Ferguson update:
* Amnesty international sends observers to the US for the first time ever. Police promptly ordered them to stop observing and escorted them out of protest area.
http://i.imgur.com/kJlZtlx.jpg* Despite the ACLU recently winning a lawsuit against Ferguson for infringing on media rights to film and move through public areas:
- Media continue to be arrested for leaving their designated area.
- Police filmed marching through the streets blasting on loudpeakers while holding handcuffs out that media are to leave the protest area or be indiscriminately arrested tonight.
- One officer pointed a gun in a reporter's face and screamed at him to "get the fuck out of here and get that light off, or you're getting shot with this." (on video here
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/17/6029739/video-police-threatens-to-shoot-reporter-taping-ferguson-protests )
- One journalist posts a photo of police targeting his driver window with laser sights while being fired upon with tear gas
https://twitter.com/StanfordKMOV/status/501614895549644800/photo/1- Al Jazeera film crew hit directly with teargas cannister
http://tinyurl.com/mfl68dl* National guard is on scene, and is more lightly armed than police. They have been relegated to guarding the staging area only.
* Police press release tonight:
- It began, I kid you not, with a prayer asking God to let "peace rain down upon us." I guess the instructions to officers in the street must have gotten confused at some point, since what they are actually raining down on citizens is not "divinely bestowed peace" but in fact "clouds of burning CS gas." Photo of peace-dispensing gun in action:
- Briefing continued by revealing a table with two guns confiscated. Said guns were found during a vehicular stop, not in use by protesters. Chief made no comparison between two unused handguns versus several hundred shotguns/automatic weapons pointed at and fired (rubber and beanbag rounds) at civilians all night long...
http://i.imgur.com/BsY1H8M.jpg- Table also displayed an unlit molotov cocktail claiming an example of ones thrown throughout tonight and yesterday, despite media widely reporting having not witnessed or recorded any incidents of molotov cocktails being thrown. Apparently Ferguson molotovs are not the normal huge firey explosion extremely obvious attention grabbing kind, but are instead stealthy, invisible weapons of the night.
* Story came out yesterday, but I just saw it, of Henry Davis who in 2009 was severely beaten in a Ferguson jail (caused a concussion), allegedly for provoking police (jail has video cameras, yet no video able to be produced to show this, because video was sped up to 32x speed at the time for unexplained reasons). Henry Davis was later charged with 4 counts of vandalism for bleeding on police uniforms as a result of them hitting him. When Davis sued them, officers changed their story and claimed they did not get blood on their uniforms.
* Egyptian government called for restraint on part of Ferguson police...