Mike Brown Protesters: Willing to Die for Justice

by Mark Daniels

"The most iconic photo of the Ferguson Protests"
Photo Credit:  Post-Dispatch photographer Robert Cohen

On August 9, 2014 Michael Brown of Ferguson Missouri was shot numerous times and killed by Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson, followed by days and weeks of mostly peaceful protests with some rioting and looting and a militarized police response including Governor Jay Nixon's State of Emergency declaration and deployment of the Missouri National Guard on the streets of Ferguson. As a result, Ferguson residents were subject to martial law measures which included city-wide checkpoints, impeding travel and limiting access to friends, family and basic supplies needed for subsistence. Militarized police positioned snipers atop buildings and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles pointing their military grade weapons at peaceful protesters and journalists. Residents and journalists were rounded up and caged in local jails and fired upon with tear gas and bullets causing serious injuries.

To date, Darren Wilson remains on paid administrative leave as local, state, and federal investigations are underway. On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a Civil Rights Investigation into the Ferguson Police Department.

Meanwhile, the corporate owned media, with the exception of local news outlets have essentially disappeared from the scene in Ferguson while local residents and activists are organizing and taking action to stand up against police brutality, the militarization of police, racial profiling, and systemic corruption within local, state, and federal government agencies.

On Friday, August 5, 2014, almost one month since Michael Brown was gunned down by Darren Wilson, Center Stage radio host, Kheri Hines has invited several protesters who have been on the ground in Ferguson since the beginning to join us on Center Stage for our sixth consecutive episode about Michael Brown's murder, to discuss recent events in Ferguson and future plans to address their concerns. We will also be joined by Zaki Baruti, a local leader of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition who will provide important information about the coalition's 'demands' for justice for Michael Brown.

We will speak with some of the protesters who have been on the front line of the "Justice for Michael Brown" movement since day one (including Edward Crawford, the young man captured in what many have referred to as "the most iconic photograph" of the protests). They will tell us why they have chosen to stay the course despite encountering militarized police presence and tactics that included being tear gassed, shot at with real and rubber bullets, having their movements restricted, constant checkpoints, facing attack dogs and being arrested. They will also explain why neither heat nor rain has hampered their need to seek justice for Michael Brown.

Please join us for what is expected to be one of our most interesting and informative episodes thus far as local residents and activists tell us why they are willing to die for Justice. The call in number is (347) 850-8390.

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The Protests May Be Winding Down, But Ferguson's Fight Is Not Over

by Alice Speri

An out-of-towner driving through Ferguson, Missouri on West Florissant Avenue on Friday morning might easily have missed the signs of the protests and clashes that have dominated this stretch of suburbs for the past two weeks.

In fact, the signs are there: most stores are boarded up, with "open" signs sprayed over the wooden panels that used to be glass windows. The burnt down shell of the Quiktrip gas station — which is at once Ferguson's "Ground Zero" and its "Maidan" — is still there, surrounded by a metal fence that was not there a few days ago.

The area got brand new "I heart Ferguson" signs, planted in every courtyard and hanging from every pole, and messages of hope and love are all over town — on colored signs drawn by children, or on the boards covering up the Ferguson Market and Liquor store, the site of looting last week.

Cell Phone Guide For US Protesters

Eva Galperin & Parker Higgins
EFF

With major protests in the news again, we decided it's time to update our cell phone guide for protesters. A lot has changed since we last published this report in 2011, for better and for worse. On the one hand, we've learned more about the massive volume of law enforcement requests for cell phone—ranging from location information to actual content—and widespread use of dedicated cell phone surveillance technologies. On the other hand, strong Supreme Court opinions have eliminated any ambiguity about the unconstitutionality of warrantless searches of phones incident to arrest, and a growing national consensus says location data, too, is private.

