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wvParticipantWhy is a liberal or centrist Dem NOT a “critical thinker” ? Based on who would be better Sanders or Biden to beat Trump ?
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OK, fair enough. I’ll change it to Progressive-Thinker. 🙂
How many progressive-thinkers have been elected in the Senate in the last quarter of a century?
You outnumber us, W. By a large margin.
w
vwvParticipant=========
WSW:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/19/deat-j19.html
One month after the reopening: COVID-19 rips through US states and workplaces
19 June 2020One month since the resumption of manufacturing activity throughout the country, it is clear that the Trump administration’s campaign to prematurely force workers back on the job has resulted in a major resurgence of COVID-19.
Twenty-one states in the South and the West are seeing a sharp rise in infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Ten states—Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas—have recorded their highest seven-day averages since the pandemic began, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
With at least 800 people dying from COVID-19 each day, the US, already leading the world with 121,000 fatalities, is on pace to reach more than 200,000 deaths by the end of September.
US factories and other large workplaces have been a major vector for the spread of the deadly disease. On Thursday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that at least 200 of the 829 workers at a Dole Fresh Vegetables plant in Springfield, Ohio had tested positive for COVID-19, with more results to come. The company issued a standard statement that the safety of its employees and the community were “top priority,” before announcing it would not close the plant.
In the meatpacking industry, more than 25,000 workers have been infected and at least 91 have died. These numbers have increased five-fold since President Trump issued an April 28 executive order reopening slaughterhouses and meat processing plants after the spread of the contagion closed dozens of plants….see link…
wvParticipantThis one is complicated.
While I don’t think this demonstrates that people “understand the underlying systemic-problem,” it shows that they understand that things are out of whack. This is not the equivalent of the Pussy Hat march, but in black instead of pink. It’s more than that.
Bear in mind that people around the world are protesting because of an American domestic incident. That’s not common.
I think there is unrest that is broader and deeper than just police injustice. I agree with zn and Billy that the Dem machine beat Bernie by successfully scaring voters into believing that Biden was a safer bet to beat Trump. It is plainly obvious, however, that Bernie is vastly more popular than Biden, and his policy positions precisely hit the issues Americans care about. People prefer Bernie. They were simply made to worry that Other People wouldn’t prefer him. They were convinced that they were in the minority.
I think these protests show that they aren’t in the minority…which we already knew. But I think these protests are about more than criminal justice. That’s a big part of it. But people are out there for other, related reasons. They are out there because the system is unjust in many, many ways, and everybody feels it, and everybody feels like Washington is largely corrupt, and unresponsive.
I don’t think many people have an appetite for revolution. But the resistance is growing, and this is not going to be pacified by the usual window dressing, I don’t think. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I don’t think that banning choke holds and making Juneteenth a national holiday are going to be sufficient. The government has been put on notice, imo. But they’ve prepared the police for this possibility, so now it gets interesting.
I applied for a passport yesterday.
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Cool.
I prettymuch disagree with most of that. And i submit, the evidence is not just Bernie vs Biden. Thats just one example among hundreds. For starters there’s Bernie vs 99 Senators. These radical-progressive-anarchist-antifa-lead uprisers voted over and over and over for Corporate-Dem-Senators and Corporate-Rep-Senators.
Over and over and over. Its not just about Trump or voting for people that might beat Trump, etc.If this country really had a large segment of progressive, informed, critical thinkers there would be evidence in the Senate. There aint.
Wanna look at the House of Rep? Whats ‘that’ look like. A smattering of progressives here and there.
So, no, I aint buying it. I think the bewildered herd will be baffled and confused and entertained and self-absorbed again, in a few weeks. And the very small number of committed critical-thinkers will be bashing on, relentlessly, as per usual.
w
vwvParticipantfwiw
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link:https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/health/scientists-call-for-retraction-of-study-claiming-coronavirus-spread-is-mainly-airborne/1996702/More than 40 scientists have signed an open letter calling for the retraction of a study which made “extraordinary claims” that airborne transmission could be the dominant mode of spread of COVID-19.
