alias Bruce.

There's a false rumor going around that the infamous Koch Bros are paying George Zimmerman's legal fees.

There are plenty of reasons to boycott Koch Industries, but not this bogus claim, which gives ammunition to those who want to trash liberal credibility. What is true is that Koch supported an organization that supported the creation of Stand Your Ground laws, although there is no direct link between Koch and the Florida law. See Snopes on this.

Watch this video "mockumentary" in which child actors portray adult roles in the rampant violence, corruption, and suffering that is sweeping Mexico.

The video was produced by an assemblage of groups who want to shake things up in Mexico's public discourse. From the stormy response to the vid, they appear to be succeeding.

In its final scene, a young girl faces the camera and, speaking to candidates in Mexico's upcoming presidential election, says: "If this is the future that awaits me, I don't want it. Enough of working for your political parties instead of for us. Enough of cosmetic changes."

 

Thanks to Tina at The Agonist.

The Tulsa shootings. And a little deep background.

The Tulsa shootings have "hate crime" written all over them. This has yet to be established legally, but circumstantially it is generally agreed, for obvious reasons, that it's likely.

Two suspects are in custody and are expected to be indicted for murder and shooting with intent to kill. Local authorities, and black citizens, have so far been notably restrained in their public statements about two white men going on a murder rampage in a black community, which is interesting when you consider the likely public explosion if two black men were to drive through a white community and shoot five white strangers within a matter of minutes on Easter weekend.

Showing restraint under brutality, of course, is a learned trait in black communities that goes back to slavery and Jim Crow.

Tulsa, in fact, has a spectacularly bloody history when it comes to white attacks on black communities. Neither the CNN story nor the NYT account mentions this -- which is interesting in itself -- but Tulsa was the scene of one of the deadliest white-on-black racial mob massacres in American history in 1921. From Wiki:

The Tulsa Race Riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict, May 31 - June 1, 1921, between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the wealthiest African-American community in the United States, the Greenwood District also known as 'The Negro Wall St' [1] was burned to the ground. Aerial fire bombing of black residential neighborhoods was reported. During the 16 hours of the assault, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, more than 6,000 Greenwood residents were arrested and detained at three local facilities.[2] An estimated 10,000 were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 36, but other estimates of black fatalities have been up to about 300.[2]

The events of the riot were omitted from local and state history; "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place." [3] In 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report, completed in 2001, to establish the historical record. It has approved some compensatory actions, such as scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park, dedicated in 2010, to the victims in Tulsa.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that today's horrible news about the shootings is just about Tulsa. The Tulsa murders draw together things that are going on at multiple levels in neighborhoods nationwide: White-panic Florida gun laws and the killings and hatred they let loose (see the armed neo-Nazis from Detroit who recently decided to patrol Sanford, Florida in proclaimed defense of white citizens); a corporate monarchy and its recession pummeling the brains of many whites into a paste of blind rage; a reactionary and fascist white "restore the homeland" movement (aka the Tea Party), with theocracy and vicious racism just beneath its surface, now being treated as a mainstream political force.

More soon.

Update on the Trayvon Martin killing:

CNN reports that George Zimmerman's attorney has now declared that the Florida stand your ground law doesn't figure in the case, and that his client will argue straight-up self-defense. The stand your ground law, the lawyer says, applies primarily to people being threatened in their homes, while Zimmerman, he claims, has a broader case for self-defense.

This seems a curious stance, since all the readings of the law I have seen, such as this one, clearly describe it as applying anywhere a person has a right to be, whether a public or private place. As such, stand your ground appears to offer Zimmerman's best chance at avoiding or beating prosecution. If a burly adult who actively chases a slender unarmed 17-year-old and then shoots him can't claim self-defense under the Swiss-cheese stand your ground law, how in the world is he going to make that claim under the traditionally more stringent standards of conventional self-defense?

It may be that Zimmerman's lawyer is retreating from the sheer public odiousness of a stand-your-ground defense, now that even the two Republican sponsors of the infamous Florida law are saying that the law doesn't protect Zimmerman and are calling for his arrest.

So, just as the law's authors are distancing themselves from him, perhaps Zimmerman's attorney is trying to distance his client from this now globally-detested law. Especially since Zimmerman is already a widely reviled figure, with public outrage spreading and unfavorable media coverage everywhere.

You could think of it as a lawyer in a rickety house hustling his client into the next room as the ceiling collapses.

At any rate, it looks like a desperate move by the attorney, and it may not be his last.

Not that there isn't a feasible chance that Zimmerman will get off, with or without a trial. But if he does, it may make the Rodney King riots look like a Sunday parade.

BTW, here is an interesting piece detailing a variety of cases in which Florida's stand your ground law has been used to fend off criminal charges for homicides in which the killers would otherwise likely have been indicted.

And here is a fact you personally need to know: although Florida was the first to enact a stand your ground law, similar laws have since been adopted by at least 25 states – that's half of America – including Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. Think about that the next time some stranger pushes a confrontation with you.

