We greet the day with a heartwarming scene from the Midwest.
Scott Olson of @GettyImages
Would you believe that already this morning, on Twitter, I’ve had one guy blaming the parents for bringing their children to a “protest/riot zone”? Of course you would.
Just like those bad, wicked parents who bring their children to Gaza.
I just wonder when it will dawn upon the politicians and police involved, the story is now about their misuse of force, not the fact protesting is still occurring.
Silly parents, believing the police when they say they’re going to stop flinging tear gas indiscriminately at people for breathing while black.
But then it’s so difficult to tell one black person from another in the dark, I suppose it’s too much to ask of police to only target people who are breaking laws. *hurk*
All responsible parents know that they should be staying home with their children, instead of trying to challenge the system with their humanity. Honestly. How is the state supposed to impose its authority with all these human shields in the way?
“Breathing while black”
Hah! That’s great. Thanks for the laugh.
Would not have thought a few weeks ago that image could possibly be from an unknown town in the midwest United States. This is very scary.
@4: Imposing a curfew conveniently turns “being seen” into a violation.
Even a child would notice the desert-tan combat boots, and realize that the original set of paranoid, over-armored, undisciplined militarized cops are back, pointing assault rifles into the neighborhood.
I bet if Bull Conner were still alive, he’d wish his boys would’ve had all that gear. Then they could’ve shot those pesky journalists so they could get back to ‘teaching those negroes their place’…
Blame the victim, because that is how a racist defends himself ignorantly.
Huh. My local news was showing an arrest, and saying that the cops were blaming “criminals within the crowd”. Which is a step up.
The arrest they showed was of a black guy with his hands calmly up, and a dozen or so cops with assault rifles pointed, swirling in on him. It really was a little dance, with a perimeter facing outward. My critique is that there should have been some cops without rifles to use two hands on the victim, and to not have their guns pointed at the backs of the other cops.
The clouds of tear gas in that photo constitute chemical warfare against unarmed citizens.
From The Dish yesterday afternoon, a post entitled “Suffocating Protesters since 1914” —
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/18/suffocating-protestors-since-1914/
The major media channels are keeping the narrative like that though “Protests are turning violent, and the police resorted to force”. The ray of hope from the press last night was reporters on the ground forming a shield around protesters when police were marching up to them.
For a proper picture of the media, I suggest playing Black Sabbath’s War Pigs in the background while viewing anything from the media about Ferguson. I really helps cut through the BS.
Sagar Keer @12,
Yes, when really it is “armed soldiers are invading our neighborhood, wounding people with rubber bullets, gassing kids and bystanders, corralling us under a curfew, terrorizing us with tanks — of course we will cry out in rage and pain and call for justice.”
And on NPR just now, the intro to a story on police militarization began “Since the unrest in Ferguson began…” as though “unrest” were the initiating event, rather than the police murder of an unarmed, nonthreatening citizen.
These cops won’t be happy until they’ve killed more black people and I worry that the longer they are there pointing rifles at them and the more other racist white folks excuse it, the more likely it gets that more innocent people are going to die.
Why isn’t there more outrage coming from our government officials? Where are the brave defenders of the second amendment and free speech when actual rights are being violated?
@Naked Bunny:
They’re not even properly imposing the curfew. They start enforcing it several hours before it begins, and they arrest people who are on their own property.
The more? Gah. I’m incoherent. Sorry.
Jackie #17
Because doing so will lose them lots and lots of votes/supporters.
Scott Olson, who took the photo in the OP, was arrested yesterday: BB – Latest journalist arrest
(Twitter link)
(Direct image link) [of Olson smiling with hands bound behind him, appearing to joke with one of the officers holding his arms.]
WTF was the charge? Working?
Saad – don’t know, but as he was released a few hours later, they probably didn’t bother to even pretend to charge him.
(Twitter link)
via Ryan J Reilly, What a photographer captures before he was arrested
How can you blame the police for getting hurt at these protests when you should know by now that some of the people involved have no qualms about getting violent, and instigating a confrontation? By sticking around, you’re saying that you accept the consequences of your actions.
Yeah, there are two groups missing from the protestors.
We should be seeing all the Second Amendment gun nuts (without their guns, please) who seem to worship the Constitutional rights, and who believe that the Constitution guaranteed gun ownership to prevent government tyranny. Here’s your fears, Bubba, but where are you?
The other group missing is the Hollywood types who appropriate black culture and who admire black entertainers. Ferguson is about being black, and about human rights, and it’s about time to hear from the hoodie-wearing, blinged-up people who have a voice that would be heard.
for reference, yesterday’s threads:
Time to arrest the police
Why would you support a policeman who shoots unarmed people
Ex-fucking-zactly
caesar @ 24
Getting teargassed is not a natural consequence of other people breaking the law, fuckwit. Go away.
via our Queer Shoop’s blog:
HuffPo – Thank You, Black Internet
see also Cuttlefish – Black Twitter is the internet at its best
and via BB, the original charter of the UK’s Metropolitan Police from 1829.
Kottke – Policing by Consent
If we tell all these racist shitstains that there are no black people on Mars, do you think they’ll go there and make this planet a better place?
They can take their guns with them.
@27:
Getting teargassed is a natural consequence of showing up at a protest where people are shooting, looting, throwing molotov cocktails, and generally instigating violence fuckwit. If people don’t want to get gassed or shot, they should protest peacefully during the daytime in the designated area, when it’s less likely that troublemakers will start shit.
caeser @24,
Bollocks. You just completely eviscerated the 1st Amendment.
Any important issue is going to raise passions. Some passionate people are going to overreact. If people can’t protest if even a minority might instigate confrontation “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is meaningless – you can only protest about non-issues…things everyone already agrees on.
That’s a heckler’s veto par excellence!
How did I miss that third one?
*ahem* Never mind.
Well, if they’d all known the police would be at their finest behaviour, well, I’m sure most of the protestors would have stayed home, because, you know, staying safe at home is so much more important than their human rights, and rights as people, and to be recognized as such.
Regarding the bolded part, well, the police should stop that, I agree.
Big thank you to PZ and everyone who is gathering all the information in comments.
Having seen the photos that Olson got, I’m not surprised that they arrested him. They were great images, including the one of the single, unarmed young man with his hands in the air having guns pointed at him by riot gear wearing police. It’s clear that the police wanted rid of this photographer as soon as possible.
And right on time, here comes caesar to keep up his perfect record of being wrong on everything.
@32:
Not might, people are instigating confrontation.The police are responding with tear gas and rubber bullets. People that show up to said protests know what they’re in for. Like I said in my previous comment, if you don’t want to get gassed, protest during the day, or stay the fuck away. Hey, it rhymes!
I still don’t understand how this curfew and preventing people from assembling thing is constitutional.
Hmm… Okay, I got it: “Not might,
peoplethe police are instigating confrontation with tear gas and bullets.,The policepeople are respondingwith tear gas and bullets.Should give: “Not might, the police are instigating confrontation with tear gas and bullets, people are responding.” Makes a lot more sense.
People have a right to assemble. Did the Founding Fathers put a daily time limit on that?
Menyambal #25
Very well said. Now anytime there’s a school/mall/theater shooting tragedy and the gun nuts are out in full force saying guns are needed to prevent government tyranny, this story will always be there to shut them the fuck up. Not that it would sink in… sigh, there I go being pessimistic again.
Your causality is confused. The police shot an unarmed man, left his body on the street for 4 hours, didn’t bother to write an incident report or call an ambulance. Later, they tear gassed a group of people who were gathering peacefully before the imposed curfew, tear gassed people in their own yards, and threatened more unarmed and non-violent protestors. The police weren’t responding, they were instigating.
caesar, stop victim blaming and Bill of Rights violating.
Ah, the harmony of the post-racial society. Things are so much better now than they were in 1968. I can’t wait to see what progress we’ll see in another 50 years.
Where are the militias?
Rey Fox #46,
They’re there. You just can’t see them in all that riot gear and armor.
@41:
And nobody’s taking that away. If people are ok with possibly getting gassed by police responding to violence, then that’s their problem.
Yeah, I don’t care. Whatever happened previously is irrelevant. There are people in the crowd trying to instigate violence now, and it simply can’t be tolerated. Once again, people who don’t want to get caught up in the police response to the troublemakers need to protest at a time and place where they’re less likely to be present.
caesar
Because the only conceivable response police could have to violence is more violence? Really?
Everyone: The first true thing caesar has ever said. It had to happen eventually.
Gee, you are even more full of bullshit than ever. Clear cut violations by a police riot of their ability to peaceable assemble. That fact that you can’t comprehend the police causing the riots, means you have your head buried in the sand.
Typical of someone who looks the other way at institutional racism, and really wants to keep it place, rather than expose it and rip it out because it keeps people, your follow citizens, down, because you can’t compete on an even playing field.
caesar,
It’s not the peaceful demonstrator’s problem that other people in their vicinity are causing issues. It’s the police’s job to not hurt people not breaking the law.
Also, “whatever happened previously is irrelevant” is actually the stupidest thing you’ve said so far in this thread, not any of the other stuff people are calling you out on. Don’t believe them.
I must have missed the part in 1st amendment law that says limiting media to a designated area is lawful.
@49:
Yeah why not? Those people who are there to incite violence need to see that they will be dealt with in the necessary fashion if they persist in their actions. Eventually such people will be demoralized enough that they will stand down so that the peaceful protesters can protest without fear.
caeser @ 48
Seriously? If you don’t even consider prior events, you can’t understand anything.
I wonder if Lord North had the same attitude to the actions of certain protesters.
caesar at #31:
Curious.
Strange, then, that in history, so much attention that leads to progress, discussion, increased acknowledgment of socio-cultural complexity, and change, has been made on issues of civil and human rights by not staying in the designated area, during the designated time, with the designated “approved persons”, in the designated “approved manner.”
The Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965.
The Alabama bus boycotts of 1955 to 1956.
The lunch counter sit-ins.
Voter registration efforts.
Integration of Arkansas public schools beginning in 1954.
Women’s Suffrage in the United States beginning as early as the 18th century.
Čaŋkpé Opí in 1974.
Salt Satyagraha of 1930.
The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.
The Opium Wars of 1839 to 1842 and again from 1856 to 1860.
The Algerian Revolution of 1954 to 1962.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
The Stonewall riots of 1969.
The East German protests of 1989 leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Watts riots of 1965.
The Los Angeles riots of 1992.
The Arab Spring beginning in 2010.
The Orange Revolution of 2004.
Pussy Riot’s feminist protest presence in Russia since 2011.
To name just a very few, indeed.
Why didn’t those people just protest quietly, in the daytime, and go home, patted gently on the head, at the appointed time?
Why didn’t they, caesar?
caesar, why didn’t they just do what you suggested? Why do you think that is?
Still learning,
Robert
Dayum, Desert Son.
LOL @ the idea of protesting when and where the authorities tell you to protest. That’s comedy right there.
OK, #54 can’t be for real can it? Can anyone point to a historical precedent for the ratcheting up of official violence leading to a persecuted minority becoming “demoralized enough that they will stand down” and that resulting in an eventual peaceful solution?
Masada?
Although the “peaceful solution” is typically that the targets are all dead.
Only a Libertarian…
Oh, people, quit trying to school the fuckheaded troll. He’s obviously not here to listen. He’s a piece of shit not worth your pixels.
Dianne@36: That photo (which I’ve been calling “blue-t-shirt-dredlocks-guy”) is amazing. It’s this situation’s equivalent of “tank guy” in Tiananmen Square.
PZ @ 59,
Oh yeah, I should have been clearer: My definition of “peaceful solution” excludes any which involves lots of killing.
What can I say? I’m eccentric
@51:
If people are throwing molotov cocktails and looting,then it’s not a peaceful assembly. I keep saying thus over and over, if you don’t want to get caught up in the police response to violence, then avoid the violent protests. It sounds so simple it’s almost defies logic.
Sorry, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Any alleged institutional racism should be snuffed out ASAP, but that has nothing to do with people looting and instigating violence. That’s just people taking advantage of a situation, and as long as it continues to happen, the police are going yo continue to use tear gas and rubber bullets. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the looters because nobody’s gonna give a shit about institutional racism when they see people running out of a store with stolen tv’s in their hands.
Saad at #57:
In the grimmest sense.
****
Follow up to caesar at various (beginning at #31):
Here’s a genuine idea to try in Ferguson:
The police lay down their arms and disperse peacefully.
The police do this.
I suspect the result would not be an increase in violence and rioting. I suspect the result would be a mix of somber reflection on the tragic death of Michael Brown and a celebratory street-party expression of solidarity, compassion, and a renewed desire for tomorrow to be just a little bit better for just a little bit longer.
Amended suggestion: The police lay down their arms and join arm-in-arm with the protesters decrying the systemic oppressions—both micro- and macro-—in which we all play a part by virtue of cultural infusion.
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born a person with racist behaviors. Those had to be subtly and perniciously invested into me by elements of my environment.
I wish I could say that I have not, or do not, exhibit racist behaviors, but I have come to learn that is not the case. Not because I’m affiliated with a formal organization advocating white supremacy, but because I live in a culture that—overtly and covertly—tells me and the rest of the world that there’s a melanin lottery and I happen to have a winning ticket.
What if instead of tear gas and batons and riot shields and armored vehicles, what if we took a different approach for once—as a society—and started by simply saying, “You’re right. This is fucked up, and as a culture we’ve been killing non-white people for so long—with bullets, ballots, banking, barristers, and more—that it has become all too easy to assume that when it happens yet again, that the fault is with the killed, not the killers?”
What do you think?
Still learning,
Robert
Two honest statements in one day! Will wonders never cease?!
No evidence that molotov cocktails have been thrown.
Media sources, not police sources required. Liberturds are big on attitude, but not evidence.
Ah, your real problem as a liberturd is the concept of looting and destruction of property, which the community was taking efforts to minimize, and those efforts were not being recognized by the police, nor you. You want racism, or you would condemn the killing of an unarmed black teenager, and the police response of anything other than the arrest and conviction of the murderer, who happened to be wearing a police uniform.
Oh, and the riot gear and rubber (and wooden) bullets have been out from the get-go.
But what happened before is irrelevant per the decree from the almighty caesar. The only thing that matters is that there’s looting because, as we all know, property > black people’s lives.
Do you feel the same way about police officers instigating violence? If not, why not?
Incidentally, I’d like some backup for these accusations:
Last I checked, several accusation made of the “rioters” have turned out to be bullshit. E.g. the accusation that a McDonalds was looted turned out not to be true; at least one claim of shooting turned out to be fireworks; the claim of molotov cocktails has, as far as I know, not been corroborated in any way; and this is all occurring under circumstance where the police has been flat out lying since day one.
On top of that, we know that they didn’t have a problem character assassinating their first victim, Brown, so why would we believe anything they say about their subsequent victims? Their tarring of Brown with accusations irrelevant to the original incident wasn’t the work of a single, rogue cop. It was a deliberate effort by the police hierarchy; to avoid any kind of responsibility by falsely making the victim of their violence look like a criminal. Does that remind you of anything? See a pattern of behavior here, maybe?
Then, cherry on top, we now from the multiple arrests of reporters that the police are actively rounding up and arresting people who have done nothing wrong, are breaking no laws and are posing no threat. We know that they’re doing that. It’s not even an open question.
So, when the police once again say that they were simply forced to use tear gas on civilians because they were being so violent, pardon me if I react with a tiny drop of skepticism. We know they’ve lied before; in this kind of way, in this kind of situation. It fits the pattern exactly. Why the fuck should we believe anything they say?
caesar,
Who the hell is saying looting innocent people’s stores is fine? Nobody in their right mind would defend the looters. If the police went in and arrested the specific people stealing shit (and arrested anyone that got in their way of doing so), that’ll be great. By definition, the peaceful protesters won’t be stopping that.
But that’s not what’s happening. Clearly. They’re indiscriminately firing tear gas at people who aren’t even off their own property. They’re using violence and severe intimidation on a large group of people and expecting things to remain calm and expecting people to not assemble?
So the police are just robots, preprogrammed to respond inevitably to minority lawbreaking with brutal mass punishment, eh?
And we should accept this as the status quo why, exactly? Seems to me you’re making a good argument for disbanding the entire force and starting from scratch. Tall order, I know, but you’re describing a totalitarian robocop type of police force which is entirely incompatible with democratic government.
@caesar #54
Those people who are there to incite violence need to see that they will be dealt with in the necessary fashion if they persist in their actions
Unfortunately, they won’t be dealt with in the necessary fashion for persisting in their actions, because the primary inciters of violence in these protests are wearing police uniforms, riot gear, and military combat equipment.
frog at #61:
Maybe.
But when I think back on all the times in my life when I wasn’t listening, and someone made the effort to try and get me to listen—sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly—such that I finally did start to listen (and yet still need to be reminded to do so periodically), I’m grateful that someone reached out.
Many of those have been at Pharyngula. This forum remains one of the most powerful, challenging, intimidating, dynamic, and liberating educational environments I’ve ever encountered.
Maybe caesar isn’t here to listen. What’s beautiful is that someone else might be, and maybe the counter-narratives to caesar reach that other person.
Then again, maybe caesar isn’t here to listen yet. All of us, at some point in life with regard to some thing in life, have not cared yet.
I used to believe in god.
Then I met Pharyngula.
(Am still working on a whole bunch of my other shit, though.)
Still learning,
Robert
Innocent people have only themselves to blame if they get attacked with chemical weapons for being in proximity to a violent minority?
Bear in mind that this indiscriminate chemical weapon response against this allegedly already violent minority was performed by an organization with a strong interest in silencing a peaceful protest against their earlier, readily obvious misconduct that ended in murder.
As more information is emerging it is increasingly clear what happened and why police acted as they did. It looks like Brown, after robbing a convenience store and assaulting the owner, was walking down the center of the main street. When confronted by Wilson, who may not have known of the robbery, Brown attacked Wilson as prelude to attempting to take his gun away. During the struggle for the gun in the police car Wilson was shot somewhere between three and six times. The deadly shot looks to have been directly down through the top of his head.
I don’t see how that wound trajectory, and the one striking the eye and emerging from the jaw, could have been delivered by a roughly average sized Wilson if it was delivered if Brown, a rather tall man, was standing, with or without his arms raised. There would seem to be some contradiction in witness accounts.
