Rioting in St Louis

[dshans]

I think when you end your post by suggesting that someone with whom you disagree should be murdered it will probably generate a few objections no matter who it is that you're referencing.

You got that right.



I read but avoid posting in these political threads. Time and patience are precious.



There are times, though ...

 

[Redbar]

yea, it was pretty clear the media was incestuously and incessantly stoking the fire. And anyone who thinks all things that come out of academia are about the "science"...well God help ya. Like all things, buyer beware...

Oh and Soros could get stung by a 30 caliber bee...and I'd sleep ok.

Almost unbelievable.

 

[phgreek]

I think when you end your post by suggesting that someone with whom you disagree should be murdered it will probably generate a few objections no matter who it is that you're referencing.

Maybe so...Maybe so.

If I offended you I sincerely apologize. That guy hits alot of buttons for me, but you are right, my hatred for him need not victimize you guys...

 

[BobD]

I believe early results are showing just how effective demonstrations, rioting and looting can be. Crime is up and police stops are down in most of the affected areas, but just in the "bad neighborhoods". Definitely a big win. Good on you protesters!

 

[autry_denson]

Maybe so...Maybe so.

If I offended you I sincerely apologize. That guy hits alot of buttons for me, but you are right, my hatred for him need not victimize you guys...

thank you.

The issue, in my mind, is not so much that it offends anyone. More that we’re all human, part of a society, interacting on a site designed for people linked in some way to Notre Dame. Differences of opinion don't mean that someone should be shot.

If your sequence of thought moves from ‘this guy really makes me mad’ to ‘I wouldn’t mind if this guy was murdered’ then you have symptoms of psychopathy.

I’m assuming that this is not the case, and you really just wanted to express how much you dislike him in a way that was so extreme that it would capture people’s attention and provoke those who might disagree. If this is right, stop. Posts designed to antagonize will do exactly that. Discussion will descend to the lowest common denominator.

 

[phgreek]

thank you.

The issue, in my mind, is not so much that it offends anyone. More that we’re all human, part of a society, interacting on a site designed for people linked in some way to Notre Dame. Differences of opinion don't mean that someone should be shot.

If your sequence of thought moves from ‘this guy really makes me mad’ to ‘I wouldn’t mind if this guy was murdered’ then you have symptoms of psychopathy.

I’m assuming that this is not the case, and you really just wanted to express how much you dislike him in a way that was so extreme that it would capture people’s attention and provoke those who might disagree. If this is right, stop. Posts designed to antagonize will do exactly that. Discussion will descend to the lowest common denominator.

I apologized. I don't remember asking "Doc what do you think made me say it". Should have stopped at Thank You.

So you think George Soros has "a take" and that made me "angry"...SMH. Can the oversimplification stop now Doc. Its not an opinion. He is a bad dude, and I think he and his are bad for this country. This is far beyond me having an issue with something he said, or even an isolated incident I "disagree" with... So lets not hurry by that so you can put your lecture pants on...

Edit: I will give you this, while I don't actually endorse killing anyone, We, as a country, would be better off if Soros did not exist as a player in it. The affect of his absence I genuinely am hopeful for. So I'd like him to cease activity in the US. That I do mean.

As well, apparently your conversations in life do not include dark humor, so lemme help ya out. Such comments communicate a degree of hatred without actual intent. Things like...if he didn't wake up, I wouldn't lose sleep, or some similar manner of speaking. Those are dark humor used to highlight your degree of dislike of someone...I am around people daily who may have a more harsh view of the world. If that makes us some level of psycopath so be it. I didn't say it to incite anything...I said it as an attempt at dark humor...clearly forgetting my AUDIENCE.

Don't you think forgetting my audience was far more likely than a) having a psychopathy issue, or b) trying to incite a response.

Again running past the obvious to get your other leg in those lecture pants...

Since we are putting on our lecture pants, and I like mine too...what say you learn how to take an apology, and use the private facility IE provides if you have a question...hmmm?

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Black lives matter.

Mother charged with murder in newborn's fiery death

 

[Whiskeyjack]

TAC's Scott McConnell just published an article titled "Who Governs?":

Over 40 years ago as a college sophomore, I read with pleasure some of Robert Dahl’s works on the functioning of American democracy. The books themselves have left my possession long ago, but I have warm recollections of the precision and elegance of Dahl’s arguments. They were an antidote to the SDS/Marxist theory of a corporate oligarchy which controlled America, a notion of American society then still influential on elite campuses, but one which, as the revolutionary ’60s burned out and gave way to the ’70s, had begun to seem jejune if not actually apologetic for communist brutality.