Dissecting the killing of Trayvon Martin.

On the night of February 26, Trayvon Martin, a black 17-year-old walking back to the home of his father's fiancé in a gated community in Sanford, Florida after having bought Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea at a nearby convenience store, was shot to death by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who is a white Hispanic, claims self-defense, despite a 911 recording in which Zimmerman apparently chases Martin on foot against the instructions of the 911 dispatcher, and another 911 recording in which a voice later identified as that of the unarmed Martin repeatedly screams for help before being silenced by a gunshot. The Sanford Police Department has filed no charges against Zimmerman.

All hell has since broken loose. The Sanford City Commissioners passed a no-confidence vote on the local chief of police, and he has subsequently taken a temporary leave after a (white) constituent reportedly sent an email telling him he "deserve[d] to be shot down like a dog" for neglecting the killing of Martin. Activists from Al Sharpton to the NAACP's Ben Jealous have descended upon Sanford. The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into the shooting. Protest demonstrations are roaring, and growing, nationwide. More than 1.6 million people, as of this writing, have signed a Change.org petition calling for the arrest of Zimmerman. President Obama and every major Republican presidential contender have spoken about the case. Corporate media – in their single-sensational-event-driven way – are on a feeding frenzy. Outrage is approaching what a friend of mine calls a potential "Emmett Till moment" -- a possible tipping point in awareness and rage over blacks being killed with impunity.

Let's take a quick look at the two ingredients of the Trayvon Martin case: race and guns.

RACE
A central defense offered by George Zimmerman's family and his lawyer is that he is not a racist because 1.) he is a Hispanic who knows the meaning of discrimination, 2.) he has mentored black youths, and 3.) he welcomed and befriended a black female newcomer to his neighborhood. All of this, if true, tells us exactly nothing about how Zimmerman would regard an unknown young black male on the street. We do have some other clues, though: A Miami Herald reporter who reviewed Zimmerman's history of neighborhood watch 911 calls said, "What you see there is a pattern where every time George Zimmerman sees an African American who he doesn't recognize, he calls the police." Racism has a funny way of exempting some from its fears – non-threatening women and clearly needy students, for example – while leaping to fight-or-flight mode in the presence of an unknown young black male in a hoodie. Racial prejudice is also an equal-opportunity illness: today's police and vigilante cultures have plenty of participants of color – blacks, Hispanics, Asians – who are ready and eager to profile by race. Ask me, or any of millions of other law-abiding black American males, about our experiences with police of all colors.

Whether or not George Zimmerman is a conscious racist in his heart means nothing. What matters is what he did. Which leads to the second issue in the Trayvon Martin case.

GUNS
Florida's so-called "stand your ground" gun laws – recently-passed legislation that allows ordinary folks to carry concealed firearms and to use them, without retreating, whenever they feel threatened -– are what made it possible for Zimmerman to feel empowered as a civilian to kill the unarmed Martin with a semi-automatic handgun. The Sanford Police Department's explanation for its lack of action on the case, in fact, has been that without a witness they have no evidence to contradict Zimmerman's claim that his killing Martin complies with the stand your ground law. Without this law, a neighborhood volunteer of questionable judgment, like Zimmerman, would not be legally carrying a handgun with which to lethally judge when he felt "threatened." Without this law, the Martin case would have been, at worst, a fistfight culminating in a lawsuit -- instead of a killing.

Even proponents of Florida's stand your ground law, though, are distancing themselves from Zimmerman. That is because, against the instructions of a telephone dispatcher, Zimmerman reportedly got out of his car and pursued and confronted Martin. His breathless chase, in fact, can be heard on one of the 911 recordings. One of the stand your ground bill's co-sponsors told CNN after the Martin shooting, "Quite frankly, anyone who steps out in a pursuit in a confrontational mode with a firearm? That's not a self-protection act. You've initiated something."

But the law is what put the gun in the hands of an amateur like Zimmerman and made him feel free to use it. Such laws are among the latest symptoms of an American firearms fetish whereby panicked citizens can suckle at the nipple of a warm gun. The United States is becoming the laughingstock of the industrialized world for its reckless embrace of access to firearms. What, after all, is some heavy-breathing neighborhood watch schlump doing with a gun in his possession while he roams the streets? Like Alabama's recent draconian anti-illegal-immigrant law, which now has many of that state's businesses in open revolt as their crops rot in the fields and their Hispanic former employees go into hiding, Florida's wild-west gun law is revealing its consequences.

Trayvon Martin paid for this law, and for the public paranoia and police collusion it enables, with his life. Others have as well; the number of Florida homicides ruled "justifiable" has almost tripled since the law took effect. The bodies continue to stack up.

We'll see where this goes. One thing is clear: As has happened so often before in so many places, it will take a concerted and ferocious national shove for Florida lawmakers to awaken to reality.

Just how whacked are some gun fetishists?

This from The Arizona Guardian:

Lawmaker points loaded gun at reporter in the Senate

By Dennis Welch
, The Arizona Guardian

A state lawmaker known for championing the rights of gun-owners pointed a loaded firearm at the chest of a reporter during a recent interview at the Capitol.