The angle is less a mystery if both men were semi-prone with Wilson backing up and Brown laying on Wilson’s legs with arms in front of him as they grapple over the gun in or near the holster. This might also mean the lacerations of the hand and arm, and impact on the chest, might have come from one bullet. Speculation yes, but at least possible given the information presented.
Once shot down through the top of the head Brown was essentially dead. He may have moved some distance before collapsing and expiring. Which explains why no ambulance was called. Dead men don’t need ambulances or worry about time. It may also explains the four hour delay. As a crime scene involving a killing everything has to be photographed and documented before anything is moved. I don’t know why this took four hours but I suspect that it may have to do with the rarity of such events in a relatively small town. Unlike NYC, which has a well established call list and protocol it might be expected that it would take longer to get everyone informed and on site.
Pretty much all the questions will be answered in time.
I will, singing for the audience, note that while it increasing looks like, subject to further information becoming available ,Brown was the instigator and attacker this doesn’t invalidate the perception of long term discrimination or oppression by the public. It also doesn’t mean the ham-handed tactics by a militarized police force are entirely justified.
Recent accounts (night of 8/18-19) by residents other than the police are that someone has been shooting at the police but the police are not shooting back. Between gunfire and CS I would think keeping the kids inside would be healthier.
Before anyone gets to nostalgic for the days before teargas was cheap and widely used you might remember that riot control was previously a matter of rifle fire, bird shot, and baton charges.
Something occurs to me. This argument of “if you’re around a criminal, you’ve only got yourself to blame if you get hurt” is an interesting one. It seems to me that this is actually an argument for indiscriminate violence against the police. A police officer committed murder. As a result, violence against all police officers is warranted until the murderer is apprehended. If you don’t like being the target of violence, resign form the police force. Otherwise, you asked for it.
Now, I don’t agree with that idea, but presumably caesar does. It’s his argument.
FIFY
What the fuck is this “use your free speech only when the government lets you” bullshit? Last time I looked, we lived in fuckin’ America, not some authoritarian backwater.
The government telling you when and where you can assert your first amendment right is fucking censorship.
Especially if we allow the police to filter the information and bury anything inconvenient. Then I’m sure they’ll be able to tie it all up in a pretty, little bow. And with so many people willing to help them? Piece of cake.
Remind me, how many times have they changed the story so far?
Also: no shoplifting or assault was reported from that store that day, according to the store’s attorney. Oops.
Looks like the police began an immediate character assassination.
I think this might be the most awful and imaginative paragraph I’ve ever read. Lorn is obviously quite dedicated to fantasizing about removing any and all responsibility from the absent officer. Why, I wonder, would one be so very dedicated to defending what is increasingly a clear act of police violence? What skin in the game does Lorn have?
Caesar,
I bet you say the same thing about kids in Gaza.
Most of these protesters live in that area and their homes are being tear gassed. Sound cannons are being used were their children are. Schools are shut down. Residents in the area have not called for more policing of protesters. They have called for justice to be done and that means that the cops stop hiding Wilson and arrest him. . The cops could just arrest the murderous cop instead of driving tanks through the streets, pointing rifles at unarmed civilians, tear gassing kids, arresting journalists and a Holocaust survivor in her 90’s. and grieving people sick of living in fear of the violent, racist police. There is no excuse for that fascist bullshit. Fuck you for trying to come up with one. If this shit was happening in some white, suburban gated community people like you would act as if this were the end of the world. If they flew drones over your neighborhood and shut you in your home at gunpoint, I bet you would not blame yourself.
I bet that’s a fun game though. What atrocities can you justify by making things up. I think I’m gonna take a crack at the Nanking Massacre. I always had a hunch those darn Chinese children were up to no good…
@54
Yeah, people experiencing violence (esp. from authorities) really have a tendency to just roll over and admit defeat. Especially when they hate the authorities.
That shot conveniently leaves out the fucking houses lining the street. These are where people LIVE. Their “actions” can be that they are staying shut up in their houses, and they are still getting tear gassed. That shit gets in through all the cracks in those crappy houses, because Ferguson is majority poor and the houses are built like shit. And know what a lot of poor people don’t have? Air conditioning. Temps in Ferguson for the last couple of weeks have been highs in the 90s and lows in the mid-70s. If you don’t have your windows open at night, inside temps can be unbearable. That lets in more tear gas. Window air conditioning units? Lots of outside air coming in around and through those.
When police use tear gas to disperse protestors, it seeps into their home.“You wake up with your face itching,” Moore said. When they start to smell it in the house, they turn off the air conditioning, because “it comes right through.”
So, ceasar, what exactly are the actions they’re facing the consequences of? Being at home? Being too poor to go out of town to a hotel until this all dies down? Not having a house that is completely closed to the elements? What the hell does a person have to do in your mind to deserve their 3 year old getting tear gassed in her bed at night?
lorn
There is no contradiction in witness accounts. Take your shit outside. Because this?
Is you calling the cops incompetent. Rarity? Fuck that – these are trained police officers, who are supposedly trained for emergencies, where their first reaction should have been to call emergency medical services.
So you’re just arguing for gross police incompetence. Sounds about right.
There’s a difference?
Remember, if you want to harass and threaten women seeking legal abortion, it’s “counseling” and you can get right up in her face and do your best to terrify her into giving up the medical care she has a right to. It’s fine that the forced birthers have ties to domestic terrorists and murderers. Nobody is going to tear gas those mostly white, conservative people. They can assemble as they choose. But if the cops kill a black teen and people protest, it’s a riot and it must be quelled by mostly white cops right away.
America, fuck yeah. /s
Yazikus@82:
But Lorn is ONLY asking QUESTIONS, maaaaan! He’s going to find the TRUTH about those awful brown people and that nasty boy that assaulted the poor, innocent police officer!
/snark
But seriously Lorn, go fucking shove your head in a toilet. Maybe you’ll find even BETTER opinions in there, shitgargler.
Are lorn and caesar from the same planet or from two different ones?
re carlie’s #86:
And virtually none of the police live anywhere near that community. They get to take off their riot gear in the morning and go sleep in a house undisturbed by LRADs and free of tear gas.
Also, they’re getting paid. They’re not losing time from their jobs or their school (or their jobs AT that school) to walk around with weapons in the streets.
Whoever called the nightly police riots a “siege” was exactly correct.
chigau
I bet the same one.
Also,
Fuck off, Caesar. We all know you love you some authoritarian brown people beating. We get it. Now go join Lorn in toiletville.
lorn is on planet “invent a fantasy that has almost nothing to do with what even the Ferguson police would like to claim has happened, then blame the witnesses for not describing what he dreamed up”
caesar is on planet “rant about jackbooted thugs when they might require him to register a gun but support them to the hilt when they are crushing brown people”
The two planets are different but orbit each other, in an authoritarian galaxy far far away.
Lorn,
I think we’ve found where the smell is coming from. Someone left your talk hole open, and there is some nasty shit in there.
You are a repellent liar in the service of white power and authoritarian power. Your lies are stupid and transparent, so much so that they are probably not even intended to convince anyone (gods save you if you have been put on this earth without the awareness to realize that your lies would not fly in this particular corner of the internet).
Take your fear-soaked trousers and your CSI:Lorn’s Racist Fantasies plotline back to YouTube comments where they belong.
Xavius @ 89
What gets me is the time and energy that people like Lorn and Cesar are investing in trying to create these alternate realities. They are real people sitting at their computers, defending the indefensible. I just don’t get it. I mean, I guess if their world view is dependent on a world where white police officers are always good and brown people are always bad… but why would anyone want that?
they are. They’re writing white supremacist genocidal fanfic right here in the comments.
Funny how the Freeze Peach Brigade seems to have jack squat to say about actual government suppression of 1st Amendment rights.
Banning commenters, deleting comments? CENSORSHIP!!
Arresting journalists and gassing peaceful protesters? Whatever.
Good to know what their priorities are.
Lorn, you fucking self-parody, are you really arguing that shooting petty theft suspects (he wasn’t) and jay-walkers is proportionate? As for this shot-during-a-struggle nonsense? I know you don’t believe it. Shot six times, the last one fatally, and he managed to tumble, dead, twenty feet across the floor, limbs and head flailing wildly to conceal his true position of aggressor?
Why not just claim that Brown took the sidearm and shot himself? I’m surprised that the police haven’t tried that story.
You are a terrible person.
Reminds me of the time a couple years ago when the police claimed that a young (black, natch) man who they had arrested and handcuffed and put in a cruiser managed to extract a gun (from his own rectum? it was never clear) and shoot himself in the head. Handcuffed the whole time.
I feel a bit ashamed that I don’t remember the man’s name off the top of my head. But there have been so many.
The 10 Kinds of Trolls You Will Encounter When Talking About Mike Brown and Ferguson…
SallyStrange
You’re thinking of Victor White.
lorn has been arguing for Israel on Mano’s Gaza threads, so there’s that.
@Sally strange,
I remember it. I suppose that I had it mind when I tried to propose a story too ridiculous for even Lorn to swallow, but there it is.
or Jesus Huerta
Awferfuck’s sake. “Dead men” are brothers and sons, and nephews and fathers.
Communities want dignity for their dead, universally, according to local norms. The callous lack of response and the dehumanizing insensitivity shown by the authorities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was shameful, and your lame apologia is sickening.
These corral, abuse, discredit and keep media from reporting tactics are ampted up versions of what happened with Occupy. That was also all about protecting white people from accountability. The escalation of these tactics will continue if nothing is done to stop it.
They keep militarizing police, to ,”handle more and more dangerously armed people”, with the direct, and logical, consequence being that the unarmed, non-dangerous ones are confronted with military grade training and weapons, and you actually ask this question? Seems to me, to the PD, and the people arming them, the answer is, “Yes.”
caesar:
Look, many of us know that you don’t sympathize with the downtrodden and oppressed, preferring to suck up to those in power bc you think you’re one of those elite special few, but can you take your fucking bullshit elsewhere?
caesar:
A natural consequence? Would you listen to yourself? Tear gas has been condemned in wartime and you act as if it’s perfectly normal to be deployed on civilians. Of course it’s likely because you don’t give a shit about the people involved, though I doubt you’ll outright say it’s because they’re black. You’ll continue use code words and dogwhistles (all while pretending you don’t know what either of those means).
“Ohhhh say can you seee…”
People like caesar and lorn make me so ashamed. Odds are high I’m the same colour as they are, odds are fair that I’m in a roughly comparable social stratum. I am ashamed to have so much in common with these dangerous, despicable scum.
Since lorn has presented his well-documented and substantiated account(s) of what happened, just wanted to drop these couple of things here:
– Two witnesses to the shooting have described it similarly: that after the initial confrontation with Wilson being in the car and firing a shot, Brown turned and ran. Wilson got out of the car and shot him. After being struck by that bullet, Brown turned around with his hands raised and Wilson proceeded to shoot him again. Since there is consensus now that there were at least six shots, we can assume safely that he continued to shoot him more even after that.
– Police Chief Jon Belmar has stated the distance between Wilson and Brown when Brown was shot was 35 feet.
Article with this information
C’mooooon, you can tell those rioters are prepared to cause trouble!! Look at ’em! They’re wearing helmets and body armor and carrying guns and shit! Nobody’d show up to a riot dressed like that unless they were planning on causing trouble!!
lorn, if you’re going to claim that Brown was struggling for the gun then you’re going to have to explain how his body came to have no powder burns on it. This is not consistent with being shot at close range. Also, it’s not 3-6 times but rather at last 6 times. The pathologist confirmed at least 6 shots hit.
@48
[blockquote] Yeah, I don’t care. Whatever happened previously is irrelevant. [/blockquote]
Well, of course you wouldn’t – that would require a little thing called empathy, not to mention it would put a damper on your narrative that terrorizing neighborhoods is simply commensurate force. After all, so long as you can appeal to anyone who doesn’t take the tear gas lying down anything short of reducing Ferguson to a mushroom cloud becomes justified.
Hell, if you subscribe to lorn’s twisted logic that an unarmed black men from 35 feet away with his arms in the air was so dangerous as to warrant immediate execution then surely all black residents of Ferguson must be killed in preemptive self-defense.
Forgot to preview ><
Caesar:
That’s horseshit and you know it. If you don’t know about the systemic racism in our country, then it’s due to willfull ignorance. Just look at the incarceration rates for marijuana vs. marijuana usage rates between the races. Look how Stop And Frisk was applied. Look at the makeup of our fucking legislature.
Then nobody has their priorities in order. I’d rather be robbed of my TV than my rights.
Lorn:
Rubbish. The trajectory a bullet takes when it enters the human body is subject to many different influences. The bullet could have lodged below the skull, skimmed the skull or passed through. And the only people competent to pronounce death are doctors. Not police, not even (usually) EMTs. It was entirely possible Brown could have been saved if he had been taken to an ER immediately. Not to have done this is criminal negligence from a group who are expected to have a greater duty of care to the public than most of us.
It was not the police’s place to decide this. I believe negligent homicide is a thing?
carlie @ 86:
That is very close to what has been haunting my mind since that image of a rubber-bullet wound was linked (I apologize; I forget who posted it, and which thread it was on). Bad enough for a healthy person. What if it was a child who was hit, or someone with brittle bones or circulatory issues or other issues that would make the result of such a wound worse? Using projectiles of any sort and tear gas is being OK with people possibly dying for nothing but being in a particular place on a particular day. The only way it can be considered acceptable crowd control is if you don’t think the police have an obligation to use violence only as an extreme last resort, because tear gas and rubber bullets are violence.
And I’m just guessing right now that if there’s any lingering effects from the tear gas or the rubber-bullet wounds or anything else the police did in the course of their epic fuckup, there’s not going to be any compensation for that. Seems like a good guess, though.
caesar:
And the fuckwit resorts to victim blaming. “It’s your fault you got tear gassed”.
I guess it never dawns on this authoritarian asshole that the cops could just not use tear gas.
Violence vs. violence=peace?
The fuck? Do you have evidence to support this asinine belief? Assuming the evidence doesn’t lead to mass death.
We know you don’t know what institutionalized racism is. I’m still wondering why you comment here. You’re the antithesis of so much of what the commentariat, PZ, and FtB in general stand for.
****
rq:
Well of course. In caesar’s world, the reasonable thing to do when a violent situation arises is to meet it with more violence-preferably guns. Because that solves problems.
::spits::
(maybe one day PZ will ban this gun loving, victim blaming, libertarian, racist shitpiston)
****
Desert Son @56:
I’ve missed your comments around here Robert. Hope you’re well.
I would dearly love it if the police would do this. Tensions in the community ratcheted up when the police got involved. *They* have exacerbated the situation. I hate to get all schoolyard here, but they started it.
****
HappyHead:
Sadly, one prone to authoritarian thinking like caesar won’t understand what you’re talking about. Siding with the police, despite their use of force and violation of civil and constitutional rights of civilians is his forte.
Care about the community and decry the actions of the police? Sonotgonnahappenwiththatone.
****
Let’s have our next apologist for the police….lorn COME ON DOWN:
The police chief is already on record stating that Wilson knew nothing of the robbery (and we’re still not sure that Brown robbed the store). We don’t know that Brown attempted to wrestle the gun away (I have no idea where you’re getting your information from, but I suspect its from assfax).
He was shot at least six times. This we know. Not “between 3 and 6 times”.
Speculation intended to smear Michael Brown and presented without a shred of supporting evidence is dismissed.
You have *GOT* to stop getting your news from FOX and Breitbart.
Given all I’ve read, there is *zero* evidence that points to Brown being the instigator.
I notice that in all your attempts to smear Michael Brown, you include NO links to support your speculation. Hard to link to uranus, I take it?
You suck at mind reading. Get a new job.
I don’t see anyone here being nostalgic. I see people criticizing the use of tear gas by the police. FFS it is condemned in wartime. It should be condemned for use on civilians too.
Do you know HOW to link to sources?
****
Avo:
To be fair, the owner said neither he, nor his employees called 911. Rather, it was a customer.
In any case, IIRC, the Chief of Ferguson PD claimed they store made the call.
****
carlie:
Asking a libertarian if they care about poor people never ends well.
****
Pteryxx:
Fuck. Can’t believe I never thought about that.
They’re getting paid to tear gas people.
They’re getting paid to disrupt an entire community.
They’re getting paid to inflame tensions in a community.
They’re getting paid to violate the civil and constitutional rights of black and brown people.
And of course, they’re getting paid to do that with taxpayers’ money!
****
numerobis @94:
Thanks. I needed that chuckle!
It does occur to me that blaming people for taking children to a protest zone is along the same sort of lines as the harping upon the “human shield” issue in the case of Israel and Gaza. Hey, what’s worse? Having your children out in your very own neighborhood or tear-gassing children? ‘Cause the two don’t actually seem all that difficult to distinguish, to me.
lorn:
I can’t believe I missed this.
From me to you, with every ounce of sincerity: FUCK OFF.
4 and a half years ago, in January 2010, I found my best friend in his bedroom, lifeless. The first thing I did was shout to my other roommate to call 911. If they could have done anything to save him, they would have, bc that’s their job. No they couldn’t do anything, bc he was already dead, but they tried. They responded in a timely manner. That’s their fucking job. A police officer is supposed to call in injuries or fatalities. They’re supposed to do these things. Don’t you fucking understand that you horrible excuse for a human being?!
If there was any chance to save Michael Brown’s life, it would have been the job of the paramedics to attempt. Of course the hero police officer that you’re so quick to defend, wouldn’t even let a nurse who heard the struggle attempt to save Michael Brown’s life. No, he wouldn’t do that, nor would he call an ambulance because he wasn’t concerned with the black man he just killed.
God you fucking make me sick. I’m even angrier at you than I am at caesar and that’s saying something you repugnant piece of shit.
Saad @113:
If you’re thinking of the same two witnesses I am, I wonder if lorn discounted their eyewitness accounts because they’re black women…
I cynically think that he was, in fact, quite concerned with the black man he just killed.
He was concerned that the man would be able to give testimony indicating that he had shot him without cause.
He made sure that didn’t happen.
