I’m not sure any of the democratic candidates really would want the job after the effects of the pandemic. The DNC can select anyone it likes, right? Maybe Elizabeth Warren will end up the surprise pick.
Politics and in-fighting. Which I guess is just politics. Or infighting
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Guiliani is a special kind of asshole. Everything about his statement was absurd and gross. I can only hope that, come November, enough of America shows up to vote Trump out of office so we don’t have to keeping hearing from him or his sycophantic crew of wankers on a daily basis.
Sadly, that still somehow a big question mark. Because America lost its damn mind years ago and our mental health system is far too shit to help us get the help we need.
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I agree Arjan, but it’s hard not to see that tensions in America have been boiling away for a long time, tump is the ultimate product a capitalist system, and the media has become so politicised to have lost any real claim to be a fourth estate.
I think the identity of the country can be repaired, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow and it will take as much luck as strategy.
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I think there is a lot of rot in the police system. Obviously some of the things that happen are outrageous. People need to get together and talk a lot more with each other. Good old fashioned comunity policing, with the police getting acquainted with the people and the other way round. Acting a bit more like social workers. I think maybe doing things like that can alleviate some of the pressure.
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That’s absolutely true, and I think as Ben mentioned in another thread it seems like no progress has been made in 30 years in respect of police brutality and racial violence.
I think one of the reasons the United State has a lot of problems is because there is a lack of coalescence between the state laws across the country. The very principle of the union gives the states these powers but it means that the federal response is automatically limited, even if you had an administration that genuinely wanted to change things.
I think the way the media narrative is presented sometimes doesn’t help, as state specific problems can be homogenised into general all-american issues and what you really need is to be targeting and demonising the bad policy making of that state. That’s absolutely not the case with the riots – this is obviously a pervasive thing that sweeps the nation, but my point being the way that America is structured can sometimes be a curse rather than a blessing.
There are obviously states that have really corrupt and racists police systems and they need to be exposed and rebuilt. Although, sometimes I’m not sure if that’s achievable with the mindset of the general populace of some states. For example, I think Delaware has historically been pretty bad (I understand) but the reporting on it does not seem to be very prominent.
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I think it’s certainly a factor.
I think, with a case like this, it’s not just one thing but hundreds, and I think as an international audience, we probably aren’t aware of a lot of factors right now. Similar to the post-mortems for the 2016 election where the issues with the rust belt were highlighted after the results.
Personally, I think the politicisation of the media in America really capitalises and exercises diviseness. I think people like Roger Ailes and Roger Stone have a lot to answer for. Particularly Stone, who has advised every Republican administration since Nixon (as far as I’m aware) and frankly, extremely amoral with respect to how he has curated the narratives of those administrations. He even admits it openly.
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That was really interesting, thanks Todd
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Yeah, I remember watching this (presumably because you’ve posted it before), but it does bear repeating. It’s a great illustration of how white privilege works, and why the assumption of many people that because they worked hard to be successful, lack of success must mean lack of committment and hard work is wrong (or at least incomplete).
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It’s getting surreal:
Protesters: Walk with us!
Sheriff: Yeah, OK.
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Guiliani is a special kind of asshole.
Nothing new. He was less of an asshole in the early post-9/11 days but still an asshole.
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It’s getting surreal:
Protesters: Walk with us!
Sheriff: Yeah, OK.
No. It’s not even about de-escalating but making the right choice. I think you’re referring to the sheriff from Flint. There are other examples elsewhere, but he also said there are kids here, lets make it a parade.
Whilst I’m here. Plastic bullets are not non-lethal. They kill and maim.
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There is also this essay from Obama
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Intelligent, empathic, nuanced but also pragmatic, inspiring.
This used to be the President of the USA.
The current President’s comment:
The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!
I know, I know. It’s just, it’s just, urgh.
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Whilst I’m here. Plastic bullets are not non-lethal. They kill and maim.
Yeah, I remember endless discussion on the radio about the use of plastic bullets in NI from when I was a kid. And a lot of the same rhetoric from the contemporary defenders of their use now.
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It’s getting surreal:
Protesters: Walk with us!
Sheriff: Yeah, OK.
No. It’s not even about de-escalating but making the right choice. I think you’re referring to the sheriff from Flint. There are other examples elsewhere, but he also said there are kids here, lets make it a parade.
Whilst I’m here. Plastic bullets are not non-lethal. They kill and maim.
Can’t post links easily via PS4 but there was a Forbes article covering various cases. Sadly, it doesn’t look like all were genuine, with some being PR exercises.
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We need something like a gathering of community leaders to stop this. I agree having Trump around is the worst possible thing at this time. Obama can still get fucked for what he did though, he was shit in his own special way.
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Meanwhile, in completely unimportant news, my Parliament is currently debating a measure that will prevent a large number of MPs from voting in Parliament.
Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said that for those with a medical reason – those who are shielding – there will still be a mechanism for them to take part by video link. They won’t be able to vote though.
The worry some of them have – and actually a number of MPs who aren’t in that category also have – is that it locks their constituents out of the decision-making process and when it comes to big, contentious votes they can’t take part.
The truth is we don’t how long that could go on for. We don’t know when things will get back to normal and when those who are shielding can come back to Westminster.
But there’s nothing sinister going on here at all. Government business, move along, citizen.
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That’s great.
I’ve been delighted to see so many marketing messages that tell us that now is not the time for people to be trying to sell things, and so many cries for attention telling us that these firms know that it’s the time to be quiet and listen.
You genuinely can’t tell at times whether they’re buying into they’re own bullshit, it’s quite remarkable.
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It’s getting surreal:
Protesters: Walk with us!
Sheriff: Yeah, OK.
No. It’s not even about de-escalating but making the right choice. I think you’re referring to the sheriff from Flint. There are other examples elsewhere, but he also said there are kids here, lets make it a parade.
Whilst I’m here. Plastic bullets are not non-lethal. They kill and maim.
There have been some incidents reported of law enforcement taking a knee simply as a photo op before going out and teargassing crowds.
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The danger is sharing such images on social media, whilst well intended, will drown out the voices of those who need to be heard. There are currently protesters and community leaders and civil rights activists trying to share their stories. Find some and tag them too. Hashtags are hopeless unless they amplify useful resources, a way to contribute, a piece of history, a comic or movie, anything. Killer Mike’s speech, Obama’s empathy, Terrence Floyd’s plea. Yesterday I watched a wee girl shield a kid from a line of riot police. The only thing that stopped them bashing her was her white privilege.
I have plenty I could recommend, right now due to the context of that image, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout springs to mind.
Toni Morrison too. I’m probably paraphrasing her but none of this will end so long as there are people who only feel tall when there are others on their knees.
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It’s getting surreal:
Protesters: Walk with us!
Sheriff: Yeah, OK.
No. It’s not even about de-escalating but making the right choice. I think you’re referring to the sheriff from Flint. There are other examples elsewhere, but he also said there are kids here, lets make it a parade.
Whilst I’m here. Plastic bullets are not non-lethal. They kill and maim.
There have been some incidents reported of law enforcement taking a knee simply as a photo op before going out and teargassing crowds.
Yeah. So it goes.
I watched footage of a decent guy in Houston too. Probably local cop.
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The danger is sharing such images on social media, whilst well intended, will drown out the voices of those who need to be heard. There are currently protesters and community leaders and civil rights activists trying to share their stories. Find some and tag them too. Hashtags are hopeless unless they amplify useful resources, a way to contribute, a piece of history, a comic or movie, anything. Killer Mike’s speech, Obama’s empathy, Terrence Floyd’s plea. Yesterday I watched a wee girl shield a kid from a line of riot police. The only thing that stopped them bashing her was her white privilege.
I have plenty I could recommend, right now due to the context of that image, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout springs to mind.
Toni Morrison too. I’m probably paraphrasing her but none of this will end so long as there are people who only feel tall when there are others on their knees.
While I agree it’ll muddy the waters, I think there’s enough other info to counter it.
For instance, this one image must have gone super-viral by now because it’s a perfect depiction of it all:
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Yesterday I watched a wee girl shield a kid from a line of riot police. The only thing that stopped them bashing her was her white privilege.
That moment was simultaneously life-affirming and stomach-turning: her brave humanity in protecting a fellow protester, and the blatantly racist actions that she needed to protect him from.
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Meanwhile, over in the UK, this is ludicrous:
https://www.theguardian.com/politic…nute-long-queue-to-vote-to-end-virtual-votingWorse:
“MPs are to return to parliament after a government motion was passed to prevent the resumption of virtual voting, despite what one MP called “absurd” scenes of a kilometre-long conga line of politicians trying to vote.
The 527 MPs snaked through Westminster halls and courtyards for an hour and 23 minutes to vote on the proposal by the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, which was carried by 261 votes to 163. It incited a furious reaction from many MPs, including those who are shielding and black and ethnic minority (BAME) politicians.”This is macho bollocks of the worst order.
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Meanwhile, over in the UK, this is ludicrous:
https://www.theguardian.com/politic…nute-long-queue-to-vote-to-end-virtual-votingWorse:
“MPs are to return to parliament after a government motion was passed to prevent the resumption of virtual voting, despite what one MP called “absurd” scenes of a kilometre-long conga line of politicians trying to vote.
The 527 MPs snaked through Westminster halls and courtyards for an hour and 23 minutes to vote on the proposal by the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, which was carried by 261 votes to 163. It incited a furious reaction from many MPs, including those who are shielding and black and ethnic minority (BAME) politicians.”This is macho bollocks of the worst order.
