More of Savant's Commentaries

Conditions are largely different here than in Europe. Socialists and even Labor Party types are completely marginal here. So, caution is advised. Still, a pointed critique of liberal Democrats must be maintained. Especially those "liberal " Dems who are more centrist than anything else. But we shouldn't talk as if there's no difference between liberal Democrats and increasingly fascistic Republicans. I was attracted to the strategy suggested in 2012 by Noam Chomsky: In any state in which Mitt Romney hasn't even a prayer of winning, maybe some folk ought to vote Green or other alternatives. Where the Republicans could win if you don't pull out all the stops, by all means vote Obama. Actually, I voted for Obama even though Romney hadn't a prayer of winning Maryland. I wanted the margin of Mit Romney's defeat to be as large as possible. I guess I was pissed by the 47% comment. Ann coulter talking about how "OUR Blacks are better than THEIR Blacks", and her lame attempts to defend those statements made me angrier. I will support Bernie Sanders if he runs. And there's a woman whose name escapes me, a women who seems progressive, whom some want to run for the presidency. You've mentioned her before but her name escapes me now. If she runs I will vote for her. If she runs in the primaries against Bernie Sanders???? Well, I will have to wait and see. For me at present, the critical thing is to form a Movement. What if there had been an Occupy Movement within a few months of Obama taking office, or just prior? Again, we forget that there was a militant labor movement in progress when FDR took office. Rosa Parks and Montgomery had jumpstarted the Black freedom movement (which help inspire other movements) BEFORE Kennedy or Johnson took office. I believe (not sure) that the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina started around January or February of 1960. This had to have been BEFORE Kennedy took office. Even if my dates are wrong the YEAR is right. The Freedom Rides in 1961. What was missing in 2008 was a progressive mass movement. Perhaps with a progressive wind at his back we might have seen a different Obama, the Obama we hoped we were voting for. Without popular "street heat" even an FDR might have been just another politician with (like Obama decades later) a few tinkling reforms here or there, but little of substance.

 -Savant

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 One more thing about this. Attai's language here actually seems to derive from the way in which things are often talked about in the Black community itself. In his zealous solidarity with our cause he sometimes adopts our rhetoric. When he told Barros that he heard Black people referring to the president as "Oreobama " that pretty much is true....though Blacks disappointed with Obama don't usually say that outsider own company. And it's not the kind of thing you expect a white person--even very progressive to say. Blacks often say of police that they're Klansmen with badges. That is precisely what my mother said in the aftermath of the recent killings of Brown, Garner, Tamir Rice and others. My uncle Oscar, who fought at Normandy, called the cops who brutalized Rodney King "California Nazis". And when the all white jury exonerated the cops, Uncle Oscar called them "a Nazi/Klan court." I have on occasion been so angry at some incident of police violence (like the beating of an elderly church woman in my old neighborhood) that I said "The Klan has traded in its sheets for police uniforms and badges." Now rarely are such statements meant LITERALLY. And people do not usually mean that each and every policeman is a raving mad racist. But a pattern of violence against the community is regarded as racist regardless of the particular personality or race of this or that individual cop. It is the police as an INSTITUTION that is the issue. That is why even the increase of Black police officers, let alone Latin or Asian ones, are often seen to matter little. The institution is dysfunctional and operates in a racist manner. And on that note, I should also point out what most Blacks know: Black cops often operate the same way as white cops. In fact, in order to "prove" themselves as members of the club, some blak cops may even be MORE brutal. This was seen in South Africa as well where, by about the mid to late 80s, perhaps 30%--40% of the police were Black; but they operated violently in defense of the same apartheid system. To take a more extreme example, the Kapos (though Jewish) were often among the most feared guards among Jewish captives of the Nazi regime. Why, racism is a SYSTEM, not simply a matter of prejudices and attitudes. So are all forms of oppression.

 -Savant

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 The statistics, which have themselves been critiqued, wouldn't prove any such thing even if those stats were of unquestionable reliability. Racial characteristics cannot be proven. Indeed race itself cannot be proven. And what of the news? It is interesting how you right wing white racists who are so skeptical of the so-called "liberal media" can so gullibly swallow anything you receive from that media when it seems to support your racism. No doubt you've not even heard that reporting of crime INCREASED even as crime itself DECREASED. Moreover, studies seem to indicate the PERCEPTIONS of Black crime commonly exceeds even the skewed statistics you've been fed. But it's interesting to see that you still believe in the "liberal " media after all.