The study, which was published last week in the journal PNAS, compared COVID-19 case counts and measures enforced in China’s Wuhan city, Italy, and New York City in the US, and noted that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In the open letter, scientists including Noah Haber from Stanford University in the US, said the PNAS study had methodological design flaws and made “easily falsifiable claims.”
According to the open letter, the main conclusions of the study are based on the comparison of disease control measures, case count trends within and between Wuhan, Italy, and New York City (NYC).
However, it said the PNAS study ignored other clear differences in disease control policy between these places, including broader variation in face mask policy.
“In one critical example, the paper asserts that after April 3, the only difference in regulatory measures between NYC and the US lies in face coverings on April 17 in NYC. This is verifiably false, based on widely available sources,” the open letter noted.
“It is flatly untrue that there were no other regulatory differences between NYC and the rest of the US on those dates,” it said.
The open letter said the study’s analysis ignored the lag between changes in disease transmission and changes in reported case counts.
It said the policy implementation dates considered in the study are extremely poor proxies for mass behaviours, including social distancing and mask use.
“Dates of policy implementation were concurrent with an enormous set of changes across society which plausibly affected reported incidence of COVID-19,” the scientists noted in the open letter.
According to the scientists…see link
wvParticipantLOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville’s mayor said Friday that one of three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor will be fired.
Mayor Greg Fischer said interim Louisville police Chief Robert Schroeder has started termination proceedings for Officer Brett Hankison. Two other officers remain on administrative reassignment while the shooting is investigated.
Fischer said officials could not answer questions about the firing because of state law. He referred all questions to the Jefferson County attorney’s office.
Taylor, who was black, was shot eight times by officers who burst into her Louisville home using a no-knock warrant during a March 13 narcotics investigation. No drugs were found at her home.
A letter the chief sent to Hankison said the officer violated standard operating procedures when he “wantonly and blindly fired 10 rounds into the apartment of Breonna Taylor.”
The letter says he fired the rounds “without supporting facts” that the deadly force was directed at a person posing an immediate threat.
“In fact, the 10 rounds you fired were into a patio door and window which were covered with material that completely prevented you from verifying any person as an immediate threat or more importantly any innocent persons present,” the letter states.
“I find your conduct a shock to the conscience,” Schroeder said in the letter. “Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and the Department.”
Sam Aguiar, an attorney for Taylor’s family said the move was overdue.
“It’s about damn time. It should have happened a long time ago, but thankfully it’s at least happening now,” Aguiar said. “This is an officer that’s plagued our streets and made this city worse for over a dozen years. … Let’s hope that this is a start to some good, strong criminal proceedings against Officer Hankison, because he definitely deserves to at least be charged.”…see link
wvParticipant“….Seattle socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant ….
…..
…….NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Kshama, explain. You proposed the legislation to have tear gas and chokeholds banned in Seattle. What did it take to do that? And what kind of response have you received?KSHAMA SAWANT: Absolutely. And, you know, this is what’s happened. This Monday is absolutely historic. Our movement was able to force a unanimous vote on the Seattle City Council, which is dominated by the Democratic Party establishment, to make Seattle the first city in the nation to win a comprehensive ban on the use and purchase of chemical weapons and other barbaric weapons used against protest movements, so tear gas, as you mentioned, mace and pepper spray, rubber bullets, flashbang grenades, water cannons, ultrasonic weapons. I mean, these are just horrific weapons that are being deployed against peaceful movements. And as you said, Nermeen, we also won a ban against the police use of chokeholds.
And what it took to win was an absolutely determined and united movement on the ground, because despite all the co-opting of the vocabulary of the movement by the Democratic Party establishment saying, “Black Lives Matter,” “We want to dismantle and reimagine the police” — despite all of that, there was a shameful attempt by the Democratic establishment to drive a truck-sized amendment into the bill, basically gutting the bill. And we were able to force them to back down because of the ferocity of the movement, where we said, “Absolutely not. This is the bare minimum you need to do. In fact, you need to pass this strong ban, make Seattle the first city, have other cities follow, make this a national trend, and defund the police by at least 50%.”
