Center for Strategic Communication

[ by Charles Cameron — a follow up — noticeable individual protesters and foreign commentary ]
.

I began the first part of this double post with a strange confluence of religious and political groups — The Nation of Islam, Black Panthers and Moorish Temple — in Ferguson. I’ll begin this one with an interesting pairing of gangs — Crips and Bloods, standing together in Ferguson to prevent looting:

**

There are some interesting individuals protesting in Ferguson, and some comments from “far flung corners of the globe” — as if the globe had quarters and someone had flung them, far, presumably, from here.. Some of these individuals and foreign commentators you may admire, some you may intensely dislike: I’m providing data points, your conclusions are up to you.

For instance, you might well feel some admiration for this old lady and her commitment to voicing her own moral perspective:

but find the following tweet, sharing at least the overall thrust of that perspective, less appealing:

Or not. Opinions differ.

**

Here’s another venerable protester:

And another view from abroad, represented in this case by Tibetan monks in exile who have traveled to Ferguson to join the protests.

**

Then there are those who would takr advnatage of the situation to score points — the Ayatollah Khamenei, for instance:

I haven’t found a similar tweet for Egypt or N Korea, but they may be out there…

**

Amnesty International has a similar critique of US foreign policy, but unlike Khomaini’s Iran, isn’t in the business of runnig a repressive state…

It’s surely noteworthy that “Ferguson” is the first occasion to my knowledge in which Amnesty has been sufficiently disturbed to send observers to a situation in the US.

Amnesty, too, has its detractors, as witness a flurry of tweets responding to the one above, one of which, from Allen McDuffee, was picked up by Buzzfeed and widely quoted — while being hastily removed from the CSIS site itself:

That dispute, at any rate, appears to have ended amicably enough:

And so it goes.

**

One last thing? That molotov cocktail allegedly thrown by a protester at the police in Ferguson? Apparently it was a police tear gas cannister being returned to sender. Not that there haven’t also been molotovs in Ferguson — as DoubleQuoted here:

In fact, peace with a dash of violence seems to be quite a common cocktail itself these days…

Share