 -Savant

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 I've seen nothing that he has written which justifies your interpretation. In fact, his comment in the thread about the NYC cops killed recently he says that this kind of street justice is NOT what we need. At most he might say that police abuse helps precipitate that kind of irrational violence. Attai may at times romanticize Black folk, and even at times make posts that are virtually "ultra left." But he's not so dumb as to actually promote criminality. But at least on one point he would concur with me that, as Insect insightfully put it, "oppression begets dysfunction" --however much both he and Barros hate to agree on anything. LOL! -Savant


____________

 So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

 -Savant

 ___________________

 An interesting thing is happening in Baltimore. The growth of the Latin population, mostly poor, has led to the emergence of a new poor or proletariat. Over the past 10+ years there have been militant labor actions and strikes pitting Black and Brown and some white poor against their bosses. There were strikes at Johns Hopkins University, Camden Yards and at some of the larger hotels near the inner harbor. In each instance reactionaries--mos tly white, but also Black and Brown--tried to pit Black nd Latin workers against each other, and thereby break the strike. In each case, the reactionaries FAILED. In each case, the workers won. When I look at this, at the Occupy Movement of a few years ago, and now the massive multiracial Movement against police brutality, I think: "we can win this battle!" In Bobby Seale's words we must "Seize the Time!". A blade in the throat of oppression!!! -Savant

 _____________________________

 But you know, a good number of psychological studies of racist seem to reveal a weird obsession, often erotic or homoerotic, on the part of racists to the objects of their racial disdain. Adorno seems to find this in his studies in THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY, Sartre notices this among many anti-semites in his La Question Juive. This same kind of obsession has been noted in the USA for a long time. Also, a good number of psychologists whom I happen to know also say that homophobia, at least when it becomes extreme or militant, usually is a sign that the homophobe has his OWN ISSUES with homosexuality. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Right wingers probably contain more hidden or subconsciously gay homophobe than does any other demographic. Like those right wing Republicans always ranting and raving about gays and then getting caught themselves doing the nasty with some guy (or even under age page boy). And I suspect that if we met some of those women, men and boys whom Miss gar gar claims to have impressed, they would probably tell us that there's nothing "gargantos " about him. -Savant

 _________________

What more interesting is that you white racists like to trot out the same tired old statistics which have been critiqued by scholars as skewed an inflated. I mentioned just one author, Lisa Bloom, who pointed out this fact in a book of hers. I mentioned it to Go Blue among others. But somehow you seem not to notice evidence you don't like. If you keep trotting out statistics whose reliability has been questioned by SCHOLARS studying these matters, and don't even attempt an argument to defend those statistics, then you're guilty of the petitio principii fallacy, assuming that which you need to prove or argue for. Numbers don't tell you how they were arrived at. And even assuming the numbers were correct, they don't tell you how to INTERPRET them. -Savant

 __________________

 This time the reservation isn't just for Native Americans. Moreover, the explosion of the prison populations and police violence are due not only to racism, but also to growing economic inequality. Not surprising to me. In the AA intellectual and political traditions it has been commonly perceived that economic and racial injustice are intimately interwoven. But the majority of whites cannot escape economic injustice even if that injustice is more intense in communities of color. By the way, there's an interesting article in AlterNet.org by Lestor Leopold entitled "How Runaway Economic Inequality and Racism are Linked to Police Killings." I think it appeared on December 15, my mother's birthday. -Savant ________________

Even if they come from the FBI. As for Black communities most residents know that the police do little anyway when it comes to crime. Indeed, cops and criminals often work hand-in-hand. Dick Gregory was right when he said that every KID in the ghetto knows who the dope dealers are, and also the cops who work with them. What James Baldwin wrote in the 1960s about cops in Harlem remains true even in 2014 in black communities throughout America. "Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality. I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once." (NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, p. 62). So have I, brother Baldwin. So have I. The incessant harassment and abuse falling short of murder on TV falls upon Blacks from wealthy entertainers, to middle class professionals and all way down to the most destitute of les miserable in the ghettoes of America. You should get down on your KNEES and kiss my people's feet for holding primarily to NONVIOLENT means to resist the police terror. And by the way, Dr. King's father named him Martin whether the authorities got it right or no. Hence his name was Martin, and that's the end of it.
 -Savant


