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The Ferguson thread / additional race discussion

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This is going to sound nit-picky but the trial is not over. Everyone is innocent until the conclusion has been wrought. Anger is fine! But what stops a flame from burning a neighborhood? Organization, cool heads, blah, blah, blah.
Again - this (from my point of view) is about injustice; so saying "the trial isn't over" is cold comfort. Is it more just for the rioters to wait until this officer is acquitted or found to be acting in accordance with the law? Some pretty restrained rioters you guys got over there; I'm impressed.
Now let us address your anger about "petty theft".
my anger? i was encouraging civil unrest.
What these people took was not insured money or items, what they took was labor; frankly exploited labor. Stealing from exploited labor practically is burning the neighborhood down. Again, hedonism. You act as if property is insured it is okay to let your anger out. Did you think about the low wage workers that make most of the shit that got stolen? Do you think about the crippling American industry that came with outsourcing (exploiting) labor to produce those items cheaply to keep the American economy afloat....And they go and riot?
I see again you've made a big point of a small part of my post (that looting from stores is probably looting insured items; this was merely an aside to the content of my post, but you're making it one of the main points of rebuttal).
Never mind, I stand by what I said.
As for the American economy - as a non-American I couldn't really care less, to be perfectly honest with you.
The Globalist outsourcing of manufacturing was an American creation that the rest of the developed world has blindly followed; making American slavery into global slavery.

But getting back to some semblance of the topic at hand; the outrage at looting in some quarters overshadows the concern for the slaying of an unarmed man by police. Can you not see how this is troubling?
They would be what I just addressed above. Slavery has nothing to do with what I was talking about. The roots of Hedonism is unchecked Desire. Some poor kid got shot? Better go steal some NIKES? Seriously, get the fuck out of here. We need serious people addressing serious issues of justice, we do not need thievery with the luxury of knowing "it's insured by a higher power".
A man is shot multiple times in the back by an officer of the law and you want to talk about consumer items?
If people wish to express their outrage in acts of petty theft, I have no problem with this. It's small-fry.
We're talking about an extrajudicial execution in the street (which we all know is legal, but this time it happened in the USA, not Pakistan or Yemen, right?)
Listen you don't have to call me naive as if I don't know about socioeconomic pressures on recruiters and the benefits therein. However I choose not to call them victims. Few people risk their lives for an Idea and if they sign up for money as that Ideal then that is their choice. Just as it is yours to call them victims. I am a Marxist for Christ sake though, don't patronize me.
Where do I use the word "victims" in relation to poor people signing up to join the military?
"Marxist" or not, I fail to see your point.
You understand the socioeconomic pressures that supply human capital to the military...and you call it 'choice' - at the same time as calling yourself a Marxist?
This makes no sense.

Social inequity plays a part I never stated it did not. Quote me if I am wrong. Institutionalized racism is injustice, yes. But what is it you plan on doing? What is your go-to response? Defend the thieves and hide the activists. I am laughing, though it isn't laughable.
My plan? Well, I wasn't aware I was obliged to have one, not being American, but here's a plan anyway;
Raise the standards of US police forces by demanding a little more from these heavily armed cowards that apparently masquerade as those who "serve and protect" the people in towns like this.

Wanna be a cop? Take this test to see if you have the basic attributes of compassion and humanity before we load you up with weapons to compensate for your fear of members of the public who are also potentially armed. Or whatever it is that scares these sorts of lawmen. Black people, I could cynically speculate (note dark sarcasm).

Arrest the officer who killed this man, and put him in the dock like any other murderer.
If this actually took place, the civil unrest would never have arisen, let alone been an issue.
I've not followed the progression of this case very closely - but it seems that police closed ranks around the perpetrator of this killing immediately, refusing to even release the officer's name.

You want a plan? Sort out the American justice system - for a start.
 
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(Eating so I'm going to lazy quote)
Where do I use the word "victims" in relation to poor people signing up to join the military?
"Marxist" or not, I fail to see your point.
You understand the socioeconomic pressures that supply human capital to the military...and you call it 'choice' - at the same time as calling yourself a Marxist?
This makes no sense.

You seem to assume they are victims because they do not have a choice in signing up in the military. That was the point.

My plan? Well, I wasn't aware I was obliged to have one, not being American, but here's a plan anyway;

You already told me your plan before I asked you to formulate one. Your go-to response was
my anger? i was encouraging civil unrest.

I think this is where we differ.
 
It wasn't a plan, it was a post on an Internet forum from across the planet, cheering on the expression of anger through "the fucking up of shit" (which i believe is the technical term).
Violence against property doesn't offend me.

You seem to assume they are victims because they do not have a choice in signing up in the military. That was the point.
I seem to assume? That assumption (your assumption, that is) is incorrect.
Not victims - just another group of people exploited by capitalism and the military industrial complex.
 
