Forgery suspect killed by cop restricting his airway

[ruby sparks]

I'm not a fan of antifa, but I do think those who support the concept have been unfairly demonized during these protests.

It is the new Acorn or Planned Parenthood. Conservatives hate what they are doing, so will make up all kinds of unfounded criminal accusations that they will repeat until ‘everyone knows they do that’

Indeed. And don't forget 'woke' and 'social justice warrior'. All perfectly useful and indeed admirable terms that have been turned into pejoratives and divorced from their original meanings and intent.

That said, it seems to me (and I'm no expert) that the negative caricature is not entirely inaccurate in the case of Antifa.

And as for BLM, I was very shocked to see the gathered/marching groups chanting, in one video 'what do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!' and in another video some song about pigs in a blanket which I think was echoing the same sentiment. If people do those chants, they can't expect to be seen as benign actors.

 

[ruby sparks]

Hong Kongers have been on the streets protesting for over a year.

Not one shop looted.

Not. One.

I am happy to broadly agree with you for once.

In fact, I read of one incident where an opportunist thief did some looting (3 mobile phones) and the protesters tied him to railings until the police arrived to arrest him. He was charged, he confessed and was sentenced.

However, mainland Chinese-owned businesses were vandalised by the protesters and set on fire. Protesters also threw petrol bombs at police. For some reason, they drew a line at looting.

Because Hong Kong doesn't have the organized looters that the US does.

You could well be right.

Another possible factor (and this is just a guess) is that culturally, there is more underlying respect for the rule of law in that part of the world.

Another (guessing again) may be that there is less extreme poverty (or better to say huge inequality, because it's a relative thing) and perhaps if there is, it is not concentrated in certain groups who feel oppressed or second class citizens.

But whatever the reasons, the US is a different context.

---------------------------------------------------

It's worth noting, by way of comparison, that in the 2011 riots in England that followed the controversial police shooting of Mark Duggan, there was extensive looting to accompany the protests and the rioting and the vandalism. As with George Floyd, there was a perceived racial aspect to the killing. Duggan was, it seems, a violent gang leader, but the manner of his death was still controversial.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots

 

[Trausti]

And as for BLM, I was very shocked to see the gathered/marching groups chanting, in one video 'what do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!' and in another video some song about pigs in a blanket which I think was echoing the same sentiment. If people do those chants, they can't expect to be seen as benign actors.

It’s that tension between the Narrative and your lying eyes.

 

[ruby sparks]

And as for BLM, I was very shocked to see the gathered/marching groups chanting, in one video 'what do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!' and in another video some song about pigs in a blanket which I think was echoing the same sentiment. If people do those chants, they can't expect to be seen as benign actors.

It’s that tension between the Narrative and your lying eyes.

I have no idea what you mean by that, but personally, after watching your postings here for a number of years, I think you are by and large far too one-sided in your outlook to have a meaningful discussion with about it, imo.

Obviously, you do have a point, up to a point. But I think you deal in caricatures too much. You are clearly an intelligent guy, so I have no idea why you do it.

 

[ruby sparks]

Word up: when a country or a society goes through such things, there are usually underlying problems in that society. Demonizing and squashing the agitants and not acknowledging their grievances, or only looking narrowly at proximal events when they erupt, is often only of limited use in solving the problems in the long run. The militant and unsavoury segment of those complaining is only the extreme end of a much larger demographic which has legitimate issues. Denial of that is basically just unhelpful.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here's a really good question deserving of a proper, thorough and comprehensive answer.

Why were those BLM protesters chanting those things? How does a society get to a place where some people do that?

 

[Metaphor]

Here's a really good question deserving of a proper, thorough answer.

Why were those protesters chanting those things? How does a society get to a place where some people do that?

There is a subculture within the woke left that hates police, believe the police force is beyond reform, and wants to eliminate the police (whether peacefully by defunding the police force, or violently by literally killing cops).