______________________

So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

-Savant

 __________________
 Now your reply to his comments about the NYC mayor was at least relevant, though the issue is a bit complicated. An issue that has plagued the left (at least in capitalistic republics) for decades. But this comment is waaay below that level, and more akin to what we'd expect from the brain dead reactionaries. AS you know, I also believe that Obama's progressivism has proven to be more fluff than substance, though he's preferable to the protofascist Republicans. I will be observing di Blasio who I hope (as I once hoped of Obama) that he'd be at least a fighting liberal. (I'm not dumb enough to expect him to be Eugene V. Debs any more than I expected Obama to be Paul Robeson). If I've a problem with Attai's critique, it's not that I think he's completely wrong. But I fear he pushes the critique to he point of obscuring distinctions between protofascist reactionaries of the Republican party, and centrists (who are just barely liberal) of he Democratic party. That can be dangerous. There is a difference between Obama's lame reaction to police atrocities and to racism, and the outright racist demoninzation of communities of color by the right. There's a difference between di Blasio's "can't we all get along attitude" and those who would like to unleash the military against the Black community if they could. And what should we actually be doing? We must resist the Right, but cannot simply surrender to the unreliable leadership of centrist liberals. So, it is a difficult matter.

 -Savant

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 It is YOU who look through a white racial lens while pretending to look through a non-racial lens. The pretense of colorblindness or postraciality is often the more fashionable guise in which white racism expresses itself. The fact remains that the police, the armed enforcers of the status quo, are capable of repressing anyone, and sometimes do slay people of any and all races and ethnicities. Partly, this is because the status quo is a capitalist class society as well as a racist one. The cops protect that. But the fact still remains that the slayings of Black and Brown youth by fascist pigs cops are far greater in proportion than the slaying of white youths. Just as fascists in an anti-Semitic society may kill other people than Jews, but kill Jews in greater proportion, in a white racist capitalist regime like the USA, cops kill all kinds of people, but Blacks and (increasingly Latins) more than others. Even members of the privileged classes in communities of color suffer abuses at the hands of the police which their class equivalents in white America would find unbelievable. But don't worry. The repression cannot be restricted to Black and Brown communities. It will knock at your door soon enough.

 -Savant

 __________________

Only mentally deranged Black men hate our sisters, And I don't think most of us are that whacked out. Sisters--most of them--have had our backs over the past 400+ years. It is only well and fitting that we have their backs also. Look at those demonstrations in support of the black male victims and families of victims of police killings. You will see Black women there in the thousands and tens of thousands. We need to be there for them as well. That's what community is about, and that's what it means to be a MAN, not a punk.

-Savant

 ______________ ____________

 First of all, many Black women as well as men--the majority if surveys are revealing--believe , Know, that racism is rampant in American society. And in America, capitalism and racism are intricately interwoven. Always have been. And if it is paranoid to believe that racial oppression is REAL in America today, then it is no mere "black male" paranoia. Nor even Black male/Black female paranoia. It is a belief widespread among Latinos as well. Moreover, what you call paranoia is shared by the United Nation's Commission on Racism, Amnesty International, ACLU, and numerous scholars (many of them actually white). Again, T-BOZ ought to at least read something above the level of a text message. As you are personally detached from the experiences of most Black people, I could provide you with a bibliography which you might read before posting again. Start with THE RACIAL CONTRACT, or Ezorsky's RACISM AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. Read any number of books by Manning Marable, or Angela Y. Davis---her more recent ones, in particular (e.g. ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE, or THE NATURE OF FREEDOM AND OTHER DIFFICULT DIALOGUES). Read MIchelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW. Nothing personal, but only right wingers (who are usually racist themselves) and simpletons go around saying that racial oppression no longer exists in America. The WHOLE WORLD as well as the vast majority of Black people know that racism is still rampant. And by racism we don't mean only prejudice, the institutionalized racism; racism as organized privileging of one group to the disadvantage of others. -Savant ______________

 Yes indeed. The wave of protests against police terror against the Black community may offer an opening an be a beginning: seizing what Angela Davis calls "the historical moment." -Savant

