Re: Article
 

Maybe moreso when the victim is black, but the article about Wisconsin was written by the father of a murdered white kid where the cop was not indicted. I just can't help thinking about them ordering my kid to stop or they'd shoot because they thought he might have a baggie of weed, which was decriminalized in NYC a few months later. Just nuts.

And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Two ways our justice system has broken down all over the front pages:

Cops shooting black men and boys without repercussion.

Women and girls getting raped, whether by Cosby, UVa preppies, or military brass, without repercussion.

Related? Unrelated? Vent at will.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

All of the suck in the world is the fault of men. Nearly all of it is the fault of white men.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

I think this shit has been going on forever, but it's a little easier to get the word out now with mass communication and media. I wish the Cosby thing surprised me more, but I should have known better than to assume that a cultivated persona was in any way similar to the real person.

People in power will abuse that power.

Re: Article
 

Once upon a time, part of the answer always suggested to this kind of crap was more training.

But post-broken-windows-policing, training often involves teaching cops that they have to be aggressive and establish they're in charge. In other words, they're being trained to do exactly this shit.

In Wilson's case, he even got training in Israel, where martial law means civil rights don't even exist to be ignored.

Re: Yeah.
 

I don't remember these rules well enough, as my days being a crim defense lawyer were many years ago. It's possible that you get the evidence once an indictment issues. But even so -- I would want to see the witnesses who testify against my client. I don't get to depose them, after all.

All this obviously has nothing to do with the recent grand jury fiascos, of course.

Re: Yeah.
 

It's ok -- I got it, and I fully understand your mood (to the extent I can, not being in your particular shoes).

I never watched the video of Garner's murder (yes, that's what it was) before today. I read enough about it to (1) know I'd find it sickening and (2) believe there was no way the cop wouldn't be prosecuted. I forced myself to watch it today, in the wake of this decision. I sincerely cannot believe that a person could watch this and not think that the cop was likely guilty of a crime. (I would think much worse, but I'm using a rough approximation of the indictment standard.)

I've read that the cop said he didn't mean to choke Garner. That is not possible. He choked him from standing position on down, and stayed on him. This is a cop with some degree of training (the choke was technically decent). He knew exactly what he was doing and knew that it was potentially lethal.

I really am at a loss for words. I don't think I have ever felt quite so ashamed to be a white man in America as at this moment.

Re: Article
 

I think it is definitely more about over-weighting white intentions, particularly white cop intentions, than about not valuing black lives (though the two are related).

Years ago I heard a radio show by Mumia Abu-Jamal on this particular subject. He called it, pardon the expression, "the 'Big Nigger' Defense."

Re: Article
 

The Chris Lollie case in the St Paul skyways drove this home for me. Cops were called for trespassing (in an area that was arguably public - the city attorney concluded it was). He refused to show ID when questioned and walked away. A cop followed him for several blocks, demanding ID until backup arrived, who put his hands on Lollie and then ultimately used the taser to bring him down and cuff him.

Why? The alleged trespass was over. What possible need was there to keep pursuing him, much less subject him to violence?

Oh, right, he was a black man who did not comply with an officer. We can't have that.

Re: Yeah.
 

How's this for insight: this week's Serial included a discovery issue.

None of my crim defense experience has resulted in an indictment (nominally there have been grand juries I guess, but practically speaking just federal lawyers and then closed investigation or guilty plea), but I had always understood that the prosecution in this type of case had disclosure obligations. These days I wonder - again in part because of Serial - whether that doesn't include taped police interviews.

But you have a point about seeing GJ testimony. No idea whether it's ever taped or if the tapes need to be turned over.

Re: Garner. No indictment.
 

Charles Krauthammer, the only pundit over there with any integrity, called it "incomprehensible." Other less esteemed sorts there have echoed this sentiment, but I think it's just because Krauthammer said it first, so they felt the need to do so.

...But of course, even Krauthammer had to offer a caveat noting Obama's focus on the racial element of the story (what else is there to it?), was "not helping things."

Re: Yeah.
 

Why not just go straight to a preliminary hearing?

I think a lot would want this option.

A mix of that and grand jury nullification.