Protesters want to be able to communicate, to document the protests, and to share photos and video with the world. So they'll be carrying phones, and they'll face a complex set of considerations about the privacy of the data those phones hold. We hope this guide can help answer some questions about how to best protect that data, and what rights protesters have in the face of police demands.

SHOOTING, SEVERAL ARRESTS REPORTED AFTER FERGUSON CURFEW

Protesters clashed with police after a curfew was imposed in Ferguson, Mo.CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times

by KMOV



FERGUSON, Mo. — Hours after Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri imposed a midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew on Saturday in this small city, a group of protesters defied the order and violence flared briefly on Sunday morning, a week after demonstrations erupted over the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer.

A clash between the protesters and dozens of police officers in riot gear began less than 30 minutes after the curfew took effect and ended about 45 minutes later with the arrest of seven people, all charged with “failure to disperse,” officials said.

The protesters had moved toward the officers — some of whom rode in armored vehicles — and chanted: “We are Mike Brown! We have the right to assemble peacefully!” invoking the name of the 18-year-old who was shot and killed by the Ferguson officer.

“You are violating the state-imposed curfew,” a police officer told the demonstrators as rain, heavy at times, passed through the area.

Protesters tossed at least one bottle rocket, the police said, and at the apparent sound of gunshots from a restaurant at the end of one street, demonstrators scrambled to safety.
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FEDS REACT TO MILITARIZED COPS IN FERGUSON

Effort to end abuse will need to address entire police state

by KURT NIMMO | INFOWARS.COM

The militarized response to protests and media coverage in Ferguson, Missouri has forced the federal government to rethink its policy of sending military hardware to police departments.

“I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message,” said Attorney General Eric Holder after police manhandled demonstrators, gassed a media crew, and used rubber bullets on protesters and journalists.

Following criticism by Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, and the introduction of legislation to curtail police militarization by Georgia Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson, Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee will a design a program to determine if the Defense Department’s surplus equipment is being used appropriately.

“Our Main Streets should be a place for business, families and relaxation, not tanks and M16s,”Johnson said Thursday. “Militarizing America’s Main Streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent.”

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul and others have criticized the Pentagon effort to turn domestic police forces into occupying armies.

“Big government has been at the heart of the problem,” Paul notes. “Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies — where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.”

“The federal government fuels this trend,” Kara Dansky, a senior counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice writes for The New York Times. “The police have virtually unlimited access to the U.S. military’s arsenal through what’s called the 1033 program. They also have access to billions of dollars’ worth of funding from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which they can use to buy military equipment from weapons manufacturers, who line their pockets with the spoils. Through these federal programs, hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed to local police departments, which have been stockpiling their arsenals with weapons designed for combat.”

The Police Murder in St. Louis and the Militarization of American Society

Jerry White

Yet another unarmed young man has been shot to death, execution style, by police on the streets of an American city. In response to demonstrations of popular outrage, riot police have attacked protests with tear gas and rubber bullets and arrested scores of people. A pregnant woman says she was thrown on the ground, maced and held at gunpoint.

The victim this time is 18-year-old Michael Brown, riddled Saturday with a dozen bullets from the gun of a cop in the St. Louis, Missouri suburb of Ferguson.

The anger that has engulfed metropolitan St. Louis is entirely justified. The police put out brazen lies, the standard fare in the string of incidents of homicidal violence against working people and youth. The Ferguson police have chosen to go with the claim, used so often in past killings by police, that Brown “reached for the gun” of the killer cop.

But numerous eyewitnesses describe a wanton and brutal murder. As Brown and a friend walked down the street, they were ordered by a still unnamed police officer to get on the sidewalk.

When the youth failed to respond quickly enough, the cop backed his vehicle into them, grabbed Brown by the neck and shot him. His friend told the media the cop shot again, hitting Brown in the back as he fled for his life. He then shot the youth several times in head and chest as he raised his hands and attempted to kneel to the ground.

