I feared for my life / Black like me/ it can happen here

If cops are so full of fear why are they given guns and badges? Why is it blacks are routinely shot for minor crimes?

In fact,  in study after study we read of how blacks are punished far more severely than whites for the same activities. Even little black girls are viewed as threats and expelled for minor infractions. 

As America works it way through the slow motion train wreck of this managed depression these questions take on an immediacy that demands answers. 

It's no secret that as the economy continues to tank these attacks will grow worse and worse. It's disheartening because America is a great country but it's clear that its citizens (white & black) don't value the relative peace in which we live. 

Once that peace goes it will be very difficult to get back. 

It's unfortunate whites cannot magically become black to get a sense of the horror of the modern American black experience. Blacks suffer a psychological brutality that is omnipresent through media, schools , and the workplace. 

If anyone should fear for their lives it's black America. 

Cam Newton's Slippery Slope/ Has Cam Newton heard of Huey Newton?

Cam Newton is an awesome, talented, great quarterback.

When he began play in the professional game he was called out publicly by his employer to not be a tattoo having thug; as that was not the image the team wanted to project. That was a signal that he is a target off the field as well as on. Unfortunately for Cam, the people targeting him compete in a different arena and use weapons (like a pen & camera) his physical skills cannot nullify.

His being on stage with Young Jeezy seconds before shots rang out at a party is a big deal for a number of reasons:

1. It's contract time - Cam has slaved under a cruel rookie wage scale. Supposedly he is in line for a hefty new contract but:
2. The team manager went on record saying ,"No ticking time bombs"
3. Young Jeezy won't give him a dime if he's shot in a nightclub and neither will anyone else. 

Cam is as free to go wherever and associate with whomever as anyone else. Based on his publicly observable choices though he doesn't understand how quickly things can go south.

Certainly the white people paying him will want to know if he thinks hanging out in a public forum with a public personality who encourages prostitution, drug use and other forms of criminality is a good idea. They may or may not ask him but they will wonder , particularly after having bit a 13.1 million dollar bullet on another player who liked to party.

So Cam has a lot to lose, and like a lot of blacks who miraculously escape the curse of poverty in America, you wonder if he even knows? 

Chomsky/Ferguson DOJ report

Noam Chomsky is a thought provoking public intellectual whose writings I have read since my college days. While I don't always agree with him, two points he repeatedly makes are relevant to the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, Missouri.

1. "The security of the population was no more a high priority for ...administration planners than for their predecessors."
2. "Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population," he told the Guardian.

Reading of the deliberate economic hardship imposed upon the residents of Ferguson through fines and violence I cannot help but agree with Chomsky's statements. The local agencies clearly were not interested in providing for the security of the residents and in fact treated them as enemies. The use of military technology  to suppress them and extract money is more akin to lawlessness than the rule of law.