Tag Archives: Lynching

Whose racism are you protesting exactly?

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SO “WOKE” America is protesting the racist brutality of capitalism’s hired thugs. What are the cops supposed to stop doing exactly? Are they supposed to let poor blacks breathe? Or stop killing poor blacks in such vivid disproportion? What an aimless message these riots bring! Of course the mainstream media is on board. Their theme is domestic unrest with an eye on regime change. It’s what they incite everywhere else. I’m surprised they haven’t labeled this a “color” revolution –except the color is already chosen and it’s their least favorite.

The only result of the visibility which the Black Lives Matter movement has brought to police lynchings is that now you hear regret that poor white criminals aren’t dished out the beatings reserved for blacks. Do we want more police brutality so long as it is equally distributed? Cops aren’t going to stop beating people. It’s their job. In an unequal, predatory economic system, cruelty is a cop’s function.

I also laugh at the celebrity blow-back at unfortunate white protesters who take up the chant “All Lives Matter” usually in earnest because their marches, reflecting their local populations, are mainly white. Their chants don’t negate “Black Lives Matter,” they broaden it. Face it, the BLM slogan is pedantic. Of course Black Lives Matter. The protesters are not illiterate and neither are the police, the supposed audience.

And BLM is such an inarticulate ask. Try “Drone Victims Matter!” Uh, agreed, but the US drone terror program is not going to stand down.

And “hands up” and “taking a knee” are demonstrations of submission. Ugh.

If the issue is in-the-line-of-duty lynchings, I’m sorry but there are unfortunates a rung below African Americans. Per capita, Native Americans die more often at the hand of law enforcement, and below them, the homeless. Constables have been “rolling” poor bums since antiquity. Vulnerable homeless are killed, white and black, in dark alleys, without witnesses sober enough to record it with charged cell phones and Youtube accounts at home. And without faith leaders to rouse their congregations, or order churchgoers to heel once the fundraising was done.

If the George Floyd protests are made to be about discrimination against African Americans in general, and not Floyd’s tragic death-by-cop, then who is co-opting the message really?

Fortunately these riots will prove a difficult genie to ride. Images of civil discord make Trump look bad, but the more violent they become, the more activated will be the middle Americans who cheer for order to be restored.

That same white middle class wants their landscapers and household help to be hispanic who won’t expect to be treated as equals. Immigrant labor is preferred for the same reason. The upper class don’t have to discriminate by skin color. If you are underclass, YOU Do Not Matter.

Supposedly all of America is expected to suppress its racism. That’ll happen when you cease showing deference to family members over strangers, or when you quit disabusing sports fans for rooting against your home team. Clans, schools, ethnicity, and nationality are natural constructs where people feel communal bonds. They are also the only instinctive means by which people find their strength in numbers. Strange we’re all being told to disavow those instincts.

Meanwhile ethnocentrism relating to religious affiliation, if you’ve got one, is still encouraged. Nationalism, when it comes to kicking other religious ass overseas is still applauded. What of that racism?

When cops start beating bank chairmen, when the international brotherhood of man includes the bosses who deploy the cops and not simply the dupes more easily oppressed with racist state terrorism, then we can consider integrating the role of police into our vision of a desirable community. In other words, it ain’t going to happen. Calls to disband or defund the police are great, but until people wield the political power to do it, the calls will be easily refused.

Focusing on race doesn’t unite people, and it doesn’t only divide black and white, it attempts to efface everyone’s chief means to draw individuals together in united fronts against their common foe. Once we’re all free we can talk about equality.

Now addressing the systemic repression of blacks is another matter. African Americans were not immigrants. They alone came to these shores without the promise of the American dream of making a better life for themselves. REPARATIONS and affirmative action, that’s the only recourse to attempt to redress such inequality of footing.

Join the protests if you want, but know they’re serving only the corporate agenda of international liberalism. If you’re all about that, do your best to pull the demonstrations toward the peaceful, lest our president benefit from the gesture of saving middle America from anarchy. But know that team .gov holds all the cards when it comes to inciting and even instigating the violence. They are both ANTI and FA.

Kimya Dawson knows from where protest must burst: At the Seams.

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Kimya Dawson not only nailed the essence of protests for #BlackLivesMatter. She knew in which direction the protest marches needed to push. Toward our system’s seams. If you are having trouble finding the lyrics of her song about HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT I CAN’T BREATH, it’s because it’s called At the Seams.

I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Dawson’s brilliant lyrics to unpack her references and simulate her cadence.

AT THE SEAMS by Kimya Dawson

1.
Left hands hold the leashes
and the right hands hold the torches,
And Grandpas holding shotguns
swing on porch swings hung on porches,
And the Grandmas in their gardens
plant more seeds to cut their losses,
And the poachers,
with the pooches
and the nooses,
preheat crosses.

And the pooches see the Grandpas
and they bare their teeth and growl,
While their owners turn their noses up
like they smell something foul,
And they fumble with their crosses
and they start to mumble curses,
And they plot ways
to get Grandpas
off of porches
into hearses.

But the Grandpas on the porches
are just scarecrows holding toys,
And the Grandmas in the gardens
are papier-mâché decoys,
While the real Grandmas and Grandpas
are with all the girls and boys
Marching downtown to the City Hall
to make a lot of noise,
Saying:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

2.
Sometimes it seems like
we’ve reached the end of the road
We’ve seen cops and judges sleep together
wearing long white robes.
And they put their white hoods up,
Try to take the black hoods down,
And they don’t plan on stopping
til we’re all in the ground.

Til we’re dead in the ground
or we’re incarcerated
‘Cause prison’s
a big business form
of enslavement
Plantations that profit
on black folks in cages
They’ll break our backs
and keep the wages.

It’s outrageous that there’s no place
we can feel safe in this nation
Not in our cars, Not at the park,
Not in subway stations,
Not at church, The pool, The store,
Not asking for help,
Not walking down the street,
So we’ve gotta scream and yell:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

3.
You tweet me my own lyrics,
Tell me to stop
Letting a few bad apples
ruin the bunch.
Don’t minimize the fight
comparing apples to cops
This is about the orchard’s poisoned roots,
not loose fruits in a box.

Once the soil’s been spoiled,
the whole crop’s corrupt.
That’s why we need the grassroots
working from the ground up.
And we look to Black Twitter,
to stay woke and get some truth,
‘Stead of smiling cops
and black mugshots
from biased corporate news.

