Friends: Here, Twitty is seen among friends and colleagues, standing next to Darren Wilson (center), the Ferguson officer who killed an unarmed black teen, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles appears in the photo as well (back left, wearing a green shirt)
From the Daily Mail:
The names of two Missouri police commanders who resigned from their positions in the Ferguson Police Department over racist emails have been released amid the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into the police department.
Sgt. William Mudd and Capt. Rick Henke resigned Thursday and City Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty was fired Wednesday.
It is unclear whether the three were recipients or senders of the 'racially biased' emails included in the 102-page civil rights report released Wednesday by the DOJ accusing the department of illegal practices targeting African-Americans.
Twitty is seen in an undated photograph smiling as Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who gunned down Michael Brown, an unarmed, African-American teen, has his arm around her. The two are seen appearing joyful among colleagues and friends, including Ferguson Mayor James Knowles.
However, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Henke was associated with a 2008 email suggesting that President Barack Obama would not complete a full presidential term because a black man can't hold 'a steady job for four years.'
Mudd is reportedly associated with a 2011 email suggesting a New Orleans woman was paid by 'CrimeStoppers' to terminate her pregnancy.
The Justice Department highlighted several other emails in the report including one that featured a photograph of topless, appearingly tribal, women dancing, with the caption 'Michelle Obama's High School Reunion.'
The report states that the emails illustrate racial, ethnic, or other forms of bias among those involved and states that the DOJ's investigation yielded no indication that any of the officers or clerks involved in the emails were disciplined before this week.
In fact, the report states, there were no instances discovered where recipients asked the sender to refrain from sending such emails, instead, the emails were forwarded along to others.Do share, how would you caption the above photo of Darren Wilson and his compatriots who implemented Ferguson, Missouri's white supremacist policies that directly led to the killing of the unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown?
Some suggestions:
Happy days!
The Legion of Doom
Why Can't We be Friends?
White Faces in High Places
Boy, You Know You Ain't Welcome Here!
Sundown Towns are the Only Towns Worth Living In!
44 comments:
"Teamwork means never having to take all the blame yourself."
I was so dismayed listening to NPR reporting on the DOJ Ferguson report. One guy said the report was MORE credible since they didn't file charges against Wilson. How the F does that make it more credible?
Killaz Kongregatin' and Kollaboratin'
"How we look without our sheets and hoods."
The phrase "racist phalanx of whiteness" is now a permanent part of my vocabulary.
Always trying to innovate.
There may be some truth to that, who knows? Remember that Anonymous got the dirt on several Ferguson PD members and their KKK affiliations.
That leap of logic doesn't work for me either. The DOJ basically said that Wilson lied so well and that our society is so sick with racism that they can't do anything to disprove his claims. Funny things, I don't think, I will have to check, Wilson talking about demonically possessed superpowered negro giants was mentioned in their report. Such comments are evidence of gross malice and deranged thinking or mental health issues.
I would title it "The Mythical White Race", or "The Lie of Whiteness".
The hydrochloric-acid nature of race mythology eats at the very neurons of perception, the fabric of humanity. Some of those people standing around the racist killer Darren Wilson might be perfectly innocuous people.
This might have been a picture of 15 distinct individuals - good, average, venal - snapped at a Belgian office party. But - just as race mythology clumps diverse people into a mythical "black" race - it does the same to those in this picture. Combine Darren Wilson's odiousness with the American "Race Gaze", and they all look like the enemy. They look like the group who have succeeded for half-a-thousand years to bequeath their children domination via the reverse-Yellow-Star of "Whiteness", and to condemn their deliberately fabricated opposite - "Black" people - to everlasting second-class-humanity.
Americans are caught in a half-millenium-death-embrace, clinging to 17th century constructs of "Black" and "White". Live by "Whiteness", die by "Whiteness".
"Proudly Lynching Negroes since 1876"
"Its great being White in America"
Smell that? Mmmmmmmmmmm! Smells like oppression up in here!
"All in the Family"
Hmmm...Wilson sure doesn't look like the scared, helpless, little waif he made himself out to be during the investigation.
