George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 December 2014.]

I intended this to be a wrap-up on the Ferguson riots, but sadly there is no wrap possible, because Ferguson is just the latest chapter in the marathon effort to fundamentally transform America.  So all we can do is pause here and take stock of recent happenings with the Michael Brown shooting by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on 9 August last.

Michael Brown was a product of our broken black culture.  He was an underachiever with an attitude, a racist, and on that day, a criminal.  He met his end by having the audacity to walk down the center of a trafficked street and challenge a policeman on patrol responding to a 911 about a convenience store robbery in the neighborhood.  It turned out the robbery was committed by Brown, a fact then not known by Wilson.  The criminal grand jury was presented all the evidence about the shooting, which it considered for over 12 weeks before concluding that Officer Wilson shot Brown in the line of duty, and the case required no indictment for a subsequent trial.

However, to those with agendas that far overarched the town of Ferguson, this was a tragedy not to be wasted.  To put things in perspective, we consider that blacks murder almost 5,400 people annually, and whites murder almost 4,400.  Given that blacks make up 13% and whites 63% of the population, blacks kill people, overwhelmingly each other, at a rate at least six times higher than do whites.  Over the last 40 years of government programs and transfer payments, black crime rates have soared while their families were decimated.  The resulting despair and misery in their neighborhoods have become the enduring national ‘poster child’ that have kept progressive vote-buying policies and programs in high gear.  So when a white cop is reported shooting an unarmed black teen-ager, there is hay to be made regardless of the facts, the jurisdictions involved, or the legal due process followed.

The Ferguson incident had to support the narrative that the shooting was prima facie evidence of white-on-black racism still alive and well in the country, a racism that must be continually acknowledged, and a racism that must give rise to ever more investigations, oversights, wealth transfers, and special race-based remedies for the aggrieved and the alleged offenders.  Our federal government was quick to draw attention to all those necessities through the personal appeals of President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder.  Holder flew down to make sure that no one misunderstood the nationally significant incident that was now being manufactured from a confrontation between a criminal youth with an attitude and an officer of the local police.

From there the commissioned riots were expanded and inflamed by the ever-willing media.  Some lamestream outlets like CNN even attempted to misreport the riots as peaceful spontaneous demonstrations, while they tried to keep the burning cars and buildings out of their video shots.  Nevertheless, enough thousands of useful idiots could be and were assembled in over a hundred cities to dutifully riot, burn, and plunder while shouting ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’ – itself a manufactured mantra that according to the grand jury had nothing to do with what happened in Ferguson.  The show had to go on, and we have yet to hear the last of it.

Why?  Because for no apparent reason other than to inspire continuing dissatisfaction with the current national order, the federal government stepped in to launch an investigation and potential prosecution of Officer Wilson for – seatbelts please – for violating Michael Brown’s civil rights.  And then to launch an add-on investigation to see if the Ferguson police practices had racial overtones which might require more federal regulations to saddle police departments across the land.  And why all this after judicial due process determined that the shooting was justified in the line of duty?  Well, it’s the agenda stupid, it’s the agenda.

As I reflect on this insane tragedy and try to put it into some reasonable perspective, the question occurs to me – are those hoodlums torching cars and buildings, and gleefully carrying merchandize out of neighborhood stores; are they trying achieve the same American dream that you and I are working daily to maintain in our country?  I cannot answer for you, but my own answer is a definite NO.  They are nothing like me or mine, and they have a very different direction in mind for our land, the progress along which their elite leaders are doing everything they can with the shooting in Ferguson.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  The one-sidedness of the Ferguson shooting is what infuriates the millions who seek to inform themselves.  The fraction of blacks shot to death in the St Louis area by white police is 2%.  Yet scumbags like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson fly around the country during these occasions doing their best to convince their constituents that white cops shooting black kids is an epidemic.  An epidemic that needs to be stopped by the most dramatic of street outpourings.

