The Micheal Brown Funeral.

On Monday (25/8/14) the funeral was held for Micheal Brown the 18 year old black man who was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, USA sparking three weeks of protests and low level rioting. As I've explained the protests and the killing itself were timed to coincide with Rihanna and Eminem's "Monster" tour which took place over the same three weekends.

The main purpose of this was to make it look like the US was challenging the long held claim by the UK that Rihanna had caused the August 2011 riots which took place over the exact same period of time three years ago. That completely unsubstantiated claim in turn went to be used as metaphor for the claim that Rihanna was also responsible for the so-called "Arab Spring" that began in 2011 and therefore she needed to be punished by the US to apologise to the Gulf Monarchies for all the trouble that she had caused.

The story was also intended to create a swirl of debate around the issue of race in America. As such it was intended to climax over this past weekend that saw both the end of the Monster tour and the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA's). After all last year's VMA's coincided with the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech on civil rights and race relations. This led many people - myself included - to suggest that maybe the spectacle of Miley Cyrus twerking with Robin Thicke wasn't quite the dream that Dr King was talking about.

So on Saturday (23/8/14) at a pre-VMA's party being hosted by Rihanna's former boyfriend Chris Brown in Los Angeles hip-hop producer Suge Knight was shot and wounded. As the founder of "Death Row Records" Knight was one of the leaders of the "Gangster Rap" phenomenon that started in the late 1980/early 1990's which included the East Coast versus West Coast rap feud that saw Tupac Shakur and then Notorious BIG shot and killed. This fashion very obviously glamorised thug and petty criminal behaviour within black culture to the extent that modern black popstars such as Chris Brown and Drake (particularly Drake) have to pretend to be gangsters in order to sell records.

By saying that black men can only be thugs and petty criminals this is obviously very damaging to the black community and race relations in America. So much so that people have suggested that it is being imposed on popular culture in order to hold black people back by stopping them from finding better role models. As such the shooting was intended to feed into the Ferguson narrative because by only talking amongst themselves the very small group of protesters and their liberal supporters have managed to convince themselves that they're striking a massive blow for racial equality in America. In the reality though the situation has left a much larger group of Americans asking themselves the question; "What is wrong with black people?!" For example much has been made of the fact that black men need to be taught how to behave when talking to police officers while every other race seems capable of working it out for themselves.

One group in particular that has had trouble understanding the outrage in Ferguson is the gun owners of which there are many in America. They haven't been particularly shocked by the allegation that Brown was shot six times because they know that with a semi-automatic pistol of the type used it is possible to fire off six shots in less then three seconds. They also know that while it's unusual it is not unheard of for someone to be shot several times and for it to not even slow them down. This is particularly true if the person in question is heavily built like Micheal Brown was, hyped up on adrenaline like Micheal Brown most likely was and initially only received wounds to their arms like Micheal Brown did. Although CNN were outraged this scenario is made all the more credible by unverified audio released yesterday which appear to show a pause between the shots being fired. This would indicate that Brown was shot several times and just kept attacking the police officer forcing the officer to fire more shots in order to stop him.

The Suge Knight shooting perfectly reflects this because although the exact extent of his injures are disputed it is clear that he was shot between three and six times with the majority of those shots hitting him on the arm. However Knight did not immediately crumple to the floor. Instead he walked out of the club and sat down on a bench on the pavement at which point the police appear to have insisted that he walk into an ambulance and be taken to hospital. As with Micheal Brown Suge Knight is physically a big man.

The funeral itself was scheduled for the Monday so it would coincide with the final day of the Notting Hill Carnival in London, UK. Bringing together some 1.4million people from across the country for a two day street party the Notting Hill Carnival always attracts a certain level of crime and on a few occasions the final day has seen a fair bit of rioting. The 2011 carnival was actually a substantial factor in what happened to the people arrested during the August riots with many people being remanded in prison until the carnival was over to avoid it setting off the rioting once again. As a result the US seemed to be hoping that this years carnival would end in rioting and that Micheal Brown's funeral would trigger more rioting in Ferguson at the same time. This would force people to look at the details of the twin riots - which by their nature are disorganised and chaotic - to see if they could find evidence of a coded conversation going on between the US and the UK.

As it turns out the weather which saw constant, heavy rain throughout the day took the decision whether to go along with this plan or not out of the UK's hands. However the indication was that the UK was not interesting in joining the US in this exercise because early in the evening it emerged that a police officer had been hospitalised after being seriously assaulted while trying to stop and question a suspect at the carnival. This seems intended to quiet down the situation in Ferguson by highlighting that Micheal Brown had been assaulting a police officer at the time he was shot making it extremely likely that he was rightfully and lawfully killed.

15:20 on 27/8/14 (UK date)