‘Cause if you steal cigarillos,
or you sell loose cigarettes,
Or you forget your turn signal,
will they see your skin as a threat?
Will they KILL you, And then SMEAR you,
And COVER IT UP and LIE?
Will they call it “self defense”?
Will they call it “suicide”?

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

4.
Decades of cultivation start
from tiny seeds that were once planted.
And we mustn’t take the gardens that
our elders grew for granted,
Though it is up to our youth
how new rows sown are organized,
Because movements can’t keep moving
if old and unsharpened eyes
Can’t see the need to hear
what those on the ground hafta say,
In Ferguson and Cleveland,
Staten Island, The East Bay,
Charleston, Phoenix,
Detroit, Sanford Waller,
Seattle, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Baltimore.

Climbing flagpoles, Taking bridges,
Locked together to the BART,
Speaking up about injustice
in our music and our art,
Storming stages to ask candidates
when they’re gonna start
Really DIRECTLY addressing issues
BREAKING OUR HEARTS.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

    Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
    BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
    I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
    A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

5.
And if the altars are torn down,
we’ll just keep on placing flowers
For the boy whose body was in the road
FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS.
We will honor the dead
of every age and every gender
‘Cause we can’t just have it be
the brothers’ names that we remember.

Oh black boys with skateboards,
and black boys with hoodies,
And little black girls who
are on the couch sleeping,
And all of the black trans
women massacred,
Too many black folks killed and brutalized,
And there’s no justice served.

After the lynchings of our people
by the murderous police,
Who stand like hunters ’round their prey
gasping helpless in the street,
Feet from the TEEN SISTER they tackled
and locked handcuffed in the car,
Feet from her TWELVE YEAR OLD BROTHER DYING —

WHILE NO ONE DID CPR…

6.
And we’ll keep on planting flowers,
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.
Yeah we’ll keep planting flowers
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

Modern Nat Turner insures Dallas cops cannot assail Black lives with impunity

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Chris DornerWas ANYBODY going to stop the unfettered lynching of people of color in America? Did President Obama ever deliver anything more than a eulogy? Few police officers are being convicted or even indicted. Videotaped killings of black men by lawmen have become so common, those disseminating the videos are being accused of harboring fetishes. People expressing offense online are being shamed for being clicktivists, though clearly the only fuels firing public outrage are the videos. Meanwhile Black Lives Matter spokespeople have become so jaded they ridicule the efficacy of street protests. And now everyone is condemning the lone direct action taker.

The killing of any human being is terrible, but the retaliatory killings of police in Dallas could have been prevented. Not by expecting minority communities to stomach further and unending extrajudicial assassinations, but by having police curb their racism and use of lethal force. Or of course by disbanding militarized police departments. Public officials can’t even broach that conversation. Do we expect the police state to dismantle itself?

Self-styled black revolutionary Micah Xavier Johnson, a typical PTSD-hardened Afghan vet, put “suicide by cop” to the service of his embattled community and avenged the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. He didn’t shoot their actual killers, but he didn’t hit innocents either. Johnson targeted America’s systemic enforcers of inequity, hitting twelve police officers, five of whom have now died.

Let’s note those cops weren’t “protecting the first amendment rights” of a spontaneous protest of the Sterling and Castile murders, but were harassing and detering demonstrations. The officers could have chosen not to, and hopefully, their comrades in other cities, molesting other legal assemblies, may now choose to stand down, because now authoritarian bullying has come in the line of fire.

There is poetic justice for those who would decry “Blue Lives Matter”. If they’re going to pretend it, let them feel the oppressive threat of violence which black lives bear. For one evening, in a small corner of Dallas, Texas, police brutality faced a comeuppance.

For now Johnson’s act is being condemned as an atrocity, as a massacre even, though obviously his victims 1) met every standard of belligerent adversary, 2) were armed, and 3) outnumbered him. Let’s concede that Johnson is a credit to his military training. He confirms how our soldiers could so murderously rapage through our war zones against lesser equipped combatants. Johnson’s motive echoes that which provoked US atrocities overseas, seeking revenge against civilians, exacting collective punishment for deadly IEDs.

If we acknowledge the violence with which African Americans are oppressed, and the mendacity of its apologists and enablers, can we condemn violent resistance? International law accords oppressed peoples the human right to resist.

Slave rebellion leader Nat Turner is recognized today as a hero, but was exhaustively vilified in his day because he killed slave owners, indescriminate of old or young. Whites retaliated and killed many more blacks. More violence follwed from abolitionsists and Jayhawkers, all of it lamentable. But slavery didn’t end because we willed it.

Because this era’s history is written with erasers, our victors’ primary tool, Micah Johnson will probably never be praised for heroism.

Johnson will join fellow effaced cop-killer Christopher Dorner. A previous African American reservist vet who was immolated alive, killed instead of being apprehended, lest an investigation benefit from his testimony about why he could no longer bear LAPD corruption in 2013.

From Dorner’s “manifesto”, before Michael Brown, Ferguson and Baltimore:

“Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target.

“Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasian officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1?s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target.

You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly.

Mikah Johnson’s last words we only know through the spin of Dallas police, the same people who decided not to wait him out, nor to smoke him or gas him out from hiding in a public parking garage, but instead to send a robot with a bomb and M.O.V.E. his ass like every other black nationalist revolutionary.

No, you murdurous assholes, Johnson didn’t “want to kill all white people.” He wanted to kill white cops. Just like Dorner, he wasn’t a threat to the public, he was a threat to the police state. You cops ensured Mikah Johnson didn’t live to dictate “confessions” and you even obliterated his body like Osama bin Laden. Drawn and quartered essentially, to preclude memorializers being able to center on an idol to build a resistance.

You and I may grapple with what to think of Johnson’s personal rampage, but the state knew immediately his was the selfless heroism they fear most. As with bin Laden, they knew his apprehension must be terminal.

Lest I be misunderstood, I do not promote armed insurrection, sedition or murder. I cannot. But I will not condemn Micah Johnson.

I need not agrandize him either. Taken without his revolutionary ideology, Johnson was an ordinary mentally wounded veteran like many others. Homicidal vets with PTSD are at the core of our epidemic of police brutality. Our law enforcement teams are full of OIF and OEF soldiers who got their start shooting up cars at checkpoints and acting out racist genocide to their heart’s content.

It’s not a new problem, the US has always had active warzones feeding veterans into homelessness for those who couldn’t cope and filling government jobs for those who thrived. Beside policemanship, a very common job for discharged soldiers has always been the post office. Rembember the rampaging gunman problem we used to call “going postal?”