Republican Sen. Lori Klein was showing off her raspberry-pink handgun when she aimed it at a journalist who was interviewing her in the lounge just outside the Senate chambers.

According to the story that was published Sunday in the Arizona Republic, Klein's .380 Ruger was loaded and did not have a safety to keep the gun from going off.

But Klein told the reporter, Richard Ruelas, that he didn't need to worry because, "I just didn't have my hand on the trigger."

Remainder of story here.

Follow-up story about Klein's action being punishable by possible felony charges here.

Thanks to The Agonist.

Joe Bageant died

of cancer on Saturday, and we are all the worse for it. He was a redneck (his term) and he was a progressive and he was both smart and passionate about fairness, which put him in the perfect position to write and speak about the actual lives of many poor white Americans and their reasons for embracing some positions that drive liberals crazy. The book that put him on the map in this regard was Deer Hunting with Jesus, but there is also Rainbow Pie, plus scads of blogs and interviews. On his website, which is still up, you will find a brotherly tribute to Joe by his friend and colleague Fred Reed.

Read his books. Listen to what he had to say. We still need him.

As Arizona’s sickened state yanks the blanket off our national fever,

here is an excerpt from today's editorial in the New York Times, that well-known radical leftist publication:

"It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people."

"What if the Tea Party were black?"

asks Tim Wise in a CNN interview and in a related essay.

It's a hell of a question and one seldom asked because of the ruthlessness with which it outs white privilege.

Let's see... raucous political rallies in and near Washington by crowds of enraged black people, some carrying guns, calling for possible forcible overthrow of the government... throngs of angry blacks surrounding and spitting on white elected representatives and yelling racial epithets at them... hmm... what do you suppose the authorities would do? What would reporters and commentators say?

I know, it's a real head-scratcher. Fortunately, Wise sheds some light on it.

The University of Alabama Shootings 2.

This conversation about what to think about the Alabama campus shootings has grown legs. In an email exchange over the past couple of days, a friend of mine who is a retired university department chair wrote this:

1) The University of Alabama violence has much less to do with tenure than with America's love of guns and with the political shills bought and paid for by gun manufacturers. One of the faculty murdered was the murderer's champion for tenure, and all reports indicate that Amy Bishop knew fully in advance that she'd be denied. These things are almost never a surprise. What's remarkable is that guns can be easily carried around into such settings, even by lunatics.

2) What could the University have done beforehand? More diligence in hiring, I suppose, and in evaluation, which had degraded, for teaching, to student questionnaires only. The old-style Chairships/headships, for all their occasional paternalism, did assign responsibility to a real person, who had to get to know the faculty both professionally and personally.

3) Although I don't think this case depends on it, tenure is surely an outmoded doctrine that serves only a very few. It now justifies the wholesale abuse of academia's "temps," the part-time and full-time contractuals who teach the clear majority of college students and do so without decent pay, security, health insurance, or retirement benefits. Tenure protects the incompetent, oppresses the many, results in bad teaching, and makes intellectuals easy targets from the right as "elitists."

4) I suppose that, as at VPI (Virginia Tech), more directness in dealing with bizarre behavior would have helped, but I don't know how to encourage that. I'm loathe to think of the problem as merely an excess of political correctness about mental illness, but maybe that's involved: who has the courage to call a crazy person crazy, especially given the false god of collegiality? Perhaps professionally trained personnel at counseling centers -- i.e., not M.Ed's -- to whom faculty and administrators could refer troubled people....

5) A British friend -- Ph.D. from Cambridge U. -- remarked to me that the Brits have nothing like tenure, nor do other countries, other than Canada, perhaps. Years ago, when I first became interested in that "peculiar institution," I read key documents from AAUP (American Association of University Professors), discovering, for instance, that tenure was originally codified in the 1940 AAUP "Red Book," where tenure was advocated as a means to insure 1) that teaching at colleges would be economically attractive to talent (remember, this was at the end of the Depression, and academia was just beginning its explosion) and 2) that academic free speech would be protected. I probably don't need to argue that university teaching is TOO attractive now, drawing faculty into the ranks for what I consider to be the wrong motives (love of subject and love of teaching are irrelevant in many cases), resulting in faculty who are often too much interested in security and status. Amy Bishop, by all accounts, was such a person, all wrapped up in the prestige, insisting on being called "Dr.," for example.
 
6) Academic freedom? Tenure, I find, works insidiously against freedom, since if only tenured faculty have it, non-tenured faculty (the majority, again), by extension, do not have it, and the tenure process almost guarantees that faculty not exercise freedom for the probationary period prior to tenure. If they do, their chances of gaining tenure are lessened, as they'll offend someone in power. A better system would be multi-year contracts, like Maryland's St. Mary's College, which has a 1,3,5,7 process, so faculty eventually get 7-year contracts, surely enough security for most people. And academic freedom can be protected through other means easily enough.

OK. Rant over.

Nothing I can add to that.