During our trip south, the trial of George Zimmerman concluded with acquittal.
For those of you living in a cave—or on a back road in the Carolinas—Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder for shooting a teenager who, according to entirely credible pathological evidence presented during the trial, was pounding Zimmerman's head into the concrete at the time the trigger was pulled.
Of course, I wasn't there—and neither was anyone else not falling into the category of shooter or shootee—so I can't actually know what went down.
Even so, watching the television highlights in hotel rooms and while waiting for planes, supplemented by additional research, I have come to the conclusion that the widespread narrative of a white racist hunting down a helpless, unarmed, black teenager was probably not entirely correct.
But that's just my opinion and worth not very much at all.
Which is why, thankfully, a fair and impartial judicial system was established in these United States. When it works as it should, a jury of unbiased individuals is empaneled and listens intently as the prosecution and defense—after having prepared in advance by reviewing all available evidence—make their respective cases.
When all is said and done, the jury then deliberates upon what they have heard and pass verdict.
In the case of the Zimmerman trial, however, that's not exactly how it worked.
Now, I apologize if you have heard some, or all, of what follows: I feel compelled to comment, if for no other reason than as a check-in on my ability to reason. Simply, what seems so obvious to me appears to be diametrically opposed to what a large percentage of my fellow citizens, including essentially all of the media, believe about the trial.
Further, based on the facts that have come out about the case, I'm having a hard time believing what has transpired.
ITEM: Eric Holder's Justice Department used taxpayer money and government resources to organize protests against Zimmerman.
C'mon! Who are you kidding? Didn't happen! I thought to myself, clearly in denial. Except, it did…
The following excerpt is from a July 10, 2013 release put out by the highly respected Judicial Watch organization.
Document: DOJ Community Relations Service was deployed to Sanford, FL, "to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old African American male."
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents in response to local, state, and federal records requests revealing that a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford, FL, following the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman.
The document (full text here) goes on to provide very specific details on the campaign the US government financed and helped manage, to stir up the racial pot in this case and to ensure that Zimmerman was arrested, regardless of what the local police thought. (I wonder if the now exonerated Sanford Chief of Police, summarily executed fired for failing to arrest Zimmerman, will now be reinstated? Hmm.)
ITEM: The state retrieved unflattering images and texts from Trayvon's phone and hid them from Zimmerman's defense team. When a whistleblower forced them to reveal the evidence, he was fired. But it didn't matter anyway, because the judge suppressed pretty much any evidence conflicting with the rosy picture of innocence lost.
IT director who alleged evidence withheld from Zimmerman defense fired
An employee of the Office of the State Attorney in Jacksonville, Fla., who testified that prosecutors withheld evidence from George Zimmerman's defense team has been fired, his lawyer told NBC News.
Ben Kruidbos, who testified for the defense before the trial began and identified himself as a "whistleblower," alleged that his former employer concealed or was slow to deliver discovery information obtained from Trayvon Martin's cell phone—including pictures of a hand holding a gun and a gun on a bed.
Full story here.
Given that Zimmerman's entire defense revolved around his contention that Trayvon attacked him, it sure seems relevant if the 17-year-old was not the innocent-looking poster child in the photos almost exclusively used by the frenzied media.
For the record, the photo that People magazine, among so many other outlets, used was taken when Trayvon was only 12 years old. Skip ahead to his untimely death, and he had grown to 6' 2" and weighed about 170 pounds.
(Just for fun, here's a photo of another famous fellow around the same age. Can you guess who it is?)
Yet, the real Trayvon had been suspended from school three times, and was in fact on waivers at the time of his death. Apparently a school security officer found 12 pieces of women's jewelry and a large flathead screwdriver in Trayvon's locker described as a "burglary tool."
But again, the judge denied mentioning any of this in front of the jury, and denied admitting into evidence any of the sequestered information from Trayvon's phone, including this photo that would suggest that somewhere along the troubled travels of life, not-so-young Trayvon may have lost his sunny disposition.
Now, please don't get me wrong. I was young and… well, young, once. And as is the case with most teens, there were times when my attitude was less than sparkly. In fact, in my formative years I did some fairly very stupid things, which only by some small miracle didn't lead to a bad and maybe even terminal outcome.
In the case of Trayvon, if things had worked out differently that night, he might have gone on to a productive career or become president of the United States. Or, he could have gone to jail for murdering Zimmerman. Fate is as fickle as it is unpredictable, but generally speaking, I'm in favor of young people finding their feet and growing older.
My gripe is that the media and the government—including, as is clear from the information above, Eric Holder and operatives reporting to him—established a horribly divisive narrative and have subsequently done everything in their collective power to maintain it.