Essentially—and I am relying on Wikipedia and not memory—Dahl contended that the United States was a polyarchy, a plural society where discrete formal and informal power structures competed and compromised over political outcomes. It wasn’t perfect democracy, but it was more than decent by historical and comparative standards. Today left-wing analyses are better remembered, C. Wright Mill’s interlocking Power Elite, and William Domhoff’s series of works, depicting American society in the iron grip of a mostly malevolent and self-serving WASP ruling establishment. I’m sure those works have been superseded, and am not certain that anyone even talks about Robert Dahl anymore, though he was president of the American Political Science Association and a highly regarded figure at Yale.

To what extent has academic political science has caught up with contemporary power in America? Certainly neither Dahl, nor Mills nor Domhoff had room in their conceptualizations for phenomena like this, in which billionaire George Soros invested $33 million to turn Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson from a small police blotter item to a national cause-célèbre. Of course the story is slightly more complex than that (Snopes gives it a mixed partially true rating); what it means is that the Soros-funded Open Society Foundation streamed $33 million to “grass-roots” activist groups from all over the country which then engaged efforts to take the Ferguson protests national and keep them at the center of national attention. The Open Society Foundation had given money to such groups before, and according to its director did not directly supervise their agitation over Ferguson. But anyone curious how hundreds of professional activists could decamp from New York and Washington and elsewhere and stay for months in Ferguson (don’t they have jobs to get to? who pays for their meals?) now has an answer.

Thirty-three million dollars, even if allocated to groups which have other agenda items than Ferguson, goes a long way in paying salaries, producing media content, organizing bodies to show up at demonstrations, etc. One blogger suggested that it will be interesting if the people whose businesses were burned down in the social justice looting which followed the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson were to depose the people whose funds kept the Michael Brown affair at boiling point for months. So, too, the family of the Bosnian man beaten to death with hammers on a St. Louis street because he was white.

Relatively small amounts of money can go a long way in organizing a protest and keeping it going. Most politically competent people have jobs and family responsibilities, and can’t devote much time to serious activism, certainly not in Ferguson, Missouri. So the ability to pay full time activists can entirely shift national perception of an issue, or even turn the direction of an entire country. The so-called Maidan revolution in the Ukraine was the culmination of years of funding by the U.S. government, government sponsored NGO’s, and private groups, including a major one, the International Renaissance Foundation, founded and controlled by George Soros. Victoria Nuland, the administration’s point person in organizing the Ukrainian revolution, boasted in a speech two years ago that the United States had spent $5 billion since 1990 trying to bring “European democracy” to the Ukraine. This is a high figure, and probably includes some crony capitalist deals which didn’t work out. But in a poor country relatively small amounts of money can go a long way—paying journalists, training people to set up internet TV stations, and equipping and staffing them. The Maidan Revolution certainly would not have occurred without hundreds of salaried and trained “pro-democracy” cadres. Vladimir Putin’s reaction, and the war which ensued have cost many lives and many billions more than the initial Western investments.

If one examines very rich people wielding enormous power, it isn’t fair to concentrate only on Soros, funder of left-liberal causes in the U.S. and more ambiguous ones abroad. Sheldon Adelson is the major funder of United Against Nuclear Iran and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, two “think tanks” which generate an impressive amount of agitation inside the Beltway against the administration’s Iran diplomacy and in favor or an American military strike on Iran. (Adelson has urged an American nuclear strike on Iran as a “demonstration” that we mean business.) Together Adelson’s groups help contribute to an inside the Beltway near-consensus that American military action against Iran is a perfectly plausible, sensible option, which could be carried out with little cost to the United States. Since Adelson is a major Republican donor as well as think tank sponsor, he stands a fair chance of getting his hawkish policies translated into action.

Now is perhaps not the place to argue in favor a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear aspirations, though one seems to be in reach: nor to stipulate that if Michael Brown had simply raised his hands up, or not tried to assault a police officer, he would be alive today. But I do wonder what contemporary political science has to say about the truly mammouth influence of rich individuals on the American political system. Their businesses are, so far as I can see, immune from popular pressure: most of Adelson’s money comes from casinos in Macau, where China has granted him a kind of monopoly; Soros made his billions on currency bets. Americans of great wealth have sought political influence before, of course, but what is now going on is on an altogether different scale. Henry Ford in his business prime published an anti-Semitic newspaper, but pressure from Jewish groups and the threats of boycott against his car business compelled him to desist and apologize. Warmonger Adelson; social justice agitator Soros have few or no American customers, and operate well beyond such social and economic constraints. (For what it’s worth, I find Soros far the more congenial; I’ve met him and found him wry and charming, which I doubt is true about Adelson.)