@56:
None of which has anything to do with the the point I’m making which is that if you associate yourself with violent protesters, you can’t blame anyone for getting caught up in the police response. It makes no difference whether or not the protest is legitimately for effecting social change. If the peaceful protesters want to be taken seriously, then they should do what I suggested and keep the protests restricted to the daytime in order to separate themselves from from the troublemakers. I like how you mention the 1992 LA riots for example, as if that was a positive moment for civil rights. Like the MLK assassination riots, it was an exercise in futility as people destroyed their own neighborhoods and lashed out at anyone they felt aggrieved at. There was no excuse for the violence then, and there’s no excuse now.
gmacs:
Ah, but remember that caesar believes in a libertarian ideology. To him, property is of the utmost importance.
dianne
To be fair, they can’t really determine that, since (as far as I know) they still don’t have access to his clothing. :/
Well, obviously. However, that’s not really the issue. The people who are scared about looters usually face a different choice: Be robbed of their TV or have somebody else robbed of their rights.
You are quite right on that, at least if precedence is an indication: Georgia county won’t pay medical bills for toddler burned by grenade in botched drug raid.
Maybe if someone owned these Black people, caesar would give a shit about them. I’m sure he opposes, as any good libertarian does, the unwarranted government interference in preventing respectable businesspeople from doing what they like with their property, such as refusing to free them from slavery.
What a fucking skidmark in humanity’s pants you are, caesar.
Nope, you can and should be able to blame police for not being able to do their real job (protecting the community from the violent troublemakers whose presence you’re using to justify police violence against innocent people) instead of their real real job (brutally suppressing challenges to the racist status quo).
caesar:
Yes, you can blame someone. You can blame the police. You know who they are, no? They people who have made everything WORSE since they arrived. They do not have to resort to force to resolve situations. There’s this thing called diplomacy. Force, especially the kind on display in Ferguson-which you *should* be opposing, since you believe in libertarian bullshit about not instigating force-should be a measure of last resort.
Take your victim blaming elsewhere. It is the constitutional right of all citizens of this country to peacefully protest. The time of day does not matter. The police should be able to handle the small number of looters or rioters without endangering the protesters.
Don’t forget that, in addition to refusing any CPR and neither calling an ambulance nor calling into his higher-ups that he had shot someone, Officer Wilson was rude and peremptory to Michael Brown’s mother when she arrived, distraught, on the scene.
In defense of riots.
If anybody saying “Riots are awful” also think that the Boston Tea Party was a great thing, guess what, you’re living in the middle of cognitive dissonance.
Lorn:
Really? How’s about that Brown was falling to the fucking ground or lying on it because he’d been shot four fucking times already, and the ‘hero cop’ Wilson then shot him two more times? That fucking trajectory works, you utter arse.
CNN reports on support for Darren Wilson
Wow, look at that crowd! Racism as far as the eye can see.
How the fuck are they associating themselves with criminals? I once lived a few houses down from a banker who stole $20,000 from retirement funds. Was I associating myself with a criminal by living on that street? How are the protesters supposed to protest at all if whenever a crime occurs in their general vicinity asshole racist scum like you accuse them of “associating” with people committing crimes? What makes you think the crimes have jack shit to do with the protests? How is it OK to tear gas children because someone, somewhere stole some useless crap? How is that useless crap more important than the health, lives, rights and dignity of actual human beings?
I wonder what the woman in this photo did to deserve having a shotgun in her face. Protesting after dark? Failing to adequately disassociate herself from rioters?
Xaivius @137
The link talks about someone telling them what Wilson told them, which apparently matches what Wilson told the department.
Alright, white officer with a bunch of straight-laced looking friends has had more sources repeat his version of the story. Well, I guess more second-hand accounts by other privileged people totally overrides the first-hand accounts of multiple poor, black witnesses. We can put this all to rest folks. Oh, the friends are also saying he had good “moral virtues”.
Oh, and please pity the officer, because he has a child and just went through a divorce last year. [/sarcasm]
If he were a black person who had been shot, that would have been spun as a single parent with a failed marriage behind him.
@ceasar, there is an incident that happened in 1972 in Derry, Ireland, known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. A peaceful protest of 10-15,000 people was held, and a one-sided gun battle was initiated by the British Army, causing 13 deaths and another 13 people wounded because a small group, mostly teenagers, threw some stones at them. Does this mean those people who were killed and injured deserved it because they were ‘associating with violent protestors’? I ask, because, if what you say holds water, that must be the case, despite the fact that even the British government now considers those injuries and deaths ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’, and it is widely seen as one of the most shameful incidents in the entire history of the British Army.
This is probably an unfair comparison, but…This is a photo of ISIS militants. The current “worst of the worst” radical crazies willing to kill and destroy whoever disagrees with them. Now, note that they are holding their guns at high ready and NOT pointing them at the people taking their pictures. In short, the police in Ferguson are acting MORE aggressively than ISIS operatives.
Dianne@141
FAR too charitable. It would have been mentions of gang associations, welfare babies, and being ‘a thug.’ They would then comb through his history for every last thing that so much as looks bad (he once violently stole a pen from someone!) and then get white people to talk to cameras about how relieved they are that the menace is gone. Maybe a token interview with a black advocacy group that will immediately be spun as implicit support for the police.
And that’s the fucking CNN treatment.
It’s becoming clearer that under the tenets of American-style libertarianism, property rights are more important than human rights. caesar’s comments seem to be evidence enough of that. The only question is why.
Frankniddy@145
Because it’s an inherently immoral philosophy created by mostly white wannabe rich assholes to justify the horrible shit they do in pursuit of money? It’s pretty much a central plank for straight up institutionalized racism/sexism/general fuckery
Tony #124
Oh, then there are at least three witnesses with this same account, since one of the witnesses I was referring to was Brown’s male friend.
As for this nonsense about justifying why Wilson didn’t call for an ambulance, I don’t know a single police officer, but I guarantee you that it’s supposed to be second nature to them to call for medical help if they see someone down. Especially if they themselves shot them down. What the hell are you (I think it was lorn) thinking? They’d leave people they’ve killed on the ground like roadkill, visible for all to see and gawk at and then just drag them away later to a graveyard?
I know some of us have had fun taking the piss out of caesar, but the number one sign he’s just a troll is that he hasn’t been getting even slightly upset, despite being called out repeatedly and having choice language hurled at him.
It seems that St. Louis police have shot and killed a 23 year old black man. https://twitter.com/iamsakuma/status/501806679823249408
It’s okay though, he was acting erratically and had a knife. And, unlike white men armed with semi-automatic weapons, everyone knows that black men armed with knives are superhumanly dangerous unstoppable crime juggernauts.
CNN is calling their coverage of Wilson’s supporters “THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY”.
SallyStrange @149
As god-fearing, gun-toting Americans know: guns are necessary, because a black man has the strength of 2 silverbacks, and the mentally ill can kill you with telekinetic powers.
Saad,
Technically there are multiple sides to the story. There is Brown’s friend’s story, in which Brown was surrendering. There are several women’s stories in which Brown is either fleeing, surrendering, or both. And there is Wilson’s story, where Brown charged him like a bull, or tried to grab his gun, or something. Huh, only one side of the story has Brown attacking.
Regarding lorns weird little story about how events unfolded:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28841715
I’m no expert, but to me, the observations of Dr Baden seem more in line with the eyewitness reports than with the story as told by the authorities or the police apologists.
you’re an ignorant dolt.
what if the “violent agitators” (because they wouldn’t BE protestors now, would they?) are the ones associating themselves with YOUR group.
because that is what is happening now, and that is what has happened throughout all history of peaceful protest in this country.
where authoritarian THUGS like YOU use that as an excuse to quash dissent.
you’re pathetic.
here, let’s fix that:
Getting stones thrown at you is a natural consequence of preventing people from expressing their feelings about you shutting down their entire community and ignoring the murder of a member of that community, and then tear gassing them because they don’t do what you tell them to IN THEIR OWN COMMUNITY.
see how that works, fuckwit?
your argument is the argument of false consequences.
go away, you don’t do this discussion, or yourself, any favors by opening your idiot mouth.
There’s an interesting column on one of the DailyKos diaries (look for DK + “Seamy Underbelly” + Ferguson) that talks about police overzealousness as a way to raise funds for the town (and fuck with poor people).
It may be a bit of a derail on to somewhat related issue of For Profit forms of law enforcement.
dianne @143
It’s only an unfair comparison because you would expect the ISIS militants to have less training in using their weapons than police officers.
…and there they go again, demonstrating why once again, the media’s idea of “fair and balanced” is nothing more than a lie used to generate ratings.
one thing that would go a long way to fixing the problems in the US is if you simply got rid of the meme “fair and balanced” because most Americans at this point have no fucking clue what those two words really mean any more, thanks to the media.
gmacs,
And in that last story, after charging towards him to grab his gun, Brown immediately warped 35 feet away and got shot. Then since he was a triceratops it took five more shots before he went down. Who the fuck even believes this “side of the story”? Calling it that is so disingenuous; makes it sound like they’re equally plausible. Reminds me of when people treat creationism as another “side of the story” on equal footing.
While we’re on this subject, let’s not forget the time-honored tradition of plain-clothes police officers infiltrating protests specifically to stir up trouble in an otherwise peaceful protest.
Buzzfeed source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/live-coverage-ferguson-missouri-shooting?sub=3421288_3626788
As someone pointed out on Twitter, this is right on schedule. Police kill a black man in the USA every 28 hours.
The white guy on the left is the one who was trying to incite a riot last night. He came here from Chicago. (Photo)
Just want to note that so far, the looters and people trying to incite have not been from Ferguson, and the latest batch are white men.
Re “fair and balanced”
Oh for fucks sake, seriously?
Michael Brown shooting: The poignant signs of protesters in Ferguson and beyond
On Twitter: ‘Black lives matter too’: The powerful signs behind the violence on the streets of Ferguson
I was figuring it didn’t need specific mentioning, but yeah, I’m old, so maybe it does at that.
dianne@143:
IS aren’t beheading people just for fun; they display appalling brutality so that nobody dares oppose them. If they behead someone in a village and nobody hears about it, they fail. So they need to be nice to some photographers to get out their terrible message. Modern media strategy meets mediaeval brutality.
The police in Ferguson are pretty ham-handed about their own media strategy. They got out the spurious robbery bullshit pretty well, and the pot thing was brilliant, but firing at reporters gets you bad press and goads reporters to start asking pointed questions. The police are also unwilling / unable to be quite as brutal as IS-level terror requires, thank spaghetti with meatballs.
Jackie:
Also, how the hell are any of the protesters supposed to know who is going to engage in criminal activity and when? To hear caesar tell it, the people among the protesters who engage in looting or rioting must somehow be clearly marked, so that everyone else knows to stay away from them (and if they don’t, this completely justifies the force used by police).
As is the case with his libertarian thinking, caesar hasn’t thought this through fully. Or maybe he has and he just thinks that all groups of black people are gangs of rioting thugs who deserve to be shit on by the police. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
wait, this surprises you?
Icthyic@167
Some of us are innocent enough in our minds that we still expect people to be logical and make sense. This is the only reason I continue to be surprised by outrageous stuff like this.
Saad @147:
http://fox6now.com/2014/08/14/witnesses-to-michael-browns-shooting-detail-his-last-minutes/
I couldn’t find the video I saw where these two women gave their accounts, but the above link refers to them.
Ferguson unrest: Egypt urges US to show restraint
Saad:
Oh, I know. I don’t expect caesar to get angry over the civil rights violations of black people or the violations of the freedom of speech for journalists, nor the militarization of our police forces, or the extreme levels of police brutality in the US.
I’ve read many of his comments over the last year or so, and he’s consistently shown himself to be an apathetic asshole.
Cliven Bundy and Wayne LaPierre may have gone missing from the action, but at least one group on the wingnut side of the political fence (an Arizona crew known as Freedom’s Phoenix) has a lot to say about Ferguson (a headline page; scroll or search for Ferguson) that sounds more like reactions from FtB than from Fox.
Though way out there in right field on economic issues, FP has been blowing the whistle on police violence, war crimes (even in Gaza), and other non-imaginary abuses for several years now.
caesar at #126:
Interesting. I counter that it has a great deal to do with the point you are making. Your quote from #126:
My point about the other instances, which include peaceful protest and violent protest (more on that in a moment), is absolutely related because the protest is a response to violent conditions that resulted in police escalating the violence, rather than diminishing it.
The police response does not happen in a vacuum, anymore than the protest develops in a vacuum, anymore than peaceful or violent actions form in a vacuum.
So I listed a number of different historical periods in which a variety of approaches—none in a vacuum—were taken to address socio-political circumstances. Ferguson is yet another in a long line of responses to a socio-political situation in context, and rightfully joins the list I mentioned, suggesting that, contrary to your mild assertion that the list is irrelevant, the list remains even more relevant than the paltry time you paid it.
Your statement about “can’t blame anyone” is a hugely problematic abrogation of responsibility that fails to acknowledge that actually there are still choices that can be made. You posit police response as if it is simply automatic, as if the police are not themselves agents, which is hugely insulting to members of the human race who undertake law enforcement as vocation.
I suggested a possible choice the police might make in my follow-up post at #64. In response to what is happening in Ferguson, the police could choose to put down their weapons and peacefully disperse, or better yet, engender the tiniest modicum of community trust by putting down their weapons and joining the protesters.
There is a useless and historically disproven notion that servants of law are somehow objective and therefore not to take political position. Yet the police in Ferguson are taking a political position with every tear gas canister fired, every arrest made, every media outlet shut down, every spun statement released, every human intimidated, and every unarmed black person shot.
So the police have a choice. In other words, the police can take responsibility and make another, different political choice, and stop contributing to the escalation of ill will, mistrust, betrayal, injustice, violence, and community breakdown.
I fully acknowledge that may not be an easy choice for some of them to make. But it does remain a choice.
Put it another way: What if the entire police community, including the National Guard elements in Ferguson, suddenly just left? Or put down their weapons and joined the protests? Or simply said, “I’m not going to visit further grief upon those already under tremendous grievance?”
What’s gonna happen? Do you think that the violence will escalate? I posited that such a move would go some distance to establishing a better mood in Ferguson, not a worse one.
But it remains a choice. In other words, it remains a responsibility, which is in direct counter to your statement about “you can’t blame anyone,” and also in direct counter to your assertion that the list I compiled is irrelevant as perspective on how social change comes about.
Later in your comment at #126 you reference my choice to add the L.A. Riots to my list (interestingly enough not mentioning, for example, the Haiti Revolution, which I also cited, and which wasn’t exactly what anyone would call bloodshed-free).
By the way, for more reading about the Haiti Revolution, you might start here.
So, anyway, you call me out for mentioning the L.A. Riots, and you specifically word it this way:
I’d like to take a moment to address this. First, I think your comment is insufficiently sophisticated. I compiled that list to show several things, including the complexity of social change, and historically relevant and important realization that social change is a gradual process that includes voices calling for calm and definitely includes and needs voices that get loud, angry, and in-your-face. Interestingly, I included the Salt Satyagrah on the list. That was a non-violent action, but it was by no means non-confrontational.
For more reading on the Salt Satyagrah, you might start here.
Second, carlie at #135 posted a response worth reading. Third, I think the L.A. Riots were a complex moment for civil rights, while also saying it has taken me a long time to realize that the idea of everyone just waiting for gradual social change to come along without anyone getting loud and in-your-face about it is historically myopic and often counterproductive.
I count 20 events in the list I posted, but perhaps it only contained one when you read it. You already discarded the list as irrelevant, when the whole point of it was to counter your notion that protest must occur under conditions approved by those in power.
Want the protests to be less violent? Me, too. The police can help that immensely by stopping the use of violence: the tear gas, the batons, the riot shields, the armored vehicles, the sonic cannons, the media shutdowns, the intimidation, the shooting of unarmed people of diverse melanin expression.
The police bear a responsibility. I do not think the police are mindless. Sally Strange posed a similar challenge in response #72. Do you think they can do nothing else but shoot tear gas and intimidate?
Still learning,
Robert
@Caesar
Yeah, because it’s not like the police are going to shoot someone in broad daylight is it,that never happens.Oh hang on, it happens a lot.In fact that’s what this is all about,a black man getting shot by the police in daylight but according to you that’s irrelevant.
First they came for the Black people, and I did not speak out
Tony! at #121:
Thank you, nice to see you, too, and with good wishes in return! *clenched tentacle salutes* and hugs all around for any and all so desiring.
Still learning,
Robert
@Icthyic 167
More exasperation than surprise, this time, anyway.
@methuseus 168, well I *have* been around these parts long enough that that kind of waffling shit from the media shouldn’t surprise me at all, yet it still manages to…
(Please forgive no block quoting or formatting. My phone and this text box do not play nice)
Ichthyic:
I haven’t been involved in social justice movements for that long, so I’m sorry to say this was news to me.
caeser @ 126
You have no idea do you.
You have no idea how some people live.
You have no idea how some people live their whole lives feeling they have no voice.
You have no idea how some people live under a daily grind of minor humiliations and degradations.
You have no idea how some people live their whole lives feeling at best distrusted and at worst feared by those in authority.
You have no idea how some people live their whole lives fearing that distrust and fear on the part of those in authority will be turned into violence against them.
And neither do I. Neither, I suspect, do most others here.
But when it’s pointed out, when there are images, stills and videos, accompanied by words, spoken and written…when those images and words tell the tales of those lives…when they communicate the barest hint of the emotional burden, the psychological wear and tear that living those lives places on people…some of us, those of us with basic human empathy, feel something.
We feel sympathy for their hardships.
We feel anger at those imposing those hardships upon them.
We feel guilt that we may in some small way contribute to those hardships, or benefit from others’ suffering, or that we may not have done our part in ridding our community/country/planet of such suffering.
We feel they have a right to push back, to reject the authority which has placed them in such hardship, to resist the rules imposed by that authority, to declare that authority illegitimate because it no longer enjoys the consent of the governed.
But you don’t feel any of that do you?
In Ferguson the violence of the state created the violence of the street
Tony:
here’s a big one for you to check out for history’s sake then:
COINTELPRO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
more:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch14.html
frankniddy
In addition to what Xaverius said, libertarians claim that human rights are a subset of property rights (the property in question being your body), which are the only real rights. And, like other property rights that libertarians champion, the person who has rights to the ‘property’ and the person who’s actually living in it are often not the same person, and can be transferred around between third parties without consulting that person. So, basically, you have all the human rights you can afford. Better buy the right to have property fast, or you won’t be able to afford any others. They’re actually proud of this philosophy.