America’s racism problem may be transcended by a succession of church services, but class struggle is not a hearts and minds operation. Fascist rule and its army of the rich are not going to be wished away by militant nonviolence. That’s as likely as counting on the tooth fairy.

Worrying that acts like Johnson’s will provoke increased authoritarian repression is an expression of privilege provided by someone aclimated to a tolerable status quo, clearly a white perspective for whom black lives matter not enough.

Until all of us share the plight of the average Syrian refugee, trapped in our capitalist frontier war zones, none of us are shouldering an equitable burden of the police state.

That’s why it is more than black lives that matter. The middle class greivances of Occupy Wall Street are only a class removed from Black America’s suffering. We’re still talking about privileged Americans who support a grander racism that drives our global exploitation of all peoples.

I don’t have any faith that an arc of history bends toward justice in this corporate dark age. For my own sense of what’s right, it’s important to recognize Micah Johnson and Christopher Dorner for who they were, flawed, maybe very minor, aspiring Nat Turners, who wanted to strike against today’s slave masters and their brutal blue foremen.

What’s so special about a handgun that shoots black teenagers with impunity? It’s standard issue for police officers.

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Celebrated lynchmobster and justice miscarriage George Zimmerman put his Kel-Tec PF-9 handgun up for auction. Today the cheapo “pocket nine” nine-millimeter with which Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin with impunity sold for a quarter of a million dollars. A portion of which Zimmerman pledges will go toward countering the Black Lives Matter movement which arose when Trayvon’s lynching went unpunished.

Denver art student informs Tale of Two Hoodies with Goya’s Third of May 1808. This KKK cop executes the black child.

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A Tale of Two Hoodies
DENVER, COLORADO- Here’s what the Denver Post article didn’t explain about the Denver high school art student who was pressured to remove her controversial piece from public display. Where was it being shown? At the Wellington Webb Building. That’s not irrelevant because it’s where viewers became offended. You could go inquire about the incident, if you knew where to ask, or where to protest the work’s removal. The WELLINGTON WEBB BUILDING downtown on Colfax. What’s so controversial, the scene is real isn’t it? There’s more.

The student’s drawing is essentially a reproduction of Michael D’Antuono’s 2014 piece “A Tale of Two Hoodies” which still sparks outrage. Missing in this version is the bag of Skittles which the black child offers the cop, locking the two figures in a standoff. Or obviously a mugging. The Skittles of course recalls Trayvon Martin and we know how that ended. The hands in the air references “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” and Michael Brown who shared the same fate.

Original 2014 workAll else about the Denver student’s contextualization of D’Antuono’s work is the same, the confederate flag uncovered from beneath the wallpaper of Old Glory. In the student’s piece the American flag appears worn through. In D’Ontuono’s original the racist flag has bursted through. The cop and hood are the same, except in the original the cop was maybe more fat.

What’s also missing in the DenPo whitewash is the context of the unamed student’s assignment. She was tasked with contextualizing TWO works. The influence of the second piece is not as apparent as the first. The boy’s hands-up wasn’t merely recalling the mantra of the Black Lives Matter movement, it was evoking the student’s other chosen influence, Goya’s famous “The Third of May 1808.” In that iconic work, a firing squad is executing a rebel with outstretched arms.

KNOWING THIS, you can see the student’s policeman has drawn his gun for an EXECUTION, not an arrest. The boy is not following an order or raising his hands in surrender. If even in resignation, this boy’s upheld arms communicate a plea. How does that inform you about this young Denver student’s understanding of “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” or “I Can’t Breathe”?

The officer’s Klan hood certifies that this shooting is a lynching. Many lynchings in the traditional sense were perpetrated by deputized citizens.

Denver Chief of Police Robert White said of the student’s work: “I’m greatly concerned about how this painting portrays the police.” Well sure, and Chief White didn’t know the half of it.

Should you go complain at the Wellington Webb Building? The Denpo article mentions Chief White intends to “have a conversation with the student and her parents.” You may want to caution that the Office of the Independent Monitor be invited attend that conversation, as a ride-along so to speak, to assure it isn’t the one-sided transaction to which we are becoming accostomed and inured.

Does Chief White think that racially enhanced officer involved extrajudicial executions should not be a student’s concern? He needs to look past what offended him and try to understand the art piece before he forces a conversation. Or what kind of conversation will it be. The student has already made her statement.

FOOTNOTE:
Here’s what Michael D’Antuono had to say about his original work. I’ve updated the original broken links:

This painting, created during the Trayvon Martin case, symbolizes the travesty of racism in the criminal justice system. It has been the object of much controversy and censorship. In 2014, I was Incensed that George Zimmerman was trying to profit from his notoriety for killing an unarmed teenager by auctioning his painting on eBay. In response, I put this piece on eBay with half of the proceeds going to the Trayvon Martin Foundation. The very same day Zimmerman sold his painting for $100,000, and as soon as it became evident that my piece was on par to pass Zimmerman’s mark, eBay shut mine down for violating their strict policy of not selling anything on their site glorifying hate groups or showing anything symbolic of the Klu Klux Klan. The hypocrisy of eBay was that at the time they killed my auction, they were selling over 1500 other items related to the KKK. Misrepresenting it’s meaning, a hate group co-opted the piece in 2015, passing out flyers in Southfield, Michigan. In 2016, a high school teacher in Nevada, was suspended for using the painting to inspire critical though.

Naeschylus Carter Vinzant was lynched by Aurora Police. His family is asked to stand by police and “STAY CALM.”

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AURORA, COLORADO- On June 6, 2015, unarmed African American Naeschylus Vinzant Carter was shot, walking along a quiet suburban street, in broad daylight, by Aurora police officers. No claim has been made that Naeschylus was resisting arrest or posing a threat, so his execution by cop seems another pignacious affront to the urgent Black Lives Matter movement. Now police have contacted his ex-wife and seven children to say they will make an announcement July 1st about Vinzant’s premature death. They want his family to stand at their side to urge the public to remain calm. In response, a rally is planned for 4pm Wednesday at a major intersection TBA. If you feel compelled to celebrate the impunity given to police lynch mobs, please keep it down.
 
UPDATE 6/30: the Jefferson County DA plans to take Vinzant case to a Grand Jury. This announcement was made in a joint statement from the DA and lawyers representing the Vinzant family. The statement came a day ahead of a scheduled protest and “asked the community to be patient and respect the process. Both want peace in the community.” Earlier in the day the same lawyers pressured the family and organizers to cancel the planned rally. The community was preparing to protest this usual method to defer justice, bury the crime and exonerate the officer.