Ferguson Riots Move the US One Step Closer to Insurrection

Justin King | The Anti-Media

Many question the moral authority of the rioting in Ferguson that was triggered by yet another killing of an unarmed teen. The rioting is a symptom of a larger nationwide trend of resistance to the encroaching police state, and specifically the ability of law enforcement officials to kill, maim, and harass without consequence.

The riots began before all of the facts were gathered about the shooting. The timing of the riot is important. Preemptive rioting and the destruction of private property is the third step in a historical cycle that has played out since the foundation of governments. It is a five step cycle that ends in widespread rebellion and insurrection.

5 steps to insurgency

Pamphlets:

Prior to the digital age, pamphlets were the main method of spreading dissent around the world. The pamphlets examined and questioned the authority of the contemporary governments and control systems. In the modern world, pamphlets have been replaced by blogs, social media, and to a smaller degree, adversarial journalists.

Reactive Protests:

Once the seed of dissent is planted, people take to the streets to voice their opposition to the government. These protests occur after the control systems of the era attempt to diffuse an offending incident.

Preemptive Rioting:

Preemptive rioting follows a period of reactive protests that go unanswered by the government. The people begin taking to the streets and destroying private and public property as soon as an offending incident takes place, rather than waiting and hoping for the government to police itself.

Military or Law Enforcement backlash and crackdowns:

These riots and small incidents of resistance trigger a government reaction. The control systems of the country tighten their grip on the people and further curtail civil liberties and infringe on people’s rights. The government crackdown fuels the resistance movement as more people tire of government intrusion.

When Is a Coup not One?

Reuters/Mohamad Abd El Ghany

Stephen Lendman

"What's in a name," asked Shakespeare? A coup by any other name doesn't change things.

It isn't one when it's "our coup, a 'good cause' coup," said Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. Western diplomats are scrambling to characterize it otherwise. 

Coups are called "military interventions with good intent." Saying they reflect good v. evil struggles doesn't wash.

Merriam-Webster calls them "a violent decisive exercise of force in politics; especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group."

The Oxford Dictionaries defines them as "sudden, violent, and illegal seizure(s) of power from a government.

According to Wikipedia:

A coup or putsch "is the sudden deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment - typically the military - to depose the extant government and replace it with another body, civil or military." 

A coup "is considered successful when the usurpers establish their dominance."

TURKEY’S URBAN UPRISING: THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY AGAINST INEQUALITY, OLIGARCHY, OPPRESSION AND TYRANNY

Andrew Gavin Marshall

It began innocently enough, it seemed, when a plan to turn Istanbul’s Gezi Park – located at Taksim Square – into a shopping mall spurred a small group of environmental activists to occupy the park in protest in late May of 2013. Within a week, a wave of urban uprisings had spread across the country, involving hundreds of thousands of protesters, in dozens of cities, met with massive state repression and violence, resulting in a few deaths and thousands of injuries and arrests. The world is now watching Turkey – the connecting landmass between Europe and Asia – once home to the Ottoman Empire, and now home to a profound lesson for the world’s people in a struggle for democracy against inequality, oligarchy, oppression and tyranny.

Police Brutality Breaks Out at Late Bloom Occupy Istanbul, Turkey

Photo: European Pressphoto Agency

Activist Post

What started out today as a peaceful sit-in protest to save trees in Gezi Park in central Istanbul's Taksim Square ended in serious injuries, chaos and destruction. Police in riot gear and gas masks led a dawn raid against demonstrators, firing tear gas bombs and water cannons at the crowds. A Facebook message to us reports that it is about more than just trees - the people are tired of police state bully tactics.

Government renovation was going to uproot the trees "to make way for a replica Ottoman army barracks and a shopping mall" -- protesters say this is the last green space in Istanbul center. Peaceful demonstrations began on Monday and at some point, a court order delayed the uprooting. Police raids dispersed the gathering literally firing tear gas canisters at the people. Pictures of the ammunition flying out can be seen here.