This is Cummings wanting to ensure the Whips can enforce party discipline over the next few weeks. There’s a big deadline looming that no-one is talking about, and being on the other end of the country might just encourage errant MPs to vote based upon their conscience, their constituents, and the best interests of the country at large.
Such a thing cannot be allowed.
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There’s a big deadline looming that no-one is talking about
Which is? I know we’re screwed at the end of the year but if there’s something earlier looming….
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The danger is sharing such images on social media, whilst well intended, will drown out the voices of those who need to be heard. There are currently protesters and community leaders and civil rights activists trying to share their stories. Find some and tag them too. Hashtags are hopeless unless they amplify useful resources, a way to contribute, a piece of history, a comic or movie, anything. Killer Mike’s speech, Obama’s empathy, Terrence Floyd’s plea. Yesterday I watched a wee girl shield a kid from a line of riot police. The only thing that stopped them bashing her was her white privilege.
I have plenty I could recommend, right now due to the context of that image, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout springs to mind.
Toni Morrison too. I’m probably paraphrasing her but none of this will end so long as there are people who only feel tall when there are others on their knees.
The Sellout is a great book and I had not made the connection. The stuff Adidas and Sony are doing is clearly commercial based. There is an opposing argument but I will not bore you with it.
We should be sharing the substantial stuff. Killer Mike’s speech, which I think Todd shared is a great example. We should be populating the media with messages of empowerment and truth. It is a war of words, as much as it is any other kind of war.
EDIT: With that said, this is not the way to go https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/49434/1/white-instagram-influencers-are-posing-at-black-lives-matter-protests-for-clout
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There’s a big deadline looming that no-one is talking about
Which is? I know we’re screwed at the end of the year but if there’s something earlier looming….
At the end of the year, the ‘transition’ period following our exit from the EU will end. The deadline to extend said transition (as you might be tempted to do if say, you were currently suffering under a global pandemic that was already crippling your economy) is the end of June.
The FT has a good rundown on the timeline.
Some context:
- We’ve been offered a lengthy extension
- We’ve refused any extension
- The civil service is apparently under the impression that No-Deal is the governments preferred outcome
- No-deal means roughly 10% of the UK economy disappears overnight, predominantly in the North and rural areas
- There is speculation that the government is planning to use the pandemic to mask the economic damage
- Some of the largest donors to the Tory party now appear to currently be hedge funds taking up short positions against the UK economy, and Russion oligarchs (make of that what you will)
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Yeah that’s something about this mess that really stinks. You have got to wonder what is going on when all the big firms and billionaires support something that is allegedly some kind of anti-capitalist uprising.
I really doubt these protests will so much as kick over a garbage can in Beverly Hills or on Wall Street. The celebs who are all over social media supporting protest will have the police there in seconds were protesters to come to their house with burning torches.
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Yeah I meant the Atlanta speech. I thought you posted it Todd, but maybe not. For posterity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWasOhArfM
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Yeah that’s something about this mess that really stinks. You have got to wonder what is going on when all the big firms and billionaires support something that is allegedly some kind of anti-capitalist uprising.
These days, marketing is essentially propaganda (to the point that the definitive book on modern advertising is called Propaganda) and advertising companies will use any social movement if they think it’ll get eyes on a brand name or title. If it’s controversial all the better because then they can rely on signal boosting from angry people on social media – Gilette, Keurig and Nike all saw increases in sales after their recent backing of progressive ideals, partially boosted by videos going viral of people dropping their razors in toilets. smashing coffee makers and burning shoes. They don’t give two shits about the cause, the see an opportunity to make money and they take it.
That said, I was at a Q&A with Boots Reilly when Sorry To Bother You when in the cinema here, and he made a good point in response to me asking him about corporate executives appropriating anticapitalist art in which he pointed out that while the capitalist entity might overall be cynically using a cause, the people working there might be all for it, so there is some overall good.
I really doubt these protests will so much as kick over a garbage can in Beverly Hills or on Wall Street. The celebs who are all over social media supporting protest will have the police there in seconds were protesters to come to their house with burning torches.
I feel this is a somewhat reductive argument, like you call the cops when a crime has happened because as shit as they are, who else are you going to go to?
In my experience though, when you do go to the cops not much happens. Like no time that I’ve been the victim of a crime and I’ve reported it nothing happens. Most recently we got broken into while Laura was at home in bed, and when the guy saw her he bolted. She called the cops and to their defence they arrived in like 3 minutes, but they never found the guy and picked up my next-door neighbour’s kid brother, found some weed on him and then roughed him up for fun.
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There’s a big deadline looming that no-one is talking about
Which is? I know we’re screwed at the end of the year but if there’s something earlier looming….
At the end of the year, the ‘transition’ period following our exit from the EU will end. The deadline to extend said transition (as you might be tempted to do if say, you were currently suffering under a global pandemic that was already crippling your economy) is the end of June.
