I spent most of the night out on the streets of Ferguson Missouri ……… The local community is protesting against the killing of Mike Brown a young African American man by the police of this city …………… the good news is although there were some incidents it was nothing like the level of conflict and violence that has characterized the nights of protest and the police response to it until tonight ………….. I did not have on a helmet or a gas mask or indeed body armor ………… but as it turned out I was just about correctly kitted out ………. not many bottles were thrown…… there was no shooting……. But many journalists expected serious trouble and wore all of their protective gear as a sensible precaution …… my stuff is all in London for use in the Middle East ……… With so many media people dressed this way It kind of reminded me of working in Iraq …….. That feeling made me even more sad to think about the depraved murder of the American Photojournalist James Foley…….. so terrible that his life was ended in such a disgusting way by the barbaric Islamic State terror group …….. murdered in the most depraved way by a hooded man with a British accent ………..
Our work here in Ferguson is important …… to shine a light on issues of militarized policing and issues of race in policing …….. brave journalists like James Foley were shining a light on the suffering of the Syrian people ……. journalism is important ……… the risk of doing journalism on these streets is as nothing compared to the risk of working in Syria. James Foley knew the risks. He had been taken hostage before but had lived to photograph another day ……… this time it was different he was held by the nihilists of The Islamic State ……. it now appears his luck has run out in the most horrific way. His murder simply depresses and frightens me …….. it threatens all decency with such dehumanizing behavior . So terrible to think of James Foley’s poor parents ……… My condolences to his family and friends ………. and to the family and friends of Michael Brown.
I was making pictures till 2AM ……. uploading my work on this story and others until now …… 6-30AM ……… time to sleep for an hour or so ………… :-//////////
Sorry if this makes not much sense……….. its kinda late …………. kinda depressing ……….
Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXX
www.jezblog.com
[ 21 ] comments
- Barbaric is the word Jez. Stay safe in Missouri.
John Harris @ August 20, 2014, 9:09 am
- Too right John…….depressing and totally barbaric…….. a threaten to everything we stand for and do………Cheers bro Jez XXX
Jezblog Ferguson @ August 20, 2014, 11:19 am
- Awful, awful …. Just someone doing their job,Nightmare for all concerned…Stay Safe Bro xx
PaulS @ August 20, 2014, 11:55 am
- Depressing……. so depressing and terrible …… these ISIS people really are the disgusting lead players in this recently invented neo death cult that has been tacked on to old style Islam.Hope all is good broCheers Jez XXXXXX
Jezblog Ferguson MO @ August 20, 2014, 1:17 pm
- Stay safe Jez. Thank you, all of you, for doing what you do.
GC @ August 20, 2014, 12:59 pm
- Thanks for your kind remarks …. Im workin on staying as safe as is possible …… Cheers Jez :-))) X
Jezblog Ferguson @ August 20, 2014, 1:19 pm
- James Foley’s death must ring such a toll for you… it must have been even harder seeing people in the US kitted out for a war zone the night you learn of it. Stay safe, and keep shooting – we need the stories and pictures people like you reveal.
Jo x
Jo @ August 20, 2014, 1:30 pm
- Thanks Jo …….. :-//////Cheers Jez X
Jezblog Ferguson @ August 20, 2014, 1:34 pm
- Isn’t this the place I told you to stay away from, lol ?
It’s like a moth to a lightbulb, have “fun”…watch out for that tear gas.
Harv.! @ August 20, 2014, 1:45 pm
- Stay safe, Jez. Thank you for your heart, thoughts and commitment to chasing the truth and injustice. Hope you get some zzzs between the hits.