Ichthyic#164
You don’t have to be old, you just have to be paying attention; there was a lot of that going on during the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, widely publicised in alternative media, and the the A20 protests in Quebec 2 years later. Also a lot of less-publicised incidents from years before and after. But it always merits mentioning anytime demonstrators are accused of ‘becoming violent’ or the like. Sure, it isn’t always the case, sometimes it’s freelance assholes, but in the cases I’ve personally familiarized myself with it’s been agent provocateurs (or at least a pretty strong probability of same) more often than not.
caesar, lorn
You’re both wretched shitsacks whose existence brings shame to our entire phylum.
Tony @178
There were suspicions of this in Ferguson; had a tweet a couple of days ago but it has since been misplaced.
I’m watching the unfolding news of another black man shot dead, from the UK, and I’m so angry and upset, affected in a way I’ve never been by a story like this. I don’t have anything else to add, just my support to everyone in the US hurting over this.
Arrested for being out at night without Free Papers.
One of the people being arrested is EyeFloodPanties, the young man in the iconic photo throwing the tear gas canister away from himself and other protesters. The woman in the other photo, she gets a rifle in the face, and a line of fucking cops converging on her.
Caesar:
“I could be well moved, if I were as you:
moved influenced, affected
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
pray entreat, beg, appeal
But I am constant as the northern star… ”
a nym aptly chosen, it seems.
Dragging out the white man’s burden:
Missouri lt. gov.: We need ‘Anglo-American’ justice in Ferguson, not racial protests
This is 2014, right?
AsqJames:
Eloquently stated. Thank you for that.
depends on who you ask, apparently.
@Saad #22: At every single protest I have ever been to, police have tried to confiscate any recording devices (including those of professional media employees) once the protest has been declared an “unlawful assembly”, becasue reasons. It’s a patently illegal violation of both Constitutional law and any number of federal, state, and municipal statutes, but somehow the cops never really try to arrest each other. Shocking, I know. There often aren’t any charges, and corporations with lawyers on retainer can usually get their equipment back later (sometimes individuals can as well, once released, or once the protest has been dispersed if they managed to avoid arrest), though usually with all content erased (though sometimes it’s recoverable – in my experience, police departments don’t attempt to secure-erase confiscated digital storage media, usually it’s just the built-in delete function on the camera or a reformat of the memory card).
I’m an amateur photographer, and I’ve done a fair amount of volunteer photography/videography work at demonstrations. If possible, I always try to set up at least a two-tiered system where the primary photographer is backed by a second photographer some distance away, so that any harassment/arrest/equipment confiscation to which the primary is subject can be captured. It’s also useful to have media runners who can get film, tapes, memory cards, etc. away from the protest in case the police start rioting and/or confiscating everything. These days, I suggest having media runners drop stuff off at location with a landline internet connection (authorities who wish to enforce a media blackout have shown they they’re more likely to shut down mobile OTA networks first, either officially or with local jamming, so relying on them for publishing breaking news can be problematic) so that it can be uploaded to off-site storage, preferably in a very different legal jurisdiction. Someone halfway across the country – or world – can then be the one sorting through the content and posting it to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. without the concern/pressure of immediate arrest and detention.
Tony! @ 166
Presumably via the same mechanism by which people will automagically know which companies pollute the environment and thus won’t buy from them, etc. in caesar’s libertarian utopia.
Inaji @ 187
The Lt. Gov. from your link: “we do not do justice in the streets.” Seems a few people ostensibly under his command didn’t get that memo.
Seven of Mine:
Yeah. They don’t do justice at all.
Oh look, it’s caesar. As usual, fuck off caesar. You still haven’t grown even the tiniest sprout of empathy from your black, withered, libertarian heart.
Washington post article on “How not to get tased” written by cop
Fucking hell. This is pretty blatant “Do what I say or get shot and arrested. I am above reproach”
If you have credentials and the ability to do so, now is starting to look like a damn good time to get out of the country.
from rq in the other thread: The rest of the “robbery” video released by the Ferguson PD appears to show Mike Brown paying for the cigars.
(Source, AATTP)
(and AddictingInfo)
Again, it shouldn’t matter if he had stolen anything or not before being gunned down for jaywalking. If true, this just shows how utterly, vilely corrupt the Ferguson police really are.
I think someone linked it above, but THIS is MO’s Lt. Governor speaking. In 20-fucking-14.
Talking about reinstating the curfue:
Talking about justice:
I repeat, these are not comments from Stormfront, they are from an interview with MO’s Lt. Governor.
authoritarians gonna be authoritatin’
After i read and saw some news about the situation in Ferguson, im a bit affraid that the presence of criminals in that town, atacking the authorities, destroying and sacking public and private property, could give a bad reputation to the manifestations that demand a police more professional and more respectful of all races, by making people thinking that the manifestations are responsables for all the confusion going on, when the fault is of some groups of criminals and the inept actions of the authorities.
Anyway, i hope that all this will end soon, and the town of Ferguson gains police officers better prepared, capable of doing a good job, with respect by all their countrymen, no matter the color of the skin or how much money they got.
there have been a LOT of things showing how corrupt the entire system is there, from the PD to the prosecutors office, for years now.
Jesus fuck. That article Xaivius just posted is pure slime.
Except for the cops that, ya know, do. This kind of assumption is exactly why cops are, in practice, above the law. They are automatically assumed by asshats like this self-important blowhard to be superior to the general public and given a benefit of the doubt FAR beyond that of any other person in any other circumstance. It’s like white privilege cranked up to 11.
“It’s YOUR fault that I shot you!”
RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH
But oh no. Swear words! Invading personal space! Disrespect! Whatever will the poor oppressed coppers ever do!?
The above is what cops should do. The above is exactly what the cops in Ferguson ARE FAILING TO DO. So what is the point of bringing this shit up!?
“Sometimes you have to use force, and though they probably didn’t need to use force in the case I am actually talking about, officers are almost always right”
What the fuck is the point of this article? Saying that cops in general aren’t as bad as Ferguson, trying to defend the cops in Ferguson, or both? Because it seems like both, and as a result, it is failing fucking abysmally.
Authoritarian asshole finally reveals himself. This guy is also “a professor of homeland security” by the fucking way. Holy fucking shit, I know.
Also, gotta laugh at how close he tries to get to scoffing at “political correctness” by saying “impolitic”. Guess professors are allowed to take very slight liberties with right-wing memes.
And thus the article has no point. Gotta love pointless disclaimers. This is just a way to gain plausible deniability and seem more reasonable, when the real message is “shut up and accept police supremacy”.
Somehow I get the impression that police and their fanboys are using a very lax definition of “serious threat”…..
Sophisticated Copology.
Hey, Mr. Professor of Coplogy, did it ever occur to you that abuse of authority happens to be a subset of “control”? And that it is exactly what we know is wrong with the Ferguson police handling of the protests?
More victim blaming and getting dangerously close to racism….
BAAAAAAAAW.
So the person making an article blaming the victim and excusing police abusing authority now wants you to have empathy for police, portraying them as The Real Victims?
FUCK. YOU.
Even the Good Cops show exactly what is wrong with the Bad ones. And illustrate quite nicely why they get away with what they do, and why people are fucking outraged by the shit they are pulling.
Inaji #161
And I want to note that the person was identified as being part of the Revolutionary Communist Party. (RCP)
If the RCP sounds familiar to some of the old timers here, that is because there was a bit of a fracas a few years ago when PZ wrote a post about a Sunsara Taylor speech. In recent weeks, her group, Stop Patriarchy, has angered pro choice organizations because of their tactics of raising money from pro choice people that goes to SP and the RCP. They also angered people because they compare anti-abortion laws to slavery. And today, Sunsara Taylor has been defending the RCP in Ferguson because they are fermenting “revolution”.
(Yes, I did call out PZ for suggesting the people in Chicago/Evanston attend her speech. Not because of a free speech issue and some people tried to think of it. Because Sunsara Taylor and the RCP has been pulling this shit for decades.)
Pteryxx @196:
My opinion on the shitstorm in Ferguson has nothing to do with the robbery, so this really doesn’t matter to me much, but I can’t quite figure out what’s going on in the video. I don’t see any exchange of money. Maybe it’s my eyes. Maybe it’s the quality of the video. ::shrugs::
Inaji #187
I will go one further, he wants Confederate justice. And, yes, it is 2014. And for a large percentage of the US population in 2014, the real US is Confederate.
wait….
so is this authoritarian shiny copper actually admitting that it’s NOT ambiguous in this case?
that says a lot, right there.
I’d have to say that even mr “I’m so persecuted” cop thinks Wilson is guilty.
fernando:
Please read up more on the events. The people protesting have valid reasons to be pissed off, and I’m rather tired of LOOTING and RIOTING distracting from the violations of civil and constitutional rights going on in Ferguson and across the country. Don’t fall for the narrative the media is putting forth.
That’s one of the big problems with the mainstream media. Many outlets are showing the small amount of looting and rioting, but framing it in such a way as to make people think that such actions are representative of the protesters. They aren’t. The vast majority of protesters are non-violent and engaged in peaceful protests. As mentioned in this thread and elsewhere, a *lot* of the looters are out of towners who are not affiliated with the protesters. The media (and people like caesar) continue painting the protesters as being associated with them, which is disgusting and dishonest.
As for the reaction of the public, they need to stop being so gullible, swallowing every bit of tripe put out by certain outlets. They need to learn to exercise skepticism and critical thinking skills, and perhaps search outside of FOX News, ABC, NBC, CNN and other typical news sources. Then they might see that the police are responding with excessive force towards the protesters and that the looters do not represent the community of Ferguson.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Neither the clerk NOR the store owner called the cops to report a robbery, nor did they even say there WAS a robbery, even after the cops showed up based on a store patron’s call.
like you said, there is no point in even discussing the video, really, except as a distraction.
rq has been gathering some good links in the other thread.
THIS, is what it’s all about:
https://twitter.com/ItzShowtim3/status/501547744935542784/photo/1
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/19/ferguson-looting-national-guard-black-citizens-get-by
for anyone who thinks this is random looting and violence… PLEASE FUCKING AT LEAST READ THESE.
btw, notes on those links:
the first is a tweet by the owner of the first store that was burned.
the second, note, is NOT an american media publication.
in fact, most of the accurate in depth journalism on this is being done by media OUTSIDE of the US.
And social media is being used to spread the stories and allowing eyewitnesses to record and transmit what is happening.
Which is something that people in the US never had before when past unrest were suppressed; from rebelling unpaid soldiers of Shay’s Rebellion, labor uprisings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the bombing of Tulsa in 1921 and the LA Riots of 1992.
It’s not a good idea to take your small children to a protest when that same protest has erupted into a dangerous situation each and every previous night.
This is just common sense. If you want to bear the risk and protest, then go ahead, but leave children too young to understand the risks at home.
Now, of course, there SHOULDN’T be any risk associated with peaceful protest. However, right or wrong, in this case all evidence suggests that night-time protests in the near future in Ferguson have a high likelihood of becoming dangerous (especially to small children).
Comparisons to the situation in Gaza are ridiculous.
By the way, here is some good stuff from wikipedia’s summary of good ol’ Gubner Nixon
Also, the governor’s website in a nutshell, in his own words:
http://governor.mo.gov/about-governor
Does not seem to care about the massive racial issues in his state. And seems to only care about poor people insofar as making sure that they can get health care, but doesn’t actually seem to care much beyond that.
I admit he isn’t complete slime. He is a Democrat after all, so he does actually do some good. But he and Obama are doing a damn fine job of showing that that isn’t good enough.
Jeff S
This is happening largely in a residential neighborhood, genius. People are getting teargassed without leaving their own homes. Which you’d know if you’d read the thread, which you’d have done if you gave a shit about what’s actually happening.
Victim blaming. Always looks the same.
Jeff S
Your armchair expertise in child rearing and living in a fucking police state is noted but irrelevant. “Common sense” is just a convenient way to assert that your personal opinion is sacrosanct without actually having to bother with making your point.
So obviously the solution is to just not leave the house at night. Thank you for your practical and universally applicable advice. You are incredibly helpful and your input isn’t looking like an attempt to the blame the victim and diminish police brutality at all. Great work.
“Don’t bring your children out at night it is way too dangerous!”
“Oh come now, it isn’t THAT bad out there!”
Pick a narrative and stick with it, you disingenuous fucker.
Jeff S, please, ignore the fact that the firing of tear gas and rubber bullets has happened before curfew was supposed to be in effect over the weekend. And also please ignore that the firing is happening where people (including little children) live.
Also, Jeff S, please tell the people of Gaza to not give the people of Ferguson advise on how to deal with tear gas. The people of Gaza should take your advise and see that their concern is ridiculous.
This is big time satire via Vox.
How we’d cover Ferguson if it happened in another country
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/15/6005587/ferguson-satire-another-country-russia-china
Jeff S: read the thread. Several people have posted links showing that the gas is going into homes and being fired onto private property.
There isn’t any way to protect those kids who are in their own beds.
Further, and correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve made the assumption that the people protesting have someone willing and able to watch their children. Or hire someone to. From my understanding of the financial status of the city, most people at the protests won’t be able to do that.
And further, for the nth time, there is no reason to be firing tear gas at civilian populations.
Seven of Mine
There can be no criticism of anyone getting tear-gassed in their own home. Is that what the person who was criticizing parents “bringing their childen” was referring to? I doubt it very much.
public perception and reaction differences….
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=804356659578652&fref=nf
Jeff S
Look, it really is very fucking simple. Tear-gas is not a natural phenomenon which happens without agency. If children are tear-gassed, the people to blame are the people who tear-gassed them. Blaming the parents, who were also tear-gassed, is a text-book case of victim-blaming.
Jeff S:
Oh yeah, it’s totally ridiculous, man. I mean, that’s why people in Gaza have been posting photos of themselves with Solidarity with Ferguson, Keep Resisting! signs, and all those tweets from people on #Gaza, giving advice on how to handle teargas, welp, that’s just meaningless.
And you know, a Turkish newspaper had complete front page coverage of Ferguson, lots of people there in solidarity with Ferguson. Today, Egypt pleaded for the U.S. to back the fuck off in Ferguson. People in Iraq have posted solidarity with Ferguson. People all over the world, y’know, but of course, that doesn’t mean anything.
Tanks, armored trucks, armored personnel (wearing more and better gear than actual soldiers), LDAP sirens, blinding lights, rubber bullets (and many people with horrible wounds from them), snipers with guns with real bullets, lotsa cops with guns on the ground, pointed at people, illegal arrests of protesters, illegal arrests of reporters, attacking camera crews, dismantling cameras, calling in the national guard, wave upon wave of cops who have removed badges and nametags, protest sites being fenced off, people told they could not protest unless they kept moving constantly, teargas being fired everywhere, seeping into houses, people being gassed on their own fucking property…and you know what, Jeff S? That’s barely the tip of the fucking fascismberg, so perhaps you could manage to check your privilege and your bias, at least to the point that you shut the fuck up and try to learn a little something.
actually, as is usual, satire is best when there is reality behind it.
Look at how China IS covering Ferguson.
yup, instant unfiltered communication is indeed a new thing. I hope it makes a difference in the long term.
Jeff S
And? It shows that it doesn’t matter if you “bring your child” or not. THE POLICE ARE CRACKING DOWN EVERYWHERE. You would be affected, protestor or not. It is a police state. A war zone. So we are left with you, tut-tutting people for the audacity of leaving their homes, when even people in their homes are affected anyway. My verdict: FUCK. OFF.
well said.
Jeff S:
Yeah, I doubt it, too. Perhaps you should stop listening to racist assholes. Did it occur to you that a lot of children are just as upset about what’s going on in their community as adults? Did you know that children have been out helping with clean up? Did you know children have been out, handing roses to protesters? Did you know that children have been quietly playing in side streets, in between the police riots, talking with photojournalists, finding out about their job, and getting to take pictures?
Did you think about the fact that children should not be blind to what is happening in their home? Ferguson, it’s their fucking home, you asswipe. Where are they supposed to go?
I’m an old hippie. I grew up in the counterculture. I was at protests when I was 9 years old and up. Fuck you, doing all you can to paint the townspeople of Ferguson in a bad light.
Daz
Who exactly is blaming anyone for getting tear gassed?
Of course the people to blame for tear gassing are the police. In my opinion tear gas should never be used on anyone, for any reason.
Now, if I am aware of a marauding police department that fancies itself above the law launching tear gas indiscriminately and firing rubber bullets during protests each night. You can bet your ass that I wouldn’t be taking my children anywhere near that area, regardless of how strongly I feel the need to protest. The safety of my children would always come first.
Is this controversial?
It’s a bad parenting decision. It’s worthy of some criticism. In no way does this place the blame for the tear-gassing on the parent instead of the police.
Jeff S
Apart from not being psychic, it looks to me like someone assuming that any child who came into contact with tear gas did so because their parents brought them somewhere. It looks like someone reckoning completely without the fact that people live in the area that’s getting gassed.
I’m disturbed by just how many obfuscating shitweasels there have been trying to throw every distraction they can into the fray in order to disrupt dialog about this subject, and how many are ignorant and just outright deny facts that already known. What they do know is irrelevant. Whatever is relevant, they do not know and refuse to know. And there are so many of them. So fucking many. It is fucking depressing. It is a perfect illustration of why we are fucked politically. And some of it is the blame on the media, who are so devoted to BOTH SIDES that they dig up this irrelevant shit and use it to bury the important details. But they even if the media weren’t doing the thinking for them, they would still be zerg rushing, bleating and attempting to spread their dogma of The Milquetoast, trying to convert all to their militant apathy and permitting from no dissent from their party line: a shrug of the shoulders and a vow to move on and stop caring. There is literally no hope until people like that actually decide to start caring about other people again.
Jeff S
Words!! How do they work!?
Inaji
I honest have no idea how your typical level of discourse is tolerated on this site.
Of course, apparently now it’s OUR job to explain what the term “victim blaming” means.
nope. not gonna do it for you dude. Go figure it out someplace other than here.
Jeff S of Christmas Present:
Jeff S of Christmas Past:
Jeff S of Christmas Future:
Do you know what the word “blame” means?
Jesus fuck, just shut the fuck up already.
No. Really. SHUT THE FUCK UP
Jeff S @232
There are a lot of things you have no idea about. I’ll give you a hint: it has something to do with not being a willfully ignorant racist apologist.
What the fuck are you on about, Jeff S? Tolerated on this site? Do you even know the commenting rules here? Do you even know where are you?
Arrogant and ignorant, all the fucking way down. This thread is now destined to be all about Jeffy. All about Jeff S and his hobby horse. All about his one little fucking distraction, all about his desire to find one, just one, thing he can use to criticize protestors and to go on and on at length about how those protesters are wrong and bad and stupid for that one minute, irrelevant, distraction of a reason. And of course, it will also be about how MEAN we are being about his disingenuous quibbles.