I go back to my initial comment here. There is no defensible basis to conduct proceedings in which decisions are made about whether individuals will be subjected to potential loss of liberty and enormous defense burdens (emotional and $$$) without the target at least having the option of defending himself.

If you can't get a GJ to indict with the defendant and his counsel present, you don't have a case. I say we do away with GCs altogether and go straight to preliminary hearings.

Re: Yeah.
 

2. The daytime TV watching crowd shouldn't be deciding anything. They do quite enough damage at the voting booth already.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

2 again. But the Cosby thing is a bit surprising. I'd not heard those rumors before, and that's some seriously disturbing shit. Mere "rape" doesn't cover it. The guy's a methodical serial rapist who's m.o. is drugging victims.

Lovable Dr. Huxtable in the funky sweaters is damn close to Dr. Lecter in the hockey mask. There's one more artifact of childhood dipped in shit.

Re: Yeah.
 

You realize that doing this is taking away a protection for the accused, right?

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

I know the right has been on a tear about "real rape" and charging that feminists like me are trying to make "borderline cases" where little George Will, Jr. just thought someone liked to say no during sex into something ugly, but I actually think the bulk of rapes out there are premeditated, disturbing acts by serial rapists, and that a lot of them involve alcohol and drugs as a way to make victims more pliable. I'm sure Cosby figured Polanski did it, why shouldn't he.

Re: Article
 

A cop on NPR last night said that the first suggestion is always "more training" but the NYC cops are the best trained in the world. Other agencies send their guys to be trained by NYC. He flat out said that it's that cops are racist.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

The justice system hasn't broken down. It never worked. It is inherently flawed because it relies on the judgment of people and people have biases that make the system inherently unfair. It has always been that way. It will always be that way. We just see it more now because all information is now accessible in a way it never used to be.

The trick is to make an effort to get white people to understand the inherent biases in the system. The knee-jerk reaction, as I've said many times before, for many white people when confronted with the result of that bias is to look for any possible excuse why it might not be the product of racism (conscious or unconscious). If there's no smoking gun evidence of outright, in-your-face racism, it might as well not have happened.

You can point to all kinds of numbers (for the best example, the death penalty cannot and is not applied fairly, see "Black Defendants and the Race of the Victims" section in this link: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deat...-decides#Black), but it doesn't matter because the story told in people's heads is: Black men are dangerous criminals who need to be locked up.

That internalized idea influences the entire justice system from cops stopping black people and arresting them for possession when whites buy and use drugs at the exact same (or higher) rates, to who gets indicted, to how judges and juries view defendants and victims, to sentencing, to appeals, to parole review, to hiring after being incarcerated, etc., ad nauseum.

The question is, how do you get white people to recognize any of this? And how can you possibly effect any kind of change at all?

This is the best article I've seen on all of this so far: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/03/whit..._of_whiteness/

For rape and other assaults on, and general treatment of, women, just replace "black men" with "women" and "white people" with "men."

Historically? Probably. But let's be honest. People in positions of power are at fault for all the suck in the world. White men have just been in power the most.

TM

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Fuck. stp, TM. stp.

TM

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

I heard someone say he's the most successful serial rapist in the history of this country. And when you can't think of why that statement is wrong, it's very depressing.

So difficult to try to divorce his personal behavior from his professional work. But that show was so important for so many reasons that I need to leave it on a mental shelf as I sweep all the rest of his shit into the trash.

TM

Re: Article
 

And NY has been at the forefront of "broken windows" policing, so their cops are trained to be assholes.

It is a city where there has been a racist tone throughout to the way they implemented broken windows and other programs. The NYPD's stop and frisk program has been blatantly racist in its application. This is not just a bad attitude, a few biased cops: this is organized institutional discrimination.

I could rant on this for a long time...

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Yes, this is right. I stand corrected.

Re: Article
 

I was on a stage with a black former LA cop. His story was that he was in a supervisory position during the trial of the cops that beat Rodney King. He was getting flack from his superiors because he was training his guys to prepare for unrest in the event of an aquittal. Then it turned out he was right about the unrest.