AMY GOODMAN: Police union, Kshama Sawant? What have you done about the police union in Seattle?
KSHAMA SAWANT: That’s a very important thing, Amy. I’m so glad you brought this up. This shows the momentum that the movement is having and the tremendous solidarity there is among the working class to fight unitedly against racism and police violence.
So, we won these important, historic bans against chemical weapons and chokeholds on Monday. And then, last night, on Wednesday night — and I speak as a rank-and-file member of the teachers’ union myself — the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, the rank-and-file and progressive unions won a vote to expel Seattle’s police from the Labor Council by saying that there is no place for a racist, anti-poor, anti-homeless police department in the Labor Council, because the labor movement itself was built on the understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all. You cannot build a working-class resistance against capitalism’s exploitation unless the working class comes together against all forms of oppression, like racism and sexual violence. And that is the only basis on which we can all unite against economic inequality, as well.
And I think that’s why these demands have to also be connected to — ultimately, really, in addition to winning defunding the police by at least 50%, we also need to fight for an independently elected community oversight board with full powers over the police, including hiring, firing and subpoena powers, because not a single police officer responsible for the murders of Black and Brown people at the hands of the police has been held accountable, because they are serving at the behest — the police are serving at the behest of the Democratic establishment, and the Democratic establishment itself is complicit in these crimes. And that’s why, you know, it’s not a coincidence that alongside the removing of the Seattle police from the Labor Council, there’s also a demand within the rank and file in the labor movement, and within the Democratic Party, actually, to demand that Democratic establishment Mayor Durkan resign. And this really calls for the labor movement to break from the Democratic establishment itself and build independent political parties for the working class.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Kshama, you’re also calling for the imposition of a tax on Amazon. Could you talk about what you’re asking for and how you think that’s connected to these protests and support for Black Lives Matter?….see link…”
June 19, 2020 at 10:45 am in reply to: Rightwing violent-fringe, rightwing conspiracy theories, etc. #116771wvParticipantThen there’s this kind of thing:https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/this-megachurch-pastor-actually-tried-to-rebrand-white-privilege-as-white-blessing-gifted-from-slavery/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4804
“….Atlanta megachurch pastor Louie Giglio gave the obligatory apology Tuesday after attempting to repackage the phrase “white privilege” as a “white blessing” during a talk about race and religion. “We understand the curse that was slavery, white people do,” Giglio said Sunday during the conversation. “And we say that was bad. But we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in.”
Giglio, who presides over Passion City Church, provided a bit of context for his rebranding attempt, saying that “white privilege” is striking the wrong nerve and that because he was born in a segregated Southern city in 1958, he is “living in the blessing of the curse that happened generationally that allowed me to grow up in Atlanta.”
June 19, 2020 at 8:20 am in reply to: Rightwing violent-fringe, rightwing conspiracy theories, etc. #116757wvParticipantForks, Washington. (where Twilight vampires and wearwolves co-exist):
Forks:https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jun/05/spokane-family-accused-of-being-antifa-by-armed-lo/
Spokane family harassed, then trapped in forest campsite in Western Washington, sheriff’s office says“….A Spokane family’s camping trip in Western Washington became a nightmarish experience when armed locals accused them of being left-wing extremists, followed their bus along a forest road and cut down trees to prevent them from leaving the woods, according to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies and other local law enforcement officers responded to a call for help from the stranded campers at about 6:40 p.m. Wednesday near the small town of Forks, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. The sheriff’s office did not identify the campers but described them as a multiracial family from Spokane consisting of a husband and wife, their 16-year-old daughter and the husband’s mother.
The family had been driving a full-size school bus to camp on the Olympic Peninsula and stopped at a local store, Forks Outfitters, to pick up supplies, the sheriff’s office said.
