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[Police brutality] American injustice, yet again.


Ragitsu

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1 hour ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

 

The terminology used here is so blatantly biased and ludicrous that it's hard for me to take anything written here seriously. Every protester is a "violent anarchist" and more than one is a "mob". Ok...

 

I agree with you on the over the top terminology.  They are sticking to their talking points beyond a doubt.  However, several of those examples resulted in injuries or involved hundreds of people.

 

I'm also not saying the feds aren't over-reacting.  But it's understandable with their courthouse getting 40-50 days of vandalism and a complete lack of support from the local police.

 

 

1 hour ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

For the record, the current protests are about better government...not "get rid of government".

 

Some of these areas want to completely abolish their police departments - like Minneapolis - which I fear will be exactly the same thing in the end.  If the Chaz/Chop was any indication it will be chaos and death.

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15 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Some of these areas want to completely abolish their police departments - like Minneapolis - which I fear will be exactly the same thing in the end.  If the Chaz/Chop was any indication it will be chaos and death.

 

IIRC, the Chaz/Chop was literally cut off of supplies.  Consider the Fyre Festival for an example of how that goes...

 

edit:  There are places that spend a lot less on their police forces, or weapons, and places that have a much better balancing of how their society operates around its needs.  Police shouldn't be the be-all-end-all, and it's a definite problem that it's become so strong as to be a literal standing army in every major location in the country 😕

 

 

My main point of contention is the counter to complaints of repeated graffiti on government buildings is escalation to kidnapping people off the street as if to threaten a literal lack of due process.  It's the communication that "we are willing to ignore the laws for any of you, and since we aren't charging someone we don't seem to care who we do it to".  (edit: There are more serious crimes on the list, I know, I address it briefly at the end)

 

There are strategies to deal with repeated damage to federal property without literally doubling the protest or creating their own insurgency scenario. 

 

But honestly ScottishFox, as with "Kettling" tactics, it really seems like the point is to create an "violent anarchist uprising" so they can crush and kill and point at it.  The violent end is the objective of tactics like this.  It's how it's employed in places like Israel.  That's the problem I have here.

 

As for the violent antagonists, well-organized protesters have been shown and video-taped as turning those people over to the police.  Even shoving them into a police line.  This is why protest leadership is needed, not discouraged.

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3 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Your solution to violent, lawless cops is violent, lawless citizens?  This will end well.  :(

It cost me four hundred dollars for a full set of tires. It takes ten years to get your money back from the government plus the expense of a lawyer, and sometimes you don't even get the full amount of the money back. If I see anybody slashing my tires, I will be violent and lawless.

CES 

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1 minute ago, csyphrett said:

It cost me four hundred dollars for a full set of tires. It takes ten years to get your money back from the government plus the expense of a lawyer, and sometimes you don't even get the full amount of the money back. If I see anybody slashing my tires, I will be violent and lawless.

 

I don't agree on the violent, but there's a reason why civil disobedience and malicious compliance are a well known set of words in the security field.

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7 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

What I found on a DHS site was:

 

 

As with any reporting, consider the source. DHS has already admitted/claimed responsibility for the "security" kidnappings. The credibility and fairness of its characterizations of these alleged incidents is at best highly suspect.

 

The Trump administration has pushed past spin. We're into full-blown propaganda now.

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34 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

As with any reporting, consider the source. DHS has already admitted/claimed responsibility for the "security" kidnappings. The credibility and fairness of its characterizations of these alleged incidents is at best highly suspect.

 

The Trump administration has pushed past spin. We're into full-blown propaganda now.

 

I mean, I'm waiting on confirmation on that, not that I expect it'll be that hard...

 

More to the point of what I was stating.  Let's say the 'grabbings' are motivated by what the protesters are doing.

 

They are still grabbing people off the street without identifying themselves, providing charges, or reading rights, not charging them ever, and releasing them the minute there's an actual legal issue about it.

 

How is this supposed to help deal with the 'anarchists'?

 

Again, the entire thing is explicitly what creates these protests to begin with!

 

But I want to introduce a different frame.

 

Please, if you are trying to act in the government's defense, remember what it is you are defending here.  You are explicitly defending the right of the Federal government to grab people unannounced for no apparent legal purpose outside of any legal framework or local authority.  Please, again, consider what it is you are defending here.