During a break I said that once all the crap came out about how the cops acted (gorillas etc.) I couldn't believe anyone near it could possibly have been shocked. He told me that it was horrible, sergaents would tell n-jokes in Squad meetings. Once, when he was in uniform, a white cop pulled his gun on him. I didn't think to ask if things changed after it came out, but at most it could only be that the racists got more careful about what they said.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Further to my point:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_6273864.html

TM

Re: You've got to speak out against the madness.
 

Chris Rock:

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before…

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. There's been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship's improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, "Oh, he stopped punching her in the face." It's not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn't. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people.



It's not white people who were or are crazy. It's People with Power and Control ("PPC") who are crazy, regardless of race. Humans. White humans. Black humans. Brown humans. Humans have historically and consistently been assholes to people who are different from them since the beginning of recorded history. PPC, regardless of their race or religion, have been enslaving other people, treating other people like shit, and have been overtly prejudiced against other people who looked different and who did not have power and control for thousands of years. White people have done it to black people. Black people have done it to white people. White people have done it to other white people, and black people have done it to other black people. If Africa instead of Europe gained economic power and control in the last two thousand years, I'm pretty sure the situation would be identical but reversed.

It's only in last 100 years or so when humans have (kinda-sorta) stopped being colossal dicks to each other.

Re: Yeah.
 

I sincerely doubt they are taped because, unless my memory is faulty, grand juries enjoy absolute immunity. Even if an indictment can be attacked as being handed down under fraudulent circumstances, the jurors themselves have an absolute privilege.

Re: Article
 

Apropos of this, here is part of an interview with a NYPD cop (not all of which I necessarily agree with):

Re: You've got to speak out against the madness.
 

This is not exactly false and it is not completely true.

I will surely concede (and I already posted about it today) that people in power act like assholes and tend to want to remain in power. But white people are the ones who decided that they wanted to conquer the entire world and build empires. And they were the ones who actually did it. Hell, the UK only gave Hong Kong back in fucking 1997!

Slavery existed in lots of places, but in many places (including Africa) it was more like indentured servitude. It served as a punishment for crimes or was the result of being a captive of war. White people in this country took it to a whole different level.

All of this aside, what's your point exactly? That white people aren't inherently evil? Yes. We know. That Chris Rock is wrong? Because I don't really see it. The simple fact is, white people in this country have acted crazy. That statement doesn't change because another race in another country also acted crazy. To say that whites here only did so because they were in power and that other races act similarly horrible in other places when they are in power misses his point entirely and really just seems like a defensive reaction to the fact that in this country white people have acted crazy.

The clear takeaway is that a black person's success in this country should not be attributed to progress blacks have made, but the progress white people have made in not completely standing in the way of people they have traditionally treated as subhuman. What's interesting about what he said is that he has taken a perspective that all of us have internalized (i.e., black people are progressing, look at Obama!) and turned it on its head by pointing out that it's white people's attitudes that have progressed by accepting, and actually voting for, a black man to be a leader.

TM

Re: Yeah.
 

The only right conceded by forcing prosecutors into prelims rather than using GJs is privacy. The cost-benefit for defendants there is a no brainer. I doubt any sane person would give a shit about embarrassment if the process decreased the likelihood of dubious charges being brought against him.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

That's all true. But I think the justice system is also becoming more aggressive. Forfeiture law has always been an abomination, but its gotten really horrible in recent years. And the police now have tanks? Assault rifles? Tear gas cannons and military body armor?

We're quietly becoming a police state that works as a feeder for the private prison industry.

Here's how we do this: White people who know better need to tell other clueless white people to shut the fuck up when they say stupid shit like, "The justice system doesn't discriminate against Blacks." I'm around a lot of right leaning whites (happens in flyover land), and when they say this shit, I call it out. Fuck them if they don't like having their narrative turned on its ear. It's simply bullshit to say Black people in aggregate get a fair shake in our system, and anyone who's worked in the system knows that. But until Whites who get this fact start telling their asshole friends who don't just how wrong they are, the false perception that Blacks are criminal by nature and deserve what they get will persist.

This is educated white society's burden. We have to start telling other Whites who believe the shit they hear from Limbaugh, et al. that's it's just wrong. Too often, when whites are together (and every white person on this board has seen this) and some dickhead starts generalizing about non-whites, all the other whites who disagree will stay silent. I've done it myself, many times. Right wingers are loudmouths, and they like to fight. It's a pain to take them on, usually tiring and hugely annoying. But we need to start doing so.