“There, the family was confronted by seven or eight carloads of people in the grocery store parking lot,” the sheriff’s office said. “The people in the parking lot repeatedly asked them if they were ‘antifa’ protesters. The family told the people they weren’t associated with any such group and were just camping.”
Antifa, short for antifascist, is not a single organization or group but rather an umbrella term for a movement of leftists and anarchists, some of whom commit violence or damage property at demonstrations against police brutality and white supremacy. Amid nationwide protests this week prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, myths have circulated online about antifa agitators arriving in small towns aboard buses and planes to incite violence, looting and vandalism.
The sheriff’s office said the family had to drive their bus around other vehicles in the parking lot before heading north on U.S. Highway 101, where they were followed by at least four vehicles. People in two of those vehicles had what appeared to be semiautomatic rifles, the family told deputies.
“The family drove their bus up the A Road and onto a logging spur road where they pitched a tent in order to camp for the night,” the sheriff’s office said. “They became concerned for their safety after hearing gunshots in the distance and power saws down the road from where they were camping.”
Scared, the family decided to pack up and leave, but soon realized that someone – apparently the mob from the store parking lot – had cut down trees along the A Road, preventing their exit. The sheriff’s office said four Forks High School students had tried to help the family by clearing the road with chain saws.
Police and deputies escorted the family to a station in Forks, interviewed them and later helped them get their bus running again after it broke down, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office said it’s “actively conducting a criminal investigation into the incident and is seeking any and all information regarding those persons involved.”
wvParticipantBreaking: The Seattle City Council has unanimously voted to ban SPD from owning, purchasing, renting, or using crowd control weapons, such as tear gas, after the deployment of such devices several times in the past couple weeks of #seattleprotest.
— Jake Goldstein-Street (@GoldsteinStreet) June 16, 2020
wvParticipantwvParticipantNoam calls the uprising and the popular support for them, ‘unprecedented.’
My own view, is different. The uprising may be unprecedented, but i dont buy into the idea there is great public support for it. My evidence is simple – Bernie vs Biden. The DEMOCRAT voters had a choice. They chose Biden.
I wouldn’t mix those 2 things up.
One, yes, is unprecedented. Unless you can name the last time there were massive protests in 700 towns and cities for 2 weeks.
The other is just machine politics winning.
One marxist term that’s really useful in times like this is “uneven developments” which (briefly) just means that processes are complicated and you don’t expect all things to be going at the same pace at the same time. People are not as attuned to democratic machine politics and tend to normalize it. People are also deeply affected by issues involving human rights and equality before the law–there is a source of raw power and energy to draw on there. In the summer of 2020 that raw energy got tapped by the issue of policing and racial injustice in a way that has never happened before (if you look back at the civil rights era, civil rights demonstrations polled negatively).
The war has many fronts. Some are doing better than others right now. But then–no one could have guessed in advance that what happened this summer would happen.
…
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Well, like i said, the uprising may be ‘unprecedented’ but I think a small minority of actual-voters understand the underlying systemic-problem. We can call that uneven development, or we can just call it same ole sorry ass corporotacracy.
I think it translates into mostly cosmetic changes. Democrat-Party type changes.Thats just my prediction. Hope it plays out better than that. Of course, i might be wrong. Etc.
w
vwvParticipantWV,
I know you don’t want to open up that can . . . so I will lift the lid just a tad:
;>)
Taibbi mentioned the Steele Dossier. That, IMO, is a major major straw man. Why? Cuz the Dems never talk or talked about it, and it’s incredibly rare that the WaPo or the NYT or even MSNBC do, either.
Mueller didn’t use it, or bring it up when he testified. Nor did Comey before him, when he started investigating the Trump campaign in July of 2016 (and hid this investigation from America). I can’t recall a single mention of it in the impeachment hearings by any Dem. But Republicans, including Trump, brought/bring up its supposed centrality constantly. They’re still riding that horse in their current investigation of the investigation (Lindsay Graham’s committee).
Taibbi is pretty much echoing a GOP talking point, which no one but the GOP uses.