Jeff S:
There may be a different in specific tactics, and the scale of the assault on human lives and rights, but there is a great deal of similarity.
@Jeff “I FUCKING LOVE AUTHORITY AND FASCISM” S
For starters, Inaji actually understands social justice. They also have been damn near non-stop reporting on this situation since it began. So how ’bout you take your tone policing happy fascist ass back to the books and FUCKING LEARN SOMETHING!
Shitweasel…
Fuck it. Asshole mode is now on. Anyone else who want to blame black people for breathing can take it to the fucking ‘dome so I can properly scream at you for being a racist sewage gargler.
I can just picture Jeff reading this…
*blink* *blink*
naw, his brain is not yet ready to parse that what he is doing is indeed victim blaming.
Jeff S
The solution to your problem is easy.
Close the tab.
This is not your kind of place.
Jeff S #228
If the children were actually with their parents, and actually taking part in protests at the time, you might have a very very minor point, though quite why children shouldn’t be just as upset and desirous to protest as adults, I don’t know.
The problem is that you chose, in the face of all the extremely major issues under discussion, to highlight a very minor maybe-point in order to blame (yes, you did, at least in part, blame) the parents. Your priorities are on show, and you got judged on them.
Any bets on Jeff S or a similar apologist likening children at the protest to “human shields”?
Just now: Alison Blood KMOX Newsradio on ABC 24 (Australia).
Apparently local clergy are telling people not to go out tonight so that ‘only the criminals’ are on the street.
The term ‘violent riots’ is still being used a lot, though I never see scenes of violent protestors – just people being dragged away by police.
“Oh sure, MAYBE the police shouldn’t be indiscriminately teargassing, and flashbanging, and rubber bulleting a crowd that they know have children in it, but it is the protesters fault! They brought the children in as HUMAN SHIELDS to stop the police from firing! Well, our noble police force would never fall for such a dirty trick! Bombs away! #TotallyNotLikeGaza”
gobi: Well, we all know that you can always count on the clergy to have moral clarity and to know how to best fight against an oppressive status quo! No…wait….
THEY LIVE THERE. These protests are not taking place in open fields outside town. They are taking place in town, in front of people’s houses. Read this and tell me where they are supposed to go. Have you even looked at a map of Ferguson? Do you understand how close those houses are to the main street where the protesters are marching? What the hell would you do if it was happening at your home and you had nowhere else to go? Seriously, Jeff. You don’t get to say “it’s a bad parenting decision” if you don’t even know what you’re talking about.
I keep having such deja vu at the way events are unfolding. It’s Kent State and the civil rights movement rolled into one big mess of heavily armed white privilege. Flower Power was a means of non-violent protest before it became a symbol of hippie drug culture. This image is burned into my brain, and seems just as relevant today as it was back in the 60’s.
JeffS, yawn, you’re another tone troll. Go away before your precious feelings are hurt, nay, teargassed.
I’ll take that bet, wrt to JeffS anyway. Better than even odds I’m thinking.
I see him as clueless, rather than malicious.
He could go either way though. I don’t think he has yet concluded this is a case of “human shields”, but he also hasn’t yet realized he’s engaging in victim blaming.
Please, Jeff S, please point out where Inaji wronged or misrepresented you.
And what of the rest of us who called you on your victim blaming.
yup.
Or Berkeley, or Watts (x2), or any of the other of the dozens of peaceful protests against institutionalized racism and authoritarianism that have occurred over the last 60 years.
I’m just expressing my opinion in a civilized manner. Not attacking anyone, and I’ve been accused of victim blaming, diminishing
police brutality, being an ignorant racist apologist, called a fuckwit, shitweasel, and asswipe and told to shut the fuck up and fuck off.
All for the sin of suggesting parents keep their children away from a situation known to be dangerous, if at all possible.
The level of discourse on this site is actually shocking. Its an “Us vs Them” kind of groupthink which leads to people seeing a single differing opinion and then making wild assumptions about that person’s motivations and beliefs because they belong to the “other team”.
Maybe you guys are too used to racist trolls on here, and you have become sick of having to deal with them.
I can assure you, that is not me. So please, in your responses to me, try not to be so…. dickish?
If you think I’m wrong, post a counter argument. If you think I’m ignorant, try to enlighten me.
Don’t try to shame me from posting. Seriously.
Jeff S has a lot of catching up to do, considering that on the first evening after Michael Brown’s death the local police were going about firing tear gas into people’s yards.
This is part of what the protest is about, Jeff. People are being attacked in their own neighbourhoods and their own homes so that nowhere is safe.
carlie:
Icthyic:
Occupy: Our Own Fucking Neighborhood
anyone remember this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundberg_v._County_of_Humboldt
Jeff S
We don’t use gendered slurs here.
Fucking hell. Another asswipe. Another one who ignores the “polite” responses, responds to the “impolite” responses, then whines about the “typical level of discourse” (read, rudeness/cursing) of the response.
Can we have a new troll-script yet? This one is stale as fuck.
“I’m just being a typical ignorant ass! Why are you all hatin’ on me!”
And while I was typing that we got “groupthink” and a gendered slur.
I think that gives me Bingo.
Hey, JeffS, maybe this will help you:
When you say what you have said so far, the first thing that comes to my mind is a quote:
do you know who said it?
do you understand why?
do you think his level of discourse “shocking”? A lot of people sure did at the time.
There you go again, victim blaming. Either the parents are at fault, as you say they are, and are therefore “to blame,” as we say in the English language, or they are not at fault and you are not victim blaming, as you also contend. Which is it?
And quit with the tone-policing. We swear a lot here and call each other “rude” words. Get used to it or go find a site with nanny-filters. Your choice.
THEY.
LIVE.
THERE.
Not “in the town”. THERE ON THE STREET. Look at Florissant drive on a fucking map. It has houses all the fuck over it. Most people can’t afford to up and go to a hotel for a week or two. Most people don’t have innumerable relatives with acres of open square footage in their houses to accommodate guests. They are not bringing their children to a protest. THEY ARE KEEPING THEIR CHILDREN AT HOME. THE POLICE RESPONSE HAS COME TO THEM. God, you’re being willfully ignorant.
Jeff S
“Civility” has nothing to do with it. You really have no fucking clue, do you? Read the fucking rules. Do you understand what “rude blog” means?
Again, rude blog. Have you actually READ the criticisms, or did you just see the bad words and then jerk away and stop reading because your fee-fees were hurt?
We don’t think you are on another team. WE see your words, we tell why you are wrong or why they are inappropriate given the context of what we are actually discussing. You ignore that and continue to do the same shit, and we get pissed off.
MAybe if you read the previous threads, you would see that there were in fact trolls using very similar tactics to yours? So yes, that is a factor. As is your ignoring the actual discussion and focusing on your little pet cause, continuing to insist that you are right and ignoring any criticism, and then getting all defensive and whiny when we use mean words, showing further ignorance about the blog itself.
Sigh. We try to avoid gender insults, one. And two, no promises. You aren’t entitled to special treatment.
You see, this is why you are getting the response you have gotten. WE HAVE GIVEN COUNTER ARGUMENTS. Pay fucking attention. Fucking read.
We can try but we are also not obligated to educate you. Especially since your ignorance is starting to seem willful.
If your posts are worthy of shame, then you will be shamed. Deal with it.
Jeff S @ 252
Saying you wouldn’t “take your children” somewhere dangerous is all well and good, but it has been pointed out to you many many times that THESE PEOPLE FUCKING LIVE THERE! The danger, the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the armoured trucks, the indiscriminate sonic weapons and the whole shebang of a paramilitary police gang is rampaging round their neighbourhoods.
I repeat, you have been alerted to these facts multiple times. Even if this information hadn’t been personally addressed to you here, there’s an expectation that you equip yourself with a basic level of facts before pontificating. You can’t ignore all of that and then act offended because people call you on it in strong language.
Not our job. Enlighten yourself. You complain of being accused of a specific thing (“victim blaming”). If you’re posting comments on a blog, you’re quite capable of using a search engine and finding out what that phrase means. Once you’ve done that, you can go back, read what it was you wrote that people thought was victim blaming and (if you can) defend yourself.
I guarantee there’ll be plenty of people prepared to debate you with facts and logic as soon as you bring some of your own.
Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station
Posted on Friday 8/15
Long and worthy read.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/08/pressure-cooker.html
Jeff S at #232:
Are you new to this site? If so, I recommend you do some reading about Pharyngula and its environs.
Important links can be found on the upper left sidebar. Here is where to start.
From your comment at #232 it sounds like you are concerned with the tone in which your comments are being addressed. If you are worried about tone, then Pharyngula may not be the site for you, as chigau noted at #240. Pharyngula is like the sea, or a great desert: vast, dynamic, filled with opportunities to learn and explore, challenging, subject to certain rules, breathtakingly beautiful, incredibly tough.
The non-gendered, non-homophobic, non-racist, non-ableist, non-transphobic, non-sexist insult has a long, storied, and beloved place here at Pharyngula, and until PZ (it’s his blog, remember?) says otherwise, that does not seem likely to change. Conversation here in general often employs all manner of “shit,” “fuck,” “piss,” and “asshole,” (and varieties thereof). In addition, comments are valued highly for their content, regardless of the occurrence of non-gendered, non-homophobic, non-racist, non-ableist, non-transphobic, non-sexist terms of various provenance. You also have the power to engage in conversation here in a manner you please (subject to the commenting rules) without policing the tone of others. You have the power to make cogent arguments supporting your contentions and link to sources of data and evidence to bolster your position. And if that does not sound like your cup of conversational tea, you wield a tremendous amount of power to direct your Internet presence elsewhere.
Anytime we engage in a community, it can help to understand how a community communicates, even if we are not fully adept in that mode, or inclined not to employ exactly the same mode.
You strolled onto the community stage and blamed the victims of tear gas for being victims of tear gas, and then found yourself challenged with counterarguments, calls to educate yourself, exhortations to read the full thread, and admonitions to consider the complexities of the issue at hand. And how those challenges have been expressed are as varied as the characteristics of the sea, or a great desert.
“Welcome to fucking Deadwood! Can be combative!” -Al Swearengen, HBO’s Deadwood, 2005
Still learning,
Robert
I see you whining that people responded to your rather blinkered words. Ad I do not see you actually engaging to what people said.
So, fuck off, fuckface.
Jeff S:
As yazikus so nicely put it @214, you’re engaging in victim blaming. What’s more, you don’t appear to know what that is. Here, let me help you out:
You’re blaming the parents for their children getting hit with tear gas. You’re victim blaming. If you want to assign responsibility for people being tear gassed, you should place the full responsibility on the people DOING the gassing: law enforcement.
Also, are you aware of the effects of tear gas?:
For your edumacation:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/02/14/the-desert-tortoises-with-boltcutters-civility-pledge/
You’ve made the obligatory 3 posts before opening fire already, but here’s a bit of that enlightenment you’re asking for:
Here are all of the threads posted on this blog on this topic so far:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/08/13/even-atheists-have-sacred-cows/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/08/17/time-to-arrest-the-police/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/08/17/why-would-you-support-a-policeman-who-shoots-unarmed-people/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/08/18/ex-fucking-zactly/
Read all of the comments on each of them, making sure to pay special attention to the Twitter links to reporters and photojournalists covering the issue. Assuming you’re speaking in good faith (rarely a good assumption here, given the high volume of racist trolls you yourself mention), that should be all the enlightenment necessary to see why people call your statement victim blaming (which it is, even if you didn’t intend for it to be).
perfect.
We should have a Deadwood Day here sometime, and assume appropriate avatars.
Of course, competition for Swearengen might be a bit tight.
Jeff S @232:
You’re clearly new here. Go read the commenting rules. You’re being shitty and complaining about peoples’ tone towards you. You deserve the response.
If you don’t want people to be rude to you, engage your brain, read more about this subject, and stop blaming the victims for what happens to them.
Protests are starting in Clayton.
If you are unfamiliar with the St. Louis area, Clayton is home to county government and some high-end commerce.
It will be interesting to see how the police handle protests there compared to Ferguson.
Jim did a great job with that; my only addition to it would be to add authoritarianism to the racism that underlies why america has become so segregated.
I’m not sure how deliberate the photo is but Ferguson appears to have an infestation of “metropolitan lice”.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-20/police-shoot-man-dead-near-ferguson-protest/5682726
Jeff S:
Gee, I think I was just ‘those people’d’. I’m honored, thanks.
Of all the people who blow through here, I often take great pains to be patient, clear, and explanatory. Why don’t I do that with you? Because every time I’ve read a post by you, it’s saying something egregiously stupid and wrong. I’m not obligated to be nice to you, or hold your hand while attempting to get victim blaming 101, racism 101, privilege 101, and bias 101 into that brain of yours.
A lot of us have been curating news for 10 days straight. That involves having to read a great deal of racist shit, which is stressful on its own, let alone on top of the stress of shaking, crying, and feeling like we have vomit up our anguish and anger over what is happening to a town full of people who are rightly angry over the murder of an 18 year old, then having their humanity and rights blatantly stripped from them. A lot of us recognize the dire nature of this situation, and that sooner or later, that rumble will mow down our towns. A lot of us recognize our common humanity and the necessity of solidarity. We empathize. We feel their pain. We feel our own pain. We feel the shock and disbelief over events in Ferguson. That shock and disbelief is being shared the world over.
This is Terror, writ large and inflicted on us from those who have set themselves above and beyond people in general, people struggling to live their lives, people who want to love, create, work, educate, and enjoy themselves and others. People who should not have to live in fear every. single. day. of. their. lives. Adults who, every day, know the insidious and horrible fear that someone they love may be summarily executed by one in authority, who will face no consequence. Children who, every day, know the insidious and horrible fear that they may lose a friend, sibling, parent, relative to execution by cop. Young people who, every day, know the insidious and horrible fear that someone might decide to gun them down. People who, every day, know that if they are gunned down, the media will portray them in the worst possible light, and stupid bigots will eat that up with a sage nod of the head. People who, every day of their lives, live with harassment from those in authority. People who cannot gather without mass amounts of bigots, many of them in positions of authority, assuming they are naturally up to no good. People who are always blamed, no. matter. what.
Me? I. Am. So. Damn. Lucky. Y’see, I’m mixed race, but that is not apparent on the outside. On the outside, I’m white, white, white. I can pass, so I get white privilege oozing out the ass. I know how fucking lucky I am, and I know not to presume on other peoples’ experiences. I know it’s better if I listen than pontificate. I know that no matter how much I empathize, I’ll never know the deep every day fear that POC get to live with. I know I’ll always be more accepted and have more opportunities than people who are visibly POC. I know that all those things mean I cannot afford to play dimwitted, clueless white person. I know those things mean I need to listen all the time, I need to read, I need to learn, I need to educate myself and educate others.
You, Jeff S, have had absolutely nothing to say about any of that. No, what was important to you was to nitpick and criticize people in an impossible situation. That certainly paints you in a very bad light, and no one is obliged to suffer your foolishness kindly.
Might we have something a little more on topic for a moment?
I understand the police in Ferguson have put up “checkpoints” around the town and are preventing citizens (who they have no evidence to believe are planning to engage in criminal activity), including journalists, from entering the area.
Is this legal?
Has anything the fucking police been doing in Ferguson been legal?
Inaji @276:
Well said and appreciated my friend.
awakeinmo, good to see you here, and I’m relieved, too – glad you’re safe.
@ Lofty:
That’s it huh. THAT’S what the St Louis PD considers a “Much more informative response”.
Ok, if that’s all the detail, then I have to wonder….
police had time to surround the suspect, suspect had not and was not harming anyone at the time.
So… no tasers then. no pepper spray, no other thought that to give the suspect what he asked for:
“Shoot me!”
uh huh.
Great example of advanced policing methods on display there in St Louis.
*HEADDESK*
To cut through the “Tone-Trolling” crap, lets break down this point and the arguments present against it.
My point:
Counterpoint #1:
This is not whom the original Tweeter is criticizing. There are are images of children standing with parents in the street amongst protesters. That is what is up for debate here.
Here are some that were apparently impacted by tear gas. Absolutely Terrible.
Counterpoint #2:
The police do bear ALL of the responsibility for firing the gas, bullets and whatever harm this causes to whomever it harms. In no way is a mother who brings her children to a protest RESPONSIBLE for any injuries they sustain by accident, or by malice. The question is not to assign blame, the question is if it is a good idea to take your children to a protest, when “that same protest has erupted into a dangerous situation each and every previous night”.
Counterpoint #3
There were in fact children on the streets taking part in the protests with their parents.
It truly is only a minor point, of course. It’s not even on the same planet as the other issues at stake here.
However, my decision to comment on it was not because I have a desire to blame the parents, nor because I wish to distract from other issues (as if I would even have such power), or even because that it is my priority. Rather, it was because PZ Meyers objected to someone making the point, and then everyone pretending that they would all take their children to areas where dangerous events have been taking place on a nightly basis.
I’ll shut up about this, its already gotten enough attention. If you can’t see where I’m coming from on this, I can’t really help you at this point.
Thank God!
(beat you to it)
Desert Son, so glad to see you around. Your words are always a help.
awakeinmo, good to see you too. I was just back in Missouri a couple of weeks ago; this is hitting me hard, so I can’t imagine how much it is to everyone living there.
AsqJames:
No. They’ll do it anyway, just like they have been doing. See the last photo here, pretty much says it all.
Tony:
:Solidarity Fistbump: and more hugs than you could count, Tony. I’m so glad you’re my friend.
probably.
Inaji says no. I’ll defer, but it would hardly surprise me if there was a county statute they were relying on to claim it was legal.
Do you know “in fact” that none of them were parents just trying to get their children home or to daycare? You do understand that people can’t leave their homes and go anywhere without crossing protest lines?
Lofty, considering ABC Australia reporting: the articles and updates from Jane Cowan have been pretty good – the ones from the Reuters feed not so much.
So far, what I have seen from the commercial stations over here is pretty much the ‘official’ police line.
Arrested for being outside the media pen. Because, you know, journalists really need to be penned up to do their job properly.
@Goodbye Enemy Janine,
Well I take for granted that shooting unarmed people, tear gassing peaceful protesters, and a whole load of other shit they’re pulling are, at least technically, illegal (though caeser, lorn and Jeff S make me wonder). I just wasn’t sure whether police (or other authorities) in the US have the technical right to prevent people from using a whole load of public highways.
