I spent a couple of nights last week on the lookout for a cloud of rising smoke. From the chimney at the Vatican? No, thank you -- there were already thousands of journalists around the globe fixated on the ancient mystical wizardry in St. Peter's Square. I was a lot more concerned that black smoke was going to rise from the damp, raw streets of East Flatbush, in a corner of Brooklyn many blocks removed from the high-tech glitz of that borough's new Barclays Center. Night after night, hundreds of young people -- most from the neighborhood -- marched on their local police station house because they wanted answers to a simple question.

Why was a 16-year-old boy named Kimani Gray shot seven times by the New York cops -- three times in the back?

Of course, I had to follow the waves of Brooklyn protest -- which teetered for a time on the brink of a riot -- by way of Twitter, since the mainstream media gave very slight, and usually belated, coverage to the doings in East Flatbush. I guess issues of law and order, civil rights and civil unrest, and the right to assemble on a major street right here in the United States can't really compete with the nearly 2000-year-old rituals of wrinkled men with their bright robes and their white smoke.

Still, I couldn't help but think that -- stop me if you've heard this one before -- there's something happening here. Maybe it was because East Flatbush wasn't the only place in America where unusual things were taking place -- the scattered shrieks of regular people who've been pushed to the edge. As the protests in Brooklyn dragged on, I heard the annual budget speech from the mayor of Philadelphia drowned out and finally shut down by the voice of angry blue-collar municipal workers, frustrated that City Hall will no longer listen to them. Just a couple of weeks ago and about 10 blocks away, so many Philly teens, parents and teachers were so upset at the knee-jerk closing of 23 neighborhood public schools that they filled the expanse of Broad Street as they tried to flood the room where the vote was taking place.

There were 19 people arrested at the Philly school shutdown; about 45 arrested in various encounters and scuffles with the NYPD in Brooklyn. All of these events were treated by the media as a total out-of-left-field shock -- as if a spaceship had landed from Mars and deposited these mad-as-hell aliens on the hardscrabble streets of the inner city. And if you haven't been paying attention, you'd indeed think these scattered events had nothing to do with each other. But to the contrary, the same river of bruised blood runs through all of them -- people who are at long last tired of the drumbeat of disrespect.

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I haven't been writing too much lately because of publisher type duties I have to perform, but when I saw this bit of ridiculousness from Hot Air aimed at myself I wanted to respond. Everyone, right or left knows I don't make stuff up like some people we know (fill in the names yourself) but when Tina Korbe says that there's no way I could defend my earlier post about the riotous scene at Oklahoma State, I couldn't pass up the chance. By the way, I happen to be pretty good friends with Ed Morrissey, even if we view politics differently so this isn't personal towards Hot Air.

But I’m not sure John Amato of CrooksandLiars.com could come back with a follow-up piece that would convince me of the rightness of his reasoning in this little bit of commentary, provocatively headlined “#OWS Are Just Sleeping in Tents; College Football Fans Are Rioting.”

In it, just as the headline suggests, Amato argues that fans storming the field after a football game constitutes violent rioting.

Had he just stopped there, the piece would have been funny enough — but still somewhat defensible. He at least offers some evidence for his perspective: After the Oklahoma State University Cowboys subjugated the University of Oklahoma Sooners this weekend in the annual Oklahoma rivalry game aptly known as “Bedlam,” OSU fans were in such a hurry to dismantle the goalposts that they inadvertently injured at least 12 fellow fans, including one who had to be airlifted to the hospital.

She obviously missed my point so I'll let one of the biggest sports talk show hosts do it for me. In the above video, WFAN's talk show host Mike Francesa explained the riotous situation in Oklahoma State, which he described from someone on the field as "natural disaster" like that took place. His words not mine. Mike is a known Republican and political junkie so he doesn't have a political agenda about this incident like say, Hot Air does. he ripped into the entire event and wondered if stadiums will need to build fences so fans can't get on the field.

Now Korbe either doesn't understand the meaning of my earlier post or is not being honest about it, that's up to her to figure out.

But the more likely explanation than Amato’s is that the police have turned to questionable tactics to evict OWS protesters because Occupiers have proved themselves to be, time and again, belligerent. Defying lawful orders to pack up and leave isn't exactly the way to ensure you’re evicted peacefully.

Did you happen to see the police called in with pepper spray, tear gas and hazmat suits to make sure tea party town halls during the August recess didn't turn ugly, did you? And they did turn very ugly because groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity disseminated memos designed to aggressively disrupt those town halls.