Drop symbols of White Supremacy, but don’t embolden government supremacy

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SORRY, I DO HAVE A PROBLEM with government telling me how to think or telling me what I can’t say. Flags mean a lot to me and I CAN imagine MY flag being declared hateful or a public threat. How is anyone to rally like-minded dissenters when a government and its corporate media can declare their rallying symbol non grata? I don’t like the Confederate rebel flag either, it is modern code for unrepentant white racism, but I’m hugely skeptical when Big Brother is driving the bandwagon. How amusing that activists eager to burn Confederate flags find that the major retailers have already banned them. There’s a statement you’re being prevented making.

Scrap White Supremacy but we must cling tightly to the supremacy of individuals over their government.

Could the censors come for your flag too? I’m not big on national flags. However, the flags with which I associate ideologically, let’s be honest, scream regicide.

Imagine if the next mass shooter lunatic leaves selfies with an Anarchist flag or an Anon mask. “Rise up” is hate speech to oligarchs.

Guys, when Walmart, Target, Dixie politicians and the White House are on your side, you’re fantasizing and you’re on the wrong side.

If the vocabulary of racism, such as the word “nigger”, is effaced, how are we to talk about it? We had this argument about Mark Twain’s use of the word in Huckleberry Finn. Literature lost as I remember.

How blessed we would be to forget about slavery, except the same demographic is enslaved today in the prison system, while we white-out the words we need to recognize it.

Let’s be generous for a moment. The “Rebel” Flag, even as it draws racists like flies, is also about rebellion. Did you know the Civil War wears a revisionist title? Until America’s foreign excursions, the Civil War was called the War of Rebellion. Formal documents of the period are still bound as the Union’s record of the War of Rebellion.

Who effected the name change and why? Did it benefit the victor to write the history of the Civil War to cast slavery as its predominant issue? To justify the sacrifice of lives and trampling of state sovereignty?

The American national identity is that of revolutionaries rebelling against authoritarian rule. Was it confusing to let the bad guys usurp the rebel image?

I think it’s a lie to believe the common Southerner fought to preserve slavery. Just as it is to pretend the common German soldier defended the extermination camps. The average Johnny Rebel fought off the Yankee foreigner. Johnny Rebel was racist but no more so than his northern adversary. Lynchings of black men happened in both North and South.

If you want to hold a flag to account for racism, you’ll find a greater offender in the Union Flag, and today’s fifty star equivalent. The Stars and Stripes flew over the slave trade, the genocide of Native Americans, and the conquest and exploitation of indigenous peoples everywhere since.

If you want to fight racism, address its mechanisms. Address its leaders, not its disputable standard. The flag is a distraction. Who are racism’s enforcers? I read that Maryland police just killed another unarmed black man. Eye on that ball.

Judging history as we’ve distilled it, the cause of the Confederacy was unjust, but the Southern soldiers fought the Union as rebels.

I am damn partial to REBELS.

I’m reminded of the lyrics to I’m a Good Old Rebel. These reflect sentiments contemporary to the Reconstruction era, unreconstructed by the abolitionist narrative. Read ’em and weep.

Oh, I’m a good old rebel,?
Now that’s just what I am.?
For this Fair Land of Freedom,
?I do no give a damn.?
I’m glad I fought again’ her,
?I only wish we won.
?I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve done.

I hates the Yankee Nation and everything they do.
?I hates the Declaration of Independence, too.?
I hates the glorious Union, ’tis dripping with our blood.?
I hates the striped banner, and fought it all I could.

I rode with Robert E. Lee,?
For three years, thereabout.?
Got wounded in four places,
?And I starved at Point Lookout.
?I catched the rheumatism
?A campin’ in the snow.?
But I killed a chance of Yankees
?And I’d like to kill some more.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
?Is stiff in southern dust.?
We got three hundred thousand?
Before they conquered us.?
They died of Southern Fever
?And Southern steel and shot.?
I wish there were three million
?Instead of what we got.

?I can’t pick up my musket?
And fight ’em down no more.?
But I ain’t agonna love ’em?
Now that is certain sure.
?And I don’t want no pardon?
For what I was and am.?
I won’t be reconstructed?
And I do not give a damn.

Oh, I’m a good old rebel,
?Now that’s just what I am.?
And for this Yankee Nation,
?I do no give a damn.?
I’m glad I fought again’ her,?
I only wish we won.?
I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve done.?
I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve done.

Take down THAT flag

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If you think taking down a flag can address the systemic oppression of people of color, have at it, but BOY DO YOU HAVE THE WRONG FLAG.

The “Confederate flag” flies over civil war memorial cemeteries and gravestones across America. Veteran and veteran-lovers cling to the notion that soldiers don’t give their lives in vain, so they are honored by the flag they fought for, in half the cases, the Confederate States. The Confederacy is as defunct as the sovereign nation of Texas, or the Third Reich for that matter, whose flags and insignia retain a similar appeal, often to the same demographic. Even if we pretend the Rebel flag represented the half of the US which defended slavery, it is not the standard that flew over the slave ships or plantations, or Charleston Bay for that matter, for the hundreds of years before the 1861-65 War of Rebellion. Those flags were many and international but it’s safe to say that the nationalist flag that most symbolizes Western racist imperialism is the American Red, White and Blue.

Who presided over the retention of slavery, over segregation, over lynching, over genocide, over the continued suppression of African American empowerment? Whose flag assailed the Native Americans, crossed the Pacific, and hasn’t stopped yet? To address America’s ingrained racism, take THAT flag down!

Battle of ChickamaugaThere’s an easy fix for our country’s Civil War graves and memorials. Replace the rebel flags with the “Stars and Bars” the authentic flag of the Confederate States. It has none of the white klan cache. As for the mistakenly iconic “Battle Flag”, BURN IT! If that offends Southerners, too bad, but have some empathy, you’re probably clinging to the Stars and Stripes with the same unbecoming nostalgia.

FreddieGray’s spine was severed at the neck. I believe literally that is lynching.

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African American Freddie Gray died as a result of his spine being severed at his neck. It’s no hyperbole to describe the continuing police murders of young black men as deputized, mob LYNCHINGS. The overwhelming victims of these extrajudicial executions are people of color. As if to underline this point, Baltimore police made this clear in no uncertain medical terms. I’m not a doctor, but what injury could better support the inference that Freddie Gray was lynched?

