Apparently the Negros got a bit too uppity for the white man in Ferguson, Missouri. Because now heavily armed soldiers have declared Ferguson is a war zone and have sealed off the black areas of the city so that no one can enter or leave. They are both stopping reporters from entering the area to report on the military operation and arresting reporters for the crime of reporting from within this “war zone”. Photographs and videos from the scene look almost like the assault on Gaza, except of course the explosions are flashbangs and tear gas grenades rather than live rounds, sometimes fired into homeowners’ back yards to chase homeowners inside when the homeowners yell “Go home!” at the invading soldiers.
The protesters appear in these videos to primarily be unarmed with their hands up in the air, albeit with the usual occasional dipstick throwing rocks or other objects at the soldiers. There was one idiot who pulled a gun on the soldiers, who promptly got gunned down for his idiocy, and there was another idiot who attempted to throw a molotov cocktail at the cops but only served to demonstrate that he flunked baseball in his high school PE class while getting arrested (the bottle made it maybe three yards before crashing to the ground and incinerating some pavement). Other than that, there wasn’t any violence at the protest itself other than the violence inflicted by the police, just a lot of people standing with their hands in the air shouting “I’m unarmed! Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed!”, which was supposedly the last action of Michael Brown as he was being gunned down by one of Ferguson’s finest.
Oh, why I call them soldiers: They can’t be police officers, because police officers serve and protect their fellow citizens. Police officers know that they’re in America, not a war zone. The fact that the soldiers at this scene are paid through various city police department budgets doesn’t make them police officers, it merely means they’re soldiers imposing military law who are being paid by cities and counties rather than by the Federal government. If your mentality is that you’re in a war zone when you are an American on American soil talking to unarmed American civilians, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Finally, pictures: they don’t even LOOK like police officers. Here’s what a police officer looks like:
Here is what the soldiers imposing martial law in Ferguson, Missouri, look like:
Note the camouflage combat gear and military assault rifles, as well as military style body armor and helmets. This isn’t something that police officers would wear, because police officers know their job is to keep the peace, not impose the peace of the grave, and you keep the peace by being part of the community, not by being an occupying army on top of the community. The latter is the job of soldiers, and these are dressed for the job, though thankfully thus far they haven’t managed to kill anybody with the rubber bullets and tear gas grenades that they’re shooting.
Well, anybody other than Michael Brown, of course… strangely enough, the police haven’t even interviewed the witnesses to that killing, according to interviews with the witnesses on national TV, who all say they’ve contacted the police department to be interviewed but got no response. The Ferguson police sure seem hard at work investigating the truth about one of their own shooting Michael Brown, eh? This is the same police department that, in a city that’s 2/3rds black, has three (3) police officers because “for some reason blacks don’t apply here.” Couldn’t have anything to do with a redneck cracker police chief and a police department made up of redneck crackers who joke about nigger-knockin’ and make it a very hostile working environment for black cops, eh? Naw, couldn’t be…
One final word: Al Sharpton, go home. Nobody cares about your sad attempt to insert yourself into a situation that’s none of your business in a lame attempt to prove your relevance. There are real leaders on the ground there, such as St. Louis alderman Antonio French, who is actually on the ground talking to people and reporting on what’s happening (at points from within the jail itself, when the police arrested him for taking video of them). They don’t need your ancient shriveled carcass hauling itself out of the crypt upon camera cue. Just quit, already, you’re making a fool of yourself. That is all.
– Badtux the Sovok Penguin
Not going to end well for anybody. I read elsewhere the (D) Governor had Presidential ambitions. Had. The police have not done themselves any favors, particularly with dealing with the press in Ferguson covering the events. Closing the airspace above Ferguson by the FAA raises a few red flags.
Streaming video, photographic images and audio reports from Ferguson shows that this is not what a first world country looks like, but a third world country with lots of lipstick. The militarization of the police forces across the country need a good, hard look. If citizens don’t trust the police to be police, and see them as an occupying force, and the police see themselves as paramilitary forces, the interaction changes from ‘citizen and police officer’ to ‘native/local and invader/occupier’.
At that point you need UN Peacekeepers to keep things to a low roar.