The memo above also resembles the talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks for pushing an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by Americans for Prosperity, is currently busing people all over the country for more protests against Democratic members. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the NRCC, has endorsed the strategy, telling the Politico the days of civil town halls are now “over.”

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As I pointed out yesterday, we already know austerity cuts don't improve the economy, nor are they simply "fat" that doesn't affect government functions. Remember the recent blizzard that paralyzed NYC after they cut 700 streets workers? We're seeing extensive proof in London over the past four days (see riot map here):

In September of last year, the British Home Secretary Theresa May refused to accept claims by the British police that austerity cuts would affect their ability to contain civil unrest (h/t George Monbiot).

A look at an article from the Guardian reveals May's belief that British people simply did not riot:

The British public don't simply resort to violent unrest in the face of challenging economic circumstances. We must have a rational and reasonable debate about policing. Your association has a long and proud history of constructive and sensible contributions to policing policy-making – long may it continue.

May was speaking after the announcement of deep austerity cuts, that police officials predicted would lead to 40,000 police staff job cuts. May refused to accept this and told the police superintendents' annual conference:

I will work hard to ensure a fair deal for policing but there will, most definitely, need to be savings made. It is ridiculous to suggest that there are not savings that can be made in policing.

From London Indymedia:

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven’t seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police’s treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One London blogger notes:

In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.’’

President Mubarak, you misunderstand America. Sure, we are historically willing to accommodate dictators, we have endorsed and supported your corrupt regime to serve perceived strategic interests. But even at our most cynical, we have our limits.

You, sir, have crossed a line our country will not abide. It's hard to deny the awe-inspiring power of a unified democratic uprising, and Egypt deserves real elections. And you need to get out of the way before some really spectacular cheekbones are endangered.

And there are economic consequences for Americans. If something happens to the Silver Fox, what else have those poor folks at CNN got? Parker/Spitzer? PARKER F-ING SPITZER? Those people need to eat, they have families.

Everybody cool out.

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The Villagers never point out why there's so much anger and resentment targeted at governments around the world after we're witnessing so many riots take place because of cutbacks to their services that do not target the wealthy, only that they need to be more serious on how to handle the "debt" problem.

CBS' Bob Schieffer is the latest to echo these views on Sunday as he talked to David Axelrod.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this question, we saw these riots in London last week when people found out that the government was going to raise the price of going to college. We saw riots in Greece when the government services had to be cut. We’re seeing problems in Ireland with their budget. Are we at a point in this world where democracies have just gone in debt too heavily, where people walked in and have come to expect these services but they really don’t want to pay for them? Is that part of what we’re seeing here?

I think people across the world world feel a little better about the state of affairs if all those responsible for the financial meltdown had been arrested and put in jail with heavy fines. Countries were paying them just fine until a new scam was developed to milk the system for billions of dollars. New austerity programs being instituted around the world which once again punishes the working class who didn't invest their country's resources to bet on the markets that has ultimately left the economies of many country's beaten and broken. Bob Schieffer is another millionaire pundit gasbag who doesn't have to live with the thought of his services being lost and it would seem that he believes we should have to suck it up and take all of the pain. Thanks Bob for your sympathy.

As that fat guy who had the movie about global warming tried to tell us, the changing weather is coming back to hit us. A record-setting heatwave in Russia has sparked massive forest fires that are destroying crops normally bought by the U.S., and their government has announced a ban on grain exports.

But hey, isn't it great that the Republicans have sworn to stop the cap-and-trade bill?

Reporting from Los Angeles and Moscow — The price of America's daily bread and meat could soar this fall, as surging wheat prices in anticipation of a Russian ban on exports stoked fears about tight supplies.

Grain shortages and food price hikes in 2007 and 2008 sparked riots worldwide, but agriculture analysts said the U.S. wheat crop has been strong, and that stockpiles of wheat and other grains worldwide are greater now than they were three years ago.

According to media reports, U.S. farmers have rushed to put out millions of bushels of wheat to bolster worldwide inventories. Wheat prices on Friday dropped by 60 cents on the Chicago Board of Trade, voiding Thursday's price run-up.

Yet analysts warned that consumers might be hit with higher prices at the grocery store in the months ahead because of a convergence of factors. With the memory of the previous food crisis still fresh, some countries and consumers may resort to hoarding, which could push prices upward. Speculators and some food companies might seek to exploit public worries.

"The situation is still in flux," said Phil Flynn, a commodities analyst at PFG Best in Chicago. "It is far too soon to say that this is over."