With American wealth I would be cautious in using the term "exploited"....Considering America is the main proponent of foreign policy around the world. But again this is where we differ.

Violence against property doesn't offend me.
If I were a reductionist (and I am) I would say your indifference to violence against property is the same kind of misuse of authority as a citizen and you would be in equal standing of abusing your powers. Also, I would say your acceptance of violence as a method of any resolution is violent, why wouldn't a mediator be needed if the police lost credibility and the people are looting? Violence is only met with violence until someone finally stops and finds a way to circumvent these resolutions.
 
Breaking into a shop and killing a man are not comparable forms of violence.

As for American wealth - a self-proclaimed Marxist would surely recognise the exploitation inherent in filling a nation's armed forces with the poor (to fight rich men's wars) because only the financially secure can afford a secondary education?
Wealth is one thing - massive disparities in wealth are something else entirely.
"America is the main proponent of foreign policy around the world" ; well - if by that you mean "planetary bullies", the main financiers of some pretty radical extremist groups and deliberate provocateurs of a range of bloody conflicts, then I'd have to agree with you.

This is getting wildly off-topic though.
Getting back to my original point, the USA has long had major problems with a culture of violence, and with injustice that is a direct result of ethnic tension.
This incident is just one of many reported (and, I assume, many more unreported) in the world media.
I don't blame "Americans", "America", "white" people, "black" people or any such simplistic notion.
But I find it rather impossible to separate the violence inherent in the military mentality, the gun lobby and the trigger-happy police forces that commit these acts of murder.
The paranoia and suspicion that has become ingrained in LEOs and private citizens alike does not make social unity in certain communities possible.
This is not the first story of its kind, and i would be willing to bet my bottom dollar it will not be the last.
I empathise with those caught up in this bullshit, for the gun-toting boys exercising their right to flop their weapons out in public; it does nothing to strengthen community and only puts people (especially police officers - who are not diplomats or welfare officers, but instead hold the monopoly on 'legitimate violence' on behalf of the state) nervous.
Not that I am an apologist for police brutality in any of its forms.
 
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The tail-end of a rather good article. Relevant part highlighted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-...ised-police-meet-institutional-racism/5674040

=================================================

Heavily armed police accelerate the broader American gun culture. Police violence has a long history of provoking American citizens to arm themselves. The Second Amendment had no greater champions than the Black Panther Party of the 1960s and 1970s, who would patrol city streets with guns to deter police brutality against black people. The Panthers opposed gun control because they saw it as an attack on black self-defence against the state. At a time when even the NRA favoured extensive gun control, the Panthers were the most militant gun rights activists in America.

If any group of African Americans attempted the same tactics today, there would be a full-blown invasion of their communities by paramilitary police. The right to keep and bear arms is now an extension of white privilege. We can expect many more deaths in defence of that privilege.

David Smith is a lecturer in American politics and foreign policy with the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.
 
I haven't yet read the back and forth above, so may comment on that later.

One thing I've found interesting is the correlation between the steadily decreasing rate of crime in the US and the vastly increasing regional (state, municipal etc) defense and police investment.

A few visual aids:

NSFW:
Crime_Victim_Chart.gif


Violent crime has fallen by over 70% since 1994. 70%! Infact, violent crime is at it's lowest point since the early 1970s.

Property crime rates are also at their lowest points since the early 1970s.

index_property.jpg


^source: Utah Department of Justice


Long_4-3-14_2.jpg


Meanwhile, police spending (which is oddly correlative to incarceration) and incarceration rates have never been higher, creating the world's largest prison population, in both per capita and in total.


I just found this interesting, and befuddling. Is this vast spending on the part of law enforcement causing such a decrease in crime, or is it a mere correlation? Even though year by year, crime rates are falling, law enforcement spending is showing no signs of slowing down.
 
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Now if only they could be forced to wear Google Glass we'd be set. That or all their funding is working...Except maybe in the drug department.
 
Crime statistics inevitably increase with an increase in policing.
Yet, "crime statistics" are so often cited as a reason to increase public spending on "law and order" campaigns.
Circular, self-serving politics; from the local level to the national.
 
Is this vast spending on the part of law enforcement causing such a decrease in crime, or is it a mere correlation?

Correlation.

I quite like the Levitt & Dubner hypothesis that the biggest causative factor in the long term decline in violent crime was Roe v Wade - all of a sudden a lot of unwanted and unloved babies were no longer being born

[video=youtube_share;zk6gOeggViw]http://youtu.be/zk6gOeggViw[/video]
 
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Apparently this was the wrong guy. Anonymous needs to stay out of things like this.

True, but let's not discount their value entirely.

