Counterpunch has reached a new low in what they allow to be published in it's pages.
Rob Urie's post is the clearest example of liberal total disregard for constitutional jurisprudence in the service of his own fantasies about about race.
This from a website who's masthead claims to "tell the facts and name the names".
Few who heard the eyewitness accounts of the murder of eighteen-year-old Mike Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson needed an autopsy report to know that Mr. Brown was gunned down in cold blood.
Really? How pray tell do people who did NOT witness the actual events know shit? If people didn't need to see evidence like autopsy's, then why the fuck do we have a jury system and rules of evidence? Fuck it. We should just do a Rob Urie and just let the defendant tell his story and let the jury make up their mind. That's what Rob is asking for. Fuck the evidence, Just go with your gut and what you overheard from someone who overheard from someone who saw a tweet.
But the death of Mike Brown was a political assassination.
Man put down whatever illegal substance you are smoking.
The systematic nature in which youth of color are harassed, intimidated, incarcerated and assassinated perpetuates the historic repression of American blacks and browns from the barbaric founding of the U.S. in slavery and genocide to supposed resolution with the Civil Rights movement.
Wow. All black crime and criminal behavior is the fault of white folks and slavery. This is some tired ass shit. Tired. Ass. Shit. It is insulting to the vast majority of black folks. Men and women who grew up in various circumstances and never ever held up a convenience store for cigars. Who never smoked weed. Who never punched a cop in the face because we didn't like how he spoke to us (or whatever excuse is going to be trotted out by these enablers. Who never shot anyone. Never stabbed anyone. Who followed the law. Fuck Rob and his criminal enabling self.
The sense of entitlement exhibited when white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot the young Mr. Brown combined the impunity of racial privilege with a pathological indifference toward the person of Mike Brown, his family and his community.
This is a lot of white liberal quasi-feminist bullshit. Wilson was a peace officer. A peace officer has the entitlement to not be assaulted by civilians. You know who else has a federally protected right to not be assaulted by civilians? letter carriers at the post office. Did you know assaulting one of those people is a federal offense. So yeah, they are entitled to not be hit.
But see Rob Uries total dismissal of the relevant facts. No mention that Wilson was assaulted (see the broken eye bone). Forget that the gun was discharged in the vehicle. No forget all that. Wilson must have been some Klan in a blue uniform because, well he's white. That's the entire logic here. In Rob's world, black men don't commit crimes, unless they do and we can complain about the unfair sentences.
Whatever the personal failings of Darren Wilson, it was in his official role on the Ferguson police department that he murdered Mr. Brown
Try this Mr Urie:
It was in his official role on the Ferguson police department that he [attempted to apprehend a civilian who had just punched him in the face (assault on an officer) and attempted to get his gun (assualt on an officer), that went off (attempted murder of a police officer) and was attempting to flee the scene of a felony who had turned to bum rush him].
See, the latter is a proper description of the
known facts in the case. Oh right Rob is of the opinion that facts don't matter. Fuck him entirely.
As the late Huey Newton put it nearly a half century ago, the police aren’t in poor communities to protect property because poor people have no property to protect. And the police in Ferguson conspicuously weren’t there to protect Mike Brown and other youth from violence.
Rob shows his total ass with this statement. Firstly it shows his fascination with the late sixties. So the police are not in poor communities to protect youth from violence? Hmmmm... OK. So not that we've established that black communities are violent and that the violence is NOT from the police (Rob just said it) then WHO exactly is perpetrating the violence?
And since it is the job of the police to investigate crimes of violence and the folks in those communities are the ones committing and victims of said crimes? Where pray tell should the police be? Where the crime isn't? Does Rob really want the Ferguson PD to simply not police black neighborhoods? Lets make a wager: 1 month with zero "occupiers" in black Ferguson and there will be mass begging for police to come back and "Do something" like it was back in the crack epidemic of 85-86 when black community leaders and representatives BEGGED the police to come into their neighborhoods and deal with the violence and drug dealing.
To the canard of black on black violence, three centuries of racial repression haven’t created a state of justice so why would continued repression by external forces be a plausible way to bring it about?
This bullshit here.
This. Bullshit. Here.
Let me clue in the many many number of white people who are under the impression that black violent crime is the result of slavery, Jim Crow and shit like "micro-aggressions". Stop with that bullshit. Most violent crime is a result of an inability to properly deal with conflicts. Small minor shit like shoe stepping, bumping in a club, disagreements about who's the best rapper, and shit like that, lead to violence where sane people would walk away.
To believe that black crime is largely the fault of external forces is RACIST to the CORE. It is a proposition that black people are unable to be agents of their own behavior. It places white people as the ultimate arbiter of black behavior past, present and future. It is the HEIGHT of racism as it is a "gentler" form of White master and black subject. It totally disregards the documented trends of fatherless homes, generational welfare dependency and the like, that were LESS prominent in the more [overt] racist past.
But all that is lost on people who think that facts don't matter.
Put differently, why would police violence of any sort be considered a solution to violence?