Movie recommendation: Automata. It's on Netflix.
Well if you want real news always go with the foreign sites and papers. They're less beholden to stupid patriotism.
But I want to go off topics and bring up the hypothetical rise of true artificial intelligence. Lately both Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have come out saying robots will kill us all or harm us greatly, more or less.
My point is, if a robot doesn't have the same brain structure and drives as a human then how is living under a robotic overlord a step down from living under the Ferguson PD? Just looking at the number of cold blooded murders, corruption and cowardice on police officers everywhere I'd welcome the terminator with open arms if it was an alternative. At least terminator would kill you based on the content of your character and not the color of your skin.
I never stopped smelling that stink, who knew that white privilege smelled so bad
Am I bad for wishing a drone strike on these terrorists ?
The DOJ report also outlined what a justifiable use of lethal force is. Mike Brown could have had his hands up in surrender, but if Wilson believed he was still a threat (i.e. not surrendering), he could have gotten away with lethal force.
They cited precedent on a case where a man was killed while in the process of surrendering, but the officer didn't "know it" and still "feared for his life".
Given how deep, systemic and casual racism was in the department, the people in that picture somehow being removed would have barely made a dent. The three who were fired or resigned is really a joke. What about all those superiors who had a responsibility to put a stop to it, who saw, forwarded and otherwise "shared in the fun" of the messages and did nothing?
The relative silence at what DOJ found in the Ferguson PD is telling. Where are the condemnations from the color blind crowd, prone to mumble inanities about "King's dream," quick to talk about "how far we've come" any time racism rears its head to avoid having to call out racism for what it is, and silence those who do, all in the interest of avoiding holding the white perpetrators accountable for what they've done?
The Ferguson PD shows to insist we've "come a long way" is nothing but a dodge to avoid getting real bout the problem and who's behind it.
"We all" are no more equally responsible for the racism that continues to stunt the citizenship of black folk than a victim is for his own murder.
Maybe its time for those who claim to abhor the kind of racism institutionalized in at the Ferguson PD to responding to it in terms of King's "dream" and start condemning outright those who are responsible.
Whoa how did I miss a perfect meme? That pic screams, "It smells like white privilege up in here." Sad to say it only stinks for non-whites. Ugly uhmurica.
Well, about the whole "few bad apples" thing, a few bad apples spoils the bunch. And right now nothing short of napalming that whole barrel might save the apples.
Spot on.
"Smells like white privilege." -- love it!
"White is right. It's good to be me."
"Anybody else want to f#@€ with me?"
Good point. The thing about an Artificial General Intelligence is that - once it exists - it will be able modify its own software, and will therefore evolve. But the evolution will be so rapid (computer-speed) that it could transform into Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) in seconds flat. An ASI would be more intelligent compared to humans, than we are compared to a flea. Imagine trying to explain the Internet to a flea, or nuclear weapons. An ASI could design and create things that we could not even begin to have concepts for; and corresponding powers.
This is not a robot. It is an intelligence that will be apply itself anywhere it damn pleases using forces of nature, theories and technology that we can't even imagine. This is Elon Musk's "demon".
At that point - people, dogs, Earth's atmosphere - anything on Earth would become sources of raw materials for any goals that it might have. It wouldn't be any Ferguson-like goals, that's for sure. But try explaining human goals to a colony of ants when you bulldoze their nest to build a condo. Same result for former species known as Homo Sapiens (formerly also of the mythological "black" and "white" races).
Again, that's applying human motives or biological motives to a synthetic entity which is not shaped or driven by a kill or be killed mentality.
Honestly I'd rather take my chances with this "demon" instead of a pol pot, Saddam Hussein or George bush
And why is it a bad thing that something we create should be smarter or more adaptive than we? What's the alternative to building this "demon" stop all advances on computer's or ai? Nothing good has ever come from trying to shout at history to stop, that is not unproven
You ask good questions... but here's a way to understand the serious danger of ASI that doesn't depend on anthropomorphic "good/evil" hopes:
A simple system like a light-switch has 2 states: ON/OFF. Imagine you are a human being in a dark room, who depends on that light switch being "ON". Are you going to roll the dice on something coming along that might switch it to "OFF"? That something doesn't need to be "evil", it could just have its own goals include an "OFF" light. Too bad for the human.