Tulsa sheriff lets yahoo donors ride along to taser or shoot black suspects

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Eric Harris running from an undercover sting in Tulsa Oklahoma
So. Black man Eric Harris was killed by Oklahoma lawmen last week, accidentally shot in the back by a deputy who thought he was triggering his taser, not his gun. He didn’t unholster one instead of the other, he actually jumped out of the cruiser with a weapon in each hand! Funny thing about that deputy… –But first let’s make clear that the Tulsa County Sheriff has already excused the officer of wrongdoing, likewise all the other cops who piled on Harris as he died, mocking his final breath. “Fuck your breath” said one cop as they kneed Harris’ face into the pavement until he died.

So triggerman Robert Bates was an “Advance Reserve” deputy, a retired insurance exec who donated to the department and thus was allowed to ride along with regular deputies and use tasers on people and other fun stuff. Bates used to be a cop in 1965 when black men were lynched more regularly –so White America believed. It turns out nothing has changed since those days. Except that today’s lynch mobs are not open to the public, today extrajudicial executioners have to wear a badge. Naturally good ol’ boys like Bates want a piece of that action.

It turns out, to be a volunteer donor-deputy is also a license to kill. Bates flat out shot Eric Harris as he laid on the ground. Though lawmen were converging from multiple vehicles and the winded Harris was already prone, someone called “taser, taser”. That’s when Bates pulled his gun instead and fired. Then Deputy Oops said “I’m sorry. I shot him!” The other deputies now pretend they didn’t hear Bates, or the gunshot. That is their defense for climbing on the victim and hastening his death.

The whole gruesome execution is on video, which the Tulsa County Sheriff supplied to make the case that the officers acted appropriately.

One of these days, a video will emerge of a deputized-donor riding along wearing a white hood and a noose.

New Yorker cover sparks controversy, inserts cop among lives that matter

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The New Yorker Magazine’s MLK Day issue has everyone upset. It’s not that there are no women in the march, sorry. That’s another issue. Marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are now iconic men of color whose lynchings have sparked recent protests. There’s Eric, Trayvon, Michael, and …WTF, one of the NYC cops whose murder might be attributable to the unrest. Maybe. But it wasn’t due to his race. To the elite, these lives may be equivalent, and to hell with #BlackLivesMatter. One of these things doesn’t belong here, one of these things just isn’t the same. One of these things killed all the other, including Martin. WHICH OF THESE MARCHERS WASN’T KILLED BY A COP, WANNABE-COP, OR THE US GOVERNMENT?

White St Louis cop kills another black teen, for aiming a sandwich at him

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With crowds still in the streets of Ferguson protesting the murder-by-cop of African American teen Michael Brown, another white officer in neighboring St. Louis has pumped another two digit number of bullets into another black teen. The off-duty policeman was attempting a “pedestrian check” –a term authorities are yet reluctant to explain– when according to him the victim began firing. Insensed residents are again taking to the streets. No confirmation yet on whether video will emerge to prove witness accounts that the victim was holding a sandwich and not the 9mm which the police claim to have found. Community leaders urge calm but fortunately St. Louis locals are undeterred. In Denver, where commuynities of color are still reeling from a string of typical lynchings by police, religious keepers-of-peace are successful at diffusing the outrage. They admonish against misplaced anger, declare we’ve made ourselves heard, laud us for bringing attention to racism, and urge everyone to all go home. Here, have a sandwich.

Bored Oklahoma teen murder suspects not bored or under-educated enough to be considered teens

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James Edwards, Chancey Luna and Michael Jones
Bored Oklahoma teens who shot a random jogger in the back are being tried as adults not juveniles because “it was an adult crime”; though killing while bored seems a juvenile crime by definition. So does immediately confessing a motive, “we were bored,” to the police, it would seem to me. But there’s more. Despite the confessions, it was not immediately clear who pulled the trigger as the three teens trailed their victim, Australian college baseball player Christopher Lane, in their car, then sped away to find a next target. But that didn’t stop Oklahoma police from charging just TWO of the boys with first degree murder, bail denied, with the third considered an accessory. I’ve provided the mug shots to give you a hint. For which 15 and 16 year-old do you think the state of Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty? (Spoiler: YES) And the older accessory –17 but white– gets bail and will be tried as a juvenile.
 
Pundits deride African American leaders for not decrying the Lane murder like they did that of Trayvon Martin, presumably because the victim was white. But I’ll ask where is the community outcry for young James Edwards and Chancy Luna, joy-killers they may be? Though I understand full well that other than the “doing it for fun” headlines, this event is unexceptional. Black children bear the brunt of law enforcement everyday, our prison system follows in the lynching tradition.

FBI focus on Assata Shakur reveals pernicious discretion of Terrorist label

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MS. SHAKUR (né Joanne Chesimard) insists she did not kill the New Jersey trooper in 1973, that she couldn’t have, she’d been disabled by a police bullet to the back while her hands were raised. Shakur contends she was the victim of a legal lynching and before that a target of the USG’s COINTELPRO. Understanding now that many black activists of that era were deliberately assassinated by law enforcement, might the 17-yr old Shakur have been justified in defending herself? She was certainly justified in escaping her torturers in prison and then gaining political asylum in Cuba. She hasn’t killed a trooper since, so it’s odd then, isn’t it, that Assata Shakur is being added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List? She’s the “first woman” because it’s a terrorist-only list. Looking back, some of the best revolutionaries have been women. Retroactively designating enemies of the people is a strange development for President Obama who won’t even revisit the last administration to look for war crimes.
 
Certainly Assata Shakur speaks against US Capitalism but does she fit the profile of drone-strike eligibility? Apparently so and that’s telling. The intelligence community doesn’t want to stop acts of terror, it’s the ideology that terrorizes them.

Collaborators, rats and pigs

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I found this unsigned flier in Denver, a collage of the American eagle, globe in mouth, and Stars & Stripes over US misdeeds, clockwise from top left: race lynching, branding slaves, blindfolded Iraqi detainees, combatant corpse desecration, Hiroshima, torture of Viet Cong, My Lai, Columbus’ mass burning of Taíno Indians, Filipino insurgents executed in trenches, the gruesome trophy pic, etc, framing this succinct condemnation: “The US military, intelligence operatives, and police are traitors to humanity. Those who work with them, those who friend them, and those who sleep with them are collaborators. They are rats and pigs.”

Someone should tell Obama that Troy Davis was a white banker. He’ll freak.