Buzzfeed published it, so “the left” has lost its mind? This is kind of like saying “the left” is X, Y and Z because Jimmy Kimmel says something something on Late Night.
Sheesh.
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Well, I dont agree or disagree with Taibbi, and i dont agree or disagree with Robinson. My brain just refuses to engage in ‘it’ and I ‘think’ the reason is this — I’ve been reading a lot of commie-memoirs this summer. I dunno why, but thats what I did in April and May. And over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, I read stories about leftists attacking other leftists. Groups forming and then factions and cracks and fissures tear the leftists apart. Heck even the FBI used to laugh about it. It got to where they stopped playing dirty tricks on the Black Panthers and some Commie groups, because the groups themselves were tearing themselves apart.Thats been on my mind a lot. And i see Taibbi as one of us. And i see Robinson as one of us. Two fine leftists.
And i just do not have the will to pick one of them apart. It just seems like something the RIGHT would LOVE to see.
Now you could say “well Taibbi started it” — but i dont care. I just see Taibbi as venting a little bit about some shit that bothers him. Next week he’ll be back to writing great stuff.
w
vJune 17, 2020 at 3:29 pm in reply to: police culture & training, including former police speak out #116678wvParticipantWell, it would be better if it wasn’t anonymous. How do we know its not fake?
w
vWell this is just one man’s subjective view, but it doesn’t seem fake to me. Way too much detail for that. You deal with cops at least part of the time. How accurate does it seem to you.
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Oh its totally accurate, LoL. But i am wary. I just dont wanna read, a month from now, that it was some bored undergrad in his basement who wanted to trash the cops, etc.w
v
“I know, Ma. I’m a-tryin’. But them deputies- Did you ever see a deputy that didn’t have a fat ass? An’ they waggle their ass an’ flop their gun aroun’. Ma”, he said, “if it was the law they was workin’ with, why we could take it. But it ain’t the law. They’re a-working away at our spirits. They’re a-tryin’ to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They’re tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop. They’re working on our decency”.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of WrathJune 17, 2020 at 3:15 pm in reply to: defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests #116675wvParticipantFrom a purely ‘strategic’ standpoint, i dont like the word ‘defund’. I dont like the way that will play in mainstream-voter-world. Think about how mainstream-voters would react if a candidate said “I’m going to defund the military.”
I dont think it will help defeat Trump to talk about ‘defunding’ the police. And yes, i know ‘defund’ has this or that meaning and it doesnt really mean this, but instead means that, blah blah blah. Good luck getting a mainstream-idiot-voter, with the attention span of a ferret, to understand any of that.
“Defund” will play right into Trump’s wheelhouse, imho. He will LOVE that word. Cant you just picture his talking points now.
w
vwvParticipantRobinson’s criticism of Taibbi’s article is a perfect illustration of what Taibbi is criticizing. I’ll just use Robinson’s first example of the professor who created a controversy by not censoring MLK’s “Birmingham Jail” that intentionally uses provocative language and by showing disturbing images of a documentary about lynching even though some students objected.
A college history class should include material that does make people uncomfortable. Or if some material is inappropriate, the university should make that decision and share that expectation with the professor.
Robinson’s own solution to this situation seems to be part of the problem that Taibbi is criticizing.
Here’s Robinson:
Today I’m going to read from Letter From Birmingham Jail. The letter contains the n-word. I am considering saying it aloud because I think it’s important to hear exactly what King wrote rather than my censored version of what King wrote, but I know the word is very painful and if anyone would like to object, I will omit it. Also, I plan to screen a video about civil rights today that contains both the word and a graphic depiction of lynching. The video uses these on the theory that it is important for us to see and hear the uncomfortable truth.” I think actually when you present things this way students will feel respected and are less likely to complain. The problem was actually that the professor did not care what the students thought of what he did and said.
Sorry, 18 year olds don’t get to decide what is censored. Again, if the university and professionals want to make that decision, fine.
Here’s the problem with Robinson’s suggestion: What if a racist student or a student who just wants to be an ass objects to seeing a documentary with disturbing images or objects to reading a poem about a lynching? Do you omit an important part of the course because of one objection?