 

If these people were considered terrorists, insurgents, there would be charges.  There would be some action.  There would be video tapes.  There would be tracking.  Do we believe the government was somehow able to identify who they wanted to grab without the evidence to charge them?

 

The alternative is the scenario that they don't seem to care.  That is not how the most powerful government in the world should operate, unless you wish it to operate with unchecked impunity.

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5 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

 

Because the word "anarchist" strikes a chord with the " Law and Order " crowd...and you can bet your bottom dollar that trump will be using that as a selling point in his campaign.

I don't know that the President has met a real anarchist in his entire life. Anarchists belive government is bad -- all government, regardless of where they stand on the spectrum. I doubt many if any of the protesters believe that. They may disagree with the President about the role of government, and claim the current system is fundamentally flawed to the point that a do-over might be worthwhile, but they want government to continue to exist.

 

They also share the common belief that continually escalating things so they can be called "riots" is a prick move. 

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50 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

The Trump administration has pushed past spin. We're into full-blown propaganda now.

 

This is more of a political comment, and response, but there was no way to leave it anywhere else.

 

I won't say whether the official DHS release is 'generously interpreted' or not.

 

I won't disagree about the propaganda point.  If you think otherwise, I dare you to sign up for a rally ticket (don't pay, just provide a junk email you can check), or fill out an 'approval poll'.  You will start to receive emails that will make even the most stalwart 'middle ground' voter blush.

 

The donation drives can, will, and do say literally anything to get money.

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5 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Because it's the same people.  Where do you think our police and government officials come from?  They're us.

 

If our government is corrupt it's because we're too corrupt as a society or failing to safeguard the institutions of power.

I don't have qualified immunity, or military grade weapons issued to me, I was not given hours of training. I did not take an oath, I did not use and abuse the public trust.They do not consider themselves "us", they see us as "lesser". The onus is 100% on them to have honor, and integrity. And if they do not, they are enemies to a free society. 

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1 hour ago, pinecone said:

I don't have qualified immunity, or military grade weapons issued to me, I was not given hours of training. I did not take an oath, I did not use and abuse the public trust.They do not consider themselves "us", they see us as "lesser". The onus is 100% on them to have honor, and integrity. And if they do not, they are enemies to a free society. 

 

Unfortunately treating 'humans with power' with the same exact responsibilities as 'humans without power' is a not-great proposition.

 

This doesn't mean you need a legal framework to enforce those responsibilities.  But when you cannot create compensatory factors to resolve those issues, you have to enforce it legally.  Ideally, you don't have to.  But a country can't run on ideals alone - people don't operate that way.

 

 

 

For the record, as frustrating as you may find it to be on boards like this, engaging in people who disagree with you honestly is important.  Finding those people you can have conversations with is vital.  Not dogpiling is important, as is giving people the space to rationalize and engage the thinking part of your brain.

 

Because even with real people who I know are real, and people who others' know are real, trying to talk online about disagreements on politics is a literal world of "quoting witty-sounding maxims that may not have anything to do with context, using memetic bullcrap to 'counter' every point, followed by shouting that if biden wins we'll all lose" and never actually responding to a single sentence that has been said.

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2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I don't know that the President has met a real anarchist in his entire life. Anarchists belive government is bad -- all government, regardless of where they stand on the spectrum. I doubt many if any of the protesters believe that. They may disagree with the President about the role of government, and claim the current system is fundamentally flawed to the point that a do-over might be worthwhile, but they want government to continue to exist.

 

They also share the common belief that continually escalating things so they can be called "riots" is a prick move. 

 

Most people at this point aren't educated enough to know what an anarchist is. Thus, it can be whatever spin doctors want it to be.  " Those American colonists....nothing but violent anarchists. They should all be shot. "

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I won't simply say 'the DHS memo should be ignored'.  I'm all for fact-checking the heck out of any and all official documentation that comes from the government.  Act on information, not on belief.

 

The issue with 'fact checking' is there's investigative and scientific.  Scientific details are easily fact-checked because, you know, they are repeatable.

 

Investigative fact checking involves a record.  And the integrity and completeness of that record becomes very important.  It's interpretive, and selective cuts of information can provide wildly different interpretations.