Man Rob is stupid. Here's how it works: The state takes over as having the monopoly on legitimate violence. The citizen may only use violence in self-defense (or of others). Having established that, the rules are simple, if you obey the law you're good. If you break the law you do not get to employ violence to get away with breaking the law. The idea is simple: if you break the law, you know that there is a very real possibility that you will lose your life. For many people that serves as a deterrent to crime. Some people, a small minority to be sure, either do not think the rules apply to them or are willing to chance it.
What Rob is actually telling us is that he thinks that the pubic, no, black folks ought to be left to the mercy of those who are willing to break the law and inflict violence on the community. He thinks that in the absence of "violent police", crime in these neighborhoods will disappear. He is a fucking idiot.
The release by the Ferguson police department of a videotape allegedly showing Mike Brown shoplifting some cigars feeds into this premise.
Earth to Rob: Brown's accomplice has already admitted that he and Brown robbed the store. So there is no "alleged" in this part of the story. It is established fact. Oh right. Facts don't matter. Fucking idiot.
By way of comparison, pictured below are four Wall Street executives who ‘run’ banks that could be accurately described as ongoing criminal enterprises— this by the number of criminal and civil charges made against the banks, not as empty pejorative. Not only would it never occur to any cop in America to empty an entire clip into one of these executives under the premise of intrinsic criminality, the entirety of Western policing is dedicated to protecting them from criminal prosecution and from retribution by those harmed by the criminal acts that they oversee.
Here's to hoping that Rob never EVER serves on a Jury. His chosen profession is artist. He should stick to whatever his "art" is and stop writing.
First of all, the criminal actions of the Wall Street bankers (and other allied parties) is irrelevant to what happened in Ferguson. You couldn't even bring it up in court without being stopped by the judge.
Secondly that the Wall Street bankers are criminals does not matter. None of the Wall Street bankers committed assault on a peace officer. Is that fact hard to understand? Rob, like the rest of the idiots out there, still think this is about "walking down the street" or "stealing cigars". It's not. Had the Wall Street executives on the verge of being questioned had tried to run away and in the process punched a cop in the face that exec might actually find himself with extra holes.
See this is the thing about "white collar crime" that many a nincompoop cannot understand. White collar crime does not pose an immediate threat to someone's life. That is the only thing an officer [usually] responds to. No matter how many bribes were paid out by an exec. So long as he goes quietly when the police come. He has nothing to worry about. People who commit robberies of stores and people ARE an immediate threat to lives and this is why they get met with guns drawn.
I know this is hard for people to understand but if you can't you shouldn't be opining on subject matter beyond your intelligence scale.
Implied in the release of the videotape is equivalence; that the alleged theft of some cigars changes the balance of culpability in the murder of Mike Brown.
No, the videotape goes to state of mind and motives of one Michael Brown. Just as if there was video of Officer Wilson beating a person for no reason it would be proper to show that.
Dummy.
The toxic narrative of black criminality ties in history to the (post-Civil War) Reconstruction practice of using ‘the law’ to continue the social repression of slavery by different means. Nominally ‘freed’ blacks were charged under criminal statutes carefully crafted to place them in work camps or in ‘convict-leasing’ programs.
Wow. You know back in the day in South Carolina, if a black person was walking on a sidewalk and a white person approached, the black person had to go out into the street until the white person passed. Then they could resume walking on the sidewalk. I suppose the conspiracy now is that Black folks ought to walk ON the sidewalk or risk lashes.
Bullshit.
I'm glad Rob remembers his grade school lesson's on post reconstruction laws used to get around the prohibition of slavery by imprisoning people on bullshit things like loitering. But this is 2014 Rob. Assault on a peace officer is illegal for everybody. Rob is positing that black people are incapable of following the same rules that everybody else is expected to live under. That's some special type of racism!!
Oh yeah. Brown shouldn't be expected to not rob a convenience store because that whole don't steal shit is for white folks! And since some [rich] white folks get away with their crimes then we should allow black folks to rob and steal and punch police officers in the face. It's only fair.
The fuck out of here with that racist bullshit.
if a population is fifty percent white and fifty percent black but nine out of ten people the police ‘investigate’ are black then most ‘criminals’ will be black even if the propensity toward ‘criminality’ is evenly distributed.
Rob is TOTALLY clueless about crime in many urban areas. But lets keep it on St. Louis. In 2013 there were 113 homicides. 105 of them were black people. How the fuck can anyone with a clue write that crime is "evenly distributed" when black folks in St. Louis are killing one another at a rate of one every 3 to 4 days? But this is the LIE that is presented by the left. Everyone is doing crime at the same rates and if they are not, the black ones are the fault of the omnipresent and omnipotent white folks. No Rob, crime in St. Louis is not evenly distributed. Facts matter.
Rob Urie is an idiot. He has shown himself immune to facts. He deals entirely in lies and irrelevant pieces of information. The question I have for those running Counterpunch is this:
If you claim to "tell the facts and name the names" then why is this piece on your site. It is neither factual or naming any names relevant to the events.
