The police here ARE the military. Try to apply w/o a military background. Police training now happens in Iraq and Afghanistan, ain’t nobody got time for proper police trainin.
Try to post something like this on a ‘liberal’ messageboard. You’ll see how invested a certain class is in this remaining a speculative theory.
Good times…

Posted by: L Bean | Nov 27 2014 18:52 utc | 4

William Norman Grigg has written many times about police brutality/abuse in the US. He posts those stories on his blog: “Pro Libertate”.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.nl/
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.nl/2014/11/darren-wilson-and-reality-of-blue.html
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/11/darren-wilson-investigation-favoritism/

Posted by: Willy2 | Nov 27 2014 21:30 utc | 6

Americans need to realize that the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’s embrace of war and fascism extends to the ‘homeland’ as well as to the Ukraine.
Obama was truly the CIA’s nihilist Manchurian Candidate and is lamely going to continue to follow the CIA/MIC/Wall Streets’ orders no matter the consequences for the US or for the world.
The only way forward is embracing Organization 101 in every one of the US’ ~ 175,000 precincts. An armed uprising is suicide, and would only end with fascists in power. It would be co-opted just as it has been in Ukraine.
If we had begun even two years ago we could literally have cleaned the House in November. Elected real representatives from among ourselves, neither jackasses nor dumbos.
Better late than never. The news is full of 2016. Ferguson is ground zero and the place to start the overt peaceful and political rebellion.

“… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights … whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It’s time … well past time … for the American Revolution 2.0.

Posted by: john francis lee | Nov 27 2014 22:06 utc | 8

In fact, the international community hasr responded. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin released a statement that the US regime has lost all legitimacy and will train the free american army in Mexico, urging Obama to step down. In fact, their wives appaealed to Michelle Obama to respect the human rights of americans. Foreign secretaries reassured the international community that all options are on the table if Obama will not respect the will of the american people. Ban Ki Moon warned Obama that peace must be maintained in every US county.

Posted by: radiator | Nov 28 2014 0:40 utc | 10

Damn it, for all my joking about jeopardizing the roles of US/UN/China it really doesn’t seem *that* far away… maybe in my lifetime?

Posted by: radiator | Nov 28 2014 1:34 utc | 12

America has a terrible racism problem and that is really the issue here in Ferguson as well as in Ohio. The federal government has very (VERY) limited capability to influence what is happening in state and city police departments. I cannot see how you think that Obama is behind what happened here in Ferguson Missouri (20 miles from where I live) or responsible for it. This post is so off the wall you I suggest you really need to re-examine your assumptions. Indeed it makes me question how valid may some of your analysis of other countries may be if you can be so completely wrong about not a very complicated issue. All the comments also seem very odd as if everyone is in a parallel reality. I know the ‘right’ here in US is accused of having a very distorted view of reality because of over consumption of FOX propaganda. Well that may be true but, based on this post, seems to me the left has a similar problem as well.

Posted by: Khalid | Nov 28 2014 3:11 utc | 14

Well it is the Obama regime that is responsible for the arming of local and state police departments by the pentagon.
It is Barack Obama himself who has asserted his ‘right’ to assassinate not only Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans. Yemenis, and Syrians but Americans as well … and who has done so.
It is Barack Obama who has invoked the internal security act used, perhaps tailored, to imprison Eugene Debs, more times than any other American president.
It is Barack Obama who has shielded the war criminals of the Bush regime from prosecution, and shielded the CIA and NSA for their crimes as well.
It is Barack Obama who has let the judicial travesties in the Trayvon Martin murder and now the Michael Brown murder stand when he had/has the power to bring federal charges against the defendants in both cases.
It is Barack Obama who continually lectures Black Americans on their failure to pull themselves up by their bootstraps … it is Barack Obama’s blackface that consistently sweeps America’s terrible racism under the rug.
It is true that Barack Obama is ‘just following orders’ , the orders of the monied elite who put him in power, that he is just a figurehead for the really sinister actors behind all these woes.
But he took the job. He didn’t say, sorry but I am just not up to it, when offered the support that put him in the position of POTUS.
So he must now bear responsibility for his actions and inactions in that position. He is an intelligent man who knows exactly what he is doing. He’s not some George Bush, led on stage, unleashed, and encouraged to follow his nose.
He’s in it for his own personal revolving-door revolution. a la the Clintons, and that is all he cares about.
He is as corrupt, and spectacularly more cynical and successful at it, than any of his predecessors that I have seen in my 67 years of life as an American.