JeffS… someday you might actually understand what victim blaming means.
until you do, suggest you keep your opinions directed to people who actually are familiar with you. Because in public?
They aren’t helpful. At all.
Jeff S.
That is assigning blame.
Jeff S #282
and then everyone pretending that they would all take their children to areas where dangerous events have been taking place on a nightly basis.
Are you related to the bastard who told my mate who lost a son when the motorcycle they were riding was hit by a drunk truck-driver, that he shouldn’t have taken his child out on that “dangerous motorbike”?
Good. Fuck off.
Thanks Inaji & Ichthyic
Avo:
Yeah. That ‘First Amendment Area’ sign makes me despair. And even that wasn’t acceptable last night. Journalists were arrested, with emphasis on the photojournalists. How are they supposed to do their job from a pen? I’m a photographer, and you go where the photos are, you don’t sit on your arse waiting for them to come to you. Late last night, the journalists in the pen were told to leave, with guns pointed at them. Townspeople were begging them to stay, out of fear of what might happen with no media presence.
Jeff S:
Please take your whining elsewhere. And read up on ‘victim blaming’. I provided a link and a handy definition for you upthread.
Ad I pointed out that when there was a curfew for the citizens, the police started firing tear gas and rubber bullets before curfew.
And yet you were assigning blame. And only pulled away from making a blanket statement when you were called on it.
Please point out who pretended that they would take their children into a dangerous situation.
Also, you did something that most trolls end up doing. (pst… It’s PZ Myers.)
Also, funny how you dropped your Gaza objection.
Fuck off, shitheel.
cut through does not mean “ignore”.
“ignore” was the word you should be using there. You know, like you ignored why it was brought up.
likewise.
Jeff S:
I think you’re at the wrong blog. For one, you’re whining about tone. For another, you apparently thought you stopped at a blog by some person named ‘Meyers’.
And way to miss my original point that the parents may need to have their children with them because someone like a babysitter may not be possible to obtain.
Would I take my (hypothetical) children there? No. But I also wouldn’t take myself there because I am a chickenshit. And because I have lung issues that breathing any amount of that stuff would likely land me in a hospital.
So I do what I can. Which is limited to supporting those out there in part by assuming they know their family, situation, and town better than I possibly can from the other side of the country.
Inaji @280
No worries. I live on the south end of St. Louis. It is very sad to see my “town” (St, Louis area) go through this though.
carlie @ 283
I think most people (well, I would hope that most people) are heartbroken, angry, and yearning for a change. But honestly, there are plenty of old white people nearby who don’t really get it. You may be familiar with the segregation in the St. Louis area? Yeesh.
Jeff S @282
Even if they took their kids out of their homes, their homes are still in the area that’s being gassed. That shit gets inside their houses. It’s hot. They’re poor. They don’t have A/C. Their windows are open. STAYING HOME WOULD NOT HAVE HELPED THEM AVOID THE TEAR GAS. They still have to live and work and exist on a daily basis in this area. As carlie pointed out, they can’t get anywhere without crossing into the areas where the protests are going on. You. Are. Talking. Out. Of. Your. Ass.
Inaji:
Shit like this just makes me want to through up my hands and say, “Fuck this. We deserve to go extinct.” I think I’ve been politically aware much of my adult life. But I swear, these last 6 years are even worse than the Bush years.
It’s like we’re trying to fuck over as many people as we can before civilization implodes.
Jeff S at #252:
Are you familiar with any of the research literature from educational psychology? If so, you may be aware that, contrary to earlier pedagogical models where agency was invested in instructors, learning is an active process, situated in a socially-mediated environment in which the learner is an agent directing the learning. Counterpoints and contentions against what you have offered have been posted not just in this thread but others, and now links have been provided for those.
You have an opportunity to be an active learner, an agent guiding your own knowledge building. Information can be provided here, but the agency for enlightenment is you actively engaging with the material: reading, following the links, more reading, still more reading, considering the counterarguments (regardless of whether they contain the word “shit”), looking for authentic narratives from the individuals where these events are happening (like, say the Tweets from the people in Ferguson getting tear-gassed?), yet still more reading.
It’s not up to us to enlighten you. It is up to you to engage with the information and build knowledge as a way to enlighten yourself.
If you are interested at all in reading more about the learning process and agency perspective I mentioned, here are some references that you might find useful as a start (in APA style, as that is what I am familiar with):
Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1989). Intentional learning as a goal of instruction. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, Learning, and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 361-392). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Ng, E., & Bereiter, C. (1991). Three levels of goal orientation in learning. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1(3 & 4), 243-271.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2010). A Brief History of Knowledge Building. Canadian Journal Of Learning And Technology, 36(1).
Winstone, N., & Millward, L. (2012). The Value of Peers and Support from Scaffolding: Applying Constructivist Principles to the Teaching of Psychology. Psychology Teaching Review, 18(2), 59-67.
Still learning,
Robert
Jeff S
Another mark of an extraordinarily unobservant person. It’s Myers, says so all over the forum.
.
gobi’s sockpuppet’s meatpuppet, just for once I’ve found the News Limited coverage better than the ABC news on the topic.
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/st-louis-police-shoot-kill-man-near-ferguson/story-fnh81jut-1227030350529
Of course the great site Pharyngula does better than any mass media at correlating the evidence.
Jeff pontificates:
The point is that EVEN IF they stayed home, they COULD still be affected, so IT DOESN’T MATTER.
God damn, you just don’t get it. You may not want to assign blame, but you fucking are. The analog to short skirts and dark alleys is fucking obvious and disgusting, but you are probably too clueless to get it and too apathetic to really care.
Then why go on your fucking crusade in defense of it?
(Bolded to note in joke meta observation)
It clearly was your priority if your objection to PZ’s objection and objection to tacit agreement with that objection prompted you to focus the entirety of your comments in this fucking thread on that one issue. You are just a bad liar.
One: About fucking time.
Two: Your arrogant ignorance is still showing.
Just had the official police update on the latest shooting here.
Two trained police officers, in a car, had no option but to shoot dead a person armed with a knife?
Really?
just practicing.
really.
there is a reason you don’t ever hear the Pentagon spouting global warming denials.
When the only tool you have is assault weapons, every response requires the threat of death.
Ichthyic:
Stop trying to kill me through lethal doses of cynicism.
Fuck. I know you’re right, but… fuck.
my ass sez:
yup, they had no choice, you see. They simply don’t carry any non-lethal methods for takedown. Tazers haven’t been invented yet.
/words I just pulled out of my ass
…your St Louis tax dollars at work!
Rawnaeris:
That’s important. Really important.
Shit, if we didn’t have animals to take care of, we would have been in Ferguson days ago. (Don’t have anyone who could come and stay for an indeterminate amount of time, and we don’t have the kind of money that would allow for boarding. I don’t even know if it’s possible to kennel rats.)
Anyway, there’s a lot people can do who can’t be on the ground in Ferguson: Campaigns and Ways to Help for #MikeBrown #Ferguson And if people can spare 20 bucks or so, please consider buying a T-shirt (I bought two today): http://teespring.com/operationhelporhush1 or these: http://teespring.com/IAMHUMANDONTSHOOT#pid=2&cid=2122&sid=front
Much as I trust the laudable, public-spirited and above all honest police force of Ferguson, do we know this knife existed?
Bingo for white opinions on Ferguson
Epicenter of protests fenced off: https://twitter.com/FergusonUnity/status/501864099563581440
Police checkpoints at 5 pm: https://twitter.com/elonjames/status/501855312228667392
“Keep walking” rule: https://twitter.com/FergusonUnity/status/501887139592671232
Journalists told they will be arrested if they watch arrest in progress: https://twitter.com/aterkel/status/501881378909462529
OH NOES CHILDREN IN PUBLIC! BAD PARENTING!!! (line of young women handing out flowers at protest): https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/501890097206558720
Jeff S #202:
See that bit of grass that’s on that photo? It’s entirely possible that’s the edge of the lawn outside the house where some or all of those kids live. These protests, and the police firing tear gas, etc, are happening where these people live. I am not talking about in the same general area, I am talking about right on the street outside their front doors. What is up for debate when these people are simply standing on their own streets?
Reasons to have you kids in an area that was previously known as “your neighborhood”:
1. No babysitters available, as all the teenaged kids have been arrested.
2. They said, “Mom, can I play? I swear I’ll stay in the front yard,” so you went out to make sure they stayed in the front yard.
3. It’s not like your house is any safer. Shit, police like to throw flash-bangs into cribs, and then refuse to pay medical bills.
4. It’s better they understand what they’re up against while they are young, rather than figuring it out when they have to raise their hands and say, “Don’t Shoot! I don’t have a gun!” while a cop is shooting at them personally.
Also, there was the young kid who was arrested while having a smoke in his vehicle, in his aunt’s driveway.
It’s not like the cops have boundaries here.
Sadly even tasers are a problem, they are less lethal than a gunshot but it seems that with some cops, if you give them a weapon it becomes the default response, a solution to all problems whether needed or not. The Robert Dziekański Taser incident comes immediately to mind.
Carlie:
I choked on my tea when I came to *After Being Told Of Eye-Witness Story* … “Nobody Knows What Happened!”
When I was typing that, I started to type *Eye-Whiteness*, and the lightbulb clicked. This is the same as rape apologists needing male witnesses to accept a rape actually happened. Here, it’s the copologists who want white witnesses before they’ll accept a cop gunned down a teenager with no reason.
Hour ago: Side streets have double and triple layers of barriers already tonight. No way to drive in.
https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/501881977369554944
Adorable:
Youngest actively chanting protestors I’ve seen
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/501868645308727296
Man arrested for lying on ground: https://twitter.com/deray/status/501888092333424640/photo/1
Those super armored vehicles near a grocery store for some reason: https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501888447628312579/photo/1
I’m going to just flat out ask:
Does it matter?
carlie at 283:
Likewise lovely to see you, as well, and ever grateful to read your comments, as I am about so many here!
****
Inaji at . . . life, right now:
*stands with*
I’ll probably fuck this up, and if so, will readily apologize:
Kičhíčamič’iye !
****
Avo at #303:
Heard, with great empathy. Yet still also cheered by the thought that still in the fight, and reading about it in a community that feels like it is still in the fight, standing by in support of another community that’s still in the fight.
Still learning,
Robert
Anteprepro:
Oh gods. Tears my heart out. I wonder, how many of those children will make it into adulthood?*
*And that, Jeff S, is yet another thing you don’t seem to give a shit about.
My access to Internet is about to end.
*hugs* and thanks to Inaji, Pteryxx, Tony! and all the others who have been tracking, collating, and reporting on this for the last 10 days.
After you just admitted what has happening indiscrimately in the community, whether peoples whose back yards were tear gassed were demonstrating or not. You are one stupid and hypocritical fuckwitted idjit, whose next post should not occur due to terminal idjitcy.
Over in The Lounge, my comments here and here list different ways people can help. I stumbled across a blog where someone told the author they were feeling helpless and wanted to offer assistance. The blogger noted 6 or 7 ways. I hope this is of assistance to people.
Inaji: I’m fairly certain that for type of people who are invested in denial of this incident, non-white people only count as 3/5ths of a witness….
Ichthyic
I would say “slightly” if it did exist. If the police lied about it though, then it become “definitely”.
Ichthyic #322
Not from a was-it-a-real-threat point of view. It just smells a little of someone somewhere trying—embellishing the facts, perhaps—to imply the killing was excusable.
Inaji:
That’s truly a tragic thing to have to think about. But the context of these protests really does force you to wonder that :/
Checking local media…Apparently, the new plan for at least one organization is to pull out of Ferguson and continue protests in Clayton.
http://www.ksdk.com/media/cinematic/video/14315341/protesters-march-in-clayton-against-muculloch/
Point of order, McCulloch has total control over “stepping aside” and appointing an independent prosecutor. No can can order him to do it, it has to be his decision. Yet he says he’ll step aside if the governor demands it. Politics.
National Guard staging area?
Damn, that Bingo card is just about perfect.
Avo’s list at 317 seems pretty accurate.
I’d add:
5. The police LITERALLY told everyone they had till midnight to be at that spot. Another night said there would be no curfew at all.
carlie @314:
I got a bingo! Far right column.
not a necessary piece of evidence to support the contention that St Louis PD regularly “mishandles” the truth.
not a necessary piece of evidence to support the contention that yes, just like with Brown, this was excessive use of force requiring investigation and review.
so, again….
does it really matter?
Daz:
Well isn’t that far-fetched! I have never seen such a strategy before! Nope, it definitely has not been happening anywhere that I can think of. Such a rarity, I am sure, like a unicorn that lays golden eggs.
On a serious note: I wonder if the events in Ferguson are going to mean that the media might suddenly start paying attention to police brutality cases? One could dream.
Ichthyic @334:
Fuck! I’d absolutely forgotten the cops totally pinky-promised the violence wouldn’t commence until midnight.
Desert Son:
Nah, it’s good. I hear you, misúŋka.* Good time to remember Mitakuye Oyasin.**
*Younger brother
**All my relations – all things are related, we are all interconnected. Cornerstone of Lakota beliefs.
*looks at my own contributions*
I’m one square away from “bingoing” myself over the last 3 days.
not sure what to make of that.
We can’t quote MLK?
damnit.
that’s bordering on a paraphrase of MLK!
*gets a new bingo card out*
Ichthyic:
I think the bingo has more to do with why someone is quoting MLK, and what bit they are quoting. I’ve seen a bunch of people on #Ferguson and other feeds cherry picking MLK to justify “oh, nasty, bad, ignorant black people looting and rioting, destroying their own town! MLK said…”
awakeinmo:
I grew up right across the river. As of 2010 census: my town- 90% white. 1 town over (less than 1.25 miles away): 96% black. Yep. When I was a kid, I went to a science camp for “minorities” (girls were considered a minority then) at the local college. There, a black teacher mentioned on hearing where I was from that common knowledge was for black people to not be caught in my town after dark. It wasn’t until a few years ago, from Pteryxx here actually, that I found out that I grew up in an actual sundown town, which, although the legal stipulations had ended a few decades earlier, still had strong and lasting effects. I brought it up to my parents, and they weren’t surprised. In fact, it turned out they knew several incredibly hideous racial jokes that had been common parlance when they were young, some of them having been transmitted by my grandfather, a cop. So… yeah. My hands are pretty filthy in this.
Breakdown of hometowns of people arrested over previous two days: https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/501898062760263681/photo/1
More on a previous arrest: Heartbreaking: witnessed the St. Louis County police run up to a woman, throw her to the ground, & arrest her. For standing still. #Ferguson
https://twitter.com/jack/status/501887364453912577
And: Fuck this country. Really. Fuck.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/08/us-rejects-international-criticism-of-ferguson-police/#.U_P0dbdm95U.twitter
Seems there’s a rally supporting Ferguson here in my suburb tonight!
yeah, I figured, likewise with links to fox news, etc.
but… the bingo card does not differentiate!
:)
Ichthyic #336
I’d say yes. Not in the over-all “is that an honest police force” sense (as you say, that’s been thoroughly answered) but as it impinges on the circumstances around someone being killed and how that particular killing was/is being investigated.
From Anteprepro’s link @ 344:
Transparency? Honestly? Openly? She’s talking about a different earth, right?
Hilarious photo caption: https://twitter.com/runasand/status/501880673519800320/photo/1
Businesses are closing hours early. Entire neighborhoods blocked. Police checkpoints where ID is being asked.
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501897115182710784
I like this artwork (it’s a little morbid, approach with caution): https://twitter.com/markuspr1m3_/status/501863657966698496/photo/1
Protesters telling people not there for peace to go home: https://twitter.com/EliKMBC/status/501888269853155328/photo/1
awakeinmo:
Stand strong, and stay safe!
Ichthyic:
There’s not a lot of room on a bingo card square.
carlie:
I didn’t know what a sundown town was until it was explained to me here as well (possibly by Pteryxx too), but I lived in Alabama for 15 years. My first roommate came from Cullman, AL and he told me about a sign that said something to the effect of “N*gg*rs don’t let us see you after sunset”. I never knew if he was serious or not, but it always stuck with me. Knowing what I know now, I’m certain he was serious about the sign, and it’s one more reason I don’t want to ever go back to Alabama (not that I have any reason *to* go there).
Anteprepro:
Justified agitator (@Awkward_Duck) was the woman who was arrested with 90 year old Hedy Epstein.
ah, you mean literally, in the specific case.
yeah, then as a specific piece of evidence, I would agree with that. like it matters where this happened, what car the officers were driving, what time of day it was, etc.
….iow, all the other details that were left out of the report provided for the media by the st louis PD.
anteprepro:
Holy shit. That is amazing. Like, “Look upon me and despair!” kind of amazing.
But really amazing.
Inaji, not only must that person live on a parallel earth, but they also did a bang up job of acting like a condescending jackass. It’s a glorified “NO U!!!”, for one, and for two, such a response seems like a diplomatic nightmare. Especially since I thought we were on good-ish (though shaky) terms with China and Egypt. Basically saying “shut up, you guys are oppressive hellholes and we are better than you” doesn’t seem like a good idea. And it is utterly ridiculous to say that considering that fuck-all is still being done about the situation in Ferguson. Bring the fucking cops to justice, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t even HARD compared to the shit that those other countries have had to deal with, and yet the fucker brags about how great we are while an easily remedied situation is left to continue to fester, to burn.
Been visiting the Redhead this afternoon, and just getting caught up. My thanks to the many regulars who put Jeff S in his place, while keeping the rest of us up-to-date on the news. That is on asshat who doesn’t understand the situation, and is dripping white privilege.
anteprepro @344:
Thank you for that first link. I got in an argument on FB with an ex-BF who had posted an image that linked looters to the community of Ferguson and I told him the looters were almost totally from outside of Ferguson. Pissed me off bc he called me ignorant of what is going on in Ferguson (I know there is a LOT I don’t know, but FFS, I’ve been keeping track of the events closely over the last 10 days-my levels of ignorance about the shitstorm are pretty low). I defriended him, but this makes me feel validated.
from the last link in 344:
it doesn’t take anger or a short temper to shoot someone; irrational fear and poor training will do just as well.