Research on the Black African Diaspora

http://diasporicroots.tumblr.com/post/17566143158/afro-latin-americans

http://socialistworker.org/2012/12/07/kings-unfinished-struggle

More Wisdom

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 The outrage in the Black community is real, not manufactured...except perhaps in your imagination. The outrage is real and a consequence of repressive behavior of the police and the injustices of the judicial system. But fortunately, MOST of us do not respond in the manner of the guy who shot those two cops. But if the misconduct of the police continues despite legal and extralegal nonviolent protests, and if the criminals in badges are continually exonerated by a corrupt judiciary, the numbers turning to armed retaliation or resistance will increase. And it won't be just some random act by a whacked individual, but systematic and organized counterviolence against the police. -Savant __________________

It would be interesting to study the linguistic history of Jewish people. For it seems that after the Babylonian captivity most Jews who returned to Judea spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. Something happened. I recall one rabbi on the history channel who argued that the reason Jews scribes in Alexandria and elsewhere started translating the OT from Hebrew (or Aramaic) to Greek was because many Jews in the Hellenistic period no longer understood Hebrew and were completely Greek speaking. Apparently, at some point Jews began to try to regain Hebrew as their original language. It would be almost like African-Americans choosing one of the ancestral languages--maybe Yoruba or Ashanti--adopting it as the national language of the Black people of America, but still speaking English in a predominantly Anglophone country. There have even been some African Americans who have suggested such a thing. Some AA folk I've even heard pointing to the example of the Jews who survived by claiming or reclaiming their heritage while making whatever accommodation they had to in largely hostile gentile societies. -Savant __________________ T-BOZ shows repeatedly that she is a white racist regardless of her actual skin color. Notice that she speaks of the actions of the killer of NYC cops as in "typical black male fashion." I don't recall her referring to the white Sandyhook killer of about 20 white schoolchildren (after murdering his own mother) followed by suicide as in "typical white male fashion." In fact, I've yet to see her post ANYTHING against white racists--not even when they killed BLACK WOMEN. All this adds up to racist disdain for Black PEOPLE concealed in the idiom of gender. Is it a mere coincidence that she writes pretty much the same thing as do the white racists--sometimes in explicit SOLIDARITY with the racists? All enemies of Black people are not white. Some are folk who, in the current vernacular, "look like us." -Savant

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 In fact, America is divided into the haves and have nots. Which is about 1%-- 5% vs the rest of the population. A few Blacks, male and female, may belong to that elite. The great majority do not. The 1% are still 99% white. Truth be told, the great majority of whites do not belong either. Most whites are serfs of their wealthy white overlords. I believe it was Dr. King who once said that the difference is that Blacks KNOW in general they don't belong, but whites are generally unaware of their unfreedom. But there are some Blacks these days (though not in the same proportion as the whites) who are also unaware.

 -Savant

 _________________


 I stated numerous times in this and other threads that I do not think that violence is the best route to take, at least not unless and until it has been shown to be necessary. I've pointed out that the movement against police repression in Black and Brown communities--a movement that has begun to become INTERNATIONAL--has remained 99% NONVIOLENT. Even in Ferguson on the day of the decision, when rioting did break out, if you watch DEMOCRACY NOW or Al Jazeera, you noticed that MOST of the protests by Blacks and non-Black allies, were nonviolent. I wholly COMMEND that movement. I have participated in some of the demonstrations, and have told my students (Black, white, Latin and others) how proud I am of them for not only protesting, but for doing so in a dignified and nonviolent manner. So, the answer to your question should obvious. But I can only wonder whether your sympathies are uncritically pro-police and against even nonviolent protest, or where exactly you stand. But while I do not favor such actions as those which happened recently, I also recognize--and History shows---that where peaceful legal or extralegal measures do not avail, violent alternatives will be used. And eventually it will be random violence of a whacked individual, but systematic and clandestine violence in resistance or retaliation against the police. All of those who oppose, or are at best lukewarm to the nonviolent protests (often with reference to black crime as a pretext) need to check need to check yourselves and notice what time it is.

 -Savant

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I don't favor this kind of response if indeed it was intended as a response to the killings by police. I still favor massive civil disobedience, massive resistance by means other than armed force. But if these measures fail more and more people will resort to armed retaliation against racist cops. But if it comes to THAT, then we'd better do some serious thinking about logistics; and we'd have to be thinking in terms of clandestine armed resistance. Somewhat like in THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR. I hope we don't have to go there.

