Chomsky/Ferguson DOJ report

Noam Chomsky is a thought provoking public intellectual whose writings I have read since my college days. While I don't always agree with him, two points he repeatedly makes are relevant to the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, Missouri.

1. "The security of the population was no more a high priority for ...administration planners than for their predecessors."
2. "Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population," he told the Guardian.

Reading of the deliberate economic hardship imposed upon the residents of Ferguson through fines and violence I cannot help but agree with Chomsky's statements. The local agencies clearly were not interested in providing for the security of the residents and in fact treated them as enemies. The use of military technology  to suppress them and extract money is more akin to lawlessness than the rule of law.