 

Twelve people are seriously injured, six have brain injuries including an Egyptian tourist now having surgery for brain hemorrhaging. A Reuters photographer was also injured. Hundreds are suffering with respiratory complications from the gas.

UN Seeks to Limit Free Speech After Muslim Protests

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Beijing battling protest fires on all fronts

AFP photo

The Australian

An eruption of protests throughout China has sent armoured vehicles into town centres, prompted an internet blackout by the government and left thousands across the country blogging about "crazy" violence on the streets.
 
The summer surge of protests, which flared in the southern industrial hub of Zengcheng over the weekend, has been linked to a range of frustrations with modern China - furies that have drawn the government into crackdowns on activism and massive increases in the domestic security budget.

More than 1000 migrant workers went on the rampage in Zengcheng after a pregnant street vendor in her 20s was roughed up by security guards. Such incidents, while distressing, are not uncommon.

Witnesses said that the centre of town was bedlam, with smashed windows, blazing police vehicles and teargas explosions as rioters hurled missiles at an official building. One bank worker blogged that the Bank of China had ordered an immediate halt to all ATM transactions.

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Mask-wearing protestors in D.C. can now be arrested

"V" at G20 in Toronto

Freeman Klopott
Washington Examiner

Wearing a mask while protesting outside a residence without telling D.C. police first could now get you arrested.

The D.C. Council has unanimously passed a strongly worded bill to deal with an animal rights group that has been known to wear masks and appear unannounced outside District residents' homes shouting things like "You should die." Residents have been complaining to their council members that they felt "terrorized." Critics of the bill say it's too broad and limits First Amendment rights.


"They scared some people so much that they feel like prisoners in their own homes," said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh, who sponsored the Residential Tranquility Act of 2010.

Police can be called, Cheh said, but they don't always have the legal grounds to arrest the protesters.

The animal rights group in question, Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow is the local offshoot of Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty. The international group was set up in 1996 to organize protests against Huntington Life Sciences, a European company that provides animals for corporate science experiments.

According to the group's Web site, they recently protested outside the Dupont Circle home of a Goldman Sachs executive, who the group claims is connected to HLS. It's unclear how, and DARTT didn't respond to requests for comment for this story. Pictures show the protesters wearing masks, and white trench coats with a bloodlike substance on them.

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120,000 protest over Irish economy

YouTube-ScarceNews
Over 100,000 people marched through Dublin on Saturday to protest at government cutbacks in the face of a deepening recession and bailouts for the banks.


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“Screw Big Sis”: Man Strips Down In TSA Opt Out Protest

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 24, 2010

A man kicked off today’s National Opt Out Day protest against TSA screening measures in a bold fashion, stripping down to his speedo’s with the words “Screw Big Sis” scrawled on his back before passing through security at Salt Lake City International Airport.

Telling screeners that he was stripping down as a “safety precaution,” a TSA worker barked, “put your clothes back on,” before fetching a supervisor, who asked the man to put his shirt back on but stopped short of saying he was legally obligated to do so.

The man refused to put his shirt back on and walked through the metal detector, telling TSA agents he was making a “political statement,” before TSA workers responded in a mocking fashion.

“Why the speedo? With the way TSA screening is going it only seems like the next logical requirement for getting on an airplane,” writes the blogger behind the protest. “Soon TSA will be having us strip down to make the screening process more efficient, but not if we take a stand. In this sense Jimmy was merely obliging the TSA, but he was also exposing the ridiculousness of their policies. With the full-body scanners and TSA agents putting their hands down our pants, let’s be honest, a speedo is pretty modest.”

“As I walked away an airport employee jokingly turned to me and said, ‘Big Sis is watching you’ and I couldn’t agree with him more,” states the man.

“And I think it’s about time that she knows we’re watching her too.”

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Max Keiser: Kill JP Morgan With a Silver Bullet

YouTube --PlanetEarthAwakens01


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