An official State of Emergency is now in effect in Maryland and the state's National Guard has been dispatched to the city of Baltimore following a wave of violence that kicked off between groups and individuals in the streets and police officers on Monday and went through the night.
The commentatoes are out in force this morning, discussing in every news outlet this huge occurrence in their usual distractive way.
Withholding information about how Freddy Gray died must have been intended to keep Baltimore from blowing up. Did that tactic work? Transparency is always the best idea.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
– Langston Hughes
Baltimore as a racially divided city with a long history of economic extremes and both economic and police repression. The rioting is an explosion of anger at both the police abuse and the hopeless poverty within sight of the unattainable wealth of a redeveloped downtown tourist area near impoverished slums. Repression of violence and of the redistribution of goods will achieve nothing if the powderkeg of injustice is not addressed. Baltimore is representative of our country as a whole (as is Detroit).
“Her troops”, those are supposed be the troops of the people. I repeat, “her troops”? Interesting way for her to phrase it.
So, do you think that those young men and women are prepared to shoot and kill fellow citizens if “she” decide it is necessary and gives “her orders”?
“and that just basically means that we are going to be patrolling the streets and out to ensure that we are protecting property.”
Maybe if they were better at protecting lives they would’t need an army to protect property.
The national guard are being called out: to help quell a tense situation?
Or in preparation for defending class privilege and police corruption? Hmm… I wonder.
And is that supposed to be reassuring that the national guard will be taking orders from the state police and local officials? Hmm… I wonder how that will work out?
While I understand the anger and do not condone the violence, it is miniscule compared to the violence of what the police did to Freddie Gray and so many other Freddie Grays like Eric Gardner and too many other African Americans to list. And the pundit, whores in the MSM have the temerity to call the protesters " thugs’! Just who are the real thugs? Without the police thugs there would be no street protests!
And if you want to take it a step further, why don’t these same MSM pundits call Obama a thug for all the innocent men, women and children he has killed with his murderous drones even including American citizens. Now there is the epitome of a real thug!
Consider this. What you are witnessing is climate change.
As the population continues to grow at three additional people per second, as resources continue to be used up, as the climate makes it more difficult to find those resources, civil unrest grows worse, and affects poor people first.
As a group that prides itself on the knowledge of the environment and concern for ecology, it should be obvious that we are watching the inevitable unfold.
Wow. Just when I thought I’ve read it all in these comments…
A few days ago, someone was blaming a fully expected earthquake in one of the most tectonically active regions in the world on global warming.
Now we have someone blaming a heritage of racism going back to 1619 and racist cops perpetuating it, on global warming and “overpopulation” (Baltimore’s population - particularly in the blighted neighborhoods in question are in decline, by the way…)
Good god, bourgeois old-hippie white liberals in their houses out in the sticks are clueless…
R-i-g-h-t… because we all understand that throughout history - until today’s historical moment of climate change, overpopulation and resource depletion - there have never been authoritarian thugs or plutocratic elites expropriating and disfranchising communities based on race, class, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Until right now, there is no historical record of resistance, uprising, fighting back, rioting, etc.
“What you are witnessing is climate change… it should be obvious that we are watching the inevitable unfold.” Well thanks for clearing that up! Now none of us will waste any time fighting racism and economic exploitation and oppression, or organizing resistance to any of that.
FYI:
Just because your knee jerks, does not actually identify a “bourgeois old-hippie white liberal in their house out in the sticks…”
Critics and commentators would later debate whether the Mercury News articles in fact accused the United States government of being responsible for the nation’s crack cocaine epidemic. In an October 2, 1996, Washington Post article, Gary Webb, the reporter who wrote the Dark Alliance series, asserted that the article had not claimed that the CIA knew about Blandon’s drug trafficking. The Washington Post article quoted Webb as saying, “We’ve never pretended otherwise . . . This doesn’t prove the CIA targeted black communities. It doesn’t say this was ordered by the CIA… . . Essentially, our trail stopped at the door of the CIA. They wouldn’t return my phone calls.” Webb would say as late as June 22, 1997, in an interview with The Revolutionary Worker, “We had The Washington Post claim that the stories were insinuating that the CIA had targeted Black America. It’s been a very subtle disinformation campaign to try to tell people that these stories don’t say what they say. Or that they say something else, other than what we said. So people can say, well, there’s no evidence of this, you know . . . You say, well, this story doesn’t prove that top CIA officials knew about it. Well, since the stories never said they did, of course they don’t.”(1)
I think most people that read and comment on this forum will recognize your comment as subterfuge on behalf of those that would like to obfuscate the issue of AGW, while at the same time adding comments to a left leaning forum so others interested in such subterfuge can point to such comments for further subterfuge.
It’s been a while since I’ve used that word, “subterfuge” but it was fun. Thanks for the opportunity.
There is no doubt that civil unrest will grow as resources like water dwindle, but to frame what is happening in Baltimore as directly related to AGW is absurd and you know it.
Keep on keeping on for billionaires and their government subsidized resource depletion profits!!!
Yunzer, you might want to take your “bourgeois old-hippie” detector in for repairs because it isn’t working properly.
The US National Guard has been actively training to quell “Civil Unrest” with a number of drills over the past few years.
Baltimore was the scene of a number of riots in 1968 shortly after the assassination of martin Luther King. This should not come as a surprise to those in power. It a natural reaction of peoples long kept under the thumb of the Police State and who become marginalized economically and subject to an inherently racist Jutice system.
These riots WILL be used no doubt to further Militarize police forces and to justify even more oppressive laws so as to ensure order maintained. PROPERTY must be protected over all as far as that one percent running things is concerned .
Well yes, your way you get to be the hero and stand up to the man. You get to own a world view where life is divided between those in power and those poor but heroic people like you who only want to do right. Not like those bad guys.
However, unfortunately, ergo, life is not a movie.
Consumer habits and breeding habits of the rich and poor got us where we are now.
What will soon unfold is the realization that the police, the people in the ghettos, the corporations, the government and everyone else will be running from rising seas, empty reservoirs and food shortages.
Then finally the progressive left and the dogmatic right can put aside their prescribed menu of grievances and die of famine just like everyone else.
Yes, and how many of those psychedelics did you take? Paranoia is such a difficult burden to carry in life. I feel for you.
Nevertheless, climate change and overpopulation are causing massive civil unrest around the world.
This reminds me of the California water crisis. When people discuss this they focus on California, because after all, it’s so important. But in fact this drought is happening all over the world. Many major cities are in the same predicament.
Seven other states are in drought. But if you ignore all that, you can focus on California local politics which is so much easier to digest.
Of course there is racism. Of course the police are brutal. Of course there is economic injustice. Duh.
Can we now leave Social Studies 101 and start looking at the larger factors involved in many of these crisis?
And just because it is happening in the USA does not mean that these people are not the next climate refugees. Just because they are black does not mean they are not feeling the effects of economic chaos due to climate change. Overpopulation means fewer resources. And what is the underlying issue here? Fewer resources!
You seem to think corporations are magic. You just demand resources and they become available. And if they didn’t hog so much there would be more for you.
In fact, resources are quickly disappearing all over the world. The population grows so fast they can’t keep up with demand. Add to it habitat destruction and you get riots. Then war.
But let’s not talk about that. Let’s just fall back on the usual 1960s fuck the man mentality. EVERYTHING is the fault of The Man. Fuck the corporations. Fuck the government. Racist pigs!!! See, didn’t that make you feel a whole hellava lot better?
Such an addiction the left has to dogma. and psychedelics.