 -Savant

 ___________________________

 Well, the range of nonviolent resistance are nearly immeasurable. I couldn't name them all. Mass protests on a scale which itself largely disables a city or town. Peaceable occupation of government buildings, or places of business. Strikes, boycotts, maybe even a tax revolt. (Noam Chomsky during the 1960s advocated, I believe, refusal to pay taxes until the Vietnam war ended. Henry David Thoreua refused to pay taxes to a government which enslaved the Black population and invaded Hispanic lands during the Mexican War. Dr. King was planning to virtually shut down the nation's capital if he and his cohorts could not get some positive action along the lines of employment for the poor, and a Economic Bill of Rights amendment). Soldiers can refuse to fight---like some Israeli soldiers who refuse to invade and carry out actions against Palestinian civilians. Young men can refuse to register. Demonstrators who are ordered to move or disperse can refuse to do so. Believe it or not, even police (like the Israeli soldiers) can refuse to obey orders which involve racial profiling or the use of excessive force. Not many of them do so. I know of one Black police officer who is suing his own dept in Philadelphia on account of excessive force and harassment of Black people. I don't know if this will cost him his job. A Latino officer some months ago started reporting the New York police chief explicitly ORDERED his offers to profile and harass Blacks and Hispanics. So, if nonviolent opposition and disobedience is possible to some extent by police and soldiers themselves, it is possible even more for ordinary citizens. The alternatives really are only SUBMISSION (which erodes sense of dignity) or ARMED RESISTANCE, which could mean a blood bath. I'd prefer even armed resistance to submission, but nonviolent resistance to armed resistance if possible. I think it is still possible.....at least for now.

 -Savant

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 Ah yes, now we get to the heart of the matter. The SYSTEM.....The judicial system, the system of e police....I'd go even further and talk about the entire socioeconomic system which breeds poverty, misery, alienation and criminality (which some use as an excuse to defend police terror), and the violence of the police whose job is really to defend this bankrupt, and to do so with force of arms. It's remarkable when you read Dr. King, the original Black Panthers, Stokely, Angela Davis, Du Bois and others they were saying the same thing about the SYSTEM....and if that didn't change very little else would either. So, we're still engaged in wars for essentially the same reasons that Dr. King spoke of in his address against the Vietnam War (April 4, 1967) called "Breaking Silence." We're still having the problems with the police and judiciary for more or less the same reasons explained decades ago by post-Mecca Malcolm X and the original Panthers. Yet, it's remarkable that so many people---including SOME Black people, and maybe MOST white people---still don't get it!!!! It's the SYSTEM, people. And you're going to miss the train if you don't pick up on that reality.

-Savant
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 The struggle against racism and imperialism is one thing Blacks in America and Africa have in common. And having ties with white racists (at least where such can be avoided) is indicative of mental illness. And that's regardless of whether the racist is from your own country or elsewhere. And yes, I'd prefer to marry a woman from Ghana or the Congo before I'd marry an American with racist. Yet, I'm not even opposed to interracial marriage since I think freedom means being able to choose whom you love. Racists are a different matter. -Savant

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 Indeed, domestic terrorists is a good descriptions of the killer cops who murdered Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and others. Perhaps they should be tried in the world court since these terroristic killer cops are so readily let off by the corrupt judiciary of the USA. -Savant ________________

 Meanwhile the killers of Garner, Brown and even little Tamir Rice are neither fired nor subject to criminal charges. And Blacks are 21 times more likely to be killed by cops than are whites. -Savant

 ________________

 The usual deflecting talk about black crime is usually a predictable expression of white racism. But that aside, the same system that gives rise to police terror creates the conditions that promote Black crime....and white crime. Therefore, what is needed is a radical social movement to change that system, and to transform the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality. When you're ready to consider that option we can talk. In the meantime, maybe you should worry yourself more about white crime since you're more likely to be murdered by another white if you are white than to be murdered by a black....or Latino -Savant

