December 01, 2014
Source: Shutterstock
The Week’s Most Immediate, Expedient, and Disobedient Headlines
RUMOR SPREADS THROUGH FERGUSON: BLACK LIVES MATTER
One of the mythical linchpins propping up the megatons of manufactured outrage over the slaying of Michael Brown (the “unarmed black teen”) by Darren Wilson (the “racist white cop”) in Ferguson, MO has been the idea that the gentle, tranquil, and morbidly obese Young Black Male was shot dead while he had his hands raised in surrender. “Hands up. Don”t shoot!“ has been a popular T-shirt slogan and group chant over the past three-plus months of “civil unrest” and “protest” stinking up the streets by local blacks and AstroTurfed white communists.
If last Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Wilson is to be trusted, the now deceased teen did not say “Hands up, don”t shoot.” Instead he taunted Wilson by saying, “You”re too much of a pussy to shoot me.“
Well, that sort of…changes…everything.
But cognitive dissonance is a strong drug, and those whose confirmation bias led them to assume Brown’s shooting was the open-and-shut case of a racist white cop gleefully preying on black youths like a rabbit hunter on a bunny farm would not budge an inch. To them, this was not the sober decision of a grand jury that had been dispassionately presented with all the available evidence. No, this was only proof that we live in an institutionally racist society that must be burned to the ground before any of us can start to emotionally heal and economically recover.
Speaking of which, at least a dozen buildings in the Ferguson area were scorched and looted in the wake of the grand jury’s announcement. The Brown family’s church fell prey to arsonists, and the pastor is blaming it on white supremacists. A black male who some suspect was either a witness to the Brown killing or a friend of someone who testified before the grand jury was found dead in his car, shot in the head and covered in severe burns.
Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a black female Missouri state politician who represents Ferguson, went on MSNBC to personally claim this “race war” for the St. Louis area:
And I have to tell you, this is St. Louis’s race war….This is our race war.
Ohio state Representative Marcia Fudge repeated the oft-parroted fiction that legal outcomes such as these only prove that trigger-happy white guys in this country are given free rein to run around picking off black males at will:
This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that black lives hold no value; that you may kill black men in this country without consequences or repercussions.
(Speaking of repercussions, Wilson has received several death threats, has resigned from the Ferguson police force, had his home address published by The New York Times, and will live the rest of his life as a marked man…even though a grand jury didn’t find reason to indict him.)
The fun folks who populate Black Twitter railed at Obama for not being vocally enthusiastic about the rioting, saying such harsh and hurtful things as “Barack Obama is a bitch ass nigga covering up for the cops and shit,” “he’s just another puppet nigga,” “Nigga get off the stage,” and “Obama is a bitch nigga cuz he doesn”t even stand up for his own people.” Well, then!
Black female rapper Azealia Banks went on Twitter to express “a general hatred for all straight white men” and her urge to “kill one of these crackers in their sleep!!”
The mainstream press was generally forgiving, or even approving, of the urban mayhem that came in the wake of Monday’s grand jury decision. Much of it blamed the civil unrest on “capitalism.” TIME magazine ran an article called “Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting,” and Gawker weighed in with “Actually, Riots are Good: The Economic Case for Riots in Ferguson.” The Gawker article referenced an estimate claiming “white officers kill black suspects 96 times a year.”
OK, fine. Won”t even challenge that estimate. Won”t justify it, either”just won”t challenge the numbers. But pooling a bunch of different estimates, it’s seems that on any given recent year, about 6,500 blacks kill other blacks in America. That means if a black person is going to get killed in America, it’s about 68 times more likely that it”ll be another black person killing them than a white cop.
So if you really feel that “black lives matter,” why would you ignore the annual crop of 6,500 dead blacks on one side while obsessively focusing on the 96 dead blacks on the other? Anyone? Serious question.
WILL ISRAEL GO ALL-JEW?
The Cabinet of Israel has recently voted in favor of what’s being called the “Jewish state bill,” which according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would reserve “national rights only for the Jewish people; a flag, anthem, the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel, and other national symbols.” It would also reportedly remove Arabic as a state-sponsored language. Netanyahu said that any future peace accord would only be possible if all parties bow down, lick his hooves, and recognize that Israel is the nation state for the Jewish people.
According to former Knesset member Einat Wilf, the bill “does not exclude cultural social collective expressions for the Arab minority, but it does exclude the possibility that Israel will be an Arab state.” After a delay, the bill will finally go to a vote in the Knesset next week.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says he favors a plan to pay Arab-Israelis”currently about a fifth of Israel’s population”to relocate elsewhere.