These people's ideas are so outrageous, impractical, hypocritical, incoherent, and immoral not even the left has sympathy for them. Yet strangely, as you allude, society does not seem to be too concerned with challenging these people's views. (In fact, people openly espouse these views in media (including mainstream left publications like The Guardian) and they are often academics).

I hope, simply, that these views are largely ignored because they have approximately zero chance of being implemented. A lot of sound and fury effecting nothing.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here's a really good question deserving of a proper, thorough answer.

Why were those protesters chanting those things? How does a society get to a place where some people do that?

There is a subculture within the woke left that hates police, believe the police force is beyond reform, and wants to eliminate the police (whether peacefully by defunding the police force, or violently by literally killing cops).

These people's ideas are so outrageous, impractical, hypocritical, incoherent, and immoral not even the left has sympathy for them. Yet strangely, as you allude, society does not seem to be too concerned with challenging these people's views. (In fact, people openly espouse these views in media (including mainstream left publications like The Guardian) and they are often academics).

I hope, simply, that these views are largely ignored because they have approximately zero chance of being implemented. A lot of sound and fury effecting nothing.

I broadly agree with much of that.

I am not sure about the last bit. You may be right, and it may also be true that they have no chance of being implemented, but I'm not sure if that's the only potential reason why they are to some extent ignored (or played down) by some. Some will downplay them because they have sympathy with the grievances that underly the complaints, in other words they will see at least some justification. Others, in 'the establishment' or the mainstream media for instance, will ignore them because they do not want to be seen as oppressors. So they give it a partial bye-ball (tiptoe around it for fear of being seen as racist). This is 'the narrative' that trausti speaks of. And I'm sure there are other reasons. Lower socioeconomic groups infighting over racial issues is quite a good way to distract from other issues. All the races involved in the lower socioeconomic groups uniting against the establishment is arguably the nightmare scenario for the establishment. I use the term generally and I'm not invoking a conspiracy.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here's another good question, imho. Why are the current protests so widespread across the USA (and indeed involving actors of more than one race or socioeconomic group)?

Obviously, I would not expect that there are simple answers. Quite the opposite.

And whatever way you slice it, America has gone backwards since Obama, imo, and it is a great pity, because America is in many ways still a great country, and seemed to be improving as regards the relevant issues here. Until the backlash and the swing back to the right.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm not a fan of antifa, but I do think those who support the concept have been unfairly demonized during these protests.

It is the new Acorn or Planned Parenthood. Conservatives hate what they are doing, so will make up all kinds of unfounded criminal accusations that they will repeat until ‘everyone knows they do that’

Indeed. And don't forget 'woke' and 'social justice warrior'. All perfectly useful and indeed admirable terms that have been turned into pejoratives and divorced from their original meanings and intent.

Oh and I forgot 'Identity Politics'. That's another term that got an unnecessarily bad name to the point of becoming a pejorative caricature.

 

[Arctish]

Here's a really good question deserving of a proper, thorough answer.

Why were those protesters chanting those things? How does a society get to a place where some people do that?

There is a subculture within the woke left that hates police, believe the police force is beyond reform, and wants to eliminate the police (whether peacefully by defunding the police force, or violently by literally killing cops).

These people's ideas are so outrageous, impractical, hypocritical, incoherent, and immoral not even the left has sympathy for them. Yet strangely, as you allude, society does not seem to be too concerned with challenging these people's views. (In fact, people openly espouse these views in media (including mainstream left publications like The Guardian) and they are often academics).

I hope, simply, that these views are largely ignored because they have approximately zero chance of being implemented. A lot of sound and fury effecting nothing.

Those chants date back to the 1960s. They might even be older than that.

It has nothing to do with Millennials being 'woke'. It has everything to do with the relationship between communities and the police turning rancid.

 

[Metaphor]

Here's a really good question deserving of a proper, thorough answer.

Why were those protesters chanting those things? How does a society get to a place where some people do that?