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On the day after the state murder of Troy Davis, you’ve got to feel sorry for the Obamapologists who must have a lot more in a knot than their panties. How do you explain why President Obama couldn’t intercede to save the life of accused off-duty-cop-killer Troy Davis? Because it would have been unseemly for a black president, the first, to intervene in the sanctioned lynching of another black man, whose number is lost among the countless. It would have been a formidable first, but Obama took the highroad, out of Dodge. Was it a matter of not stepping on states’ rights? Because preventing an injustice would not have been worth it? To save a human life?

PIC: Hey Georgia, say cheese!

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GODDAMN RACIST CRACKERS. By which I mean bloodthirsty Georgian officials, the US Supreme Court and the POTUS himself. Last week a Texas audience cheered their own state’s record number of executions, on TV, the halfwitted bigots. Lynch mobs used to pose for picture postcards which they purchased and sent to relatives. A sampling of notes on the backside: “Well John — This is a token of a great day … I saw this on my lunch hour. I was very much in the bunch. You can see the negro hanging on a telephone pole.” and “This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Love, your son Joe.”

Will state of Georgia murder Troy Davis tomorrow in your name racist America?

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The state of Georgia is about to murder the likely innocent Troy Davis in somebody’s name. By now you’ve probably been alerted that Davis is scheduled to be executed for the 1989 shooting of a Savannah policeman, despite witnesses having now recanted and another having implicated himself. Supporters are rallying to ask for clemency for Davis, arguing there is insufficient evidence to uphold the death sentence. So far Georgia’s obstinate. A stay of execution has just been denied. Any link to the state’s lion’s share of the nation’s black population behind bars? Or being second only to Mississippi in number of racial lynchings? Since 1882: 492 versus 539, out of total 3,446.

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

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COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!
 
To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.
 
And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

OMG the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph agrees Obama is a Tar-Baby

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Disney rewrote its Uncle Remus Tale in printed version of the Brer Rabbit storyYES OF COURSE my surprised is feigned, but not my embarrassment. How in the world does a newspaper of not insignificant distribution (okay, readership perhaps) not restrain itself from supporting a bigoted remark like Congressman Lamborn’s? Whether the racism was inadvertent or idiotic, at best the comparison of America’s black president to a “Tar-Baby” could have been remarked upon, if one didn’t want to condemn it, but the Colorado Springs Gazette chose to support its Tea-Party libertarian by belittling criticism that the reference to the Uncle Remus stereotype was racist. In historic perspective it recalls the days when Colorado newspapers endorsed lynchings, and later the Klan. In essence that’s not ancient history. People no further away than Denver can dismiss Lamborn as typical of Pikes Peak mouth-breathers, and the Gazette editorial page confirms them. Indignation doesn’t begin to touch it.

The lynching of Preston John Porter Jr. by a mob from Limon and Colo. Springs

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A propos of, let’s
say, LYNCHING.
Burned at the stake, at Lake Station Colorado, near LimonColorado
state history records 175+ lynchings, of mostly cattle rustlers and horse thieves. Boosters laud our state’s few (5) racially-motivated lynchings, but in relation to Colorado’s small portion of African- Americans, the incident rate is not insignificant. What’s more, Colorado can tie any state for the worst race lynching ever, when in 1900, along the railroad tracks near Lake Station, black 16-year-old, 130 lb. Preston Porter Jr, innocent and probably mentally feeble, was burned at the stake by a cheering mob numbering over 300.

Lynching describes the physical act of hanging, stringing someone up without inexpedient formalities. In principal lynching means a death sentence without recourse to due justice. And of course, in practice the summary execution is often motivated by racial prejudice. I explain the obvious because today no one appears to acknowledge that US drones over Pakistan, Yemen, et al, are terminating lives based on mere suspicions of being enemies of the state, these are darker skinned lives, with the full enthusiasm of the American TV mob.

Out West, lynchings were rough justice. Everywhere else they were and are hate crimes. Colorado sidesteps having to include the killing of Native Americans as lynchings because those were massacres. One western memoir recounts that “lynch law” was as necessary to keeping peace in the Wild West as were Indian Massacres and shooting wolves.

Preston Porter was a young railroad worker accused of the rape and murder of 12-year-old Louise Frost. After having accused another African-American, three “Mexicans” and a Native American, enraged parties in Limon and Denver settled on Porter. After a week of interrogation, enhanced by trying hypnosis and reading his palm, they coerced a confession.

Next they let the victim’s father decide the manner of death. “Burnt at the stake” was his choice. The mob marched poor Preston to the site of the crime, near what was then Lake Station, and they used a rail for the stake. Preston had no coat but was made to wait for hours in the cold because crowds were delayed getting to the affair by rail from Colorado Springs.

The etching below is reprinted from the Denver Times newspaper article of November 17, 1900. It portrays Porter crying out for the Lord to forgive his tormentors. Don’t think the reporter reflected Porter’s act with sympathy. He wrote: “The great crowd shook with pure enjoyment of the situation.”

Here’s what happened next, as reported by the New York Times:

For an instant the body stood erect, the arms were raised in supplication while burning pieces of clothing dropped from them. The body then fell away from the fire, the head lower than the feet still fastened to the rail.

This was not expected, and for a few minutes those stolid men were disconcerted; they feared that the only remaining chain would give way. If this had occurred the partly burned human being would have dashed among them in his blazing garments. And not many would have cared to capture him again. But the chain held fast.

The body was then in such a position that only the legs were in the fire. The cries of the wretch were redoubled, and he again begged to be shot. Some wanted to throw him over into the fire, others tried to dash oil upon him. Boards were carried, and a large pile made over the prostrate body. They soon were ignited, and the terrible heat and lack of air quickly rendered the victim unconscious, bringing death a few moments later.

All told, the fire took 20 minutes to kill the young black victim.

How was Preston Porter’s ordeal unlike the targets of American aerial assassinations? Americans just heap on the fuel as they burn alive.

EPILOG:
Preston’s executioners left the rail at the site to serve as a warning to other coloreds. Fortunately there wasn’t any trace of it when I made a recent visit. But a docent at the nearby railroad museum knew exactly the incident I was asking about and dismissed me curtly, disgusted with my interest in the matter and refusing to offer any directions to the location. It hadn’t occured to me that Limon’s “native” residents would be related to Preston’s killers. Fortunately another local, not born-and-bred, overherd my inquiry and gave me a lift to a probable starting point.

It wasn’t hard to find. Lake Station was the train stop before the bend at Limon. Before trains, “Lake” was a stage for stagecoaches, providing water to the Butterfield Overland Dispatch heading to Denver. Later it became a “siding” where steam locomotives could take water. After water stops became unnecessary. Lake Station was demolished. Building foundations remain. Its namesake lake dried to wetland long ago.

