“One Adam Twelve!”
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the sunny, pleasantly seasonal and soon to be stormy once again island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this 3rd day of March, 2015, a spectacular day out there if you happen to be anywhere on this grand sand bar created by glaciers 11,500 years ago via ‘The Great Ice Age’…
Sad news from L.A. over the past 48 hours or so, as another helpless, homeless man was gunned down by L.A.’s ‘finest’; the grizzly scene witnessed by lots of (non)people in the ’skid row’ area of Los Angeles, where allegedly this man was “living” in some sort of tent to wit he was attempting to go back into when the police clearly went after him. The officers (five of them), harassed him as if instigating a conflict… They tackled him, “tazed” him, and then, when someone yelled out something about a gun, (reports on national news claim the homeless man was possibly going for the officer’s gun, right!), the officers made the moral decision to gun him down like a dog in the street, with the whole world looking on now in horror.
Having had some experience with this, I feel I have some street cred here. The reality of President Obama’s task force to look into policing in this 21st Century America–prompted after the gunning down (in cold blood some say), of teenager Michael Brown from Ferguson, Missouri–was a good start. True and impartial, independent investigations and all, body cameras (that may or may not be on at the time when they need to be…), as well as more training, especially around Black history (kudos to NYPD police commissioner Ray Kelly).
But, it does not really tackle the base root of the problem.
The reality is that this country has become a quasi-police state, where most municipalities are heavily armed via ‘appropriations’ from the Patriot Act signed into law after the attacks of 9/11, creating a new, militarized and some say dangerous department of “Homeland Security”, i.e the NSA. A law that received carte blanche from day one, given that blank check via our former Republican president George W. Bush.
Although, Republicans use it today as a political bargaining chip to ‘get that Obama’ for his legal and up until this time, rather limited use of Executive Orders; addressing our outdated and cruel immigration policies!
With that in mind, we also have become a state, a nation, a country, that incarcerates more people than any other on the face of planet earth. Think about that for a moment… We don’t discriminate any longer either when it comes to the gender, taking more women to prison than ever before. Why? Because the prison industry has become just that, an industry worth billions of dollars. So what if there are a few casualties (collateral damage), along the way like some homeless bum on the streets of L.A.? Who cares? WE hate the homeless! No one is going to be going to that guys funeral.
May “Africa” rest in peace.
When Russian President Putin (indirectly or directly), ordered the hit on Boris Nemtsov (Russian politician/turned protestor, worked under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin; a very popular man who bucked the Kremlin and Putin’s overall policy of submit or die!), it exemplified to the world what we are (21st Century Western Civility) are up against here. On the one hand, you have a kleptocratic killer posing as a president (and why not?). A man (former KGB agent), who manipulates, lies and fabricates this world, while the West wastes precious time attempting to negotiate as if he were on the up and up. Putin’ cold heart will not bend to sanctions, or will it?
A funny word that, terrorist. For to that homeless man who lay dying in the streets with multiple gun shot wounds, the face of terror came in the form of an ‘officer of the peace’. A man finally relieved of his misfortune for being ‘poor’ in this 21st Century America. Humiliated and handcuffed by the same men who shot him. For we all know, you can never be too careful? Handcuffed by police watching him in silence, kicking; dying alone on the cold hard, poorest of the poor pavement, deep in the city of Angels.
May a few be with you now…
Lo, one could say the same of 12 year old Tamir Rice, who was infamously gunned down by Cleveland Police who, after being acquitted, indeed charged with nothing in the little boys murder, yes, after all of that, the city of Cleveland made a statement that they have since walked back, but made it anyway, summed in basic callousness “…it was the boys fault”.
Terror is in the eyes of the one being terrorized. And who is to say what brand of terror strikes more of that precious commodity–FEAR–than the other? A product promoted daily by mass corporate media outlets created by and for man’s entertainment? Certainly not for his enlightenment!
We all forgot the Israeli/Gaza war just a little while back. Ask yourself this: were those poor, innocent, trapped, and marginalized Palestinians terrorized by the rain of missiles that killed many whose fight it was not, indeed, were those women, children and men terrorized? A mass killing made mostly of transparent political expediency?
The fact is, most Americans have little to no knowledge of police brutality, or a list of just how many real, live American people have been killed by police, for no records exist. That is something that MUST be changed.
For if we are going to live in a police state, we should at least have proof of such! You know, for public consumption!
Have a nice day!
PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