 

This is why I err on the side of examining the known endemic problems with the police, and push conversations in the direction of resolutions.  I also suggest knowing the tactics used in these protest situations (by the police, by protesters, by looters), and what they accomplish.

 

These are things you can take away from this situation _before_ you get into the details of what's going on.  This knowledge will arm you to better understand the context of these situations.

 

And maybe I can stop seeing conversations that start with "they all deserve it they're all rioters anyway"

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16 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

And maybe I can stop seeing conversations that start with "they all deserve it they're all rioters anyway"

I share your frustration on that point. The term "rioter" is so nebulous that you can apply it to just about anyone. I thing George Wallace justified his actions of his state police at Selma by saying Dr. King and John Lewis had started a "riot". That was enough to justify in many white minds in the South the notion that it was the African-Americans who were the threat, not their own privileges.

 

Meanwhile, wrecker in Portland took away the last remnants of the base for "The Elk", a popular and notorious statue across the street from the City Hall. "The Elk" had stood for 110 years before bring torn down with most of the other statuary in the park. It was probably not massive politically objectionable, but I can understand why it happened. Public Art is often a self-contradictory term, after all. A statue of a white pioneer family was also torn down, which was more objectionable and needed to go anyway. There is a memorial to the 1st Oregon regiment in the Spanish-American War and the  Philippines insurgency that might or might not still stand -- if it does, it's probably because the statue is some 40 feet high at the top of a pillar.  Even for a committed vandal, that's quite a climb.

 

I have seen stickers that said "Vandalism is for those who can't afford free speech". Current events in Portland are demonstrating that. I feel sorry for the elk, though -- although it wasn;t particularly good art, it was a sort of innocent victim in all this.

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10 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

IIRC, the Chaz/Chop was literally cut off of supplies.  Consider the Fyre Festival for an example of how that goes...

 

edit:  There are places that spend a lot less on their police forces, or weapons, and places that have a much better balancing of how their society operates around its needs.  Police shouldn't be the be-all-end-all, and it's a definite problem that it's become so strong as to be a literal standing army in every major location in the country 😕

 

 

My main point of contention is the counter to complaints of repeated graffiti on government buildings is escalation to kidnapping people off the street as if to threaten a literal lack of due process.  It's the communication that "we are willing to ignore the laws for any of you, and since we aren't charging someone we don't seem to care who we do it to".  (edit: There are more serious crimes on the list, I know, I address it briefly at the end)

 

There are strategies to deal with repeated damage to federal property without literally doubling the protest or creating their own insurgency scenario. 

 

But honestly ScottishFox, as with "Kettling" tactics, it really seems like the point is to create an "violent anarchist uprising" so they can crush and kill and point at it.  The violent end is the objective of tactics like this.  It's how it's employed in places like Israel.  That's the problem I have here.

 

As for the violent antagonists, well-organized protesters have been shown and video-taped as turning those people over to the police.  Even shoving them into a police line.  This is why protest leadership is needed, not discouraged.

I dont know about supplies, but I am pretty sure the city sent in porta potties. And near as I could some of the residents themselves discouraged people coming in.  

 

Dont know all this for sure, though.

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7 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I don't know that the President has met a real anarchist in his entire life. Anarchists belive government is bad -- all government, regardless of where they stand on the spectrum. I doubt many if any of the protesters believe that. They may disagree with the President about the role of government, and claim the current system is fundamentally flawed to the point that a do-over might be worthwhile, but they want government to continue to exist.

 

They also share the common belief that continually escalating things so they can be called "riots" is a prick move. 

I will say most so called anarchist I have met seemed to be more of the dictatorship of people who I agree with style of govt. For whatever that entails.

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37 minutes ago, Badger said:

I dont know about supplies, but I am pretty sure the city sent in porta potties. And near as I could some of the residents themselves discouraged people coming in.  

 

Dont know all this for sure, though.

 

I more meant other fundamentals.  I doubt any of the people there were working, meaning I have no idea how they would be getting food.  But again, I don't know of the context of it.  My understanding is things happened so fast that I'd be likely unable to put together any kind of details on what was going on or how it got that way.

 

Immediate malfeasance is a thing I can see in a close city as opposed to, let's say, a Rural or Suburban area, but cities are also much higher maintenance per block regardless...

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