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 What we need is not random acts of violence, but a social movement to combat police violencend judicial injustice. But the Movement must also combat the entire system of class and racial injustice, entire system of concentrated wealth and power. Random acts of violence, even if directed at the specific cops who killed Eric Garner, would not solve the problem because it is the ENTIRE SYSTEM that must be radically transformed. StaggerLee is right about that, and has made perhaps the most perceptive observations on this matter. The police are the armed instruments of the Establishment, of the racist corporate state and the classes that uphold it. Unless that establishment is changed even killing the actual killers of Garner, Brown or Rice will mean little. The system will simply replace them. And yes, such actions will become an excuse for even more police repression. What we need is a movement not only to end police brutality, and the fascistic tendencies illustrated by an increasingly militarized police; we must change the entire social order which makes this kind of police possible (if not necessary) and of which the cops are mainly tools. And for those who are always ranting and raving about "black crime"--usual ly as a deflection from the issue of police brutality--it ought to be known by now that criminal activity is mainly a destructive and self-destructive reaction to an oppressive social system. The Movement which seeks to end social conditions which make police terror possible also seeks to alter the conditins that promote self-destructive behavior among poor blacks, whites, latins and others. MOvemets of the 1960s & 30s show that during times of great liberatory social movements and high social consciousness ordinary criminal activity declines, sometimes disappearing totally. Hence Dr. King noted the drop in crime in Black Montgomery (a 60% drop) during the Bus boycott. Even riots that broke out in Baltimore and other cities after King's assassination led to the radical reductions in crime. If you take a look at Thomas Jackson's FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS: MARTIN LUTHER KING AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE, it is clear that Movement leaders noticed that. The Black Panthers also tried to steer young people from crime to Struggle. Similar observations have been observed in other counties---in parts of Latin America by Paulo Feirie, in part of Africa by Frantz Fanon. For the aim of the struggle is to build a new community of freedom, with new bonds of solidarity; in that new community there will be no place for police terror, for poverty amidst an ocean of material wealth, and for the kinds of alienation in which one's neighbor is one's enemy. You're right, Stagger Lee. The system must be change----radicall y and fundamentally.

 -Savant

 ________________


 I have been involved in mass demonstrations in Baltimore and Washington over issues of police brutality and the corrupt judicial system. As for the "MLK nonviolent" you ought to have noticed (if you really called off from work to be at the demonstrations) that the demonstrations were overwhelmingly NONVIOLENT. Even on the day of the jury's decision in Ferguson when riots did break out, MOST of the Black community and its allies engaged in nonviolent protest. Moreover, the "MLK bullshyt" as you call it was actually quite effective in its time. And it just may be effective now. And yes, some baastard killed Martin Luther King, but people who engage in violent struggle against oppressive authority sometimes suffer casualties as well. More people died in the riots of 1967 than in the previous ten years of nonviolent struggle in the South. I would also submit for consideration that a nonviolent revolution, if it can happen, reduces the dangers of a new tyranny replacing an older one. Without the violence I doubt that a Robespierre or a Stalin can arise. And violence must be a choice, then it ought to be our LAST recourse; what is left when all else has failed. Part of the moral authority of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress derived from the fact that when they decided on armed struggle after the Sharpesville massacre, it was at the end of FORTY YEARS of failed nonviolent strategies in which they were more oppressed than when they started out. Under THOSE kinds of circumstances it is quite understandable that recourse is had to armed struggle. I would have taken up arms myself against the fascistic apartheid regime in South Africa. Even Frantz Fanon and karl Marx both believed that in SOME countries, under SOME conditions, nonviolent transformation is possible. Before I consider taking up arms and risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people (or more), I want to be damned sure that either no other options exist, or that they have proven to be ineffective in the fight against oppression and injustice. -Savant
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http://socialistworker.org/2014/12/18/when-soldiers-declared-peace-on-earth