The link that Robinson contains a sentence about protesters calling for the firing of the history professor in this example AND another professor who refused to delay or cancel exams at UCLA because of Floyd’s death.
_________________________________________
Richard Wright–“Between the World and Me”And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth
into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.
My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my
black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as
they bound me to the sapling.
And my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from
me in limp patches.
And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into
my raw flesh, and I moaned in my agony.
Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a
baptism of gasoline.
And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs
Panting, begging I clutched childlike, clutched to the hot
sides of death.=====================
Well, I am having trouble focusing in on what the issue is exactly. Maybe i’m just having a pandemic-fuzzy-thinking week, I dunno.
But i can think of all kinds of ‘gray area examples’ that go in various directions. What if a BLM protest representative is being interviewed about how black men are being victimized…and the interviewer says “what about how black men victimize black women?” Well…shit. Men ‘do’ victimize women, so there is something important about the question. But what is the agenda here? And is the timing of the question right? But shouldnt we be able to discuss all tricky issues? Etc, etc, and so forth.
To your professor example — Maybe the kids arent really ‘deciding what gets censored’ — maybe the professor is just being sensitive, or nice, or open to listening and dialogue about stuff. I dunno. It depends on so many factors, and motivations. For me, the issue can unwind in so many directions it just gets….unfocused. Or i get unfocused. I dunno.
Heck Taibbi even brought up Russiagate. Which is a whole can of worms by itself, which i will not open, here. 🙂
I got nuthin.
w
v
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“To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:
1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.
2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.
3. Charity is immoral.
4. Pay for your own fucking schools.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
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“Most people, when they imagine New England, think about old colonial homes, white houses with black shutters, whales, and sexually morbid WASPs with sensible vehicles and polite political opinions. This is incorrect. If you want to get New England right, just imagine a giant mullet in paint-stained pants and a Red Sox hat being pushed into the back of a cruiser after a bar fight.”
― Matt Taibbi, Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season
————
“The basic scam in the Internet age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out fiftieth-story windows, and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
—————-
“Twenty-six billion dollars of fraud: no felony cases. But when the stakes are in the hundreds of dollars, we kick in 26,000 doors a year, in just one county.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
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“Our prison population, in fact, is now the biggest in the history of human civilization. There are more people in the United States either on parole or in jail today (around 6 million total) than there ever were at any time in Stalin’s gulags. For what it’s worth, there are also more black men in jail right now than there were in slavery at its peak.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
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June 17, 2020 at 9:33 am in reply to: police culture & training, including former police speak out #116656wvParticipantI submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.
yeah. but that’s the rub for me. it’s the system that’s corrupt. so if you have the same system in place, what will defunding the police really accomplish?
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Exactly. I think about that all the time, in different contexts. Its very interesting territory.
Mostly though, the system is NOT going to let the police be ‘defunded’. Aint gonna happen, in most places. There will be a lot of talk, but in the end the reforms will be watered down to “more police sensitivity training” and “modifications on the rules of choke-holds” and maybe one or two less bazookas and one or two more Public Relations Officers hired.
Just watch.
And watch what BIDEN ends up proposing. He will spout so many ‘down the middle’ useless cliches it will be utterly meaningless.
Looks like there might be a few places that might try some intriguing and radical changes though. Small pockets of radical-experimentation in the Corportocracy.
Strange times.w
vJune 17, 2020 at 9:23 am in reply to: police culture & training, including former police speak out #116655wvParticipantwvParticipantWV,
Have you read Robinson’s piece? Didn’t know he had responded to Taibbi until I saw your video. Thanks for posting.
The Current Affairs piece is excellent. He calmly, effectively, surgically destroys Taibbi’s (IMO) ludicrously broad-brushed complaints, and Taibbi should have quit while he was behind. MT’s rebuttal to the rebuttal was a big ol’ bust. He wasn’t able to adequately address a single point made by Robinson — well, at least not without twisting it like a pretzel.
