Impunity Marches On

Bob McCulloch is turning into quite the little sideshow these days. He's the so-called St. Louis County prosecutor who rigged and manipulated the grand jury to return a no-bill on Darren Wilson for the execution of Mike Brown. [Note: I use the term "execution" in preference to "murder" because his actions and his excuses are in line with someone who summarily executes (under color of authority) rather than someone who premeditates and kills.]

McCulloch went public with the fact that he knew Witness 40 -- Sandra McElroy -- was bullshitting, lying, fabricating, etc, when she was called before the GJ to testify to what she had "witnessed" that day on Canfield Drive. Her testimony was almost word-for-word corroboration of Darren Wilson's story as reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch the previous day. McElroy's testimony has been quoted numerous times in the media -- particularly on FOX -- to "prove" that Brown was charging the officer and did not have his hands up, yadda, yadda.

Except the "proof" is a fabrication.

McCulloch claims he knew it was fabrication and lies when his staff put her on the stand. So? The chest-out brazenness of it is pretty shocking. But then he's also said that plenty of witnesses lied to the grand jury, some on behalf of Brown and some on behalf of Wilson, and all he did was give the grand jury as much evidence and testimony as he could and let them decide whether there was evidence sufficient to charge Wilson with a crime.

They said "No," like nearly all grand juries and DAs do.

No matter what the cop does, what the testimony and evidence show, cops are almost never-ever charged with a crime when they kill someone. Sexual indiscretions, on the other hand, can get them into plenty of hot water.

McCulloch's brazenness in this case mirrors his brazenness in many others, wherein he not only refused to indict cops who committed "street justice", he used the opportunities to smear the victims and witnesses alike, just as he did in the Darren Wilson matter. It is his way, and it's the way of most DAs. Cops are perhaps imperfect, but the people they kill are monsters who need to be put down, at least in the culture and lore of the police/DA continuum. No matter the facts.

We're seeing this brazen impunity play out again and again, all over the country, in almost every case of police killing, while the People raging in the streets over it risk becoming part of the background noise of a society and globe in crisis.

I may have said it before, but it looks to me like Authority -- in the persons of Bob McCulloch and his counterparts in much of the country, and in the persons of chiefs of police and police union honchos, and in the persons of governors and various other political leaders -- are deliberately trying to incite rebellion, perhaps as a means to gauge the depth of resistance to the New Model American System.

In other words, there is at least a suggestion in McCulloch's behavior and that of the various PDs involved in the killing of Mike Brown and its aftermath of a deliberate intent to cause rebellion in order to study it, counter it and suppress it. A large-scale social experiment you might say.

There is a growing recognition that the American justice system -- from the cops on the beat to the Supreme Court -- is broken. Disparate justice is the rule, impunity for those with power vs harsh retribution for those without is the standard. There is no sign that Our Rulers will do anything to redress the legitimate grievances of the People and restore balance to a justice system out of whack.

Incidents keep piling up, but nothing substantive is done about it. Too many people like things just the way they are.

And people like Bob McCulloch and his counterparts are brazen as all get out about it, because they know that nothing can or will be done about it under the current system, and they are confident that the current system will endure, no matter the rebellion in the streets.

Impunity marches on.

The Sherrods vs Hysteria

Last Monday, the media and the White House exploded with hysteria over the edited video clip of Shirley Sherrod of Georgia giving a speech in March to the NAACP at an awards ceremony in DC(?). The video was marketed and promoted by Andrew Breitbart, a notorious scammer, and was purported to show a black Federal worker exposed as a racist before the racist NAACP. According to Breitbart, this was "get back" for the NAACP's call on the TeaBaggers to denounce the racists in their midst.

The White House and Agriculture Department behaved very badly indeed in this instance, for they summarily dismissed Shirley Sherrod -- actually, they required and got her immediate resignation -- within hours, if not minutes, of the posting of the video on one of Breitbart's websites, even before the thing had entered common knowledge and heavy rotation on the cable channels.

But then, the cable channels didn't actually behave any better. FOX of course was leading the charge to pillory and ostracize Ms Sherrod, and most of the other "news" channels just mindlessly followed suit. Were it not for the fact that Shirley Sherrod was in Georgia, near enough to CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, the record might not have been corrected.

But she was in Georgia and she made many appearances on CNN to counter the lies of Andrew Breitbart -- who also made many appearances on all the shows, though they never appeared together -- and to denounce FOX and challenge the White House and Agriculture Department for yielding to hysteria stirred up by FOX and Breitbart.

Ultimately, CNN made a special biographical program to explain to viewers who Shirley and Charles Sherrod are in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and what they have done in the context of rural Georgia and the preservation of farmlands and farm life for blacks and whites.

Breitbart seemed like a goon and the Government seemed out of touch and hysterical to say the least.

Ultimately, the Sherrods came out of last week's media-storm -- and White House and USDA stumble-bumming -- smelling like roses, whereas Breitbart was pummeled from every direction imaginable. Yet, according to Palace wags, he'll survive, stronger than before. He did not back down. Nor, unlike the Government, did he apologize.