http://socialistworker.org/2014/07/28/capitalisms-first-world-war

Unfortunately, you're no better---at least not much--than "lol"; substituting personal insult for argument, and name calling for debate. But anyone besides the racists, or mentally twisted Blacks like T-BOZ or SBT, knows what I've stood for since I accidentally discovered this "forum" about six or seven years ago. Some may be familiar with my thread "NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION: IS IT POSSIBLE?" Some may have seen my thread "PROGRESSIVE WHITE PEOPLE: WHERE ARE YOU?" Or maybe "MARTIN LUTHER KING'S LEGACY AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT". Even those who paid close attention to my thread "BRING BACK THE BLACK PANTHERS?" know that my preference is for NONVIOLENT ACTION even though I do not, as King seems to do, take armed resistance completely off the table. It is a question of reason, sanity and moral sense of justice and human dignity. A sane man--he need not be King, Gandhi or Bishop Tutu---prefers peaceabE means for at least as long as he thinks them possible. Even if I had reached the point, as Mandela did after the Sharpseville Massacre, that nonviolent resistance was no longer an option, I wouldn't advocate random acts of violence. Even then there would have to be discipline and adherence to modern norms and rules of combat. As it stands, I am convinced the NONVIOLENT options, both legal and extralegal, are still options. Perhaps you should explain where YOU stand. In my Panthers thread you told me you posted Mike Brown's mother to essentially tell her off for not properly raising her son. Like the typical white racist you called him a criminal. But you didn't refer to Wilson nor other cops who kill men, women and even children as criminals. And when I asked you what post you sent to Wilson I noticed a deafening silence. You were noticeably cool toward the tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of mainly nonviolent protestors throughout the country (even in foreign countries). But now you come here upset about the killing of police. Could it be that you need to re-examine your own moral compass? (


 -Savant

More Research

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/lanesboro-ma/TFD3392P5PK1QNDOK/p16

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/05/cuba-m10.html

http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TML5GR6CA7GEQO02U/p2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/naacp-union-net-neutrality_n_5606854.html

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/nan-naacp-other-hypocritical-civil-rights-organizations-assert-constitutional-right-conceal-

http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TVG7O4BOHC6387O60

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/17/3/gpr170315.html


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Many whites, by that same logic, don't think white life matters either. Only nobody uses that as an excuse for police terror against whites. Most crimes against whites are committed by whites. Yet paranoid white simpletons stress over Black crime while being violated (87% of the time) by other whites. Now Blacks are in general more RATIONAL in this matter and far less paranoid. We know that most crime in every group (Native Americans maybe excepted) is INTRARACIAL, not interracial. And we don't lose sleep over how many of you kills or rape each other. Indeed, white husbands more commonly murder than wives than Black husbands. But you don't find Blacks obsessing over white crime. We are indignant about WHITE RACISM, not white crime. THAT we are directly affected by. And you racist buffoons who are always obsessing over Black crime, or using it to deflect from the issue of anti-Black terror by the police, ought to check out Lisa Bloom's article "White People Commit the Most HEINOUS Crimes, So why is America Terrified of Black Men?" in the May 13, 2004 edition of AlterNet.org. Oh yes, the author happens to be white. Trying to talk some sense into some of her more benighted fellow whites....like yourself.

 -Savant

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 Several years ago I read an interview involving Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky said that if the police conduct that is status quo in Black and Latin communities were to become COMMONPLACE in white American communities (and not just he white poor) America would already be regarded as a Fascist. Well the police terror so common today in Black and Latino America may very well become commonplace throughout the WHOLE of America. We then will have a Fascist USA; and even many current conservatives and reactionaries and even racists will wish they had opposed police terror while it was still mainly directed against communities of color. But by then it may be too late. Indeed, there are a few conservatives (it seems mainly "libertarians ") who are beginning to perceive this danger even now. At present, most of our allies in white America are---unsurprising ly---center/left. Not unlike the 1960s.

 -Savant

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 Those people for whom HUMAN lives matter, are more incense over the killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner or Tamir Rice than about scattered outbreaks of looting of property. For persons, unlike property, have INHERENT value. And since it was destruction of human life, and judicial support for the destroyers which provoked the attack on property, the obsession with burnt buildings may indicate a definite alienation from all that is human. Moreover, those for whom HUMAN life is valuable, for whom the dignity of human personhood is inviolable, the very thought of racist use of words like "Mexican Jew"---as if being Mexican or Jewish lowered one's worth as a human being---the whole way of thinking indicated by the language is unacceptable to persons for whom human life matters. But such ethical and socially conscious people do not include depraved individuals like Max Fascist "Devil".

 -Savant

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 The racist trolls are deflecting. I've a concern more relevant to this thread. Where do we go from here? I also wonder about the similarities and dissimilarities between the mass protests against police terror and the Occupy protests against plutocracy. Police are the armed extension of the state. Plutocracy is the rule of the privileged classes which dominate the state. Somehow relation must be drawn between economic oppression and police violence, and also between racism, economic oppression and political repression. A new movement must think through these matters very carefully. -Savant

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 The CIA has been training dictatorial regimes in torture tactics for decades. -Savant