Posted by: john francis lee | Nov 28 2014 4:15 utc | 16

@17 khalid.. i think i understand you. however as one of the posters who said something upstream you might have put me on the defensive! the way i see it ‘b’s post is a bit provocative in so far as it takes what one would read about with regard to other sovereign nations and apply the logic how it is often applied by the usa in it’s exceptional fashion… how often do you hear of the usa being referred to as a ‘regime’, or that it is murdering or killing it’s citizens?
never..
it can get said in the msm about syria regularly, in spite of the fact the usa and many of its war mongering allies are quite happy to treat the country and it’s people like shit… for someone to be audacious enough to suggest that obama and it’s people are no better then much of the targets they make of other countries – to me it is fair game.. i see b’s post as a bit ‘tongue in cheek’ but also valid..

Posted by: james | Nov 28 2014 5:01 utc | 18

I had certainly seen him before that particular afternoon, but he’d been just another cop. After that afternoon, he had red hair and blue eyes. He was somewhere in his thirties. He walked the way John Wayne walks, striding out to clean up the universe, and he believed all that shit: a wicked, stupider, infantile motherfucker. Like his heroes, he was kind of pinheaded, heavy-gutted, big assed, and his eyes were as blank as George Washington’s eyes. But I was beginning to learn something about the blankness of those eyes. What I was learning was beginning to frighten me to death. If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy. In that eye, you do not exist: if you are lucky. If that eye, from its heights, has been forced to notice you, if you do exist in the unbelievably frozen winter which lives behind that eye, you are marked, marked, marked. Like a man in a black overcoat, crawling, fleeing, across the snow. The eye resents your presence in the landscape, cluttering up the view. Presently, the black overcoat will be still, turning red with blood, and the snow will be red, and the eye resents this, too, blinks once, and causes more snow to fall, covering it all.
(James Baldwin, ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, 1974)

James Baldwin wrote this 40 years ago. But things do not seem to have changed much.
The dirty secret of the US system is that racism pays. The system feeds on them, and thrives on them. That is the reason why this thing keeps going on.
For one thing, at least since the 30s, the US real estate market has depended on the manipulation of racism, by racially selective distribution of mortgage through red lining.
The result was the disinvestment and disintegration of black community, which then would provide a powerful incentive for the white to move as far away as possible from there. Now you have a healthy demand for the newly built suburban homes for the whites.
Making the lives in the minority communities miserable is not a matter of accident or neglect. It is carefully maintained economic stimulus for the real estate market. And don’t forget that the building of suburbia and accompanying demand for cars, highways, mega malls was the foundation of the post WW2 economic boom in the US.
If things follow the previous pattern, the unrest in Ferguson will provide another stimulus to the real estate market in the surrounding areas.
In this scheme, the role of the police is to contain the artificially created hell and its residents in their place so that the new suburbia maintains its black free status and thus its economic value.
Therefore it is no wonder that the police in the US has license to kill. They don’t need to prove objective threat to kill somebody. They only need to claim subjective perception of threat. Under that kind of incentive structure, it is irrational not to shoot first and ask question later.
Also it is no wonder that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world with its 2.5 million prisoners. Its incarceration rate, 750 per each 100,000 is matched only by Stalin’s Soviet Union. The World average is around 100 per 100,000. Even North Korea, the favorite target of the human right accusation by the US, only has the incarceration rate of 500 per 100,000. Even that number can be disputed. If you include only prisoners, North Korea has the incarceration rate of 100 per 100,000, just world average. If you include internal banishment, yes North Korea uses that as a punishment, then the number reaches 500. Then US has 5 million under probation or parole with severely limited mobility and rights.
By the way, I found the performance of the killer cop, Darren Wilson, quite familiar. Where did I see it before? Of course, from the musical ‘Chicago’, the song titled ‘We both reached for the gun’.
People, Enjoy.
http://youtu.be/C9dFKRZ8EbU

Posted by: Puppet Master | Nov 28 2014 6:21 utc | 20

Well it is the Obama regime that is responsible for the arming of local and state police departments by the pentagon….
Posted by: john francis lee | Nov 27, 2014 11:15:17 PM | 16
I have to respectfully disagree with this statement.The arming of US police departments with surplus military weapons started way before Obama. The practice of giving military grade weaponry to local police was ramped up during the BUSH-Cheney travesty of an administration. Obama may be continuing the process but it did not begin with his administration. And no I am not being an Obama apologist, the militarization of local police departments is wrong and dangerous to democracy in my opinion.

