Furguson or whatever...

Heard a voice on the radio claim that cops killing black men may amount to modern day lynching, which made me think 'wait a minute'..... According to studies conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011 there were 279,384 black murder victims, of which 262,621 were murdered by other blacks-a 94% figure. As awful as that statistic sounds, the rate of black people killed per 100,000 persons has dropped from around 50 murders in 1976 to around 25 as of 2005. That is still way more than the white rate of around 5 murders per 100,000 in 1976 which had dropped to around 3.5 in 2005. Despite the street protests and genuine grievances in some cases, the bulk of the violence remains black on black, so the real outrage should be directed to that continuing problem.
POSTSCRIPT: April 2015~It seems as though the recent murder of the black man by the Charleston cop-eight shots in the back- WAS a lynching by gun... Ignorant white trash...makes me wonder about justice including an eye for an eye...just tell the guy to start running...So no doubt racial problems still exist, but don't forget that we fought a civil war over this issue and that half of the 500,000 white guys killed were trying to improve the situation...
POST~POSTSCRIPT~ An inspiring book is 'THE PACT' by Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt describing their journey through medical school as they raised themselves from the projects of Newark, N.J.by sticking together and focusing on the positive.

Snowden and the NSA

    I am reading a book by Glenn Greenwald titled "NO PLACE TO HIDE" about Edward Snowden and the NSA, and I recommend it to anyone wanting to know the truth about his whistleblowing. One reason there was so much blowback from our government was that Snowden was no hack, rather a highly competent, informed cyber security expert who simply became morally disturbed by some of the things that the U.S. was and is doing. He seemed to be fully prepared to be ostracized and perhaps imprisoned for his actions, but felt morally compelled to inform the public about the extent of the governments spying. For instance, our government has the capability to remotely turn on your cell phone and use it as a listening device. So assume that for at least ten years every single phone call, email, and online action has or could have been tracked and saved to a massive database. Snowden's fear was that most of us would just shrug and say 'well, we figured that was happening' and not care, or feel powerless to change things, which has happened to some extent. But he wanted the public to be informed and make that choice rather than the rich and powerful cloistered behind the cloak of  "terrorism threat". No doubt some plots have been thwarted by the NSA, and I am no paranoid skeptic regarding our government, but as we witness the sheer incompetence of so many people in power, it heeds us well to be aware of the potential abuses.
        More information from the book:  People complicit with the NSA, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Diane Feinstein, say things like "people have gotten really comfortable not only sharing information of different kinds, but more openly and with more people" and 'the collection of metadata does not constitute surveillance because it does not include the content of any communication'. Yet neither one would willingly make public their E-mail contacts and passwords nor allow video cameras into their homes. Mr. Zuckerberg spent $30 million dollars to buy the four houses adjacent to his Palo Alto home in order to assure his own privacy. So both the government and those people directly responsible for intruding into the average citizens privacy have gone to great lengths to hide their own...just more hypocrisy among those on power. I'm not sure where all this is heading, but as the 1% amasses over 50% of the world's wealth in the next few years, you can be sure that they will do all the can to preserve it.