SIGNS OF FERGUSON

The United States of America has encountered serious domestic political and social challenges for the first time since it became established in the status of the sole superpower as the winner of the "Cold War". The protests in Ferguson and other American cities revealed a number of the most pressing problems that threaten not only to fundamentally affect stability in the United States, but also knock this country off the world's pedestal and deprive it of the image of "a free world country".

The reason for the explosion of discontent among millions of Americans with socio-political realities in the country was the court's decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed an unarmed African American, 18-year-old Michael Brown, on 9 August in Ferguson (Missouri). According to the police officer and the court which supported him, Brown himself was to blame for the tragedy, because in response to a request to move off the roadway onto the pavement, he attacked the patrol car. Under US law, this is bad news as the demands of representatives of law enforcement forces should be carried out strictly.

However, despite such arguments, many in the United States consider Brown's death as a racially motivated murder. That's why the court's decision to acquit the killer-cop caused such a storm of protest. Ferguson was engulfed in riots, and in order to pacify the protesters, the police used tear gas and arrested more than 60 people.

But, as the saying goes, there you go. The large-scale demonstrations that began in Ferguson spread to other cities - New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The wave of protests engulfed 37 of the 50 states. To prevent further protests, the authorities had to arrest more than 400 people. And National Guard troops were sent to the source of protest energy - the city of Ferguson.

The scale of protests caught the White House off guard. This explains the fact that the US administration showed no initiative aimed at strategic crisis resolution. US President Barack Obama only ordered that a working group be set up to prepare recommendations to improve the work of the American police. In addition, he called on Congress to allocate 263m dollars from the budget in three years to "improve the training of law enforcement personnel to ensure their adequate interaction with the population". It is assumed that exactly the same amount will be allocated for the implementation of this task by state governments. But all these are measures of a rather soothing nature, and therefore, judging by the reaction of the protesters, few people in the United States count on the effectiveness of the measures proposed by the president.

Perhaps the most high-profile action on the part of President Obama was his statements. They really have some strong points (in a theoretical sense) such as recognition of the fact that the law does not always apply to people on the basis of equality in the United States. Obama expressed his understanding of why many people are outraged by the decision of the jury and vowed not to allow "militarized culture among our local law enforcement agencies". But at the same time, the president drew attention to the fact that the violent protest in Ferguson cannot be justified by anything. Obama stressed that such actions are criminal and therefore all participants in the riots will be brought to justice.

Not surprisingly, the president's words did not reassure the growing number of protesters. Many Americans were disappointed with Obama's refusal to visit Ferguson, although the protesters demanded that he personally visit the scene of events and "punish those responsible". The president's actions (as well as the rejection of any actions) are only touches of the overall picture of escalating conflict processes in the socio-political life of the United States. And the impetus for their dramatic aggravation was not just a tragic event in the American sticks, when a white police officer escaped criminal punishment for the murder of a black guy. America ended up on the verge of a social explosion because these stories have become almost the norm, indicating the precariousness of the very foundations of the American social system and the so-called American way of life.

Cases of unjustifiable brutality by the US police were also denounced by the UN Committee against Torture. The structure expressed concern about "a large number of cases of disproportionate use of force by the police in the United States against persons belonging to certain racial groups". The committee called on the US authorities to investigate all cases of excessive use of force by the police and bring those guilty to justice.

However, is it realistic to count on a fair trial in the United States, which many citizens of this country are demanding? The impression is that many Americans, who regard their country as a "police state", do not believe in the possibility of a fundamental change in the political and judicial system in the United States. The model of democracy, which has been touted by the global liberal media for decades as a role model for the entire world, is actually a smokescreen that is unable to hide the gulf that lies between US citizens belonging to different races and ethnic groups. The protesters do not share the propaganda cliches praising the "exclusivity" of their native America and condemn the US order with such manifestations of it as the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the ill-being of millions of people (mainly blacks and ethnic minorities), police brutality and total surveillance by the secret services. And the race problem is the most convincing reflection of all this unpleasant reality.