Posted by: really | Nov 28 2014 8:12 utc | 22

I have been this blog for a few years and find many entries useful but have never been a ‘true’ believer. That used to be ok. The commentators used to be worth reading; there were 8 or 9 different people making insightful comments. It has been many months since I have looked at the comments as those commentators have all left and the new ones I have found not useful. ‘Shame on me’. Really? I could easily have been on a right wing blog to hear that! My concern about the fall in quality was out of concern not to attack. There are real issues and developments with what is happening in Ferguson but I will skip over them as intelligent debate is secreting away from this blog.

Posted by: Khalid | Nov 28 2014 9:49 utc | 24

Perhaps the Canadians are considering humanitarian corridors as the US regime continues to brutalise its own people. Perhaps an emergency meeting at the UNSC will be called to condemn the use of lethal force against black Americans, and to coordinate a Friends of America summit in Paris. Perhaps a transitional Government is being assembled that will lead the US out of this brutal racial conflict – one that will unite all people in society. Perhaps large numbers from the opposition are being assembled in Mexico by nations representing Friends of America to launch attacks on regime infrastructure in order to facilitate meaningful dialogue and the transition that ‘we want’ – the resignation of an elected head of state. Why is the US regime denying its citizens their dignity? Oh Lord why won’t somebody think of the children!?

Posted by: Pat Bateman | Nov 28 2014 13:22 utc | 26

Police brutality is very widespread in the United States and yet there is almost no serious reporting on it by the mainstream media. Police forces are steeped in corruption and routinely use excessive force and engage in racial profiling but are worshiped as heroes much like the soldiers who have committed war crimes in America’s dirty wars.
And because the elite are afraid of the masses, they feel they need to terrorize them using the police as their tool of choice (at our own expense) to ensure their power and wealth are not challenged.

Posted by: Cynthia | Nov 28 2014 14:07 utc | 28

From TRNN:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12715&updaterx=2014-11-26+11%3A13%3A37

Posted by: ben | Nov 28 2014 15:51 utc | 30

Whenever I hear people here in the US say “we have to hear the cops side of the story”, I think… just show them this video of the 12 yr old kid, blown away within two seconds for doing what kids do – playing. What’s the cops story here? They rolled right up and just shot a child. Apparently US cops are such massive pussies that they can’t do anything except hide behind their firearms.
Those who did this despicable act are obviously cowards, but you can hardly blame them. Such cowardice is put on a pedestal in today’s America. This is what the tough guy does in America – shoots first wether their target is a man, a woman, or a child. Wether they are one of those who gun down their schoolmates, their spouse, or their coworkers in fits of infantile but deadly rage or like those who killed kids in helicopters in Iraq or Who drop bombs on people in Pakistan from an office park in Tampa.
This is how Americans see their “heroes”.
We know “Land of the Free” went down the tubes decades ago, but now “Home of the brave” seems to be just as much of a joke. What a laugh. All of these guys are just quaking with fear – masking it behind itchy trigger fingers, military-grade weapons and billions of dollars in technology.

Posted by: guest77 | Nov 30 2014 21:38 utc | 32

Police have definitely acted both illegally and legally – but morally wrong in many instances.
However, while I don’t excuse this behavior, it is understandable since they are the layer between the oligarchs and the regular people. It is precisely their job these days to enforce the 1%’s laws – and by doing so, oppress the rest.
Further demonizing the entire class only serves to push them further into identifying with the 1% when in reality, they are well on the other side of the divide economically.

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 1 2014 10:34 utc | 34

jfl
One of Obama’s daughters could have been killed by IDF and the moron in the white house would still have supported Israel.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 11 2014 15:26 utc | 36