They've released an hour's worth of police dispatch recording during the incident. I haven't listened to the whole thing, I'm not yet sure what insights it may present, if any. But it's at least some kind of documentation of what took place, as it happened.
 
Main thing I mean with that, is that by releasing this unrelated man's name, they put him/his family in danger. The officer's name was not going to be withheld forever, but in that heat at the beginning, with threats made against him, I completely agree with withholding the name.

It seems the officer didn't know he was a suspect for the robbery at the time that he stopped him, but what I've read lately says that after he saw the box of cigars he considered that he was. This may or may not be true, but if true, it may have contributed to the escalation.

Some reports say that the officer tried to put the guy into his cruiser, if I'm remembering this correctly. This guy assaulted the officer/resisted authority. It was reported that a shot went off in the cruiser, as Brown allegedly made a go for the officers weapon.

Maybe that shot didn't happen. It isn't good that Ferguson PD doesn't have dashcams or audio recording, or that officers don't have cameras on them.

I have only read of the one shot hit then his arms up in surrender then execution, by Johnson. The other eyewitness accounts don't say it quite like this, although they do tend to want to implicate the officer in wrong-doing. One thing to take into account is that St. Louis is one of the most racist and segregated places in the U.S. It can at least be said that there might be some motivation for blacks to paint whites as oppressors, cold, etc., even if they aren't aware that their version isn't objective. Each account is different.

I would totally be in favor of it being a requirement for all police to wear monitoring equipment. Nobody should have state authorized power on this level without at least an attempt to monitor their potential execution of it.

I do believe in attempting full transparency, but when the facts are still being ascertained, and threats are being made on the officer, in heat, there needs to be some control over the dissemination of information. What anonymous did here was contribute to the danger.
 
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The following lyrics, I found here:
http://soopermexican.com/2014/08/15...ap-songs-featuring-drugs-drinking-and-murder/

"With this Glock in your face
And you betta not make a sound
And I only like white men on my money [???]
Those who are last shall be first,
Whites on the bottom

He musta walked up and unloaded because there was no stopping him
Somebody else layin’ across the street, must be his partner
Damn."


Link to song:
https://soundcloud.com/bigmike-jr-brown/080514-freetyle-bigmike-luh-vee-k-loc

His soundcloud page:
https://soundcloud.com/bigmike-jr-brown
 
Delving into his personal business outside of the court of law is a bit NSA-like. I mean this doesn't prove anything except that people (well you but I am sure there are more) don't know personal boundaries in a public discourse of justice. You're way ahead of the horse on this one.
 
It is a witness to his character. I'm sure there are positive ones, as well.

Relevant? Not really. Anonymous released the name of a man who they claimed was the officer who shot this guy, when death threats were out on that officer, and it wasn't even him. It was careless.

People want to claim the cop who did it is guilty, and that everyone else is guilty, and that Brown didn't do anything at all they want to believe, and when video comes out showing him assaulting a guy, and robbing a store not long before his death, they cry foul. It's a fucking circus.
 
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There is no "they" only you and your opinions, I mean unless you have a spreadsheet in front of you. Do you? It's extremely relevant, it's a 'witness to his character' which is nothing more than he likes to rap. It is ironic that Anonymous broke the same rule you did, and that you both came to the same conclusion, "It was careless" [...] 'Death threats were sent out and it wasn't even him'.
 
This doesn't threaten the life of another.

nothing more than he likes to rap? He likes to rap about killing, and robbing. and he robbed a store, and committed violence against a man, just prior to his death. and this whole thing is so big on how whites have caused all of this, and we were slavers, and all of that, and that's what america is known for, and here he is, these lyrics, showing his frustration and how he sees himself-- on the bottom. it's revealing. it might provide insight. maybe he had this music in him, and was wanting to fight the system he perceived, but he may have been going about it all wrong.
 
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Ferguson, Missouri (CNN) -- The Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown didn't stop him because he was suspected in a convenience-store robbery, but because he was "walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic," the city's police chief said Friday.
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson -- hours after documents came out labeling the 18-year-old Brown as the "primary suspect" in the store theft -- told reporters the "robbery does not relate to the initial contact between the officer and Michael Brown."

CNN

So he was stopped in the street, unknowingly the primary suspect, then evidently *ran and got shot or put up a fight. Regardless both instances must prove the next sentence true. The officer would have to prove his life was in danger, like how he left his bull mace in the other police car, or couldn't shoot his toe. In fact in police training they train you in hand to hand because if you try to pull your gun from the holster in a certain proximity you're presenting a danger to both individuals. I'm pretty sure Steven Seagal went around the U.S. teaching throat punches...So. Also if there is a kid running don't police officers have like Dodge Chargers?
 
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I'm reading about all the shop owners with automatic rifles. It's like the confusion of the tongues no one can get their point across and both sides have lost faith to surrender its own safety.
 
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