The price of wheat surged to a two-year high when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the ban Thursday. Wildfires and serious droughts have ravaged a large swath of central Russia this summer, destroying one-fifth of its crop. Russia is one of the world's largest wheat exporters.

The Ukraine government, also a large global wheat supplier, reportedly canceled a number of its contracts because of similar dry-weather issues.

And as an added climate-change bonus:

MOSCOW: Russia's Emergencies Minister has warned that wildfires raging in the west of the country could release radioactive nuclides from land contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Sergei Shoygu said special laboratories were monitoring a potential release of contaminants in Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine, which was sprayed with caesium-137 and strontium-90 after the explosion of the power plant's fourth reactor in 1986. The alarming statement came as firefighters continued to battle hundreds of fires across central and western Russia amid the hottest temperatures in more than a century.

Wildfires around Moscow have forced the Defence Ministry to order munitions moved from a military depot near the capital, the Ria Novosti news agency reported. Elsewhere there were reports that a secret communications centre of the Russian Army had gone up in flames.

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The right-wing media have been aghast at the unpleasant realities being reported about all those shouters and disruptors at town-hall forums -- namely, that their anger is being ginned up by corporate interests using right-wing populists to derail their political opponents; and that their ranks are riddled with extremists.

And to the extent that the critics of these protesters try to portray the scenes as purely a product of corporate machinations, they have a point. There is real anger out there, and the anti-reform interests are successfully tapping into it.

But the anger they're tapping into is not a new thing; in fact, it's been around a long time. It's a larger anger at the federal government, stoked (as we've seen in the health-care debate) by a combination of real grievances and a pathological belief in explanations for those grievances that are provably untrue, wrapped in paranoid conspiracy theories about government officials and a conspiracist view of history.

In the 1990s, they called themselves militias or "Patriots." Nowadays, they're organizing around the so-called "tea parties" and now the health-care town halls. These are the wellspring of the anger at these meetings -- but this faction has a long history of being motivated by anger anyway.

This is not to downplay the vital role behind the scenes being played by ostensibly mainstream conservative operations, fueled by corporate money. Adele Stan at AlterNet has a thoroughly devastating expose of the machinations behind the protests, beginning with Dick Armey's FreedomWorks operation all the way down to the Birther nutcases who are bubbling up at these shows.

Indeed, Stan gets what the rest of the media are missing: Not only are business and conservative interests ginning up these protests, but they're doing so by empowering far-right extremists from the fringe.

We've been reporting steadily on this phenomenon as it's been happening. Perhaps the best signifier of this empowerment and energizing of the far right on the behalf of the mainstream right is the fact that every single right-wing extremist organization and forum -- ranging from far-right hate groups and white supremacists, such as Stormfront.org, to "Patriot"/militia organizations such as the Militia of Montana and the Constitution Party, to Bircherite conspiracists like Ron Paul and his followers -- are avidly advocating involvement in the "tea parties" and the health-care protests.

And these folks, frankly, are beginning to talk openly of armed revolt. This is something that used to be relegated strictly to the fringes of the far right; now, it's being openly discussed at WorldNetDaily,, which ran a poll with the following headline:

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

Is America on the verge of revolution?

The results:

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Pat Buchanan wrote an op-ed that literally made me sick to my stomach.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?
Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."[..]
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Hopefully, you've been able to retain your lunch while reading. I've known that Pat Buchanan was a little nuts with his isolationist rhetoric, but I had no idea just how isolationist he actually was--he really doesn't want anyone who doesn't look like him in this country, does he?. This reads like something white supremist Sam Francis would write, and as it turns out, Francis was a mentor to Buchanan.

Pam's House Blend has a response to Buchanan (and really, should he still be getting gigs on EVERY MSNBC show with this kind of open racist attitude?):

Thanks, Pat. We've gotten the old "lift up" message, all right. How could people like Buchanan listen to the same speech and walk away with this level of vitriol in their heart and purposeful ignorance of history? Our country suffers an incredible sickness when it comes to race relations. The point of Obama's speech is that we all have work to do, and share responsibility in opening up an adult dialog. The above does nothing to advance understanding, and shows no desire to do so either.

Pandagon and Orcinus have more...

"Accuracy in Media (AIM) is urging a full inquiry into a report that a Saudi billionaire caused the Fox News Channel (FNC) to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Saudi billionaire, Al-waleed bin Talal, is a friend of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and controls an influential number of voting shares in the company...read on"

Juan Cole: "Readers have asked me for comment about the riots in France that have now provoked emergency laws and a curfew. What I would rather comment on, however, is the myths that have governed many rightwing American comments on the tragic events....read on