Holy crap, the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looks like a scene from Robocop

boing
21

Yes, a classic indeed. And also:

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22

Actually, with the “Nixon lifts curfew… calls in National Guard” I think Watchmen is more appropriate. Just give the cop a smiley face pin and maybe a giant, blue, naked dude disintegrating the fleeing civilians in the background.

23

Pretty much this:

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love it!

25

Come on, it’s not like there has been a shortage of riots and state violence in recent US history, from various race riots to Civil Rights protests to Vietnam-War protests and Kent State. None of this killed American Exceptionalism.

Every new police officer in London, England, you mean.

26

I dunno, the LA Riots lasted for 6 days, and Ferguson already has that beat. But beyond that, it’s the images that matter. Media representations of the LA Riots were absurdly racist caricatures, and fairly broad - i.e. much of the coverage was from afar, or based on secondhand reports from police.

In Ferguson, there’s a small army of reporters on the ground, many of them doing constant live coverage, and many of them extremely wary and critical of the police. So regardless of the actual situation, the images coming out of Ferguson are different than anything America has seen before.

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But what was happening in the LA riots is not what is happening in Ferguson. Not even close, and not even if the police act like it is.

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The thing is there actually have been people moving in the last couple of days to exploit the situation for violence and profit. But the initial response of the police was so over the top that now they have no credibility.

I continue to think that no law enforcement agency should be in charge of investigating itself.

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As near as I can tell, the “unrest” in Ferguson is like 50 protesters, 500 reporters, and a bunch of random shirtless dudes queueing up to rant incoherently about “The System.”

And cops.

And I’m still trying to figure out if the “situation” in Ferguson trumps the wall of jello. Undecided at present.

30

That’s one gutsy photographer. I wouldn’t want to get that close to somebody discharging such a weapon even under controlled circumstances, let alone the chaos of what’s happening in Ferguson and the police’s attitude toward the press.

31

If your assessment is correct, and I’m not saying it isn’t*, I think the fact that Ferguson has chosen to deploy a squadron that would have been out of place (for it’s high tech weaponry) in the first Gulf War to suppress “50 people” - and that this is what the system is designed to do, not a crazy aberration - would probably worth the reporters and is probably bigger news than the wall of jello.

  • At least for the purpose of this point - your assessment is definitely incorrect factually.
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32

I clicked on a button that was labelled ‘More Wonderful Things’ :frowning:

33

That is a very large muzzle flash. I wondered why they’d use such a slow burning powder in such a short-barreled weapon, but some quick googling revealed that often black powder is used for such rounds in order to avoid damaging the projectile during launch! Black powder, of course, produces a lot of flash and smoke compared to modern smokeless powder. I can’t tell if the muzzle flash is actually flash or just that the smoke produced is lined up with a spotlight to produce the illusion of a flash. Either way, it is not indicative of the power of the weapon just a quirk of the propellant choice. A discussion of propellant, interior ballistics, weapon signatures, or the affect of smokeless powder on history might have been interesting and informative, but I guess that wouldn’t have the visceral appeal of Robocop and urban dystopian fantasies.

34

‘might have been interesting’, or ‘derailed the thread into a gun-wank argument’?

35

America is weapons Walmart to the world. That’s what we do and who we are and it’s who we have always been.

The reason Ferguson is “militarized” is because ALL of America is militarized. We need markets to sell our kill tools. It’s as simple as that. For all of the media hype of the cops “assaulting” “protesters” and “deploying” “snipers,” mostly what those over weaponed cops are doing is standing around, occasionally shooting tear gas, and going through a hell of a lot of zip ties.

36

You misunderstand. I didn’t mean it would have been interesting for someone to post a COMMENT about something informative and complicated to an “OMG This Looks Just Like Robocop!” article.

I meant that an ARTICLE that asked “What is going on with this picture?” or “Why does this look the way it does?” from the beginning (or anything else that required thought and led the reader to discover something) would have been more interesting to me than one that says basically “OMG This Looks Just Like Robocop!”

37

So basically you are saying you are almost entirely desensitized to the horror of this facet of American culture and you don’t see why other people aren’t desensitized to it as well?

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38

The story made me wonder.

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It’s not what they ‘mostly’ do that is the problem.

It’s when they play stormtrooper and/ or kill kids.

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I’ve got no problem with either sort of lead article, but I’d love to see the comment threads spend some time talking about achievable ways things could be changed for the better, rather than just repeated condemnation of millions of people because of their skin color.

It does not look like I will see such a comment thread today, though.