The FT has a good rundown on the timeline.
Some context:
- We’ve been offered a lengthy extension
- We’ve refused any extension
- The civil service is apparently under the impression that No-Deal is the governments preferred outcome
- No-deal means roughly 10% of the UK economy disappears overnight, predominantly in the North and rural areas
- There is speculation that the government is planning to use the pandemic to mask the economic damage
- Some of the largest donors to the Tory party now appear to currently be hedge funds taking up short positions against the UK economy, and Russion oligarchs (make of that what you will)
Oh, of course. Incredibly awful but what’s new about that? Thanks for sharing.
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4 users thanked author for this post.
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There’s a big deadline looming that no-one is talking about
Which is? I know we’re screwed at the end of the year but if there’s something earlier looming….
At the end of the year, the ‘transition’ period following our exit from the EU will end. The deadline to extend said transition (as you might be tempted to do if say, you were currently suffering under a global pandemic that was already crippling your economy) is the end of June.
The FT has a good rundown on the timeline.
Some context:
- We’ve been offered a lengthy extension
- We’ve refused any extension
- The civil service is apparently under the impression that No-Deal is the governments preferred outcome
- No-deal means roughly 10% of the UK economy disappears overnight, predominantly in the North and rural areas
- There is speculation that the government is planning to use the pandemic to mask the economic damage
- Some of the largest donors to the Tory party now appear to currently be hedge funds taking up short positions against the UK economy, and Russion oligarchs (make of that what you will)
Oh, of course. Incredibly awful but what’s new about that? Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, the frustrating thing about all this is that it hasn’t been forgotten by a lot of people – there is still a lot of awareness and regular news coverage of it (albeit obviously not as prominent as it would be without competing for the front pages with the pandemic) – but there’s just not a lot anyone can do to change the way things stand. Short of going back in time to the last general election and asking people to think twice before gifting the Tories a massive majority.
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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is increasing charges against Derek Chauvin to 2nd degree in George Floyd’s murder and also charging other 3 officers. This is another important step for justice.
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) June 3, 2020
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Ella Jones Elected First Black Mayor Of Ferguson, Mo.
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Worth reading:
Stuff like this makes me wonder whether it’s Trump or McConnell who is the real dividing force. The blinders on the Republican party with respect to Trumps actions are largely under McConnell’s whip.
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Seriously, though, the NYT can go fuck themselves forever for printing that bullshit from Tom Cotton calling for military intervention in US cities.
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Seriously, though, the NYT can go fuck themselves forever for printing that bullshit from Tom Cotton calling for military intervention in US cities.
hmmmmmmmmmm
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Congress banned the export of tear gas and other crowd control munitions to the police in Hong Kong last year to enable a peaceful resolution to the protests.
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Alok Sharma, Business Minister, is now ill having been in Parliament two days ago. Some are citing ‘severe hayfever’, but it could be a new version of ‘7 days’ :
Voted for Rees-Mogg on Tuesday
Got Covid on Wednesday
Coughing his guts out on Thursday
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
No respite on Monday
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I saw footage of him in parliament this week and he was like a character from a not particularly subtle film minutes before collapsing dead; coughing into a tissue, mopping his brow and cheeks of sweat. It’s ridiculous that anyone thought it was a good idea for him to go in and for other people to be near him.
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I hope every MP is currently getting a phone call from a contact tracer telling them to self-isolate for 14 days.
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The pandemic isn’t obeying the timescale of their virus alert level so they’re closing their eyes so it won’t see them.
They do tend to go on about a nanny state. Perhaps they think they can place it on the naughty step.
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a not particularly subtle film
Remember, the most common comment on 2020 politics is that if this was fiction, an editor would tell the writer to change it to be less on the nose.
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I expect the political themes in Transmetropolitan will seem less over the top when read in 2020. (Which I plan on doing sometime soon.)
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I rewatched Babylon 5 a few weeks ago and damn that show remains relevant.
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The answer to police violence is not ‘reform’. It’s defunding. Here’s why
[…]
Over the last 40 years we have seen a massive expansion of the scope and intensity of policing. Every social problem in poor and non-white communities has been turned over to the police to manage. The schools don’t work; let’s create school policing. Mental health services are decimated; let’s send police. Overdoses are epidemic; let’s criminalize people who share drugs. Young people are caught in a cycle of violence and despair; let’s call them superpredators and put them in prison for life.
Police have also become more militarized. The Federal 1033 program, the Department of Justice’s “Cops Office,” and homeland security grants have channeled billions of dollars in military hardware into American police departments to advance their “war on crime” mentality. A whole generation of police officers have been given “warrior” training that teaches them to see every encounter with the public as potentially their last, leading to a hostile attitude towards those policed and the unnecessary killing of people falsely considered a threat, such as the teenaged Tamir Rice, killed for holding a toy gun in an Ohio park.
