Author: susie

Watching Ferguson burn

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

ferg2-08

Jeb Lund of Rolling Stone:

Combined with the Ferguson and Clayton police preparations, McCulloch’s entire demeanor seemed to say, “Your move,” and either way the black community was fucked. If they didn’t riot, then the rotten system that lets white cops get away with killing black kids and prosecutors get away with using the law to absolve them works. Even a peaceable demonstration of disgust and refusal to some extent absolves the machine that churns up bodies. You have your vote, you have your First Amendment, and if nothing changes, then that must mean what we have is the most just compromise we can strike. Even if striking it requires turning your town into a fortress to make sure that we can all shake on the deal and walk away.

But they did riot, and you could see the smug radiate off Twitter from every white armchair general in the modern American race war. “The blacks” sank to the expectations set so low by images of the fortress state of their town. Set aside the fact that turning a town into a fortress to “contain” the calls for redress from a population is an act so offensive that it itself should provoke a riot. The great authoritarian trick about preemptively implying that everyone in a town is a lawless goddamn animal is that there is no immoral law or immoral selective suspension of the law that they can then rebel against without confirming the echoing pre-judgment that they are animals.
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This seems like good news

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Planet-Earth

And God knows, we can all use some:

Since its release in June, the REMI study has been a game-changer in conversations with congressional offices, especially Republicans. The study found that CCL’s proposal – a carbon fee rising $10 per ton of CO2 each year with revenue returned equally to all households – will cut CO2 emissions in half within 20 years while adding 2.8 million jobs to the economy.

Our thinking was pretty simple: As more and more people on Capitol Hill learn about the study and its findings, we’ll get closer to getting a bipartisan bill introduced. I call it the Three R strategy – Ride REMI to the Rose Garden.

With the wheels in motion for a targeted lobbying day, it made sense to follow up with briefings for Senate and House staff. With the help of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. John Larson (D-CT), we were able to get rooms where Scott Nystrom, author of the REMI study, led briefings to standing-room-only crowds in both the Senate and House.

It helped immensely that CCL staff and volunteers visited more than 100 offices on the Hill Tuesday, making one final push to bring staff to the briefings.

The House briefing on Thursday was as packed to capacity as the Senate briefing, and at a certain point we had to stop letting people in and start a list of aides who would be interested in a future briefing.
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Ferguson everywhere

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Ferguson Protest, Seattle, WA November 24, 2014. #ferguson #BlackLivesMatter #MichaelBrown

It’s encouraging to see so many people protesting, but depressing that after all these years, they still have to protest:

In Atlanta and Boston and New York and Los Angeles, they marched by the hundreds or the thousands — blocking bridges, tunnels and major highways as they shouted their anger over a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson.

A day after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced there would be no criminal charges against Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, there were protests in more than 170 U.S. cities.

In the Big Apple, protesters shut down lanes of the FDR, known more formally as the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, as they chanted, “Mike Brown! Mike Brown!”

It was just one of several long lines of demonstrators make its way through the city. Police, who were nearby in large numbers, stayed back and let the marchers go.

Deconstructing the bullshit

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

http://youtu.be/XIKyJbFgs3I

Via Raw Story:

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin ripped St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for asking Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson “softball” questions during the cross examination of his testimony, which she called “fanciful and not credible.”

On Monday, McCulloch had released all of the evidence provided to the grand jury that eventually decided not to indict Wilson for shooting unarmed teen Michael Brown. The evidence included Wilson’s testimony to the grand jury that Brown looked “like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”

“When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan,” Wilson said. “That’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.”
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Afghan mom kills 25 Taliban

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Rezagul

After they killed her son:

An Afghan mother claims to have killed 25 Taliban militants and injured several others after she found her son, who was a police, dead in a fierce gun battle with the insurgents at his check post in western Farah province.

“Reza Gul” the Afghan mother who rushed to take revenge of her son’s death stood behind an armament and claimed the lives of 25 insurgents.

Woken up by the gunfire, Reza Gul told TOLOnews that she had no other option but to pick up a weapon after she found her son, who was the in charge of an outpost, dead in front of her eyes.

“It was around 5 a.m. when my son’s check post came under the attack of Taliban,” Gul said. “When the fighting intensified, I couldn’t stop myself and picked up a weapon, went to the check post and began shooting back.”

Few minutes later, Gul was not alone when she found her husband, daughter, youngest son and daughter-in-law holding weapons and accompanying her in the fight against the insurgents.

“The fighting was intensified when we reached the battlefield along with light and heavy weapons,” said Seema, Gul’s daughter-in-law. “We were committed to fight until the last bullet.”
The fighting lasted several hours with 25 insurgents dead and many others wounded, she added.

“We started a kind of family war against the Taliban,” Fatima, daughter of Gul said, adding that she was personally preparing bullets for her father and mother to fight off the enemies.
Gul’s husband Abdul Satar stated they were ready to sacrifice the entire family, but not allow the Taliban to get closer to the check post.

“My young son who was a police officer was killed in front of my eyes,” Abdul Satar said. “I pulled aside his dead body and started fighting to defend my soil to prove that this is the soil of Malalay, the hero. I was committed to give up my life, but not my son’s check post.”