The National Bar Association has Filed a Lawsuit Against the City of Ferguson and the Ferguson Police Department Seeking Pertinent Information Related to the Shooting
The temperature of his blood doesn’t matter. He still gunned down an unarmed kid who was trying to surrender.
Last time I checked, that makes him a murderer.
Oh pray, tell. That’s a bloody miracle, that is, a man without a temper. They oughta put him up on display at the Smithsonian.
This crap is wearying beyond measure. People are making up the worst shit, and it is shit, because if he actually had an orbital fracture, which is also being claimed, why flee? If he’s struggling so, why hasn’t he turned himself in?
Lies, lies, lies, and more lies.
Oh look. Fox News, home of the No Spin Zone, decided to jump in and put their own little Not Spin on the statistics of the hometowns of people arrested during the protest:
It’s a good point. What’s the problem? Assuming that all of the people arrested were rioters . Assuming that the people who were arrested DESERVED to be arrested.
And that’s why Fox News continues to keep its throne as the number one source for authoritarian porn.
in the deja vu department, I just recalled this song, For What it’s Worth.
different circumstances, same underlying issues.
anteprepro:
I like how they transition from “protestors” to “rioters,” as if they were the same thing.
Fucking Fox News. How do they work?
Inaji #360
Ah, that sounds like this, at least the initial theme.
Ichthyic, I’ve linked that song numerous times over the last 10 days, and so have a lot of others. It’s been in my head for days.
What a field day for the Heat / A thousand people in the streets / singing songs and carrying signs / mostly saying Hooray for our side…
Yeah.
And just for Avo…
The Eve of Destruction?
the words ring true, but also recall… we managed not to blow ourselves up with atomic weapons.
Don’t lose yourself to despair.
That’s my job! ;)
Tony!
I remember you mentioning that argument at one point, before the unfriending. Sorry the unfriending had to happen, but it is probably for the best anyway. There is a lot of arrogant ignorance on this issue. We’ve been tapped into this shit since the start. I know I’ve been staying up as late as possible, skimming through Twitter feeds and this blog and catching snippets from the mainstream media that are WAY less informative but still help me have an idea of what people are saying about what is going on. And yet the people who hear two or three two minute soundbytes think they are more informed than everyone else. Because for most stories, most people usually ARE less informed than that. But still it is infuriating how confident they are that they REALLY know what is going on. Fucking asinine.
Also, you will note my caveat when I mentioned Fox News’s take on that same information: a lot of the arrests are just police’s way of harassing journalists. But it does still go to show that not a hell of a lot of rioters/looters are from in-town, regardless.
I figured; how could one NOT think of that song eventually?
And in case people missed it here, the lyrics:
There’s somethin’ happenin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun, over there
Tellin’ me I got to beware
(I think it’s time we)
Stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
There’s battle lines bein’ drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speakin’ their minds
Gettin’ so much resistance from behind
(It’s time we)
Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singin’ songs and carryin’ signs
Mostly sayin’, “hooray for our side”
(It’s time we)
Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away
(We better)
Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
(We better)
Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
(We better)
Stop, now, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
(We better)
Stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s goin’ down?
Avo also Nigel the Bold
<blockquote cite="It’s like we’re trying to fuck over as many people as we can
beforeuntil civilization implodes.”>FTFY
just like The Pravda, that’s how.
White on White Crime:
Also from the last link @344:
Oh really. Will you now?
Dealing with problems and issues openly and honestly? What the fuck is this person talking about? Which problems have been dealt with openly and honestly?
And a parry for Ichtyic:
I’m surprised you didn’t go straight for the ultimate despair. (Which I love, despite the religious phrases.)
Of course, it’s much like Steve Martin said, you can’t sing a depressing song while playing the banjo.
Oh dear FSM, I am not getting sucked into the comments at that ABC News link. This one was enough:
Many thanks to everyone continuing to post news here. I’ve kept up with it all and the comparison to what the media is reporting is amazing.
MM @ 374, thank you for that link!
Tony!
When I think openly and honestly, I think:
Julian Assange
Edward Snowden
Chelsea Manning
What I don’t think of:
The country that fought tooth and nail to silence them.
shala:
I know. I am still surprised even now. Even though the media is actually paying attention, they still only pay minimal attention, and even then, the mainstream outlets still fuck things up in the name of Balance. I have never realized just how useless it is. How attempting to seem “unbiased” can actually make them LESS trustworthy.
Tony!:
But what if it’s the nice polite police officer that’s doing the escalating?
“Oh, Hai, nice polite police officer! Sure, I was walking down this obviously not busy street (which is obvious because when the time comes for you to shoot me, there aren’t a dozen witnesses). But my gram’s house is right over there, where I was walking. We’ll be out of your way in just a sec.”
Nice polite police officer: “Sure! No problem. Just make sure not to block traffic, now, y’hear?”
Nice polite police officer: “Oh! I almost forgot!” *blam*blam*blam*blam*blam*blam*
Tony!’s quote from a moronic cheerleader for police brutality:
That’s a rather incredible Own Goal, right there.
Damn! Sorry. That quote wasn’t from Tony!. That was a quote from a quote from Tony!
My apologies for any confusion. That was just fucked up of me.
Avo:
Y’know, there’s a very minor thing which has been a burr under a brainfold: why does no one pay attention to how much time it takes to cross a street? I’ve seen the photos, it wasn’t a big street, so this would be a matter of seconds. And this was reason enough for *blam*blam*blam*blam*blam*blam*? Yeah, that’s definitely the work of “a man without a temper”.
Mellow Monkey @374:
Thank you for that link!
Since we are talking about media coverage, can I say how disappointed I am at NPR’s coverage? When they finally did start covering it, they talked about ‘two sides clashing’ and how Ferguson was a ‘tinder box’ all week, and how the police are trying ‘to restore order’. And that last one I really take umbrage with. The police are not ‘trying to restore order’ they are actively preventing the citizens of Ferguson from restoring order. Total bullshit. They didn’t mention journalists getting arrested, they rarely mentioned the rubber bullets. They didn’t mention the deliberate misleading information released by the police, they didn’t mention that no report was filed by wilson, they didn’t mention a nurse was prevented from checking on Brown, the didn’t mention that Egypt today issued a statement urging the US to use restrain when dealing with protesters, and as far as I heard they sure as fuck didn’t mention that Amnesty International had a group of observers on the ground, a first in US history. Fuck that shit. These threads have been stellar. Thanks again everyone for keeping the coverage real.
Inaji and Tony!, welcome! I thought it (and the linked references) were really important for counteracting that narrative.
Apologies for the wall ‘o text and run-on sentences. I was a little fired up.
seconded.
really though, NPR died with Reagan.
Mo. Attorney General Chris Koster said this when I asked why he came to visit protesters: “These are my bosses. I work for them.”
That seems encouraging.
I doubt it was a big deal, Avo.
More Stuff:
Police getting ready for the evening at #Ferguson carwash.
https://twitter.com/EliottCNN/status/501895569393348610/photo/1
Protesters still doing laps up and down the street, chanting “no justice, no peace”
https://twitter.com/JimDalrympleII/status/501911871516319745/photo/1
A little dark humor: https://twitter.com/AnonymousPress/status/501907465190277120/photo/1
Paul Ryan Joins the Bingo Game: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/08/19/Paul-Ryan-Lets-Not-Prejudge-Anything/
No tear gas so far: https://twitter.com/WillRossWriter/status/501912565346103296
Inaji, #384:
Well, my understanding (and this is from the cops involved), is that the pair was walking down the middle of the street.
So, that’s the crime: walking down the middle of the street. Well, and potentially copping an attitude when the cops tell you to get on the sidewalk. And by “copping an attitude,” I mean saying, “My house is just up here.”
Which is apparently enough to make this nice polite police officer go off on a rage.
Oh! Not a rage. He went off on a “situationally-intense scenario.” Or something. Y’know, because a teen talked back, and said he was almost home, and so wasn’t getting off that busy, busy street right away. Just a few hundred feet down the line. Because, y’know, busy street. As is evidenced by all the eye-witnesses.
Which is why even the official fucking police narrative doesn’t hold together. There was no reason to get out of the vehicle to deal with two kids walking down a street that isn’t very busy to begin with. It should’ve ended with a cop spraining his eyes while rolling them.
Not a dead kid.
Police are now saying that there are snipers afoot. TAke with a pickup truck full of salt:
https://twitter.com/passantino/status/501884987340492802
MO Attorney General joins protestors:
https://twitter.com/passantino/status/501907019809296384
Journalistic Gas Masks:
https://twitter.com/VanJones68/status/501885490216595456/photo/1
The Thick Green Line:
https://twitter.com/kickitupanacho/status/501912506042822657/photo/1
Moar White Person Bingo (Don’t click the link unless you want to feel exasperated)
https://twitter.com/joshabbottband/status/501901473572474880
yup.
From the link yazikus provided @390:
Hi! Welcome to America, Land of the Free!
I mean, as long as you don’t define “Free” as having any kind of freedoms. Really. How ludicrous is that? It’s like defining “cake” as a baked sweet egg-and-wheat mixture, perhaps topped with a nice ganouche. How likely is that? It’s most likely just gonna be a Little Debby oatmeal creme pie.
Which you can have as much as you want. Just don’t ask for anything like “Boston Creme,” or, heaven forbid, “Angel Food.” As for the “cheese” varieties? That can get you more than locked up.
It might just get you shot.
Wasn’t the Nat Guard being positioned on rooftops?
Hate to say it, but I am gonna laugh hard if one of them ends up shooting the other (hopefully non fatally).
Tweet regarding Maddow show. Implies no fly zone is still in effect: https://twitter.com/bannerite/status/501908151449710592
300 Protestors: https://twitter.com/RobertKlemko/status/501912530802200576
Police strategy is to have armored cars drive in loops to attract sniper gunfire… (????)
https://twitter.com/RobertKlemko/status/501908463279419392
Less smoking and drinking due to National Guard
https://twitter.com/RobertKlemko/status/501897123034849280
Highway Patrol demands ID to drive on Florissant
https://twitter.com/RobertKlemko/status/501894877811314689
first response:
6 year old protestor: https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/501914620375085056
“Hottest night so far” “No riff-raff” : https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/501910722654511104
This shit is not helpful:
Shit is going down RIGHT NOW for awkward duck:
Squad cars just rolled up on us at the church with rifle guns #ferguson
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501919310877446144
Like….we’re just here, at a church, prepping to go give assistance #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/eXmDqwEz8x
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501919687718862848
Just had a gun pointed on me. By cops
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501919490729197568
Picture: https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501919809106227201
Chief Wile E, Coyote would be much more clever than that. With more boulders. And Suuuper Geenius.
They canceled Tell Me More, their only primarily African-American news broadcast, on Aug. 1, saying that budget cuts required it because it wasn’t popular enough.
comment summary:
“human shield”
*headdesk*
naptime.
Regarding the link yazikus has @390-they’ve collected a lot of Tweets. 81 pages worth starting from the 10th through today (though not full pages; still that’s a lot).
Ichthyic:
Basically. Looks like Jeff S is a dime a dozen.
Awkward Duck:
We immediately dropped the water bottles we have for relief out of fear they’d think it was a gun
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501921077115637760
“People think you may be starting something tonight with all these masks”
https://twitter.com/Awkward_Duck/status/501921397916979200
#policestate #ferguson real time http://instagram.com/p/r51j7zHLfd/
Tony! Today was my first day I’ve been able to successfully embed links (at least in a long time). I’m glad it was today. I’ve always seemed to bork them in the past. I’m glad they have worked, and I’m glad that people are reading. How are you holding up?
Armchair Twitter assessment: Seems like the cops aren’t being as overtly assholish as usual. That may be due to the National Guard preventing them from acting excessively abusive. It also might be because with the National Guard there, they can crush anything that they perceive as a threat now.
MO Attorney General Chris Koster says a grand jury will be convened at 9 am tomorrow.
Yeah, there’ve been snipers out since the beginning. < checks link > oh, wait, they’re claiming that the protestors have snipers!?!??!? Excuse me while I laugh bitterly and beat my head on a wall.
Can I just say that I feel righteous and very old after attending my neighborhood’s rally. It was on the college campus, so had to wrap up at 9. Was nice to see it in my Whitey McWhiterson town.
Re: a few references to Egypt a few hundred posts ago.
The context here: Egypt kicked out / refused entry to some Human Rights Watch staffers who were in Cairo last week to unveil a report on the 2012 Raqqa crackdown. Said report details how the “security” forces killed more than a thousand peaceful protestors (including a friend of my sister’s apparently, something I only just learned) — and in particular that the result was meticulously planned. In fact the army expected to kill twice as many people as they did. These are the protests against the 2012 coup, not the 2011 revolution (roughly an equal number died in the revolution).
The Egyptian government’s statement on Ferguson is doubly disgusting:
1. Trying to deflect attention from their massacres.
2. They have a point.
Avo #396
Hi! Welcome to America, Land of the Free!
I mean, as long as you don’t define “Free” as having any kind of freedoms.
Every single word of this.
oops. First two lines above weren’t mine, but were quoted.
Reposting from the other recent thread, my own experience with being teargassed:
yazikus:
I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. This shitstorm is aggravating, but I feel useful being able to do *something* (even if it’s just collecting links and information posted here and helping to distribute them elsewhere). And oh yes, your link upthread is immensely helpful. I clicked through the tweets I saw on the first page and then saw that there were 80 more pages to go through. Whoa. It’s nice to have things collected like that in one central place.
I hope all is well with you my friend.
awakeinmo:
How long was the rally?
CaitieCat:
Damn, being teargassed sounds fucking horrible.
Tony!
According to Twitter, it started at 7.
I’m thinking about effective responses to aweful justifications.
Is “because the tear gas is being fired at their homes” really the best response to people saying that they should not bring children to the protests? It’s a thing that needs mentioning but I’m wondering if it is too indirect with respect to the protests because if there were no gas in yards, justifying children at the protests still remains.
The people of Ferguson should not have to worry about tear gas at all. This is true victim blaming and it works because the “fear for child’s safety” is a convenient way to logically short out and prevent a rational look at where the harm to the children is coming from. It’s a useful way for the person to conveniently shore up beliefs or social goals.
This police riot is a failure of law enforcement’s ability to tell black people apart from criminals due to a lot of factors like institutional racism, resorting to military responses before anything happens, waving guns around without provocation, and a general psychological refusal to consider something like deescalation as an actual police tactic. If a kid gets gassed or shot, it’s all on the cops given how this has played out. It’s like having that Highway Patrol officer show them how it was done is making them double down.
You should get to protest without worrying about your kid. If the kid gets hurt it’s on the racist cops because this whole situation became fubar from how they set the emotional tone. But how to get around the emotional BS? This one is tricky.
@The Mellow Monkey
That is going on Facebook now. Awesome find. It’s amazing how deep the projection gets.
I’m not sure why I love this so much:
Re: Comment 392. Black kids tend to walk in the street more than white kids do. It’s mostly related to income level, lack of cars and lack of sidewalks, and maybe to culture, but it is a noticeable thing if your job depends on noticing it (I used to drive city buses through various neighborhoods). Two black kids together on a quiet residential street wouldn’t be using the narrow sidewalk — they know what is safe, they are not blocking traffic (I never saw a problem), they are just strolling side-by-side.
So I am thinking that the kids weren’t just crossing the street, they were probably walking down it, in a perfectly safe, non-blocking way, as is the local custom, acceptable and accepted. To a white cop from a better part of town, it probably seemed like a black thing.
I say that the officer was hassling them for being black, for walking while black, for walking in a black way. Technically, he was saying that they should have been on the sidewalk, but he may have had no legal right there, and I doubt they were blocking traffic (any blocked traffic would have known who they were, personally, on that street).
What they were doing was safe and legal, but it was a black thing to do. The white cop was harassing them for racial reasons.
—-
And, as I have said, the cops kept that street blocked for five hours with Mike Brown’s body lying in the middle of it, and they are blocking the fuck out of Ferguson for days now. Hypocrites.
CaitieCat at #416:
That one’s a standard at West Point Military Academy here in the U.S., as well, or at least it was in the early 1990s. A friend who is now a nearly-20-year U.S. Army veteran had the tented tear gas exposure trial during his first year at West Point. They, too, had to don environment suits in the midst of the gas release, and while it wasn’t “O, Canada,” he told me there was something about earning the right to an extra helping at chow or similar to “plebes” who could go thirty seconds (or whatever arbitrarily ridiculous measure of time it was) of exposure without donning the mask.
My condolences on your own gassing, at protest and training alike. As Tony! said, it sounds awful, just like it did when my friend told me all those years ago. And this week, in Ferguson, visited on countless others, including children. Bleak.
Still learning,
Robert
Good gravy. The cop on the TV was just saying that a cop has a right to defend himself.
MSNBC is doing pretty well.
Thanks to all here for all the amazing information.
Tony and Robert, yes, it was pretty unpleasant. And bear in mind, that was my opinion when I was literally the fittest I’ve ever been in my life, as were all my colleagues. It was still very hard to work for the rest of the afternoon, and a few people were pretty sick for a couple of days (mostly those with respiratory ailments of some type – mild asthma, that kind of thing).
The concentrations would be much lower in the obscenities the police have been committing in Ferguson, but as pointed out, getting it into your home would be really nasty, especially if you have small children or old folks or anyone with any respiratory difficulties. It’s a seriously shitty thing to be doing, and as noted, would be illegal to use in war, which makes use of it in a civilian and ostensibly peaceful context a thing of seriously dubious morality.
I noticed I forgot to define one thing – the NBC (nuclear/biological/chemical) suit, also known as a bunny suit, is a heavy fabric garment, one piece, with long sleeves, full pants, and a hood, along with gloves and a gas mask. Just wearing the gear is a pain in the arse, hot and stifling and itchy as hell. Pictures can be found here.
For the record, I got about a third of the way through O Canada in my first attempt, and about halfway through in my refresher training. After that, I was unable to make a sound, as my throat had basically closed from the inflammation and pain, and my voice was hoarse for three days.
Hand to my heart
I will never again diss Twitter.
chigau:
I know what you mean.
By the way, how caught up are you?
Are there any solid reports on the motivations of the people coming in to cause trouble from outside Ferguson? Besides looters taking advantage I mean. It’s one thing to have a report of a person that appears to be trying to incite, it’s another to get some background on them because that can be better for effective rhetoric.
Thank you so very much to Inaji, Pteryxx, rq, Ichthyic, Tony! and everyone else who has been providing Ferguson links, updates, commentary, and troll bashing. I really appreciate all your efforts; they allow me to keep abreast of developments in almost real time and from more sources than I would be able to find/gather on my own. You are all awesome!