Re: You've got to speak out against the madness.
 

One last rant on this topic...

Another thing we have to do is decouple discussions of racial tensions and the murder of Black youths from politics. Too often, conservatives, Republicans, and even libertarians fail to criticize things like the Garner incident because they assume that's a liberal or Democratic cause. That's twisted thinking.

It's not conservative, or "law and order," for police to murder people. That is much closer to what one would expect in a dictatorship, or a communist regime, than a democratic republic.

It is not govt interference or overreach for the feds to step in and investigate a grand jury fuck up like the Garner affair. Even if you're a live and let die sort with a lifetime subscription to Reason, you can't sit idle before a system in which the state picks who's really free and who isn't by skin color. That stands in opposition to the notion of absolute liberty you profess to support.

And just because Democrats tend to be attracted to the issue doesn't mean you as a Republican must reflexively stay silent (or worse, support the murderers). Some things cross the line. Rand Paul can't be the only Republican out there admitting our justice and prison systems are inherently racist. (In part because he'll fuck it up by saying something frivolous, like the Garner murder is also attributable to cigarette taxes.)

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Hey Sebby, here's one of the most recent news stories my cousin has posted on Facebook:

With FEMA DHS And 386,000 Foreign Troops on U.S. Soil Will Obama Declare Martial Law in December?

I'm not sure telling him to STFU is going to help -- what do you think?

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Encourage him to go completely off the grid, so he'll be safe when the Black storm troopers come piling out of their black helicopters. As far off the grid as possible. They can even get to you through your drinking water, you know.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

What about the guys who sign the FB petition to promise not to vote for him ever again. At first I thought some Onion-esque person started it to show how dumb the average tea-partier is, but then I realized there are mounting a campaign, for real, to defeat him at the polls when he runs for that third term.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

as to UVa http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/...aders-20141205

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Apples and oranges. He's generally out to fucking lunch. There is no way to respond to broadsides of lunacy including myriad delusions. I'm talking about whites you can pin down on single issues... the sort who'd assert Blacks aren't victimized in the justice system. You can tell them to STFU on that discrete point, and back your position concisely with facts, and this:

"I've worked in the Court system for ___ years. I have seen this first hand. Your facts are anything but. Stop talking out of your ass."

This is particularly persuasive when it comes from someone who is not perceived as a liberal. And it's actually kind of amusing. I sit and listen to Republicans talk their "I'm a free market capitalist, and a fiscal conservative" stuff, and though it's usually bullshit, I'll go along. And if pressed, I'll accede that I do not believe I owe anyone anything. But then those Republicans will always go too far, by saying something like:

"People on welfare all want to be there, on the dole," or,

"The Blacks can't follow rules and get themselves into these situations with cops... It's their fault."

That's where you have to check them. And they get pissy. But most of them have never seen the crim justice system, so when you say, "Listen dude, I did a few years in that system, and you're talking shit," they have nothing to say. Do that. It's not great for your social standing among Republican friends, but it's good for society.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

I think this story broke Twitter.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Interesting that you replied to a Cosby post with a UVa post.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

Look up "US Government" and "30,000 guillotines."

Yes, that's right. Somewhere, probably not far from your present position, sits someone so profoundly fucked in the head... so absolutely batshit crazy, riddled with fetal alcohol syndrome, generations of inbreeding, or massive lead paint exposure, or whatever else causes such levels of baffling imbecility, that he believes Uncle Sam owns warehouses of guillotines. And plans to use them on "Patriots."

...No doubt all manufactured by the International Guillotine Corporation, PLC, of Trans-Dniester - a joint venture of Soros Holdings, ACORN, and the Rothschilds.

Re: And everybody hates the Jews....
 

I can only imagine what viruses lurk on that site. Please, take care with your links.

On articles like that, you really need to read the comments. I especially enjoyed the debate over whether calling the President "King" or "Emperor" conflicted with the undeniable facts that he is a communist. So hard to keep these things straight.

Sensei Greedy Bey