I've made a number of points about this incident:

• 1) One man, Andrew Breitbart, was able to paralyze and control both media and the Government for nearly a week, by simply posting what turned out to be a misleadingly edited video clip on his website. Though the Sherrods came out of this looking very good, Breitbart was the master of what went on. Simply by posting his deceptive video clip, nearly every other story was jettisoned, a dedicated public servant was forced out of her position with the Federal Government, an action that then required "walking back" and numerous apologies for not "hearing the whole story." The media -- all of it -- was completely consumed with the saga for day after day. The media was being driven by Breitbart, and to a much lesser extent by Shirley Sherrod.
  
  
• 2) What happened demonstrated the weakness of the Government and the mindlessness of the media. Combined, the two appear to hold nearly tyrannical power over Americans, but the facts shown here demonstrated just the opposite. In fact, it was Andrew Breitbart who controlled both. That is extraordinary, and it is very dangerous. It's not so much "who" was the controlling entity, it is that the apparatus of both media and the Government could be controlled by a single individual at all. This not only indicates weakness, it implies irrelevance. When you think about what that means in the context of the WaPo's "Secret Government" series, it should put the Dread into nearly everyone.

But the fact was that pointing out the implications of what happened was met with a chorus of denial and boos. It's very hard to recognize how weak our Government really is when we are being told over and over again that it is a tyranny. Well, yes, it is, but it is a surprisingly weak tyranny. If one man, Andrew Breitbart, can control it so easily, think what a more public minded individual might be able to do.

Breitbart used a time-honored tactic, that of the "whistle-blower" to put his evil plan in motion. He had video "proof" of racists within the Government and at the NAACP, and he was blowing the whistle on them.

For its part, the Government -- apparently in the person of Cheryl Cook, Deputy Director of the USDA and one assumes a career civil servant -- demanded the immediate resignation of Shirley Sherrod even before the "proof" was in wide circulation or in fact had circulated beyond Breitbart's site much at all. This is stunning, and there are many implications. Was Ms Cook monitoring Breitbart and FOX on the internet? Did she report what Breitbart had "discovered?" Was it her recommendation and decision to terminate Ms Sherrod with prejudice? And was that decision then made the policy of the Government? What a mess. And who, exactly, is Cheryl Cook to be making these decisions -- if that's what happened?

We don't know. Ms Cook has been in seclusion from day one, unaccountable and inaccessible. Is she a factional player? We don't know. All I can say is that I have seen this sort of thing happen in Federal service. Without a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all in some cases -- employees will be forced out, either through resignation or firing, on the accusation of some impropriety or other without evidence or proof, or as I have seen happen, when the actual evidence contradicts the accusations. It happens suddenly, without warning, and sometimes with such determination that the victim has no chance to respond until after the events have transpired. I was one of the ones who intervened when this situation developed in my agency. So far as I knew, it was not a partisan issue, but it was an issue of hysteria ginned up by someone with a grudge who then was able to convince a supervisor to act in ignorance and haste.

The first time I saw it happen, I thought it was an aberration; then I saw it happen again. And then I realized this behavior was part of the institutional culture and that, when there was no intervention, the perpetrators could be handsomely rewarded, even if the victim eventually sued and won.

Ultimately I realized it is a self-protective action by the institution itself. Although there are real people involved, and there may be personal issues at the bottom of it, the process is often so mindless -- literally -- that it is not a personal matter. It is the Institution reacting to some perception of threat.

Based on what I've seen in the past, my suspicion is that Shirley Sherrod had been targeted and was being monitored prior to this incident, probably due to her history and her apparent newness to the Agency as an employee, as a "potential threat." Knowing something of who she was (she had pressed and won an enormous discrimination suit against the very Agency that now employed her) I'm sure close tabs were being kept on her and her activities. Although I have no idea who Cheryl Cook is or if she is a factional player in the USDA (wouldn't surprise me if she were), my instinct says she acted on her own to "protect the agency" from potential harm once she saw that Sherrod was being targeted by Breitbart. How she learned of that becomes a matter of some interest. I would guess that she was contacted directly by... someone. But I'm noodling here. What really happened will probably never be investigated let alone known, and Cheryl Cook will probably get an award. That's how these things work.

-- To be continued

It's 3:00AM -- Canaries in the Coal Mine

A friend called me yesterday while I was finishing up my work for the day. "Have you heard," he said, "they're tasering protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul." I said no, I hadn't heard that. He said it was in the paper, I'd better take a look. I told him some of what I had been reading and seeing on the Internets, about the numerous assaults by police and the mass arrests. He hadn't heard about the numbers arrested, had no idea so many had been hauled away.

Then I got around to checking out FDL's extensive and disturbing coverage of the police overkill in the Twin Cities. I'd been following Glenn Greenwald's less extensive but equally outraged coverage and had been spending a good deal of time in a kind of "dialogue" with various commenters there about the events unfolding outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. So, clearly I had missed a good deal of the news.

One of the noticeable aspects of the reports of what was going on in Minneapolis and St. Paul was that apparently very few people cared about what happened to a few hundred "anarchists" who got out of line. They broke windows!!! And they deserved every bit of what they got. There is nothing worse in the history of Domestic Terrorism than the breaking of windows!!!! Except for the balloons full of urine. And the bags of feces.