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OK,but everyone is making this a black/white issue,why? Its a no respect issue. Both were wrong, the kid for not obeying the police, fighting with the police, and the police for bad enforcement techniques. Plus the media not being identifiable in an emergency situation. No press ” badges” like the olden western days. Go back and look at olden fire/crime scene photos and see, press is identifiable. Plus the old hate gangs show up, along with the anarchists. Damn its a fun mix. Remember good guys don’ t run around with white hats or black hats, like in the movies. Some may even be bald. Plus some of the latest news have that the kid was fighting with the cop who has an attitude problem. Maybe they now have a reason to crack more heads because of the first stories.
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Jim, you’re not from the South, so let me put this to you bluntly: When you have an all-white police force imposing martial law on a segregated all-black section of town, it IS about race. To deny that it’s about race is to be either a fucking moron or a deliberate liar. Pick your poison.
Furthermore, the Washington Post reporter who was assaulted and arrested very much had an old-fashioned press badge around his neck and showed it to the police officers. They didn’t care, they viewed him like they viewed the people in the neighborhood — not as a citizen, but as an enemy combatant in a war zone.
And that last, not race, is what this post was about. When we have police officers in America viewing their fellow Americans not as fellow citizens, but, rather, as enemy combatants in a war zone, things have gone very, very wrong in America.
Finally, I wasn’t aware that the penalty for resisting arrest by running away was to be shot from ten feet away while holding your hands up in the air and saying “I’m unarmed, don’t shoot!”, which according to witnesses was Michael Brown’s last action. I mean, I checked my law books and didn’t see anything like that in there. At least here in America, we don’t impose the death penalty for that particular crime, and if we did, it would be via trial before a jury, not an execution in the middle of a street. But maybe you have different laws in your country?
– Badtux the “I’m a citizen, not an enemy combatant” Penguin
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I’m waiting for conservatives to say it is all Obama’s fault.
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It’s gonna be a long haul to slash police funding so far that they’ll stop looking like soldiers. It would take decades of correct voting.
You could almost engage Republican interest because it could cut taxes… but they are too openly interested in the killing of black/poor people.
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An exchange I saw on twitter:
@PaulSzoldra : “Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants again?”
@Uljua : “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”
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I wonder how long it’s going to take for a plurality of whitomerikans to realise, at the gut level, that they live in a Police SState? Black folks have always known that. But whites still have the illusion that the armed authorities are there to protect lawn order. As in “Keep those uppity blacks-n-poors off my lawn!” When they truly, deeply glom that the po-leece, and the spy industry, and the private rent-a-cop agencies, and everyone with the power to carry a weapon and use it to hurt people without fear of consequences, regards them as the ENEMY, not a citizen, what happens then? When the existing establishment is “delegitimised” in the eyes of the people who are forced to pay its wages, how does that play out? I reckon I should look to the social dynamics of African nations for guidance.
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Bukko, perhaps a more apt comparison is with Iraq. The Sunni’s (whites) retained control until the invasion, where upon the Shia’s (others) majority status resulted in discomfort for the previously rulers…no one trusts the “State” authorities, everyone prefers their “own” militias.
Lesson for the rich, a private police force is no good if they don’t benefit from what they are protecting…
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Perhaps in the future, the “benefits” for the “protectors” will be the right to “confiscate contraband from criminals” (i.e. steal whatever they feel like). As they’re already doing in a lot of jurisdictions where pigs grab cash, cars, etc. from people they suspect of driving down the road on the way to a drug deal. “Prove that you weren’t going to use that $5,000 cash to buy crystal meth!” Someday the right to rape women amongst the poor might be added as an extra bonus to retain loyalty amongst the enforcers. Gotta make sure they don’t get restless and turn on the Sociopathic Overlord Class, eh? Because when you’re depending on a mob of bandits and pirates to do your bidding, you’ve gotta keep them pointed in the right direction…
Not that it’s new to anyone, but Tom Dispatch recently put a good piece up titled “One Nation Under SWAT” recently about the militarisation of po-leece forces, and the “us vs. the criminals posing as citizens” mentality.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/15/cops-gun-down-headphones-wearing-utah-man-because-he-wouldnt-comply-with-orders/
and no comments?
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