The alternative is not more money for police training programs, hardware or oversight. It is to dramatically shrink their function. We must demand that local politicians develop non-police solutions to the problems poor people face. We must invest in housing, employment and healthcare in ways that directly target the problems of public safety. Instead of criminalizing homelessness, we need publicly financed supportive housing; instead of gang units, we need community-based anti-violence programs, trauma services and jobs for young people; instead of school police we need more counselors, after-school programs, and restorative justice programs.
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Worth noting that a ton of that military hardware was stuff bought for the “War on Terror” and was sold onto police departments to ameliorate the initial cost. And combined with cultural issues inside police departments including the cops rallying around bad actors rather than recognising that they need to be disciplined or prosecuted where appropriate; infiltration of LEOs by White Supremacists (this is well-documented and the FBI have been issuing warnings about it for 15 years!), and the formation of racist cop gangs has lead to an “us or them” mentality where the cops in the US largely view non-cops as enemies, and they end up itching for an excuse to use all that military hardware against their enemies.
During the peace process, the RUC was disbanded and the PSNI formed to replace it. The RUC was deeply prejudiced against Catholic/Nationalist communities and the PSNI worked hard to change that. They aren’t perfect – I’ve found them far more intimidating in my interactions with them at protests than with the Gardai, and a lot of their initial members were former RUC officers so some institutional prejudice was there from the start – but they have done a better job at being a cross-cultural police force than the RUC ever did.
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It seems the steps to get out of this mess are pretty clear and there are a lot of good ideas to make things better. It is just the incompetence of Trump that is stopping it. I’m also afraid there are troublemakers among the protesters that are just making a mess of things, and are giving the other protesters a bad name.
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But I thought that foreigners stealing British jobs was one of the reasons you wanted Brexit? https://t.co/6bWt2cf96w
— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) June 4, 2020
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I expect the political themes in Transmetropolitan will seem less over the top when read in 2020. (Which I plan on doing sometime soon.)
Yeah, I keep pulling the Martha Washington collection off the shelf for a reread and then thinking “hmmmm, maybe not now.”
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Transmetroplitan only seems very prescient. All it is is paying attention to what’s there under the surface. They’ve yet to deal with the past with a meaningful form of truth and reconciliation process.
Lorcan is incorrect about the RUC. They weren’t disbanded but renamed following the recommendations of the Patten Report.
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It may be what Lorcan meant within the context of his comment. Reformed may be the better terminology?
Although I concede to knowing nothing substantive about this and defer to learned posters.
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It’s an important distinction. Problematic officers are still there. I wasn’t disputing the remainder of his comment. They have reformed and the focus is on community policing and involving work with other groups outside of the force. They demilitarised to a large extent and did away with problematic flags and symbols and focused on human rights issues, for example. Stop and search is still abused. They introduced a quota for recruitment to increase diversity but it was abandoned. Investigations into legacy crimes and collusion during the Troubles have been underfunded and politicised. Two journalists were wrongfully arrested last year following a documentary. The north has been used as a centre of study for conflict resolution and peace negotiations. The US seems to be taking the opposite approach currently to what should be done. It wouldn’t take much for Brexit to unravel all the hard work that has been done on all sides of the community. It’s a tricky thing to discuss in just a couple sentences.
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It’s an important distinction. Problematic officers are still there
Yeah, poor choice of words on my front. And as well as the other important issues that you brought up, it’s worth noting that while they have demilitarised to a large degree, they tend to go armed as a matter of course, when no other police force in the UK or Ireland does. It’s a big part of why I’ve found them to be more intimidating and confrontational when I’ve had dealings with them. It’s very hard to ignore the guns
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There’s been an increased presence of helicopters and armoured land rovers this last while. Your first name, like mine, would still be enough to get you stopped in certain areas.
I’m not about to make glib comparisons between here and the US, but, from studying the Troubles, and learning from visitors from other conflict zones, I’m seeing similar patterns.
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Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: Racism Won’t Stop Until We ‘Accept Jesus Christ’
Elected official says laws won’t solve the problem, only God.
By Ed Mazza
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Wednesday night claimed that the root of America’s racial problems was the lack of faith by “the left.”
Speaking after more than a week of demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, Patrick tried to pin the nation’s long and deep-rooted racial problems on people not being religious enough ― and more specifically, “the left” not accepting Jesus Christ.
Patrick said on Fox News that Floyd’s killing and the unrest breaks his heart and that it’s an issue of “loving God.”
“You cannot love your fellow man if you don’t love God,” he said. “And we have a country where we’ve been working really hard, particularly on the left, to kick God out.”
Patrick also said laws can’t fix racism, only Jesus and God can:
“You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind. And you can’t change that unless you change the heart, and for billions of us on the planet, we believe you can’t do that unless you accept Jesus Christ or unless you accept God. God has been left out of this equation through all of this and we need tremendous healing. We cannot heal through commissions and blue-ribbon panels and more laws.”