Cecilie Holter @ August 20, 2014, 4:24 pm
- You might find this interesting:
What My Friend Jim Foley Taught Me to Question
http://tinyurl.com/q3gc99v
John Harris @ August 21, 2014, 1:47 pm
- Yes lovely to see him speaking ….. :-)) ….. So sad ……. I’m sure he was a very nice bloke who was genuinely motivated to show the tradgedy of war and its horrific effects on ordinary people in Libya and Syria ….. he seemed a gentle funny soul …… interested in an informed and open liberal society he was a journalist after all …….. that such a ghastly thing has happened to him is tragic.His friend said some things that are no doubt true …… obviously there is a relationship between Western meddling in that part of the world…… from drawing the maps of the states on through invasions etc….. a drect relationship with other things that happen there of course there is. That meddling is no doubt the background driver to some of the ideology that has grown up in this part of the world…….. but not the only driver I would say.It seems odd for her to only blame the US. Not even putting any blame on the apparently British man who did it. If he had been in a properly defined Neo Nazi organization like say ‘The National Front’ I expect she might have found it easier just to blame him, even though his father might have been made unemployed by an American company pulling its investment from his home town … leading to the son bla bla …….. there is always background….. there is always motivating factors that can be atributed to being casual ……. apparently the butterfly effect is real enough …….
So say she has a world view that basically blames the US for everything…… say take global warming …… it is the the US…… people complain about the US in creating global warming rightly …… but China is the biggest generator of CO2 these days …… its OK to blame the US they are responsible ….. but to only blame the US …… ???
It seems particularly odd to push away other casual factors entirely.
The man who comitted the murder. Say he grew up in Britain and joined a Neo Nazi organisation then, went overseas to join another Neo Nazi organization then committed the crime. It might be easier for her to blame him and his fellow Neo Nazis.Or at least attribute him and them some of the blame.
But clearly that is not what happened. He probably grew up in Britain became a radicalised Islamist. Went overseas to join another radical Islamist organization then comitted the crime. Then it is clearly in her view the fault of only the USA.
I’m not sure I agree entirely with that thought process.
Jezblog Ferguson @ August 21, 2014, 4:48 pm
- ‘— in another part of the world, strutting young men are behaving in almost exactly the same way, though with even greater cruelty. And they’re doing it for a surprisingly similar reason: a fanatical belief in purity. Once large numbers of people are convinced that there is one route to human felicity, whether it’s Aryan racial purity or extreme Sunni purity, massacres and sadism follow. Yes, I know there are other factors, from obedience to fear and the natural cruelty of young men in gangs. But they only remind us that we humans are too dangerous to be allowed simple, one-size-fits-all solutions to anything. Ideas are only good or bad in terms of their effect on actual societies, and I go back to Isaiah Berlin, who warned that without pluralism, there followed ‘the vivisection of actual human societies into some fixed pattern dictated by our fallible understanding of a largely imaginary past or a wholly imaginary future.’ Spot on. That vivisection is memorialized deep in rural France, and carries on in Iraq and Syria right now.’This above is written by Andrew Marr on visiting a Nazi site of massacre in France …….. he is in my opinion absolutely correct to draw a direct comparison between 1930/40’s German style Nazi slaughter and today’s Jihadist style Islamic State slaughter …. because the purity of Sunni Jihad is imaginary and the purity of the Aryan race is imaginary….. all there actually is ….. is the totalitarian slaughter …. there is fundamentally no difference….. their actions and motivation are almost identical….. it is about imposing a totalitarian State.Cheers Jez XX
jezblog in the big ATL :-)) @ September 8, 2014, 3:07 am
- Have you been arrested yet..they seem to be going for it in a big way out there!! Just had dinner with DeDe… I f©©©@in love Bangkok :))
Saigon Sven xx @ August 22, 2014, 8:07 am
- I could be arrested at any mo for doin completely nothin and yet its u who should be arrested …….. its just not right :-))) XXXXXX
Massey Ferguson @ August 22, 2014, 12:57 pm