But America really is in a new era. The much-vaunted separation of the 1 percent, or 1 percent of the 1 percent, from the rest of society doesn’t mean simply that some people have many more homes and cars and planes than the rest of us; nor does it mean they can simply finance an insurgent candidate who might not otherwise be viable (as was the case with some antiwar Democrats in the late ’60s). It means they possess a truly enormous power to shape perceptions in our society, to bend democracy more than was possible before. What can we call such a system? Clearly Robert Dahl’s “polyarchy” concept needs serious revision. Who might undertake it?

 

[phgreek]

TAC's Scott McConnell just published an article titled "Who Governs?":

Amen!

 

[BGIF]

Justice Department said ready to clear Ferguson officer: N.Y. Times | Reuters

WASHINGTON Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:12pm EST

(Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is about to close the investigation into the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, and clear the white police officer involved of any civil rights charges, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted law enforcement officials as saying that federal prosecutors had begun work on a legal memo recommending no civil rights charges against the officer, Darren Wilson, after an FBI investigation found no evidence to support charges against him.

The Justice Department declined comment.

...

 

[BGIF]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/u...ferguson-civil-rights-darren-wilson.html?_r=0

By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTJAN. 21, 2015

WASHINGTON — Justice Department lawyers will recommend that no civil rights charges be brought against the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., after an F.B.I. investigation found no evidence to support charges, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his civil rights chief, Vanita Gupta, will have the final say on whether the Justice Department will close the case against the officer, Darren Wilson. But it would be unusual for them to overrule the prosecutors on the case, who are still working on a legal memo explaining their recommendation.

A decision by the Justice Department would bring an end to the politically charged investigation of Mr. Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The Missouri authorities concluded their investigation into Mr. Brown’s death in November and also recommended against charges.

...

Soon after the shooting, witnesses told reporters that Mr. Brown had his hands up in a gesture of surrender when he was shot and killed by Mr. Wilson on a city street.

The F.B.I. investigation, however, painted a murkier picture. Mr. Wilson told investigators that Mr. Brown had tussled with him through the window of his police car and tried to grab his gun, an account supported by bruises and DNA evidence. Two shots were fired during that struggle.

What happened next, as the confrontation moved into the street, is in dispute. While some witnesses were adamant that Mr. Brown had his hands up, some recanted their stories. Mr. Wilson testified that Mr. Brown had charged at him, and other witnesses backed up his account.

“I’m backpedaling pretty good because I know if he reaches me, he’ll kill me,” Mr. Wilson told a state grand jury, in testimony that investigators said was consistent with what he told the F.B.I. “And he had started to lean forward as he got that close, like he was going to just tackle me, just go right through me.”

Mr. Holder said that the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Brown’s death would be independent from the one conducted by the local authorities. While the F.B.I. and local officials conducted some interviews together and shared evidence, the analysis and decision-making were separate. Mr. Holder resisted calls from local officials to announce his conclusion alongside the county prosecutor last year, in part because he did not want it to appear as if they had reached their decisions together.

Federal investigators interviewed more than 200 people and analyzed cellphone audio and video, the law enforcement officials said. Officer Wilson’s gun, clothing and other evidence were analyzed at the F.B.I.’s laboratory in Quantico, Va. Though the local authorities and Mr. Brown’s family conducted autopsies, Mr. Holder ordered a separate autopsy, which was conducted by pathologists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the officials said.

The federal investigation did not uncover any facts that differed significantly from the evidence made public by the authorities in Missouri late last year, the law enforcement officials said. To bring federal civil rights charges, the Justice Department would have needed to prove that Officer Wilson had intended to violate Mr. Brown’s rights when he opened fire, and that he had done so willfully — meaning he knew that it was wrong to fire but did so anyway.

The Justice Department plans to release a report explaining its decision, though it is not clear when. Dena Iverson, a department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the case Wednesday.

...

 

[BGIF]

Anderson Cooper had a panel on tonight discussing the Brown shooting. The panel consisted of Jeffrey Toobin, Areva Martin, CNN Legal Affairs Commentator, and an attorney from the St Louis BOP.

