A Tale Of Two Midwestern Cities, Of Murdered Children, Of Cries For Revenge And Stone Silence

It's painful to watch the Michael Brown funeral, but here it is, in all its YouTube Glory.




The Sharpton excerpts widely broadcast are inflammatory enough, but the real damage to the body politic may well come from the eulogy delivered by Brown's uncle, Charles Ewing, misusing the Genesis story of Cain and Abel, and blood 'crying from the ground for vengeance'. The terms 'justice' and 'vengeance' seem to be equivalent: Justice=Vengeance=Justice.

Uncle Charles claimed divine inspiration, a special 'word' from the Holy Spirit, in effect ascribing canonical weight to his words, i.e. to claim: 'The Holy Spirit who guided the words of Isaiah and Paul now guides my words'. This is a terrible slippery slope, especially with a grieving family on the front row, a body in a coffin, and cameras carrying the Reverend's words to the world.

The Reverend Uncle also drew a broad analogy between young Mr. Brown, who died at noon, and Christ himself, crucified at noon. A terrible, tragic slippery slope upon which to perch a family.

And here's why: We don't exactly know what happened in that encounter that Saturday noon, and this side of the pearly gates, probably won't. All that is known with complete certainty is that young Mr. Brown is dead, and that Officer Wilson fired the shots that ended his life.

What if it does turn out, after three autopsies, much investigation, mounds of evidence gathered and gone over, that young Mr. Brown, Mike-Mike The Gentle Giant, had indeed stolen that box of cigars and assaulted the clerk, as is caught on camera? That will tarnish the memory and reputation of the young man, who was dearly loved by his now heartbroken parents. This is not fair to them, it increases their pain.

What if it does turn out, after three autopsies, etc, that Mr. Brown was the aggressor, and regrettably Officer Wilson felt he had no recourse but to fire? If the evidence shows that this tragedy was the result of Mr. Brown's aggression toward Officer Wilson, what then constitutes justice? And what then of his family, and all those young people out there convinced of both his martyrdom and sainthood? Who rescues the family from that slippery slope?

Meanwhile, in Chicago, three-year old James Jenkins was critically injured this weekend by the negligent mishandling of his father's handgun.

His father, also James Jenkins, was a felon on parole, prohibited from having a gun.

This was but one tragedy--some 40 shootings in Chicago in the same weekend. Mainly black teenagers. We should not expect to seeing Rev. Jackson or Rev. Sharpton at any of those services, and our 'I-am-Trayvon' President has his hands full between rounds of golf and watching the jihadists conquer the Tripoli airport.

Things have gone seriously upside down, OS fears. Obvious senseless murder is now treated as routine, while a tragic death that occurs in the fog of conflict on the street becomes the occasion of the worst sort of demagoguery.

Mr. Obama's 'JV Team', aka ISIL, Captures Major Airbase In Syria

Remember, just because you wear a Kobe Bryant jersey...

And, to counterbalance all this unpleasantry--at least we can rejoice that the President's golf game is flourishing. Why, even this morning, ABC News pointed out that Dwight Eisenhower received his share of flak for playing so much golf. Hmmmm, so does that make Himself a President on par with Ike, the man who launched the Normandy invasion. Well, if you work for ABC news, it must...

Meanwhile, in the real world--

From today's UK Telegraph:

Jihadist fighters captured a major military air base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, removing the last government-held post in a province the extremists claim as part of their new "Islamic State". 

The storming of Tabqa air field, a major government military facility containing several squadrons of planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery, is a significant victory for the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

"Some of the Syrian regime troops pulled out, and now the Islamic State is in full control of Tabqa," said Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "This makes Raqqa province the first to fully fall out of government hands."

At least 500 fighters from both sides were reported to have died in the fighting over recent days, with casualties among Isil forces said to be running twice as high as among the government troops. 

There were reports of celebratory gunfire in Raqqa, Isil's central stronghold in Syria, after mosques announced through their loudspeakers that the base had fallen to the Islamists. A witness told the Reuters news agency that fighters displayed the severed heads of Syrian army soldiers in the city square. 

The jihadists, who have grown in strength and numbers throughout Syria's continuing civil war against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, are now unchallenged in the north east of the country.
Their control has given them access to the regions plentiful oil resources, from which they generate an estimated monthly income of more than $20 million (£12 million) - enabling them also to sweep into neighbouring Iraq.

Located just 25 miles from Raqqa, Tabqa military base had been besieged for several weeks, forcing the Syrian regime to supply its trapped soldiers by parachute.
In recent days however, Isil stepped up its campaign, dispatching suicide bombers to breach the base's outer wall - including, according to its social media accounts on Friday, Sufian al Omar, a 14-year-old boy who it claimed had joined his father in a "suicide operation" at Tabqa.