Victim Louise Frost was returning to her home in Hugo when she was accosted as she drove her surrey across the Big Sandy River where the dry river bed was forded by the old wagon trail. The old trail refers to the famous Smokey Hill Trail which led aspiring prospectors to Colorado gold. Erosion has altered the topography of the dry river but Preston Porter was executed on a rise between the crossing and the railroad tracks.

There is no memorial for the black martyred teen. Nothing marks or commemorates the atrocity. There should and could be. The site of Preston Porter’s death lies adjacent to a protected wetands along the Big Sandy. There’s a nature walk which could easily incorporate a monument. If Limon would own up to the deed.

Lake Station, Colorado, where Lake Creek crosses into the Big Sandy
The Union Pacific Railroad track at Lake Station, looking Southwest toward Pikes Peak.

Bin Laden was right, but you knew this already, America is a Godless nation

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Lawless and Godless. My stomach has been in a knot all day. I remember feeling this way when we executed Saddam Hussein, by all accounts a brutal despot. We tried him in a kangaroo court, without even the courage to make the audio or transcript public, because he would have ratted us out. Then we had him summarily hung. Now I’ve no great objection to regicide, I favor it actually when imposed by public coup. At the hands of foreign invaders it’s victor’s justice, and probably deliberately criminal to humiliate the conquered. Last night a US special forces hunt and kill team shot the unarmed Osama bin Laden and others, in a fire-fight whose casualty ratio was that of a firing squad. Bin Laden’s body was immediately disposed the way we taught Argentine and Chilean death squads to do it, disappeared out over the sea. Gone, just like those famous shoes that offended George the Wretched Bush, vaporized in post-incident explosives tests it was said, not kept by any Princeton grad as talisman keepsakes, like for example the bones of Chief Geronimo, the famed Native American resistance leader whose grave was robbed by elder alum Prescott Bush to provide the skull and crossbones for which the secretive society was named. Oddly, the operation to assassinate bin Laden was called “GERONIMO.”

That, or we named the mission after an expression that means, as far as I remember, “here goes nothing!” Usually shouted as you were leaping somewhere. Regardless it’s an incredibly insensitive subject to invoke as you’re intending to assassinate a later era’s most significant resistance leader. When we decide to take out Subcommandante Marcos, are we going to name it Operation Bin Laden? And don’t pretend someone doesn’t want dibs on his pipe.

We’re told we disposed of bin Laden’s body to prevent the forces of evil, aka Islam, from creating a shrine. But are Muslims the only people who worship at a shrine? I’m inclined to believe a whole other denomination of people attribute something mythic to a hero’s remains, more perhaps even than his mere followers.

Now I wouldn’t put it past America’s spooks to wring those shoes of the sweat of the wearer who summoned the courage to have a go at Bush, which no one before or since, neither prizefighter nor pope, has dared to do. Likewise, I’d think even your average incurious scientist could get a grant to scan the heart and brain of a man worth half a billion dollars yet renounced a life of luxury to dedicate his life to fight the godless Soviet invaders, and later, the most sinister, most profane dragon which has so far destroyed or enslaved everything in its fiery wake. What distinguishes this fluke DNA and how can we eradicate its traces so that Capitalism isn’t jeopardized by a recurrence?

But that’s looking at this from the scientific side.

That’s right, less than the extra-judicial lynching, I am most disturbed by President Obama’s decision to officially dispose of bin Laden’s body. To make it disappear, to thwart followers, as if it bore some malignant power, attributable to a kind of person like Adolf Hitler. Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden killed but a fraction, compared to whoever it might be said was the mastermind of the War On Terror. And what of those behind the War on the Third World, the War on Debtor Nations, the War on the Not yet Enslaved, which has become the War On Islam? They were also his declared enemies. And so bin Laden was but an adversary, who held an opposing economic view. His means were violent, but peanuts compared to the poverty, death and destruction wreaked by Western imperialism and war. I subscribe to neither his methods nor his ideology, but Bin Laden was no demon. He was the champion of billions of our victims, and to call him a worthy opponent is to flatter ourselves.

And that’s why I suspect somebody right now is worshiping what remains of bin Laden’s essence, in the same manner that Sunday, the very day Operation Geronimo was deployed, the rest of the Western world was staring at television screens, in songful prayer, focused on a bible atop the coffin of a recently disinterred Pope John Paul.

No America, justice has not been done

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This didn’t always need explaining– lynching and body snatching are INJUSTICES. There used to be an understanding of what “taking the law into your own hands” meant. Killing someone outright doesn’t bring them to justice, and I’m not alone to assert that killing someone -even after a trial- is premeditated murder. We’re not hearing any such voices on the media unfortunately. Even in the days of mob lynching, the crowd once drained of its blood-lust would sober to the crime it committed, often masked. That said, the press has always responded with statements of pitiable glee. In Colorado, even the most gruesome lynchings, race-related and otherwise, prompted congratulatory editorials from the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Rocky Mountain News and the rest. However, political leaders were usually more careful not to be celebrating extra-judicial revenge killing.

Today even world leaders seem to be piling on with attaboys. Dispiriting really.

The facts emerging from bin Laden’s killing just get worse and worse. If Osama was indeed in a military-secured compound, a whole secured zone apparently, what reason could possibly be given for why every usual method would not be used to bring him into custody? Where was he going to go? Did we need to kill his entourage like we did Saddam Hussein’s sons? The fact that this raid is purported to have been planned for months makes the assassination all the more purposeful.

And then we learn his body was buried at sea, which the media uncritically recite is “in accordance to Islamic tradition” even as Muslims refute it. Besides of course suggesting that today’s raid was only Kabuki theater for disposing of OBL’s ten-year-dead corpse, conveniently making the body disappear makes dark humor of mocking Habeas Corpus. Where already America disregards the fundamental right of a trial of your peers.

Bin Laden’s colleagues are denied the jury of peers and instead judged through kangaroo military tribunals, patently illegal by international law. Lynching of course dispenses of even that formality.

But lynching victims of the earlier times were not deprived of their bodies. How dare the US declare itself judge, executioner AND God over Osama bin Laden’s remains?!

The pretext is that they don’t want a shrine made of wherever his family would have chosen to bury him. But of course, that will not be ours to decide. At the very least the site of bin Laden’s murder will already be a shrine for those in Islamabad. It will certainly be ironic if the WTC in New York City will be the most significant memory of Osama bin Laden’s deeds and become ground zero for his enormous fame worldwide.