If the real Trayvon wasn't quite the innocent portrayed, shouldn't the jury have been allowed to decide whether it was material? What was the government trying to accomplish? To protect some ill-conceived fiction that young black men are infallible? Or that the young man, who President Obama said "could have been me 35 years ago," may not have been the choir boy portrayed by People magazine and pretty much every other media outlet.
What happened to letting the cards (of justice) fall where they might? Is the jury system so severely damaged that it should now be ignored and all trials decided by public opinion? Maybe in front of a wall with a large pile of rocks nearby? If so, is there any doubt about Zimmerman's fate?
(On the topic of straying from the path of virtue, there have been a number of postings that Trayvon might have been a habitual user of a homemade drug that apparently has violent emotions as a side effect. This because he had two of the three ingredients necessary to make the gangsta drug called "Lean," but as the formula is rather generic and not specific to the Arizona Watermelon drink or Skittles Trayvon had just purchased, but any sugary soda and candy, it's a circumstantial claim at best).
ITEM: As the defense was winding down, the Judge harangued Zimmerman in front of the jury about whether he was going to testify, making him look at times confused and even furtive. Understandable, because he and no one else wasn't expecting to have the judge break free of tradition and directly harass a witness.
The following quote from Breitbart sums it up fairly well…
On Wednesday, Judge Debra Nelson, who is presiding over the trial of George Zimmerman, repeatedly asked Zimmerman whether he would be testifying, over the objections of his attorneys. Nelson told Zimmerman that he had the "absolute right to remain silent" and then asked him whether he wanted to testify. Don West, Zimmerman's attorney, objected; Nelson overruled him and said, "The court is entitled to inquire if Mr. Zimmerman's determination as to whether or not he wants to testify."
She asked Zimmerman how much time he wanted to figure out if he wanted to testify, to which West objected. Nelson then said, irritated, "Your objection is overruled!" Mark O'Mara, another of the defense attorneys whispered, "What is going on?"
Such exchanges are very unusual in criminal trials. Judges rarely confront possible witnesses or defendants on whether they will testify over the objections of attorneys.
A few minutes later, Judge Nelson continued to ask Zimmerman about whether he would testify. She gave him a few minutes to consider. Then she returned to Zimmerman and asked him whether he would testify; he said he would not. She then repeatedly asked whether it was his decision not to testify in the case, rather than the decision of his attorneys.
You can watch the video of her questioning here.
ITEM: The entire early narrative, which has largely stuck in the glue-like minds of most of the unquestioning masses, is built around the idea that George Zimmerman is a white racist.
But rather than being a "white racist," George Zimmerman's genetic make-up is actually about as "mixed" as you get, including a Peruvian mother, a white father, and a black great-grandfather. In addition, it was well established that, if anything, Zimmerman was an advocate for the black community.
This from The Inquisitr…
…George Zimmerman was one of the few non-black people that helped protest the beating of a black homeless man by the son of a Sanford police officer that was left unpunished. The twist to this story is that George Zimmerman asked the NAACP in Sanford for help, but he was shot down, claiming they didn't have the resources to help the homeless black man.
So without the help of the NAACP George Zimmerman printed his own fliers and distributed them at black churches in the area. Only after the guilty party turned himself in did the NAACP become involved in negotiating an "undisclosed financial reward" for the black man George Zimmerman had helped.
In the same time frame George Zimmerman was helping blacks, he was videotaped saying, "I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white. It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those that are in the thin blue line." Ironically, the same police department George Zimmerman protested for racial violence and cover-ups is the police department that investigated Zimmerman after Trayvon Martin. In the end, even the FBI said George Zimmerman is not racist.
Here's the full article.
As a footnote, needing to hook their racist hat on something, the media have taken to calling Zimmerman a "white Hispanic." Here's an example yesterday, from good old USA Today…
"Zimmerman, 29, is a white Hispanic and Trayvon, 17, was black. The case was racially charged from the outset, and prosecutors alleged Zimmerman had racially profiled the teen."
As strange and disturbing as the Zimmerman trial was—and as far as I can tell, it should never have been held in the first place—it is the aftermath that really winds me up.
Starting with the comments of the first juror who spoke out, who said, emphatically, "We really wanted to convict him of something…".
Excuse me? Why would they want to convict him? Either he was guilty, or he wasn't. That they couldn't manage to stick him with something only proves that the government didn't have a case… but proceeded nonetheless.
Then there was the mainstream media's reaction, which was uniformly "surprised" and "shocked" and "outraged" at the verdict.
Now let me get this straight. Acting under political pressure, the government brought a case that clearly had no merit, with no supporting evidence, then proceeded in an underhanded way that clearly demonstrated bias… but when the jury votes unanimously to acquit, somehow the verdict is "surprising"?