Will quote a bit from the article tomorrow or later this week. Sad to see Taibbi choosing this hill — and The Hill — to plant his flag.
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Well, my gut tells me, Matt is just kinda defending a friend of his. Which is fine with me, but I dont know that there is really much of an issue there.
I dunno.
w
vJune 17, 2020 at 9:08 am in reply to: defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests #116653wvParticipantwvParticipantTaibbi responds to the criticism of his article:
wvParticipantNeo-Nazis who want to stop anti-racism protests against police brutality attack the police, so police demand a ban on protest, including against police brutality.
If we didn't know better, we might wonder whether neo-Nazis and the police were colluding https://t.co/H0cC6rwpES
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) June 15, 2020
June 16, 2020 at 10:33 am in reply to: defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests #116615wvParticipantlink:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55235.htm
“….During the Obama administration, the Pentagon has been equipping US police departments across the country with a staggering amount of military weapons, combat vehicles, and other equipment, according to Pentagon data.
According to a New York Times article published last week, at minimum, 93,763 machine guns, 180,718 magazine cartridges, hundreds of silencers and an unknown number of grenade launchers have been provided to state and local police departments since 2006. This is in addition to at least 533 planes and helicopters, and 432 MRAPs — 9-foot high, 30-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles with gun turrets and more than 44,900 pieces of night vision equipment, regularly used in nighttime raids in Afghanistan and Iraq…
…
Much of the lethal provisions have gone to small city and county police forces.{ } The recent militarization is part of a broader trend. According to Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter B. Kraska—who has studied this subject for two decades—as of the late 1990s, about 89 percent of police departments in the United States serving populations of 50,000 people or more had a PPU (Police Paramilitary Unit), almost double of what existed in the mid-1980s.Their growth in smaller jurisdictions (agencies serving between 25 and 50,000 people) was even more pronounced. Currently, about 80 percent of small town agencies have a PPU; in the mid-1980s only 20 percent had them. The domestic military ramp-up is far from being in proportion to any perceived threat to public safety….”
June 15, 2020 at 12:22 pm in reply to: defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests #116579wvParticipantNYPD out here protecting the Wall Street bull. pic.twitter.com/SosSFgHpEl
— P. Nick Curran (@PNickCurran) June 13, 2020
wvParticipantleft vs middle-class
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wvParticipantShannon Sharpe on racism and owners.
wvParticipantA Morning Consult poll showed 58% of Americans either strongly or somewhat supported the idea of “calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces.”
You get different answers about that one, depending on the poll. For example there’s this:
Americans 49% to 34% reject use of military for crowd control amid George Floyd protests, poll finds
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/americans-49-34-reject-use-military-crowd-control-wake-floyd-protests-poll==================
Well, i think you’d get different numbers on all the other ones too, if you change a word here or there, or offer another option, etc. Like i say, i dont trust these kinds of polls. I wish i could.
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vwvParticipantJune 15, 2020 at 9:49 am in reply to: “black on black crime” is THE reactionary response to anti-police brutality #116565wvParticipant..Just dismissing important trends with some bogus arguments like this one source is frustrating to me.
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But you agree that the Fox-Version/Rightwing-Version of B on B crime, is cherry-picking/shallow/spin, right?
I think its a layered, complicated subject, that ‘could’ be discussed in a useful way, but that topic would inevitably lead away from race and right to Class/Poor-People. But that kind of discussion would require class-consciousness, and study, and time, and facts, and that aint gonna happen much if at all, on corporate-TV.
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“hurt people, hurt people”
June 14, 2020 at 7:45 pm in reply to: police culture & training, including former police speak out #116552wvParticipantOh my goodness. Stick with it for the 18-19 minute mark. Excellent stuff.
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vJune 14, 2020 at 7:33 pm in reply to: police culture & training, including former police speak out #116551wvParticipantAt 6:15 mark of the Rogan vid. Check out what Wood says about stop-and-frisk Stats.
“The stats are junk”w
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