There is a subculture within the woke left that hates police, believe the police force is beyond reform, and wants to eliminate the police (whether peacefully by defunding the police force, or violently by literally killing cops).

These people's ideas are so outrageous, impractical, hypocritical, incoherent, and immoral not even the left has sympathy for them. Yet strangely, as you allude, society does not seem to be too concerned with challenging these people's views. (In fact, people openly espouse these views in media (including mainstream left publications like The Guardian) and they are often academics).

I hope, simply, that these views are largely ignored because they have approximately zero chance of being implemented. A lot of sound and fury effecting nothing.

Those chants date back to the 1960s. They might even be older than that.

It has nothing to do with Millennials being 'woke'. It has everything to do with the relationship between communities and the police turning rancid.

I didn't mention millennials, but I'd be flabbergasted to find somebody who thinks we ought abolish police who is not part of the "social justice" hard left.

Indeed, the idea of abolishing police is so far outside the Overton window, it is looking at 'unthinkable' in the rear view mirror.

The fact that some people have been chanting the sentiment since the 1960s is telling. Contrast this with how quickly same-sex marriage went from inconceivable to unpopular to acceptable to supported to the law of the land, in the space of a couple of decades.

 

[southernhybrid]

I don't condone violence, but when you read about the extreme racism of the police department, you might understand where the hatred of the police comes from.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/03/us/minneapolis-police-use-of-force.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Video of George Floyd’s last conscious moments on earth horrified the nation, spurring protests that have led to curfews and National Guard interventions in many large cities.

But for the black community in Minneapolis — where Mr. Floyd died after an officer pressed a knee into his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds — seeing the police use some measure of force is all too common.

About 20 percent of Minneapolis’s population of 430,000 is black. But when the police get physical — with kicks, neck holds, punches, shoves, takedowns, Mace, Tasers or other forms of muscle — nearly 60 percent of the time the person subject to that force is black. And that is according to the city’s own figures.

Community leaders say the frequency with which the police use force against black residents helps explain a fury in the city that goes beyond Mr. Floyd’s death, which the medical examiner ruled a homicide.

Since 2015, the Minneapolis police have documented using force about 11,500 times. For at least 6,650 acts of force, the subject of that force was black.

By comparison, the police have used force about 2,750 times against white people, who make up about 60 percent of the population.

All of that means that the police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years.

And, police brutality goes back for decades, actually for far longer than that, but I'm mostly considering what I've seen in my lifetime, and what sometimes happened in the 1960s when my own generation protested peacefully, primarily against the Viet Nam War. There was police brutality during the civil rights movement and long before that. We used to refer to the police as "pigs". Did we mean that every single police officer was terrible? No. It was just a phrase meant to point out police brutality, although it really wasn't fair to actual pigs.

So, I wouldn't take chants so literally. Think of the horrible things that Trump tweets, like "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat". When challenged, he says it was a joke or he didn't mean it literally. He's the fucking president. He should never say things like that. Why be alarmed when protesters chant things that I doubt they all mean to be taken literally when we have a president that says some of the most hateful things ever repeated by a so called leader of the country?

 

[marc]

And before the civil rights era, police were used to end attempts to form unions. They were pretty much used to enforce the desires of the powerful to preserve 'social order' rather than justice.

My wife's grandfather used to say the police are the biggest street gang in the country. Of course not all are like that, but you can probably find of some that are.

 

[JohnG]

Just want to make sure I'm clear on this. The guy protests racial inequality, and now the police are protesting his actions by refusing to participate in a pre game ceremony.

Instead of saying "Yes, we must stop racism and shooting unarmed people within our ranks", they are saying "F*** you fof having a problem with that".

Just wanted to be clear.

I posted this in 2017. One theory of quantum mechanics is the multiverse theory - which implies that somewhere there is a universe where Kap kneels, a Chinese nationalist catches wind of this occurrence and says to himself, “Gee whiz, if that happened in my country he would be punished for that, but what a great place this America is where a man can make a peaceful political statement.” And maybe, just maybe some politician would look into the data and make changes in the system.