The more complex a system, the more delicate the balance of "what is good for humans". Our home planet Earth (like that light switch) only has a limited number of states that are good for humans. Once ASI comes along, it will have goals (that is part of the definition of intelligence). Having goals means that ASI will alter the state of the environment and planet. Humanity would be foolish (fatally so) indeed to gamble that the goals of ASI will (just out of our dumb luck) align with the states that are good for continued human existence.
They do have those Nigerian traffic robots. And you can always go see Chappie...which I am going to do despite the hate from the crickets. Call me simple. I do not want robots with "ethic governors" doing police work. What I want are reasonable, law abiding, ethical cops who are held to a higher standard than the general public doing police work.
If we're dealing with an infinite sided dice throw then human extinction is one possibility among many, infinite number more options may be available harmful, helpful or neutral with equal or unequal probability.
Point is, it's all a crap shoot. But we've been dealing with the threat of extinction from day one. A hundred thousand or more years ago there were just a thousand or so humans in existence. At any time a hundred or more cosmic phenomenon could have scoured the planet clean of life. We were just ignorant about it.
The only insane thing to do is to not move ahead and just accept things. Its like wearing a face mask in Beijing instead of cleaning up the air.
And I want to ask, what is the alternative to developing computer science and ai? How do you stop the "demon" if it is so undesirable?
Agreed. Obama himself seemed to feel that he had to mumble this incantation: "We have come a long way".
Truth be told, things are proceeding uninterrupted in the same direction since the nation's founding on "race". If you look at the long view, "white" oppression has simply found other means to continue the exact same oppression that started with the manufacture of the "white" race. After slavery "ended" with the civil war - there were the Black Codes. After Reconstruction, it morphed into "Jim Crow". After the Civil Rights Act, it morphed into mass incarceration, ghetto-ization, informal anti-"black" discrimination, a nation of Fergusons and more "black" people in chains than under slavery. The methods change, but the goals remain the same.
"We have come a long way" is a Big Lie worthy of a totalitarian ideology (which is what "White" Supremacy and its one-drop dictatorship is).
Most people who are considering this ASI eventuality think it's humanity's "green door or red door". When ASI comes, it will either enable us to transform our lives and this planet into a paradise (like a real-world analog of a Minecraft game only infinitely better) - or it will be the end of humanity. It's a tossup. People are working very hard to make it one way.
But - I remember what the dead-eyed Omar said in The Wire: "You want it to be one way. But it's the other."
"The Unbearable Whiteness of Stealing"
"Will Systematically Oppress and Shoot on Demand for Beer"
Man this photo gets to me, mostly because I am from a small town in the Midwest and these are the types of people I had to rub shoulders with in my youth. It's hard to articulate the dread that is washing over me right now.
Try "The Audacity of Arrogance"
How could you put trust in such a development? It is like trusting Monsanto with GMO food production!
Respect wisdom, not technology. When we win, we can avoid this very dubious direction, just as "we" as humanity, could have avoided the choice to build a nuclear weapon as being just too dangerous.
Its not the GMO I hate, its the company executives.
But its not the technology that triggered itself over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the human beings guided by imperialists doctrine.
Should be BOTH. Apparently you have not seen the pictures of the huge gross tumors on rats fed GMO corn exclusively.
Wisdom, if it had prevailed, would have anticipated the low moral development of these imperialists and declined to invent those genocidal weapons that were used, not on a military establishment, but on cities mostly containing old people, women, and children.
I don't hate science, just how capitalism applies it. I never hate the science or the technology
Well the only thing I find scarier than the end of the world is choosing to make the world stay the same, to fear change, to keep on doing what we're doing because that's what we're doing.
Wisdom, there's that word that's the antithesis of everything men in power believe in.
And they are "decent" people are they not? How do they rationalize their behavior?
No justification, it's pure lizard brain tribal shit. They think they are good, others are bad, and act accordingly without thought or hesitation.
Post a Comment