Fox News host Shannon Bream agreed.
“The Bible tells us it’s not optional,” she said. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Patrick neglected to mention that while many use faith as a means to share a message of love and integration, others have done just the opposite. Religion ― including Christianity ― has been used to justify both racism and slavery.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the KKK and other white supremacist groups use the Bible and believe the book “is the family history of the white race.” Slate reported that the fires of Klan cross burnings “symbolize faith in Christ.” And the Bible was used historically to justify slavery in the United States.
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There’s been an increased presence of helicopters and armoured land rovers this last while. Your first name, like mine, would still be enough to get you stopped in certain areas. I’m not about to make glib comparisons between here and the US, but, from studying the Troubles, and learning from visitors from other conflict zones, I’m seeing similar patterns.
did I ever link you to my cousin’s dad’s movies about the Troubles? They’re fascinating to watch, and sometimes terrifying.
EDIT: Oh, and leaving my name aside, if my family history came out when I was in the wrong place in NI? I’d likely be somewhere between getting the shit beat out of me and dead.
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Remove the entire police force and start again as in Lorcan’s RUC example? I seriously don’t think that’s even close to being a practical solution in the United States.
A group of Minneapolis city councillors are investigating how they would go around disbanding their current police force and rebuilding it from the ground up, so that might help in one city at least.
I feel that the level of reaction to the protests from the police in the US, regardless of the location, of how recently a killing happened, and how increased violence and threats of even further violence from various parties is going to be some level of sea change. It’s very easy to dismiss protesters or talk about outside agitators when it’s one city or in a “blue” state, but there have been protests literally everywhere.
What we’re seeing now is the authorities trying to figure out how much ground they need to give to stop enough protesters coming out. We saw the same thing here with the water protests, where the government spent months slowly backing down from their plans to privatise the water supply in the face of massive protests on a regular basis.
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It seems the steps to get out of this mess are pretty clear and there are a lot of good ideas to make things better. It is just the incompetence of Trump that is stopping it. I’m also afraid there are troublemakers among the protesters that are just making a mess of things, and are giving the other protesters a bad name.
I’m not sure that the steps actually are clear. I mean, we all know what the problem is, but we’ve always known what the problem is and it has never been fixed. How do you correct something that seems ingrained into an entire group of people?
Education? Every sane, normal, empathic human being already knows that racism is bad, if you don’t already know that then no amount of telling is going to help.
Put new laws in place? What laws do you propose that aren’t already there? Kneeling on somebody’s neck until they die is already illegal, I think?
Remove the entire police force and start again as in Lorcan’s RUC example? I seriously don’t think that’s even close to being a practical solution in the United States.
I honestly don’t see a way to fix this. And in all the thousands of words written and spoken on this topic in the last week, I haven’t seen a single proposal for what will. (I’d dearly love to be proven wrong, if anybody has one.)
He won’t see me agree with him, but I think Lorcan is mostly right. The pressure from the protests will force a solution, but whether it’s a long term or a short term one is the important distinction.
There’s no use passing laws. The American legal system is problematic due to the separation between the federal and state powers, and in cases like this you need uniform laws that can be prosecuted on a federal level and in each 50 states, which is basically impossible to implement. Notwithstanding, I doubt there’s any problem with the laws, it’s a cultural issue.
The only way to do this is large scale and targeted reform and example making. Australia did it with the two of our state police forces through royal commissions. Around half of the Queensland cops were dismissed during the moonlight state. We’ve already heard about the RUC becoming the PSNI. Not every American police force is broken (but, I’d wager, probably most of them) and you do need the country to have some faith executive branch, and you do that by preserving the parts that work (in the places that work to). The ones that don’t, of which there are probably as much as 40 states, each with at least two thirds of their precincts across the LGAs, to reform in accordance with recommendations from a review board.
Except, as you’ve mentioned, the scale of America makes that next to impossible. Undertaking an investigation on that scale, across that number of states, across that number of counties, could take a decade and implementing them would be just as big an effort. Public pressure notwithstanding, it’s impossible to change the entrenched law enforcement culture across 10 million km2 country of 330 million people in a few months. It takes years, and money, convincing idiot governors, and would probably need to survive at least one change of administration.
But I think you keep that in the background and make immediate practical change where you can. Take 0.5% of the annual federal budget and spend it on the following. As far as I know, there is no Federal board of police commissioners (who are usually appointed) and sherrifs (who are usually elected). Create one and control uniform policy implementation from the top down. Create a police integrity commission which has local and state powers informed by the board designed to weed out the bad apples at the upper and middle levels and have discretionary powers to report to the department of justice. Create mandatory background checks for officers at all levels which is vetted by an independent ombudsman (who operates at a state and federal level) and mandatory suspension for any officer previously engaged in any instance of excessive force (whether disproven or not) until they can be cleared by the ombudsman (it will take as long as it takes, the generally, the US police force is not understaffed and better to have less officers on duty then more problematic ones). As far as I know, most cities law enforcement complaint divisions are arms of the existing police force – separate that to be part of the independent ombudsman so the public can feel confident that their complaining to a body that doesn’t have a vested interest with proper investigative powers that can be actioned by a federal response by the DOJ.