What is more reprehensible to me is that the Sharptons and Jacksons are lauded by liberal leaders.  That their personal lives are such that they would lack any moral credentials in less disadvantaged public forums is totally papered over by the national progressive leadership.  They are seen and celebrated in congressional conclaves and White House gathering to address or acknowledge this social problem or that.  And sadder yet is when some of their real credentials leak out to their constituents, then those are taken as confirmation that all are birds of a feather, and that it’s not only OK but ‘normal’ to do and say the things such degraded public persons do and say.

Now I believe that all police killings should become a detailed matter of public record.  However, that is not the case today.  Nationally there are about 18,000 law enforcement agencies, and all of them report their officer killings to the FBI at their pleasure.  The FBI attempts to keep records on such shootings, but an analysis by WSJ staff (reported here) discovered that during recent years there were actually 45% more police justifiable homicides than in the FBI tally.  Whenever government kills, it should become a matter of open public record so that we can keep tabs on the trends that move Leviathan.  All should know that governments in modern times have been the biggest killers of their own citizens.  Governments have killed more of their own than have died in all the wars (here and here).

[4dec14 update]  ‘Staten Island cigarette vendor Eric Garner was killed by the NYPD on 17 July 2014.’  ‘Lifelong criminal Eric Garner was caught selling black market goods on Staten Island on 17 July 2014, and died while resisting arrest by officers of the NYPD.’

From what we know now of the Garner case, buttressed primarily by the video (chokehold, aftermath) of his arrest and death, and the grand jury’s verdict exonerating the officer involved, I throw in my own two cents worth here.

1. The Ferguson and Staten Island cases involved totally different encounters with their respective victims Brown and Garner.

2. From the arrest video it does not appear that Mr Garner resisted arrest; the police assaulted him before there was any physical evidence of any resistance (e.g. his hands were already in the air), although there may have been a verbal exchange indicating otherwise.

3. Mr Garner’s takedown was a clumsy affair with any attempt at a carotid hold immediately slipping into a visible choke hold.  Nevertheless, the coroner indicated that his windpipe had not been crushed or suffered permanent damage.

4. From his arrest record Garner appears to have been a lifelong, unsuccessful, petty criminal reduced to selling individual cigarettes on the black market.

5. The grand jury presumably studied the arrest video and its aftermath in detail.  Using that and other evidence presented, it decided not to indict Officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico.

6. Since choke holds by police are illegal, there had to be extenuating evidence which made this potentially unnecessary and clearly botched takedown exculpable.  Else, in my opinion, the grand jury made a grievous mistake.

7. There is no evidence that the Garner case and the Brown case had any relation, especially being connected by protester allegations that both are part of a systematic nationwide vendetta by white police against innocent blacks.

8. We are told that the transcripts of the grand jury hearings will be made public soon.  I am willing to wait until that information comes in.

[6dec14 update]  Having watched the Staten Island video over 20 times, many in freeze frame, I am more disturbed than ever at how the NYPD handled the situation.  Not only did Mr Garner offer no resistance, there was absolutely no immediancy to the entire situation.  Mr Garner was a petty criminal selling individual cigarettes – doing business as a willing seller with willing buyers who happen to approach him.  Who was aggrived in these transactions?  Most certainly not the buyer or seller or the local community – it was the state.  The state was denied its pound of flesh in the transactions, and therefore its apparatchiks went into thoughtless action just because they could.

Since there was no immediacy involved, if the cops on scene thought Mr Garcia was a bit slow in compliance (not evident from the video), then take your time.  Pull up a chair, grab a soft drink and talk to the man and explain the matter to him in plain language while all parties let the heat of encounter dissipate.  Hell, take fifteen minutes to chat about it; Garcia was not going to go anywhere or hurt anyone.  So yes, the NYPD needs a lot of retraining if these cops were exemplars of New York's finest.  They need to crank up their situational awareness so that they can tell when it's time to use peremptory force or not.

[8dec14 update]  And now for the expected politically incorrect coda to this post, let's consider the matter of white police killed by blacks.  These occur quietly across the country with no protests, no AG visits, no outrage from black leaders (nor even whites), and, of course, no national news coverage.  Here are just four recent ones picked up by a blogger.  (H/T to reader).