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Thursday, August 14, 2014

Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014:
An obsrevation 

Regarding the Civil Crisis of August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, U.S.A.
A Commentary
August 14, 2014

As an observer living in the same American State but not in that city, I feel like we need to wait for the outside investigation to find out what really happened there before I draw any conclusions about it myself. I recommend everyone else do that as well before getting all emotional and saying or doing something rash regarding something about which we actually, factually know very little. I also realize that this recommendation is likely to go unheeded in the future and likely has already gone unheeded in the past and the present. Such is the way we live. Some things just are, and some things just suck.

So why do I even bring it up? Because there are three things that really annoy me about everything that is happening there as it happens, and about what other people are saying and doing (or not doing) about it:

1) People who really are only taking advantage of the situation for their own careers and/or agendas (outside agitators like Al Sharpton, etc.) are making the situation worse, as usual, simply because they can.Freedom of Speech is necessary for a just and lawful society, but when it is subverted and/or abused, man, that really, really sucks!

2) That sort of includes the rioters, who really care more about looting than about any injustice that has happened. Not to mention add in all the stupid commentators (like Rush Limbaugh, etc.) who are also taking advantage of the riots primarily to benefit themselves and their careers and/or agendas. I mean, forget about what 'ought to be,' it really does seem that riots always happen no matter how "civilized" people get principally and mainly because some people are just stupid asshats, and that has nothing to do with anything except that some people are just stupid asshats.

3) Worse, the police there seem to be not just over-reacting but kind of going nuts over-reacting:

---Telling people standing in their own yards to go home, and then using stun and chemical explosives on them for being on their own properties  (weapons which are banned by international treaty as weapons of mass destruction, but seem perfectly fine to use on your own populations in their own homes in your own country, apparently.) The Ferguson police are also using those weapons on news reporters; Yeah, that's gonna get the press on your side ...

---Did you know that that city is one of many that don't use dash cams in police cars? Why not? The police chief here in Springfield, Missouri made a statement in the news on the third day of this crisis regarding what is going on up there, saying that the use of dash cams is instrumental in keeping cops honest and reducing claims of abuse nationwide, and that he is trying to follow the trend of getting cameras mounted on the cops themselves to get that kind of monitoring expanded even further. Why are they not doing so up in that city?

---On top of shutting down airspace over the city and preventing anyone, including news reporters and citizens living in the city, from entering or leaving (something not even Chicago did following the rash of murders during and following the Fourth of July this year) the police there have harassed and arrested national news reporters on the scene without cause or warrant, as if it were some third world authoritarian dictatorship and its regime up there or something. WTF indeed! When did Missouri turn into some crazy, petty little tyrannical police state?

---Far worse indeed is that others who we expect to and rely upon to keep the peace and be our 'Leaders' have said and done nothing regarding the issue for days. Look at a map of the area: If you didn't live up there, or looked at a statewide- or nationwide-scaled map you'd think that that city, a suburb of St. Louis, was within the bounds of and a part of St. Louis itself. Why have we heard little or nothing from the political leaders and top cops of that city? Why have we heard little or nothing from the authorities and top cops of that county and of the State of Missouri? Why have we heard little or nothing from the 'leaders' we elected to represent us in the United States Congress, or even the President of the United States until days later? I have claimed for decades now that what we are missing most in this country is real leadership and real leaders, and here is a shining example of that. This sort of do-nothingism is exactly the sort of thing that opens the door to interfering, invasive outsider busybodies like the United Nations to come into states and countries like ours and force us to do what they want us to do (often represented by the paid stooges of known authoritarian dictatorships whose hobby it seems to be to commit international war crimes against not only their neighbors but their own citizens.) We know that such organizations actually exist to usurp the sovereign rights of nations to make and uphold their own laws in their own lands; that's what they were made for and what the United States and other "civilized" nations use them for. Don't believe me? Read their charters, it really is all there to see.What we really don't need in the extreme is stupid, hateful foreigners with ignorant or destructive agendas telling us what we can and can't do in our own homeland, measured out to their own satisfaction and to our eventual destruction. By the way, is it irony or hypocricy that says that while we don't want anyone doing that to us, it is perfectly okay for us to do that to the rest of the world? Hmmm. In any case, way to go morons of the world ... er, 'our precious leaders.'

What is going on up there reminds me a lot of what happened in New Orleans after Katrina. Police officers and top cops behaved that way there at that time, and have been prosecuted and jailed for what they have done. I have the feeling that that same sort of thing is what will come from a Federal investigation of what is going on in Ferguson now, even if it turns out that the eyewitnesses to the original shooting were found out to be exaggerating or lying about what happened and how it happened then. Just another sad commentary on our "civilization" in today's world. Today I am ashamed to be a Missourian because of what is going on up there, and very thankful that I live on the extreme other side of the state from there in a community that is culturally and politically very different from that community up there.