MUST READ Ferguson: Ten Days That Shook the Country

By Justin Raimondo

The facts surrounding the murder of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old resident of Ferguson, Missouri, gunned down by Darren Wilson, a Ferguson police officer, are not entirely known – but enough is known that it’s quite justified to characterize it as cold-blooded murder. Thanks to Brown’s family, an autopsy has revealed that of the six shots fired by Wilson, five were survivable, but the sixth – which entered through the top of his head – was not. Although the evidence is not yet conclusive, the forensics – and the testimony of eyewitnesses – point to the fatal shot being fired as he was falling to the ground with his hands up in the classic posture of surrender.

Yet regardless of the circumstances surrounding his death, the significance of this event lies in the reaction to it – from the people of Ferguson, and, most importantly, from local, state, and federal authorities. From the former – anger: from the latter – repression.

As citizens of Ferguson took to the streets to protest what they view as a racist attack on their community, the response from the authorities was similar to that of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic during the turmoil that eventually ended in the Serbian despot’s overthrow. Indeed, the comments of many in the news media – at least eleven, at the current count, who were arrested during the proceedings – were that it seemed like something that would happen in a foreign country.

Which hits the nail directly on the head.

Much has been said about the shocking "militarization" of the police, and how this seemed to many like a provocation: police in Ferguson were encased in armor that one veteran remarked was heavier than anything he wore in Iraq. And now the cry has gone up: demilitarize the police! Take away their MRAPs, their forest camouflage, and all the paraphernalia of intimidation that accompanies them into battle. Rep. Alan Grayson introduced legislation, shortly before Ferguson exploded, that would have ended the Pentagon program which funneled this gear into local police departments, but it was voted down. Several newer versions are in the works, and a good thing too, but this is attacking the symptoms rather than the disease.

The disease is imperialism, otherwise known as US foreign policy: the underlying condition is the American Empire, an international regime of terror and exploitationwhich cannot be expected to treat its own citizens much better than it treats its overseas subjects. How on earth did we ever expect otherwise?

It isn’t just the fact that the Pentagon decided to offload its surplus military gear – formerly used to subjugate foreigners – onto local police departments. The problem is the culture of imperialism which has leaked like a poison into the groundwater of American society. It permeates not only public policy but our art, our literature, and our minds: it is broadcast 24/7 via every media outlet, until it becomes like the air we breathe.

Every empire, by definition, is a

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