was run out of Barawe with their tails between their legs under heavy fire it was sold as a strategic retreat so as to not harm “the children”. Funny that I don’t recall any such considerations for the safety of "the children" when it comes to drone strikes, cruise missile attacks, incendiary bombings or any of the other bravery of being out of range actions undertaken against the brown-skinned, non-Christians who are the targets of our imperialist policies. The Obama administration is certainly not shy about using “the children” for political purposes, this time it is to cover their asses for batting .667 over the weekend in black ops renditions but only weeks ago it was “the children” who laid dead at Ghouta, the victims of sarin gas and last year it was the Sandy Hook victims. Pretty damned shameless but dignity and grace have never been Barry’s strong points being the calculating political animal that he is.

Despite the triumphalism exhibited over the two successful renditions over the weekend, one being the kidnapping of the alleged perpetrator of embassy attacks back in the 20^th century, after which Secretary of Skull and Bones Kerry crowed “they can run but they can’t hide” in a rather eerie reinvention of the unspoken  “kill everything that moves” Vietnam  dictum the administration now is in damage control mode. Kerry, the windsurfing elitist who married into the Heinz ketchup family fortune after parlaying his Vietnam era experience into a national political platform conjured up memories of the fascist Bush administration by warning critics of our now firmly entrenched policies of kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings that “I think it’s important for people in the world not to sympathize with alleged terrorists.”  This of course speaks volumes about the rogue Obama regime’s ongoing war on journalists.  Now if you are a dissenter from the imperial policies you will be marked in some manner, the NSA Stasi sees everything and is warehousing all of that surveillance data in a gigantic complex in Utah where one day in the near future it will be used to retroactively identify enemies of the state and as in all authoritarian states their associates and families. Hitler, Mao and Stalin would have drooled over such capabilities.

The failed Seal Team Six raid will now join the list of taboo subjects in The Homeland and will be washed clean of the stench of illegality and failure by reliable state shills like NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski among many others. It will then be flushed down the memory hole once and for all. I suspect that at this very moment that the Pentagon planners and the narcissist in chief are concocting another series of commando raids to dominate the news cycles and divert attention from their enormous list of policy failures that have destroyed the economy and dragged America from the moral high ground it had occupied for decades – and sadly it did not go kicking and screaming when it was driven down. The new raids will be free of “the children” other than those who end up as “collateral damage”, Seal Team Six will be lionized once more and Obama and Kerry can prance around on the world stage, their complete and utter hypocrisy evident to all but themselves and the majority of their exceptional  people.