It's no secret that every major American city has a ghetto - a kind of a rogue island which the police visit only if they are authorized to shoot to kill. In small towns with a predominantly African American population, power belongs to whites, which, of course, annoys the general population. In the same Ferguson, 63 per cent of the population is black. However, the mayor of the city, James Knowles, is white like most members of the City Council. In the local police department, only three of the 53 officers are African Americans. According to the American historian Steven Bradley, "the mayor of Ferguson, chief of police and other local officials are whites. They try not to share their sphere of influence with the African Americans. They are afraid of losing control over the ever-increasing mass of the black population."

The conclusions of US journalist John Whitehead on the pages of the Mint Press News online publication are interesting too. He argues that the "national dialogue about the dangers of the existence in the country of a police force, which is armed and trained to act like on the battlefield - shoot first and then ask - escalated into a debate about racial war". Ferguson, according to Whitehead, is a warning of what the attitude to all people in America will be like if they do not challenge the actions of the police state. "No matter if we are white or black, rich or poor, Republicans or Democrats. In the eyes of the state of corporations, we are all a common enemy," Whitehead says.

The reference to "the state of corporations" in the statement of the famous American journalist is not accidental. The United States is a major stronghold of transnational capital not only in the eyes of the international community, but also of its own population, a state on top of the political and economic power of which are the richest people in the country and the owners of most of the financial capacity of the country. And serious internal political processes are often caused by the struggle between the various elite groups. In the context of the events in Ferguson and subsequent protests, a theory spread that they were provoked by the part of the American establishment who are dissatisfied with the activities of the Democratic administration led by the country's first African American president Barack Obama. In other words, we are talking about a power struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats in the sense that opponents of the current president are trying to fully take advantage of the existence of real problems in the field of interracial relations.

If you raise the question of who in the US benefits from destabilization, the first in a series of possible answers is the Republicans. They are interested in discrediting Obama, and not surprisingly, the strike is aimed, so to speak, at the most vulnerable side of his rule - the African American president is not able to protect the interests of the citizens of his own race.

What draws attention is the fact that the protests in the United States began shortly after Barack Obama made a decision in the field of immigration, which outraged conservative political circles. The White House legalized the presence in the country of more than 4 million illegal immigrants who now have permission to work in the United States. Congressmen condemned the actions of the president, while the authorities in 17 US states, mostly supporting the Republicans, filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration with a US federal court. The lawsuit states that the head of state had no right to sign the decree on immigration reform without the approval of Congress and his actions violated the US Constitution.

We should also remember that Barack Obama recently angered the Republicans when he ordered the allocation of billions of dollars from the budget for the development of the school education system in America. This step, in fact, provides children from low-income African American, Latin American and Asian families with an opportunity to get a good education.

And now, in view of the recent events, it suddenly becomes clear that not only the black president of the United States fails to protect the rights of African Americans, he is also willing to drown their protests in blood. It is obvious that such a situation is of benefit to the forces that are going to put an end to the rule of the Democrats in the White House in the 2016 election. The events implicitly mean that after Barack Obama, a black politician will not become president for a very long time. Thus, the experiment with an African American president, who is likely to be labelled as "the worst president in US history", can be considered complete (whether it was successful or not is a question of political tastes and preferences).

Meanwhile, the mass protests in the United States cannot be viewed in isolation from the role of this superpower in world politics. Washington has long assumed the role of a world policeman, pointing to other countries on their shortcomings in their inner life. Using the theme of human rights in its own geopolitical interests, the United States inspires protests in countries whose governments are not in favour with the American political and economic elite. Quite a few "colour revolutions" were born in this way. And now the ghost of "African American revolution" has unexpectedly appeared on the threshold of America. The world and especially the Russian media have even drawn an analogy between the protests in the United States and the "Maydan" in Ukraine. However, the difference is that the US government, allowing itself to suppress unrest in the country with any punitive measures, denies foreign political regimes, which, according to Washington, should sink into oblivion, this model of behaviour. And it is another trait of American global panorama, on the content of which not only the stability of the United States, but also, to a large extent, the future of the world order depends.