So, I don’t think you can make any significant cultural change overnight and it does need a concentrated effort at a federal and state level, but you can make (relatively) simple structural changes which may amelerioate some of the cultural problems now while a long-term change strategy can be implemented.
EDIT: Apparently there is a pseudo board of police commissioners called the International Association of Chiefs of Police (which is a dumb name if its not really just for America). They have a statement about various reformation they are promising to undertake on their website, but I already have my doubts. Irrespective, my comments on structural reform and multi-jurisdictional integrity and vetting bodies still stands.
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What we’re seeing now is the authorities trying to figure out how much ground they need to give
But this is the gap where I don’t see a solution. What ground can they give? Hold up their hands and say, “Yeah, our bad, we’ll stop being racist”? That’s… not actually going to fix anything.
I don’t think it’s within the power of “the authorities” to change this. It’s not as if it’s just a bad law that they can repeal. It’s everything.
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I guess the other truth to account for is that you can’t make any systemic change at a federal level with an administration that would just veto it. I’m sure we’ll see some changes from a select-few governors and mayors in the coming months, but it will not be on the scale it should be.
Voting out Trump in november will help to open the way for large scale reform. That should be obvious. But the pressure needs to be kept on the next incumbent to actually undertake the reform, which is where your continued activism comes in.
I think America can make a plan to make significant and long-lasting change here, but it does need to have a little bit of luck too, and it hasn’t had much of that lately.
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What we’re seeing now is the authorities trying to figure out how much ground they need to give
But this is the gap where I don’t see a solution. What ground can they give? Hold up their hands and say, “Yeah, our bad, we’ll stop being racist”? That’s… not actually going to fix anything.
I don’t think it’s within the power of “the authorities” to change this. It’s not as if it’s just a bad law that they can repeal. It’s everything.
I don’t entirely disagree with you on this one, it’s practically impossible to unravel the defence of property over lives, the deeply ingrained racism of the police (did you know the original US police forces were formed to hunt down escaped slaves?), and the us vs them mentality of the law enforcement apparatus (not just the police, but also the legal system and for-profit prisons) without tearing it all down. And I mean, I’m all for tearing the police down, salting the ground and building something good in its place.
But you know, extremes. There is a series of 8 procedural changes that activists are pushing at the moment that would help.
But while they’re good ideas, they won’t matter unless they’re backed up with suitable enforcement measures. And that means breaking the top-down support for violent and corrupt cops. That’s possible but very difficult/
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It seems as if the US police force is an occupying army viewing the minority community as “other”, oppressing them to maintain the power structure and make whites feel safe. As for the white “civilians” carrying assault rifles, it appears that this armed show of force is to give whites a sense of “security” that they can handle themselves and to keep the “minorities” in line. They rely heavily on a twisted rendering of the 2nd Amendment and the NRA. Also these laws making it easy for minorities to do jail time is as if they want to keep as many in line and off the streets, to “contain” them, so whites can feel safe.
I can remember years ago, in the news, reports of whites stockpiling arms and one white supremacist actually admitted someday the racial tension would come to a head (a race war) and he was stockpiling to prepare for it. There was also a distrustful, anti-government militia movement that held up this book The Turner Diaries which had a similar scenario of a race apocalypse and pure anarchy. I get the feeling that this and the current alt-right are related. Perhaps one evolved or merged into the other.
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The Turner Diaries which had a similar scenario of a race apocalypse and pure anarchy. I get the feeling that this and the current alt-right are related. Perhaps one evolved or merged into the other.
The Turner diaries is definitely on a throughline between older far-right extremists and the modern alt-right. I wouldn’t describe the end state in the book as anarchy though – anarchy is the absence of rules rather than the presence of chaos.
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Calls for “abolishing the police” are misguided, though I can understand the sentiment. Honestly if people are afraid of nazi militias the worst thing they could do is abolish the police.
Abolish the police doesn’t mean have no police, it means remove the institution of the police and replace it with a similar one that’s impowered by and answerable to the people
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Yes, we would still need a force, or forces, out there enforcing traffic laws, searching for missing persons, investigating murders, etc. But if abolition happened, the replacement forces would be unarmed, trained to respond humanely, and wouldn’t be used to supply prisons with a steady stream of slave labor (because prisons would also be abolished, the two go hand in hand). Sex work and drugs would be decriminalized and as a society we’d concentrate our resources on addressing the economic and institutional causes of crime.