Also choosing to ignore the verdict, certain leading lights in the black community have organized protests and even threatened Zimmerman with death.
And just to add a little comedy to the proceedings, this week the Detroit City Council took time out from their busy schedule of lording it over their bankrupt domain to unanimously pass a resolution calling for a civil rights investigation into Zimmerman.
A task that Holder et al. are already well engaged in, having impounded all the evidence in the Zimmerman case.
Further encouraging the Justice Department is a new hearing on the topic of "race and justice" called to order by Nancy Pelosi.
There used to be a legal concept called "Double jeopardy," which said that no one could be tried for the same crime twice. But as you read this, it is clear that Holder is preparing to charge Zimmerman with the same crime a second time, just with a slightly different slant.
Given the carnage going on daily in the community of young black men—almost all of it at the hands of other young black men—that the government continues to throw resources at this case, using money it can ill afford to spend, boggles the mind.
Supporting that last point, while you can do your own research on the subject, despite only making up 12.5% of the population, a full 50% of the murder victims in the United States are black. And well over 90% of those murders are committed by other blacks.
So, what, pray tell, is so exceptional about the George Zimmerman case except that he's a "white" Hispanic?
Which, finally, brings me to the point, and to the rather odd title, of this article.
Yesterday a friend sent me a North Korean propaganda film that has as its main theme the shallow, self-absorbed, celebrity-focused culture here in the United States.
While starting any phrase with "North Korean…" is usually a sure sign that joviality will follow, and that is certainly the case with this video, unlike most of what emanates from the Supreme Leader's minions, this one actually has a couple of redeeming qualities. For starters, it's mostly accurate. And secondly, the script writer demonstrates a keen use of metaphor.
Case in point, when referring to celebrities who overtly or covertly promote cigarettes by appearing in overseas ads, or by lighting up on the screen, the screenwriter calls them "trained-monkey collaborators of death."
As I was preparing to write today's musings, that phrase fairly leaped from the corner of my cranium where it now resides as being perfectly suited to describe the degraded media in these United States, as well as the politicians and self-interest groups who are so culpable in hollowing out what used to be a nation based on principles and law.
Of all the criminal investigations, why was Zimmerman's case so notable that it all but dominates the media? In my opinion, in no particular order, it has to do with the following…
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It's a circus. As in the other half of "bread and circuses." Now that the government is running out of bread, it's time to distract the masses with a circus.
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It's a continuum of the politics of race that the livelihoods of so many black leaders and liberal politicians revolve around. I mean, absent the constant banging of the race drum, what career, other than fleecing the masses on a Sunday, do you think Reverend Al Sharpton would be suited for? Car salesman? Has the black population been treated poorly over the history of the US? Of course. But so were the Chinese coolies who were brought over pretty much as slaves to build railroads and so forth.
One would think that now that a black man and a dope smoker/coke snorter, with an Arabic-sounding name at that, was elected president, society could move on. But that's just not going to happen, at least as long as the tired old scripts continue to be trotted out, as they were in the Zimmerman case.
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The media is a bunch of whores. And not the nice kind either. Rather, they are the degraded sort willing to cut a person's throat for a wallet. These trained-monkey collaborators of death don't care if Zimmerman is ultimately murdered, or thrown in jail and then murdered. And they don't care if their hyperbole results in violent race riots (around the time of the verdict, their breathless anticipation of just such an outcome was palpable). Without the slightest exaggeration, as far as the media is concerned, the more racially charged violence, the better. It's all about the bottom line and getting paid for giving the unthinking masses what they want, good and hard.
Again, look at the photos used in these mass-circulated publications. It's not that the editors didn't have access to up-to-date photos of Trayvon Martin. Of course they did. That they chose to continually run one of him at 12 years old—the Daily News headline makes it clear the story is being run 45 days after the altercation—is not only misleading but despicable and, in a perfect world, criminal.
If they'll go to these extremes to sell ads, then can we believe anything they have to say?
Speaking personally, if the government brings a civil rights case—despite the clear evidence countering the claim that Zimmerman is a racist—and they find him guilty, I might be compelled to march down to some government office and protest.
No, wait, that's a non-starter—I just remembered that, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that its society is being led towards the abyss by the trained-monkey collaborators of death, I now reside mostly outside of the United States.
Something that George Zimmerman should seriously consider.
But enough of that. I felt the need to rant a bit, and so I have. In the end, it won't matter in the slightest. Rather, my protestations will be, to quote my favorite Arab adage, nothing more than "A little fox barks in the night as the caravan passes by."
That may be so, but I can assure you that this little fox will be watching the caravan passing by on a flat screen down at the Clubhouse at La Estancia de Cafayate.
Moving along, here's Bud Conrad's timely article on recent developments having to do with the loose money policies now keeping the economy afloat.
