MIRROR FOR OBAMA

The Occupy Wall Street events being still fresh in memory, a new manifestation of popular unrest has taken place in the USA which had to be suppressed by force. All that began when policeman Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-tear-old Afro-American Michael Brown. One theory has it that Brown was robbing a shop and then attacked the policeman. According to another theory, the youth was just walking by but something about him seemed suspicious to the vigilant cop. It is unknown what happened in reality: whether the teenager was violent or the policeman was too nervous but, anyway, he killed the youth shooting four bullets in the hand and two in the head. 

Different media have written that New York's former pathologist invited by Brown's family for independent examination found no signs of a struggle on the killed man's body. He has also concluded that the fatal shots were fired from a range no closer than 50 centimetres because there is no gunpowder residue on the body. At the same time, according to witnesses, Brown was shot when he held his hands up to surrender. As a result, the black population of Ferguson decided that their fellow had been killed all but deliberately and started demanding a fair/just investigation. 

The demand for justice was accompanied by crushing shops and government office and besieged police stations, blocked roads, Molotov cocktails and pelted stones. Local policemen decided not to expose themselves to risks in this situation and National Guard units were sent into Ferguson armed with tear gas, flash grenades, smoke bombs, rubber bullets and batons. A state of emergency and a curfew have been imposed in the community. The police has also requested a no-fly zone over Ferguson to provide security for police operations and, most likely, to keep off news companies' helicopters. As a result, 30 people have been arrested and a few have been wounded. It is noteworthy that those arrested include journalists and residents of other states, for instance, New York and California. Local correspondents have inferred from this fact that the protests in Ferguson are well organized. Meanwhile the police believe that "outside agitators" are involved. Indignant residents also took to the streets in New York, Boston and Los Angeles. 

Having arrived in the insurgent town, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced taking the investigation into the killing of Brown under his control. In his opinion, the investigation into the killing of the 18-year-old youth is "a critical step in restoring trust between law enforcement and the community, not just in Ferguson, but beyond". It has become known that one police officer has been suspended since aiming his weapon at a protester and threatening to kill him. A video of the incident was posted on Youtube. As regards the investigation, the late Brown's body has been exhumed and sent for a new autopsy. 

President Barack Obama has cut short his vacation to address the nation. According to the US president, he understands the "passions and anger" provoked by the death of the teenager but giving in to anger "by looting or carrying guns and even attacking the police only serves to raise tensions and stir chaos". In Obama's opinion, such behaviour "undermines justice". 

So what does justice mean to the insurgent residents of Ferguson and why did their demand for a fair investigation grow into a very real street war? Judging by various comments by witnesses, the police and the military who came to establish order in Ferguson were outfitted almost better than their fellows doing their service in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also noted that the law-enforcers too easily aimed their guns at civilians. By the way, after the death of Brown, policemen shot and killed another 23year-old black man. According to a spokesman for St Louis police, the cops had to apply firearms against a man who was attacking them with a knife and was "behaving erratically". 

Ferguson grew up around a railroad. It is in essence the north-western suburb of the big city of St Louis. It has a little more than 20,000 residents. The white people are deemed a minority (about 30 per cent) but, paradoxical as it is, local police stations are staffed just by white people. And so are Ferguson's town and school councils. As a result it turns out that the black make up the majority of the population while the white take important decisions and establish order. By the way, the white population has declined by a factor of 2.5 over the past 20 years and the number of Afro-Americans has increased by the same factor. This is blamed on the worsened economic situation. This means that white people have where to go while it is much harder for Afro-Americans to settle and get a job in a new place. Los Angeles Times cites figures showing that the poor population is growing in US suburbs twice as fast and most of the people are Afro-Americans. Here follows some simple statistics picked from different free access websites. 

An average white family is more than 20 times richer than an average Afro-American family. The level of unemployment among black Americans is twice as high. Most children in one-parent families in the USA are black. There are many times more black than white prisoners in US jails. 

One would think that the subject of racial confrontation has been viewed as hackneyed and dropped long ago in the USA and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has remained as a literary monument to human cruelty in bygone days. America got over this shameful disease long ago. When Obama became the first Afro-American elected to the White House, the entire world rejoiced together with the USA which gave an example of how to display tolerance, democratic approach and openness. Now the black people in the USA can rise to any heights: you can see them in show business, in science, in politics. This is the case on TV but how about real life? In real life, we have the bare figures of statistics. All the more so that the latest large-scale black pogroms happened in the USA not all that long ago: in 1992, in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Merely a lot of mass media have too short a memory. 

Anyway, pictures of the developments in Ferguson have spread all over the world and captured a lot of attention. But it has turned out that it is not the US race problems that the entire world is concerned about. Quite a different thing has caught the eye. It is the great number of commentators just noting the mere fact that there are internal conflicts in the USA between the white and Afro-Americans people, between whites and Latin Americans, between the rich and the poor, between residents of big cities like New York and San Francisco supporting freedom from any norms and rules in lifestyle, sex relations, fashion and other things and, on the other hand, the communities of relatively small, conservative, mainly republican and religious townships. Let alone the fact admitted by Barack Obama that there is a "gulf of mistrust" between local residents and law enforcement in many communities in the USA. Given an appropriate catalyst, these problems (apropos, excitingly spiced with the fact that civilians have the right to carry firearms in the USA) may become a "new Ferguson" any moment. Will the army be called again to pacify the protests? How legitimate and democratic is this? 

Is the USA not contradicting itself? As we know, the Ferguson authorities' decision and Washington's support for them could have passed unnoticed against the background of ongoing developments in the world (suffice it to mention Ebola fever alone), if it had not been for the well known words of many US politicians, including the US president himself (and his predecessors in this post). Repeated in multiple variations, all their statements boiled down to the idea that, in a democratic state, there should be no hindrance to peaceful demonstrators expressing their views. 

Public events, gatherings and marches are deemed one of the fundamental human rights laid down in many international documents, such as, for instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This right also occupies a place of honour virtually in all democratic constitutions of the world. Violation of this right is a favourite reason for criticism of the governments of many "developing countries" and "third-world countries" by various human rights organizations and in monitoring reports of the US Department of State. 

However, taking a closer look, the countries recognized in the same reports from year to year as the most democratic ones (the USA itself and European states) have a lot of "buts" restricting the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. These include stringent requirements to the procedures and venues for holding demonstrations and marches, the period for considering applications and the definition of distinctions between "peaceful marches" and "illegal gatherings" which is justified by the need to protect the rights of the majority of the population). It depends on the latter factor how prompt and tough the authorities' response is as was the case in Ferguson, an obscure township until recently... 

This is not quite so though. Ferguson is known for Emerson, one of the biggest transitional corporations ranked by Forbes among the top 200, which has its central office just in this town. It is also said that the president's family has considerable investments in this company. In addition to all this, the race riots are taking place under a black president. Will this not lead Obama to a loss of support from the huge numbers of black voters?