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It seems as if the US police force is an occupying army viewing the minority community as “other”, oppressing them to maintain the power structure and make whites feel safe.
The police definitely needs to be reformed somehow. But there does need to be a force in society to maintain the law, and keep order when necessary.
Calls for “abolishing the police” are misguided, though I can understand the sentiment. Honestly if people are afraid of nazi militias the worst thing they could do is abolish the police.
Think of Iraq when the US occupied it and abolished the military and the whole security apparatus. It caused incredible chaos and suffering, it gave criminals and extremists the opportunity to rule the streets and it led to the state the country is in now. That’s what nazis and other extremists would be looking to do in the US if the police was gone. Most people are good, but we’re not so enlightened that we can live without any policing whatsoever. We just need responsible policing.
You need to walk the line between utopian thinking and what can actyally be done on a time frame that makes sense.
The first hurdle is you need a uniform response across all states because law enforcement is under state.
The second is the reform. You can make large scale reform over years and small but significant changes immediately.
It can be done, there just needs to be a plan.
I tgink limiting the armaments of police is one of the most significant small changes you can make. Not only does it depower them physically but also psychologically.
You do run into 2nd amendment problems, and the idea that there are legally armed citizens out there when the police arent, so im not sure how acgeivable this is without gun reform.
In any case, beat cops do not need to be armed, for sure.
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Calls for “abolishing the police” are misguided, though I can understand the sentiment.
The majority I have seen are about defunding the police rather than abolishing (although admittedly some are going further). The reasoning being that they are being given a lot of money to arm up to the hilt while social programmes have been slashed. The LAPD alone has a police budget of $3bn dollars a year. That’s a huge amount for a population of 3.9 million.
If you could divert a good chunk of that into policies that reduce hardships they may well have a lot less to deal with.
It’s a bit like that British nuclear scientist that admitted if the money invested into power plants had been put into insulation in houses they’d never have needed any power plants in the first place.
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For the record I didnt say that, Arjan did.
Ive already made relatively comprehensive posts on the reform.
Even if you dont defund them, you can spend that budget in better ways than armaments that would go a long way to changing the culture. Defintely.
America has a resource allocation problem as much as any other problem
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Looking at their latest twitter responses, I once again wish Warren was the Democratic candidate and not Biden. Biden still isn’t showing his face, and while he’s supporting the protests, he’s also going comfortably middle of the road with comments like his latest:
Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.
Warren, on the other hand, is picking a side much more clearly, and her video, while corny, is a much better ad for Biden than anything he’s been saying himself.
Police brutality threatens Black lives and our democracy. Every time activists and journalists are met with violence from the state, our fundamental rights are at stake. And any elected official who doesn’t take a stand is turning their back on our Constitution. pic.twitter.com/9o1OIvAnEo
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 4, 2020
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Looking at their latest twitter responses, I once again wish Warren was the Democratic candidate and not Biden. Biden still isn’t showing his face, and while he’s supporting the protests, he’s also going comfortably middle of the road with comments like his latest:
Biden’s been attending protests while also saying that it’d be better to shoot rioters with rubber bullets in the arm or leg than the face. He’s a human incarnation of the cops kneeling and then the same cops being photographed a half hour later busting some kid’s head open.
Also ignoring that the way to use rubber bullets is to shoot them at the ground and let them ricochet into people, not to aim them directly at someone. The reason many countries stopped using them is because their riot control units were constantly using them incorrectly on purpose.
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Geneva guidelines warn against skip-firing. It’s too unpredictable.
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Geneva guidelines warn against skip-firing. It’s too unpredictable.
It’s almost as if rubber bullets are inherently dangerous and their use is immoral
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The advice, if they’re to be used at all, is to aim for the lower parts of the body.
They’re not even entirely made of a rubber material. They should be banned.
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I certainly would have preferred just about anyone to Biden as the nominee. And maybe if the primaries were happening right now, we would have gotten a different result. I am hoping that Biden at least picks a VP who is bold. Seems almost a certainty that he’ll choose a black woman at this point. Maybe she, whoever she ends up being, can be the bold voice on the ticket a lot of us want and need to see.
All that said, Biden is what we’ve got to work with and, despite his many flaws, he’s still infinitely better than what we’ve had the last 3 1/2 years. I only hope people realize we can’t take another 4 1/2 years of this and show up to vote. The fact that that’s still up in the air is quite sad.
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Geneva guidelines warn against skip-firing. It’s too unpredictable.
It’s literally what they were designed for though. The intention when being built for the British Army in the 1970s was the ricochet off the ground and into the legs meant in most cases the person shot is hurt and not injured. If shot at directly (which in practice they were frequently anyway) the injury risk increases massively and the closer to the chest and head could and did result in fatality.
Of course it is correct that that also means the accuracy goes off and they are unpredictable.
So as Lorcan says they are inherently dangerous and shouldn’t be used.
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