You Will Anyway: Ferguson Update

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Ferguson Update

The city manager of Ferguson, Mo., has resigned in the wake of a critical Justice Department report on the behavior of local police. The city’s municipal court has also been canceled for a week, with all cases being transferred to a state judge.

[...]

On Monday, state Judge Roy L. Richter was reassigned by the Missouri Supreme Court to take over all pending and future municipal cases from Ferguson. The high court said the move was intended “to help restore public trust and confidence,” adding that Richter would be authorized to implement any reforms needed to “ensure that the rights of defendants are respected and to help restore the integrity of the system.”

Richter won’t actually take over the city’s caseload until March 19, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, but he will remain in place until the state Supreme Court reverses its decision.

RT

Has anybody done a study to see if the state of Missouri is any better at this than the City of Ferguson?

Meanwhile, after Madison police shooting:

Madison police have already been receiving racial sensitivity training, Chief Koval told the Wisconsin State Journal. However, though the city enjoys the reputation of a liberal haven with progressive politics, statistics indicate substantial disparities between whites and blacks on every level, from poverty and unemployment to arrest rates.

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According to 2011-2012 arrest statistics reported by USA Today, Madison actually had worse racial disparity in arrests than Ferguson, Missouri.

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“There is no question that the system is kinder and gentler” to middle-class white youths, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin told RT's Manuel Rapalo. Soglin added that the city is experimenting with ways to keep young African-Americans out of the criminal justice system, by working with a municipal judge and setting up a “peer court” in one of the districts.

[...]

“Reconciliation cannot begin without my stating ‘I am sorry,’ and I don't think I can say this enough. I am sorry,” wrote Madison Police Chief Michael Koval on his official blog.

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On Tuesday evening, however, a cyber attack crippled city and county computers in Madison, with the hacker collective Anonymous claiming responsibility.

RT

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

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"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.