Desert Son, it is so good to hear from you.
chigau and Tony, I totally agree about never dissing Twitter again.
Inaji, I will be ordering a Hands UP, Don’t Shoot shirt tomorrow.
chigau at #427, Tony! at #428:
Yeah, before this time I had poorest concept of its power to record and disseminate what other outlets may be unable or unwilling to render.
****
CaitieCat at #426:
Thanks for the information, by the way, grim as it is. It’s another important piece in trying to understand what is going on in Ferguson (and other places when similar things occur). Thank you, and glad you are here to share. O, Canada, indeed!
Still learning,
Robert
Tony!
re: caught up
With my lousy internet connection, I became aware of Ferguson from PZ’s Robin Williams post.
I’ve been home for about a day and I think I’m keeping up now.
Thanks to the efforts of many people here.
Hekuni Cat at #430:
Hello! Good to see you! Been terribly busy with work, hence much absence. Hope you and your loved ones are well! Strength and compassion to you in bleak days, as to us all!
Still learning,
Robert
ABC 24 TV again: footage of protestors and cops in trucks with spotlights. You can clearly hear a loudspeaker: ‘You are in an unlawful assembly’
The reporter was filming as someone was being arrested – she didn’t know why- other protesters warning him not to struggle.
Very telling: she and the cameraman visibly flinched and backed away when they though a cop was noticing them.
Oops bad writing – the protestors were not in trucks.
finally working their differences out in a shared love of 4 wheel drive vehicles.
awww.
;)
Lasting peace through a monster truck show!
Police stated that a tazer was not an option because the guy with the knife was at such short range – I think he said three to four feet.
Clearly backing away wasn’t an option either…
gobi’s:
I wonder what happened to those police batons that look like they could put a hurtin’ on someone…
Exasperation.
From this link at Reuters:
The equivocation is facile and gnawing. “What many perceive?” The implication being that things aren’t clear, that the jury’s still out on whether institutions like law enforcement in the U.S. are rent by racism.
I grow more and more convinced that a course in basic inferential statistics is increasingly a necessity in fundamental education. Hey, media! The numbers are in, folks! There actually is a racism problem in the U.S. For real! In fact, it’s so fucked up, that we’re all in it! Don’t believe me? Ask the reporters on scene getting gassed alongside the residents! Ask the residents!
Or maybe I cling naively to the hope that the reporting outcome would be different if only . . . . Maybe that’s it: I’m hopeful that it’s just a course in statistics away from realization. Fuck. Ok, have burned through my reserve tank for today, going to bed.
No peace tonight, however much I wish it for you and yours, wherever you are, in Pharyngula, and Ferguson, and the world.
Still learning,
Robert
Three to four feet – not a long time to get a gun drawn…
Or maybe they were drawn already?
…but not the tazers…
decisions have to be made I guess…
*snark*
Desert Son:
I know what you mean. It’s ridiculous the amount of denial people in the US have about racism. I touched on this earlier (in the wake of the comments by State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf about other countries criticizing the police response in Ferguson):
uh, he wasn’t at 3 or 4 feet BEFORE they decided to shoot him. THEY MOVED TO HIM FIRST. They had all options available to them, before they put themselves in the position where they decided to shoot him.
fail police training is FAIL.
this entire county PD is fail, and needs an overhaul like the LAPD got after Rodney King, only this time keep it going.
It’ s my understanding they didn’t even BRING any tazers with them. only guns.
Yeah, I got that impression too – the whole tazer thing was an excuse for why tazers wouldn’t have worked had they brought them. Lame.
Hello,
If someone here has a subscription to the New York Times, would you be so kind as to copy and paste its article entitled “In Missouri, Accounts of Shooting Differ” and perhaps some of the comments too? Non-subscribers only have access to 10 articles a month. Like other readers here, I am less interested in this article as an account of what happened and more interested in it as how the NYT is spinning it.
yeah, there’s not going to be a criminal conviction.
Gov is leaving his buddy McCulloch in charge of prosecuting this.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/missouri-governor-says-he-will-not-seek-removal-of-prosecutor-investigating-police-shooting/article20130476/
here ya go Chimera:
top ten comments (reader picks):
Good morning, indeed. :P
In case you didn’t know, police are operating with total impunity in Ferguson. Ha fucking ha!
Another eye-witness account (I think a repost), but it was linked with a discussion about officer Darren Wilson’s face – no visible injury.
Built that way.
Wearing a hoodie on CNN? Apparently, bad.
Update from Amnesty International.
Oh, and Compton CA schoolboard allows cops to carry AR-15 rifles. Because the world needs more of this shit.
There’s a hashtag PressConferencePrayers. Apparently it’s been a thing in Ferguson, and some of the offerings are… wow.
This sounds a bit creepy, but hey, if it works…? Right???
Yes, they just want to live. Apparently the pastor had a good show with Chris Hayes.
HOLY SHIT, they even tweeted they’ve been everywhere and never thought they’d be deployed in America.
I wonder on which side? Because the situation needed more equipment and more military prowess. :( Maybe they’ll bring something new to the table, like negotiating skills.
RentaSoldier?
Wishful thinking…
Some background links, awaiting the portcullis.
via Feminist Batwoman:
For those of you who have never dealt with riot cops
That list just surfaced on FBW yesterday, but the blogger wrote it five days ago, around August 15. They also predicted “free speech zones”.
via Shakesville:
—Bayard Rustin, in “The Watts,” an essay written in 1966 on the Watts Riots of 1965.
Read for the parallels to a similar situation 48 years ago.
from Freedom of the Press Foundation via Boingboing – Documenting the arrests of journalists in Ferguson
Pretty certain this is a repost but it follows after the links from Pteryxx:
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043247/ferguson-police-media-harassment
I just noticed a point in the 1966 article about the Watts riots. The looters didn’t target “their” businesses – they targeted mainly businesses that screwed their community over.
The Ferguson protests are taking place in a largely residential area. Every night, people are having to wander through strangers’ yards, drive through strangers’ yards, hide in back yards, and take shelter in people’s homes to avoid the worst of the tear gas and police on the hunt. At the same time, some houses are unattended because the residents can’t get through the blockades to get home, or because the few who can afford it checked into hotels days ago. Yet there hasn’t been a single report of citizens – as opposed to police – breaking into anyone’s home, or even their car.
Why has hardly anyone noticed or mentioned this?
Pteryxx
In the other thread, I had a link with livestreaming advice. It’s a weird position to have, though – basically, for making things more open and transparent, you become a target for the cops. So as long as your camera is on them, they have to ‘behave’, but they’ll do a lot to get that camera out of your hands.
rq – I also had a thought that all the back-and-forth MSNBC and other networks were live-covering on Monday night, where the police seemed to tear-gas the crowd intermittently (and at the top of the hours) and where they largely held defensive lines and even backed up a time or two, was all intended to smoke out and wear down as many broadcasters as possible before they could get down to the real brutality. With all the businesses closed, private cars blocked out, and protesters blocked from their homes, after a few hours of this *everyone’s* devices would be running out of battery power.
And to siege out viewers from those broadcasts, not incidentally. I discovered from Wesley Lowery’s Twitter timeline the next morning, to my shame, that not long *after* I gave up live-posting and went to sleep, the real police rioting began.
I had just posted that the police response seemed improved. Intentional or not, they suckered me.
Also, live streaming:
Many cameras nowadays have built in wifi (or you can get wifi capable SD cards) – if you can’t get photos or film directly to the internet, have someone out of the ‘danger’ area with a smartphone and send to them.
If your camera is busted or confiscated the images are already backed up to an unidentified ( to the police) source.
gobi’s : Then what’s needed is some sort of crowdsourced or pre-arranged volunteer editing team who can curate random incoming video and direct viewers to the next available stream whenever the current one goes down.
Roundup of recent FTB posts about Ferguson:
Greta Christina – Missouri GOP Chief: Registering voters “disgusting” and “inappropriate”
Margin of Error – Tyrants’ crocodile tears for Ferguson
Digital Cuttlefish – “Don’t Challenge Me”: Advice for a Police State
Almost Diamonds – Overnight in Ferguson
and one of Ophelia’s several posts: Butterflies and Wheels – Watching
One problem with these setups is range: wifi cards, phones and cameras don’t have a lot of broadcast power.
Also, I have no idea if police have the capability to scramble transmissions – I would have thought that was a military or federal thing.
I guess the main point is the technology is getting better and it is getting harder to hide brutality. Targeting the media just doesn’t work any more – everyone is a broadcaster.
…I missed a major post: Greta Christina – Michael Brown and Ferguson: My greatest fears for my friends
Still working my way through the Watts essay from 1966. This is a long read well worth studying.
Ichthyic, previous page, #448, 449 NYT article and comments
Thank you for copying and pasting the NYT article on Ferguson here in the thread. It’s really sickening how that article was written. For anyone who’s been following the events as they unfold, on Twitter and as curated by Pharungula’s commenters, the distortions in the article are clear.
I don’t subscribe to the NYT mostly because of the cost but also because I wouldn’t want my precious resources to go towards sustaining such bullshit. I suspected the article would be bad, but I am nonetheless shocked by how bad it is. Why can’t we have news sources that are interested in ferreting out the truth rather than presenting “both sides”?
Ooops, not on previous page.
Pteryxx,
I was 8 years old when the Watts riots occurred and I remember being glued to the television. Watching that was part of what makes me me, part of developing a social conscious and realizing that I was white. Still, I swallowed the narrative that “the rioters” were hurting their own neighborhoods — How could I not, at 8 years old?– and never questioned it since until today.
The public radio station I have on, here in the southern US, plays the national anthem each morning.
?
They need mobile phone charging locations, plus an off-location (but near-by!) editting team.
Don’t know about other people’s devices, though, I know when mine is online / searching for internet, it sucks batteries dry about 10x faster than usual. So there’s that, too.
The Guardian wants YOUR profiling story. I wonder how they’ll get through all the submissions?
As an antidote to the national anthem that Pteryxx is forced to listen to when they turn on their radio in the morning in the South, I’m thinking of poems by Galway Kinnel, The Book of Nightmares. Going to see if I can find it on my bookshelves.
THE MAUD MOON
1
On the path,
by this wet site
of old fires —
black ashes, black stones, where tramps
must have squatted down
gnawing on stream water
unhouseling themselves on cursed bread,
failing to get warm at twigfire —
I stop
gather wet wood
cut dry shavings, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hands
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was,
I light
a small fire in the rain.
The black
wood reddens, the deathwatches inside
begin running out of time, I can see
the dead, crossed limbs
longing again for the universe, I can hear
in the wet wood the snap
and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.
The raindrops trying
to put the fire out
fall into it and are
changed: the oath broken,
the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken
to be sworn again,
over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,
over and over, on earth.
___ _ ___
It goes on, The book of Nightmares of the 20th century, and stands up today some 40 years after publication. Kinnel is one of our political poets. Coming back to him today, after a hiatus of decades, I notice the inherent dualism of flesh and spirit in the poem… but won’t go on about that here. It is a sort of kindertotenlieder, appropriate for the mourning of the death of a young man, Michael Brown, a national mourning that has yet to begin.
Michael Brown’s funeral will take place on Monday. (NBC)
Pterryx, you are amazing. Thanks ever so.
…….
In reply to a question in a comment in a pasted article: It would be very difficult to get your arm around the neck of a big man standing outside your car window, but it is very easy to get your hand inside the front of the collar of that same man’s T-shirt, and you can deliver a throat punch on the way, and have a strangle-hold as well as a way to pull. Think for even a second before you start dissing people for impossibilities, eh?
and thank you for the poem, chimera. Wasn’t intending to sound snarky there.
Oh my gosh, with a second shooting nearby, Ferguson is finally in the local news. Can you guess which version? “Rioters”, “looters”, “shooting at police”, and then “lack of witnesses to Mike Brown’s death”. It’s just the police side, and nothing else. And the comments… Christ.
Watched the NBC video (link above). One point: the journalist questioning the parents says “… what happened to your son that night…”. Night. It wasn’t night, happened in broad daylight. Anyone who has been following this just a teeny bit should know that. But the narrative of thug in the night, of criminal shot down, of victim deserving what he got is so strong that it comes out unconsciously like this on the journalist’s part.
Some words from Wisconsin, which may or may not eventually apply to Ferguson.
chimera
That poem was… really moving. Thank you.
Three guns! Good work, guys. :P
(Also, previous link a repost.)
It is really weird how narratives overtake reality. We are the only animals who do this, who have stories that are more important than what is actually happening or what happened.
rq wrote:
I’m sure the second amendment types will be around any second now to defend these folks’ right to bear arms… Oh, right.
From PZs post on that abusive cop, a look at the second shooting. Not really agreeing with the ‘use of lethal force’ argument within, though.
Some fundamentals of policing that a bunch of aggressive wannabe-commandos in Ferguson seem to have forgot. (Also from that post’s thread.)
via some wonderful person or other on Twitter: there are now *five* eyewitness accounts of Michael Brown’s shooting, three of whom didn’t even know each other before Saturday the 9th, and all of their accounts agree.
(The Root)
At #371 Inaji linked to and posted the lyrics of “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. Chimera added a portion of “The Maud Moon” by Galway Kinnel at #473.
This morning, another reference occurred to me.
“September ’77
Port Elizabeth, weather fine.
It was business as usual
In police room 619.
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Maja! Yila Maja! The man is dead!
The man is dead!
When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red.
The outside world is black and white
With only one color: dead.
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Maja! Yila Maja! The man is dead!
The man is dead!
You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire.
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher.
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Maja! Yila Maja! The man is dead!
The man is dead!
And the eyes of the world
Are watching now!
Watching now!
Watching now!
Oh, oh, oh!
Oh, oh, oh!
-“Biko”, Peter Gabriel, 1980
Business as usual. When I was growing up, I thought apartheid was something reprehensible that South Africa did, and there I was, white in the U.S., not aware that the same kind of shit was going on right here, in the nation where I live, in a mythology where I live that has catechisms like “Land of the Free” and “Land of Opportunity.”
Tony! your post at #442 and your blog made me think of this, and thank you for those. The eyes of the world are watching now.
Still learning,
Robert
Yeah, and we believe stories because they fit our own narratives, and make up our stories to keep it going.
—-
Three guns? The police confiscated three guns? Go look at that iconic photo of the armored cop firing the grenade launcher, the one with the cloud of flame out of the muzzle. He has the grenade launcher, with a multiple-round cylinder (maybe all tear gas, but it might be capable of lethal rounds). Slung down his right side is his assault rifle, ready to hand. On his right hip, barely showing as just the top/back part, is a pistol, an automatic, not a revolver. That man has three guns on him! And magazines in pockets on his vest, in case he needs to kill more people.
And besides, aren’t we supposed to be able to carry guns in this state? I know that the Missouri legislature put through a concealed-carry law after the voters rejected it. But at Ferguson, guns are bad?
Menyambal @486, technically that pistol is a semi-automatic, but your point stands. ‘Semi’ means it requires a pull of the trigger for each shot; ‘automatic’ means basically a bullet hose, pull the trigger and it shoots until it’s empty.
Really, there was no tear gas last night?
Menyambal
Guns are bad because black people are trying to carry them. But the riotous cops carrying three apiece – yeah, that’s alright. See, they know how to use them… :P Going to choke on my sarcasm soon.
via Tony!’s post linked at #442 (thanks, Desert Son):
(twitter)
A reminder – many black people, especially young or elderly black people, may not own ID to show. How are they supposed to get to their homes if they have to show ID first?
Slate – Why Do Many Minorities Lack ID?
Pteryxx
Have any of those people been interviewed by the police??? The Latvian version of events says witness accounts do not line up, but again, they gave the police side – which means all those stories we’ve been hearing from the police (Wilson’s account, the chief, everyone else) don’t match up. When will the police/FBI talk to the actual eye-witnesses?
Oh, and any news on the progress of that FBI investigation?
Menyambal,
Thanks for your observation up-thread as a school bus driver about black people or kids walking in the street and not necessarily on the sidewalk. It’s the kind of thing most people don’t notice or think about. It’s so relevant to the murder of Michael Brown, having been stopped, initially and essentially, for, in fact, acting black.
Got me wondering about sidewalks in general and sidewalks and the South in particular (MO being a border state). What is the geography of your observation?
rq – as far as I’ve heard, none of the witnesses have been interviewed by police. IIRC the first witness, Brown’s friend who’s been trying to be interviewed since day 1, asked to be interviewed with a lawyer from the NAACP present. I’m assuming that’s why the cops
refusedsomehow forgot to contact him again.The FBI is apparently interviewing witnesses – at least they’ve stated that’s their intent. Given how the Ferguson and St Louis County police have been mishandling information, if I were the FBI I wouldn’t announce anything either.
Pteryxx
I hope the FBI get to these witnesses, and agree to interview them (with their requested support people present, of course). I find it highly suspicious that the police woudln’t talk to Brown’s friend just because he wanted a lawyer present. Guess it’s tougher to intimidate a lawyer than a lone black man. Argh.
(But yes, in one sense, the fact that the FBI isn’t announcing anything, is a good thing.)
CaitieCat, thanks. My age is showing. I did my training on 1911 Colts, and the term used for that kinda stuck.
—-
What is the police side of the story? Where is the documentation from the scene? Where are the dispatcher transcripts? The police did everything wrong that day, and since.
from Reuters (at Rawstory) via Shakesville, police brought out the dogs again last night. Along with almost everything else.
McEwan:
It occurs to me that police dogs (well, anyone’s dogs) would not do well in clouds of tear gas. I remember being surprised to see a K-9 unit vehicle in one of the police lines on Monday night. Hm.
Pteryxx
Nonsense, they have special genetically modified tear-gas attack dogs. :P (…)
+++
Here’s your Approved Assembly Area, from which you can now challenge the establishment. Go!
A few words from Rosa Parks.
Quick rundown on the CS tear gas used in Ferguson.
rq – this isn’t exactly good news, but it’s news. via Stephanie Zvan
That’d be this county prosecutor. Guardian
See also the previous thread.
A grand jury? I’m going to love hearing what Darren Wilson has to say for himself.
Good morning all. I see there are a fresh crop of new links. Thanks to everyone who has provided this vital information. It is definitely being put to good use.
To readers – there’s a previous page of comments, and it’s…