- Yes, I’d concur with those sentiments, I think it is important to have the “right idea” in life :-))
Gunter Ludwig Van Niagra xx @ August 23, 2014, 2:01 am
- Yes I agree Jez it ain’t that simple. If “radicalisation” has a “dynamic” it seems to me that it is the disillusionment of young Muslims with the compromises older religious hierarchies have made with the existing (capitalist and anti Islamic) domestic and international order. Hence the doomed attempts to use that same hierarchy to stop any such process. Once that order and its inhabitants are identified as satanic anyone is a legitimate potential target. Rather the same endpoint reached by Zionists in Israel about Palestinians or any occupying troops can reach about civilians come to think of it.Criticism of the US can hurt the feelings of some folks, just have to think of it as part of that heavy “white man’s burden” I guess… US foreign policy is, however, significant because the US came out of WW2 as the dominant power, a position reenforced by the collapse of Stalinism – it is just the reality I’m afraid. However, much of what is unravelling goes back further to British policy at the end of WW1 with the betrayal of D H Lawrence’s promise to the Arabs by the secret Sykes- Picot pact. Having said that the illegal invasion of Iraq has had seemingly endless (if unintended) consequences – way beyond the obvious squandering of the world wide (including Muslim) empathy for the victims of 9/11, a surge of opinion that could have washed al Qaeda and the like down the drain of history. What a mess man. Secular Assad was an anti Islamist ally (as was Gaddafi) and so arming the rebels and US sponsored regime change blows back… The US as a midas touch! Will the next idiocy be to encourage attacks by the Shia in Iraq, intervene by bombing Sunni civilians and start another US led invasion – so cementing ISIS (IS) in place at the very moment of (arguably) greatest weakness? Brilliant! Strengthen the Iranian position vs Saudi Arabia (who beheaded 18 people in the last month I’m told) so that later more war can be waged against… well we will see.
“Policy” may be too grand a word. Meanwhile back in the UK, fear will distract “the bewildered herd” from domestic squalor, encourage more blundering around the “Middle East” with lethal weaponry and our home grown racists can do a quick switch from antisemitism back to Islamapobia..“What Bremer Got Wrong in Iraq” is worth a look (that Nazi thang,wrong again!)
http://tinyurl.com/5tpf7fMaybe the western response should be to stop funding and arming sects of any kind, stop bombing populations, stop supporting intervention by proxy e.g. the Saudis (and Israel for that matter), and most importantly to pour in humanitarian aid to all refugees though out the region without favour. Some actual goodwill might be generated and our American cousins could begin to feel better about themselves again? Just a thought.. JH
John @ August 23, 2014, 10:02 am
- Too right, can’t agree with you more on the Middle East John, think that it was T E Lawrence though (Loz of Arabia).. D H Lawrence was too busy writing subversive and somewhat smutty literature to have anything to do with the current horrible mess that is the Middle East..
A Pedant!! @ August 23, 2014, 11:52 am
- Are u really calling the Virgin and the Gypsy smutty? :-))
Pedents Pendant Delta :-))) X @ August 23, 2014, 1:44 pm
- Yes I absolutely agree u would no longer be blamed if u just left everyone to get on with it… Not sure the resulting slaughter would be better than the current slaughter… But u would have the joy of being without blame … Of course the Yazidis and the Christians and Jews of Iraq and the possibly millions of different denominations of Muslims may well be dead too… Maybe not though… I do think all the Cristians and Yazidis of Iraq would be dead… Not sure I think that’s right… But assistance to refugees of all description awesome idea …. Wheels up St Louis MO 🙂 XX
Jezblog Delta :-))) XX @ August 23, 2014, 1:56 pm
- Yes I absolutely agree u would no longer be blamed if u just left everyone to get on with it… Not sure the resulting slaughter would be better than the current slaughter… But u would have the joy of being without blame … Of course the Yazidis and the Christians and Jews of Iraq and the possibly millions of different denominations of Muslims may well be dead too… Maybe not though… I do think all the Cristians and Yazidis of Iraq would be dead… Not sure I think that’s right… But assistance to refugees of all description awesome idea …. Wheels up St Louis MO 🙂 XX
Jezblog Delta :-))) XX @ August 23, 2014, 1:58 pm