But not in this universe of racist America.

 

[Toni]

Before the Civil Rights Movement, police also kept certain groups of people 'in their place.' You know who: Black people, always. Brown people much of the time. Jews. LDS. Gay men. In some places, Chinese, Japanese. Native Americans. For a while Italians and Irish. Women who dared to want to vote. I know I'm leaving out groups.

At their best, police truly do serve and protect. We're seeing the worst part now.

 

[ruby sparks]

All of that means that the police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years.

Wow. Times 7.

My (overseas) take on that is:

I would not be surprised if some of it, possibly even much of it, was due to non-racist factors, and/or factors that the black communities need to address or at least acknowledge themselves. Which would leave room for at least some racism. And I don't necessarily just mean out-and-out strong racism. Some could be merely mild or implicit. It would only be some officers, and so on. But my guess is that anyone who says that particular ethnic group have no good reason to feel hard done by is probably getting it wrong, imo. And I say that while thinking a lot of progress has been made during my lifetime (some of which might have been reversed this last few years perhaps).

 

[ZiprHead]

Floyd was in the cop car and they took him back out.

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/vEeMHFik9Xo[/YOUTUBE]

 

[laughing dog]

I don't condone violence, but when you read about the extreme racism of the police department, you might understand where the hatred of the police comes from.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/03/us/minneapolis-police-use-of-force.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Video of George Floyd’s last conscious moments on earth horrified the nation, spurring protests that have led to curfews and National Guard interventions in many large cities.

But for the black community in Minneapolis — where Mr. Floyd died after an officer pressed a knee into his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds — seeing the police use some measure of force is all too common.

About 20 percent of Minneapolis’s population of 430,000 is black. But when the police get physical — with kicks, neck holds, punches, shoves, takedowns, Mace, Tasers or other forms of muscle — nearly 60 percent of the time the person subject to that force is black. And that is according to the city’s own figures.

Community leaders say the frequency with which the police use force against black residents helps explain a fury in the city that goes beyond Mr. Floyd’s death, which the medical examiner ruled a homicide.

Since 2015, the Minneapolis police have documented using force about 11,500 times. For at least 6,650 acts of force, the subject of that force was black.

By comparison, the police have used force about 2,750 times against white people, who make up about 60 percent of the population.

All of that means that the police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years.

And, police brutality goes back for decades, actually for far longer than that, but I'm mostly considering what I've seen in my lifetime, and what sometimes happened in the 1960s when my own generation protested peacefully, primarily against the Viet Nam War. There was police brutality during the civil rights movement and long before that. We used to refer to the police as "pigs". Did we mean that every single police officer was terrible? No. It was just a phrase meant to point out police brutality, although it really wasn't fair to actual pigs.

So, I wouldn't take chants so literally. Think of the horrible things that Trump tweets, like "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat". When challenged, he says it was a joke or he didn't mean it literally. He's the fucking president. He should never say things like that. Why be alarmed when protesters chant things that I doubt they all mean to be taken literally when we have a president that says some of the most hateful things ever repeated by a so called leader of the country?

There are always those who use hyperbolic rhetoric without thinking. There are always those who over-react.

The problem with those people are that they are now reacting to their immediate fears instead of the actual forces driving the fear-generating actions: chants instead of what is driving those chants, and riots and looting instead of what is driving the peaceful protests.

Think about it - we have protests in cities across the country where most of the participants are peaceful. Yes the looter, rioters and violent agitators are wrong regardless of their motivations. But the focus of these fearful reactionaries is to label the violent ones into an ideological camp (not recognizing that all sides have violent assholes involved), and to either reject or minimize the protesters empirically valid concerns.

 

[ZiprHead]

Minneapolis police release bodycam footage. It's less than useless.

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/UyUtGpSe_hQ[/YOUTUBE]