Flotilla not a Love Boat, it was a lynch, says Netanyahu, describing beating of IDF soldiers, not deaths of aid workers

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What’s a lynch? I find it intriguing that Israel’s spin machine can drop an American pop culture reference like Love Boat, and simultaneously flub basic usage with “a lynch.” According to Israel, that describes what befell their crack-troop Mavi Marmara party-crashers. What does “a lynch” mean? Apparently someone feels at liberty to shorten Lynch Mob, or Lynching, to coin a new threat to Israel. But doesn’t it stretch credulity to imagine the IDF has never claimed to have been baited into an “ambush?”

Every modern military with a propaganda office, when it suffers a setback, attributes it to an ambush. When the US and Israel do it, it’s an attack; when our dastardly adversaries do it, it’s an ambush. Let’s set aside that the night watch on the Mavi Marmara’s deck might have been defending themselves. For the moment the IDF version of events is the only one Israel is allowing.

Ambush, trap, beating, getting jumped, wouldn’t these be appropriate descriptions for what Israel is asserting its night-vision video depicts? To lynch someone -it’s a verb- implies a hanging, extrajudicial, usually perpetrated by a crowd against a lone victim, unarmed. So where does the IDF get “lynch?”

To my mind, the Israeli-accented tender of “lynch” is feigned bad English, stuttered -I hope in shame- as perpetrator blames victim, but stuttered conveniently, to make the accusation less preposterous. Isn’t a rape victim who is too well versed in the crime perpetrated against her, less convincing than a victim who fumbles to comprehend the outrage she suffered? Poor Israel, its soldiers stepped into a, a, a lynch.

Emitted from military spokespeople however, one projects a reflexive followup “-that’s the ticket.”

I’m guessing grasping a straws like “lynch” is played for sympathy. And while I deconstruct the false unfamiliarity of otherwise precisely crafted English: PM Netanyahu’s mention of “Love Boat” had a bumbling Bush “the internets” ring to it. Anyone old enough to know the television show about the enchanted cruise ship knows there’s not “a Love Boat” but The Love Boat.

If the newly nouned “lynch” is intended to define a hate crime unique to anti-Semites, the motive fits with Israel’s insistence that first genocide, now holocaust, can only apply to Jews. Such an implication is aided by Netanyahu’s suggestion that the lynch was “plotted.” Because common understanding of mob misbehavior precludes a premeditated plot. This may reflect a naive dismissal of the responsibility of authorities who manipulated the lynch mobs and witch hunts, but dictionaries seldom chronicle the injustice of the victors who write the history. Conventional wisdom holds that lynchings were improvisational.

Perhaps the English speaking viewers are meant to associate the implicit racism of the term. Ambush after all doesn’t conjure the slightest whiff of antisemitism. But here’s where Israel’s liberal arts wordsmiths may have outsmarted themselves. While it’s true that thousands of African Americans were lynched through our nation’s history, to the average American who dwells not very often on shameful pasts, the definition of lynching encompasses simply an execution in lieu a trial. Even an unfair trial, or kangaroo court, can be called a lynching. A lynch mob is an enraged crowd meting vigilante justice, hanging high what to them is an indisputable wrongdoer. The overwhelming number of lynching victims in America’s lawless west were hunted criminals. While xenophobia may always have skewed the mob’s judgment against Indian, Chinese, Mexican, or Black, a lynching was not by definition about racial prejudice.

If the beating of the Israeli commandos illustrated a hatred, was it racist? One is meant to assume the motive was anti-Semitic, but I wonder if Arab-Israelies serving in the IDF, or foreign nationals or mercenaries, don’t garner antagonism as vociferous. The historic prejudice decried by ADL and holocaust remembrance stalwarts has been against Jews, but the world today reviles Israeli arrogance. The US has become universal despised, but American tourists are still assured the world hates America, not its people. It’s what we’re told, if even if it is untrue. I do not know of course if Israelis are proffered the same polite assurance.

Did Israel mean that the Freedom Flotilla was an attempted lynching of Israel’s international reputation? In that case, Israel’s predictable militant reaction made such a hanging a matter of assisted suicide. If the Israeli national character suffers irreparably, who’s going to be to bame?

Presuming to paint its soldiers into a lynching scene, which character does Israel assert they played? Were the IDF the horse thieves? Bandying about the connotations of lynchings makes for an interesting turning of the tables. Were the convoy defenders the ones pronouncing hasty judgment upon their dark-of-night assailants? Or were Israel’s commandos declaring themselves judge and jury on the alleged arms smugglers?

In cases of breaking and entering, the home field advantage is accorded the right to self-defense. A SWAT team might make the argument that identifying itself as law enforcement preempts a homeowner’s recourse to armed resistance, based on the principle that an arresting officer’s safety is inviolate. Israel may assert it was policing its border, but unfortunately last Monday it was operating beyond its border. What protection can a law enforcement function claim if outside its jurisdiction?

It might be well and good to say Israel reserves the right to protect itself from enemies anywhere in the world, but it can’t pretend its badge should command universal obeisance.

The Mavi Marmara had declared her intention to run Israel’s blockade, but hadn’t yet attempted the crossing. In fact the Freedom Flotilla was moving away from the contentious area at the time of Israel’s attack.

Who then was the victim of this “lynch?”

I’ll tell you why it’s lynch and not lynching. Because Israel’s soldiers weren’t killed, they were beaten. Not to diminish what might have been their adversaries’ worst intentions, but the gantlet the IDF commandoes received was not a hanging specifically, and not very effective in terms of proving fatal. On the other hand, the outcome was the killing of an as yet undisclosed multitude of civilians, unarmed to an extent that the killings can be defined as executions, the entire result already adjudged to have been a massacre.

Israel’s invention of “lynch” is an utterance which I believe betrays the sign of shame the world longs to see from Israel. Even as the public revels in watching the Israeli hubris on self-destruct, empathy has us hoping to see Israel grasp for its lost humanity. To describe the events on the Turkish passenger ship as a “lynch” is to fail to summon the chutzpah to bear false witness, to accuse the dead of capital murder. Neither does Israel dare to raise the specter that summary executions were committed that night at all.

There is a term to describe

a) Israel’s taking the law into its own hands by pirating a ship belonging to another nation while it sailed in international waters,

b) Israel’s soldiers not being a police force but an ideology-deputized posse,

c) opting in a confused fervor to punish outlaws thought to have been caught red handed,

d) issuing on the spot death sentences.

It’s called a mass lynching.