I'm surprised no one has made a thread on this yet, after Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for the death of Michael Brown riots, looting, and arson broke out across Ferguson and police responded with tear gas(as usual by now). What does this event entail for the rest of the 2010s, do you think there will be more riots and protests, how does it fit with the other 2010s activist movements like OWS and the Arab Spring?

"Arab Spring" was an exercise in fantasy. All it did was to provide Arabs and Muslims a new reason to subjugate and murder each other along with ethnic and religious minorities that they hate. North Africa and Syria are far more dangerous places as a result of it.

Try describing events of the past few years to a Coptic Christian, a Kurd, or an Alawite as "spring" and you will look like a fool.

As for Ferguson... Regardless of the outcome last night, the people there were gonna loot and burn down their town. They have elevated a common criminal to some sort of sainthood, and in his memory they are physically demolishing their home town. So be it, if they want to live in a burned-out slum for the next 25 years the law abiding people don't really care any more. So I'd say they have lots in common with "Arab Spring".

The military should step in and put an end to it. Innocent people who live there are the ones who'll suffer for it and that kid was no saint. The sad thing is it could have all been avoided. Destroying their own businesses is not helping their cause. The media is fueling it too.

Ferguson probably doesn't have much to do with the other two tbh. OWS and the Arab Spring were coordinated political movements. The Ferguson riots are an immediate reaction to the fact that a cop got away with shooting a man with his hands up.

The trend that Fergusson probably points to, however, is then militarization of the police force, and the public's growing awareness of it. Hardly anyone knew a year ago that the police can set up a no fly zone over a domestic riot.

The Ferguson riots are an immediate reaction to the fact that a cop got away with shooting a man with his hands up.


The problem, of course, is that SIX EYEWITNESSES (all of whom were black) testified under oath that the Gentle Giant did NOT have his hands raised.

The problem, of course, is that SIX EYEWITNESSES (all of whom were black) testified under oath that the Gentle Giant did NOT have his hands raised.


The facts of the Brown case are not clear, unlike the "choke hold" case on  Staten Island, but in both cases what is clear is that the county prosecutors are not looking to indite cops, on who they rely and with whom they have strong relations.  IMO any time a cop shoots someone an independent prosecutor  should be appointed and charges brought.  This grand jury approach does not equal  justice, and is used to get cops off without the bother of a public trial.  There have been way to many such shooting over the past few months.  A 12 year old blown away less then 1 min after cops confronted him (3 seconds I think), a guy in a store holding a gun (BB I think) that was for sale, a couple blasted 86 times, several of which were  fired by a cop through the windshield of their car while standing on the hood.  It seems very clear hat the cops are out of control.  This crap is simply  unacceptable

The "choke hold" scenario was indefensible. Truly a case of excessive force. I mean really... You have 5 cops take down some dude for selling cigs on the street?

I do not know all the technicalities but that whole "take down" was not right.

The "choke hold" scenario was indefensible. Truly a case of excessive force. I mean really... You have 5 cops take down some dude for selling cigs on the street?

I do not know all the technicalities but that whole "take down" was not right.


Yeah, the New York case is one of the few cases on which I've seen agreement regardless of political affiliation. 


In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.


At least the Coroner was technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.  I mean, that's basically the definition of a chokehold, no?


"compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police."

  - Coroner's Report on the homicide of Eric Garner via CNN, 2014.

There's a point where I needed to stop and I have clearly passed it.

Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."


But let's keep going and see what happens.


The Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR) is a hands-on application that police use rather than using their nightstick, pepper spray or Taser. The LVNR appears to the untrained eye to be a choke hold. If the LVNR is applied properly it does not choke the arrestee at all; rather, it closes the blood flow on both sides of the neck causing unconsciousness.

  - Star Tribune, some f**king pig's Op-Ed whitewashing the murder (oops, I just may have done a little op-edding myself!), 2014.

I can't breathe ... because I'm laughing so hard at the the joke about pigs, ham sandwiches, and grand juries that basically writes itself.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.


All Orwell quotes are from George Orwell's essay on  Politics and the English Language, 1946.  What, you think 1984 was the only thing he wrote?  Read his essays.  They're far more terrifying than his novels.  Being actually correct is way scarier than being technically correct.  (Even if you side with the regime, they're required reading, because in spite of the fact that he wrote them as warnings, they're unfortunately the best HOWTO guides for how to maintain power that have ever been written.)

Yeah, the New York case is one of the few cases on which I've seen agreement regardless of political affiliation. 


One of the worst parts of the story (other than the death of course) is that the cop actually "called for backup" so that he could effect the arrest of a guy selling cigarettes.

Really, you need to call in four officers as backup to nab a guy who is selling ciggies? ???  It is a complete lack of common sense.

The other thing that I see going on are the SWAT teams escalating situations, and creating situations, that are inciting a violent reaction.  A few years back here near Picksburgh, the FBI launched an armed incursion into a suspected drug dealer's house, in the middle of the night, where his wife and children were known to be sleeping.

His wife took up a position at the top of the stairs overlooking the entry door, and blew away one of the FBI agents who invaded the house.  That agent is dead solely due to the stupidity of himself and his superiors who authorized the most provocative and violent of acts... an armed home invasion.

The cops claimed that they clearly announced themselves as such.  That makes no difference to me... the perpetrators of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre pulled a similar ruse and their victims fell for it.  Break into my house with weapons, with my children in the house, and you're gonna see a hailstorm of lead headed your way.  End of story.

Rather than choosing a less provocative time and place to effect an arrest (this was not a hostage or flight situation), they took an approach that maximized a worst-case scenario, and they got just that.  This sort of stupid, needless escalation is going on every day, where SOME cops seem to think their job is an episode of "S.W.A.T." and they are Lieutenant Hondo.

On the other hand we have cops (I believe them to be the majority) who have a tough job to do and do it to the best of their ability.

I was reading a news story today about a cop who is under investigation.  He was dealing with an unruly arrestee who was handcuffed, and she kicked him in the face.  He then decked her and broke her orbital socket with one punch.  My opinion? She got what she had coming and the officer was defending himself... her handcuffs had nothing to do with it since she was kicking him in the face.  (In this case both arrestee and cop were both black not that it makes any difference).

Where I used to work we had a similar situation.  We had an unruly truck driver who our head security guy had to "cuff and stuff".  As he was putting the perp into the back seat of the police car, the truck driver kicked my guy square in the 'nads.  My security guy then pilled out his billy club and quickly put an end to that.  You kick or land punches on a cop and you deserve to get a proportionate ass kicking to subdue you. 

(By proportionate, of course, I don't mean that you "give the guy the Abner Louima", but rather an in-kind response to subdue him).