Then there were the reports of what happened to Keith Smith, 17, of Menomonie, Wisconsin.



According to reports, he'd actually stopped a line of police by sitting down in the street, shaking his sistrum, and being photographed. His action evoked something of the admiration people around the world have for the brave fellow in Beijing who stopped a line of tanks headed to Tienanmin Square to put down the revolt there in 1989.



Somewhat later -- how much later, I don't know -- he was assaulted by five police officers and beaten before he was arrested and taken to a juvenile detention center where he was held for a couple of hours and then released. His injuries are documented here.

And he is one of many peaceful and non resisting citizens and demonstrators who have been brutalized by the hyper militarized police forces deployed in St. Paul to protect and defend the Republican National Convention from the crazed youth who otherwise would interfere with their party.

As I watched some of the videos on this page, I became angrier and angrier that this sort of outrageous police overreaction continues in this country every time there is a significant gathering of the rich and the powerful in a city, gatherings which are by their nature subject to protest by citizens.

On a smaller scale the same thing happened in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. The police there also received $50 million and direction from the Secret Service and the FBI; but in St. Paul and Minneapolis (where many of the raids and pre-convention arrests took place), the brutality and the constant police instigated conflict, as well as the mass arrests and brutalization while in custody reached a new level -- for this year.

Of course it is nothing new. Since the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, there's been repeated street warfare and street theatre again and again all over the country, large scale peaceful marches and protests being broken up and put down brutally.

Yet strangely, sports fans continue to riot whenever their team wins or loses, and there is little more than a shrug from the hyper-vigilant and militarized police forces. Strangely, enormous protests against the Iraq War, protests organized by a coalition of Communists, have gone off almost without a hitch. And strangely, too, Americans tend to look at these things -- when they look at all -- with a sort of distate and with boredom.

How do we break the cycle?

These incidents are the canaries in the coalmine for our deteriorating, vanishing rights as citizens of a free and prosperous land. Many Americans simply don't care what's happening to scruffy youths who think they have the right to mouth off to Authority. Yet what happens to those scruffy youth now is quite likely to be what happens to anyone in the future who tries to exercise civil and political rights against the orders and wishes of the Powers That Be. For now, the youths being brutalized by the Authorities in St. Paul are not like you and me, any more than the criminals being held in our bulging prisons and jails are like the rest of us. They are separate and different and so they can be -- and are -- treated with surpassing indifference by the rest of us, and with apalling brutality by the Authorities.

But what happens to them could happen to any of us.

And that's what those who do the brutalizing and those who are indifferent to -- or celebrate it -- need to come to understand.

Brazil!

They're going to cave. The House of Representatives is going to cave on telecom amnesty.

As mentioned here and elsewhere, the Problem the House has with the orders from the White House to provide telecom amnesty forthwith is not the orders themselves. No, the Problem is that the White House, as it did with the Senate, tried to circumvent normal procedures, and that is a big, fat No-No!

So. Like the Senate, the House has dug in its heels and refused to comply with the commands from the White House toot-sweet. Of course they will comply in the by and bye, just as the Senate did, but they will get there in their own sweet time. No tin pot dictator in the White House is going to tell them when to do something. Ha! Never!

(Except at summer break, but that's different.)

But it's not about Principle. It's not -- absolutely not -- about defending the Constitution or the Rule of Law or anything other than the House asserting its perogatives to debate and consider on its own terms.

They will cave. That's what they do, and with a more than sufficient number of Blue Dogs to align with the Rs for this measure -- as they have with so many others in the past -- when the reveal comes, it will be fast and ugly.

Ain't politics grand?

Kenya!

NPR and most of the other "news" outlets have been running with a consistent media spin on the situation in Kenya that follows a narrative of 'tribal rivalries,' 'ancient animosities,' and 'brutal African Natives.'

Very little is said about the bogus election of Mwai Kibaki that has triggered the revolt and the bloodshed. Instead, we're treated to endless beard-tugging over all this ethnic struggle among the Uncivilized Savages. Been going on for hundreds of years. They're just that way. Pity.

No mention of the proxy war going on next door in Somalia (which sometimes spills over into Kenya.) No mention of the United States' interference in Kenyan affairs (GWOT and all that, dontchaknow). It's as if there is only one media narrative that explains all "unrest" in all uncivilized countries, all the time. Ethnic rivalries that have been "just below the surface" for hundreds of years. The idea that something actually happened (a rigged election for example) that caused this outbreak of violence is simply impossible.

And there is an assumption that Kibaki is the legitimate president because he was "elected," and Condi Rice calls him up.

Nothing at all about the opposition and their very legitimate complaints. No, just like the Bloomberg campaign, everyone must come together and go forth in unity.

Beggars belief. 

But Kibaki and Musharraf and who knows how many others are simply following the Bush-Cheney example, aren't they?

They just brazen it out.

(Note: the video was made by some Norwegian [Danish?] kids on safari in Kenya this spring. Cute, innit?)