From early on in this case Toobin has had the position that a civil rights violation was dubious. Based on his experience in the Justin Department, he did not see the evidence justifying such actions. He reitererated the reasons why.

Areva Martin brought up the other deaths of black males by police and said activists would not be happy with this decision. They want action.

The St Louis Attorney pointed out the each of those cases were unique with different situations they could not be lumped together.

 

[BGIF]

Police release video of more than 180 Ferguson looting suspects

Surveillance footage shows destruction of market after grand jury decision

By Dylan Stableford
11 hours ago
Yahoo News

Police in Missouri have released surveillance video that officials say shows more than 180 people suspected of looting after the Ferguson grand jury's decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

The footage, released by St. Louis County Police on Wednesday, was taken from surveillance cameras at the Dellwood Market in Dellwood, Mo., shortly before midnight on Nov. 24, 2014, and soon after the grand jury’s decision was announced. News of the decision sparked violent protests in Ferguson, Dellwood and other St. Louis suburbs. Two police cruisers and at least 12 buildings were set on fire, officials said, and hundreds of gunshots were fired during the unrest. At least 18 people were injured, and scores of protesters were arrested.

The department also released more than 180 still images of the suspected looters storming the market.
"If you can identify any of these suspects, please contact the St. Louis County Police at 314-889-2341 or CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477," a message on the SLPD website reads. "All tips are anonymous."

Wilson, who is white, became a national figure after he fatally shot the African American 18-year-old multiple times in broad daylight on a residential street in August. The grand jury deliberated for months, ultimately concluding that he would not face criminal charges in the controversial shooting death.

Dellwood Market owner Mumtaz Lalani said the ransacking in November was the third time since August that his market had been looted, and that he has no plans to rebuild.

“It is not only the dollar amount," Lalani said on Fox News last month. "It’s just the psychological effects, that I don’t feel safe anymore in my own neighborhood that I used to be doing my business in for the last 25 years.”

 

[BGIF]

Police seek hundreds in videotaped Ferguson-area looting - CNN.com

By Ray Sanchez, CNN
Updated 6:12 PM ET, Wed January 21, 2015

(CNN)It was one of hundreds of small businesses looted after a St. Louis County grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager.

Surveillance video released by the St. Louis County Police Department on Wednesday shows looters at the Dellwood Market, just outside Ferguson, Missouri, following the November 24 grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the August death of teenager Michael Brown.

A group of men is seen in the video futilely trying to break down the reinforced door. They pull and pull. With a stick or metal rod, they try to pry the door open. When all those efforts fail, they shatter a glass pane in the display window and barrel through a sheet of plywood behind the glass.

A wave of looters -- at least 180, according to St. Louis County police -- can be seen in the video pouring into the small business. For several minutes, they are seen walking back out the way they came in. Some carry bottles of liquor and other merchandise; others haul boxes of goods. Stragglers arrive late and take some of what little is left.

The owner of Dellwood Market, a family-owned business, was home watching the looting live on his surveillance system.

"My dad has had this place for 25 years," said Jan Lalani, 33, who took over the market about a year ago. "It's been his livelihood for a long time."

During three bouts of looting between the time Brown was shot in the summer of 2014 and November's grand jury decision, Lalani estimates the business sustained about $300,000 in damages and losses.

"The first time we were hit in August it was like watching an action movie from Hollywood," Lalani said. "In November, it was more the thought, 'Oh my God, not again.' I didn't even know what to think."

The surveillance video released by police only shows about five minutes of what happened that November night but, Lalani said, the looting started about 11 p.m. and continued until about 6 a.m. He estimates that more than 300 people ransacked the store during that time.

"I was at home looking at it while it was going on," Lalani said.

St. Louis County Police are making video and still images of the Dellwood incident and others public in hopes of arresting some of the looters.

Shawn McGuire, a police spokesman, said the release of the videos has taken time because detectives not only are working the looting cases but also current crimes. They hope people in the community will help identify the looters.

"It's pretty shocking," McGuire said. "Even if we get one person identified from releasing the video it's a success."

The St. Louis Economic Development Partnership estimates that about 250 businesses in the area were affected by the disturbances from August through November, including looting, vandalism and other damage. The group is still working on a monetary estimate of the loses, partnership spokeswoman Kathryn Jamboretz said.

At Dellwood Market, looters ran off with everything from toothpaste to cigarettes to frozen foods.

Of some 2,000 bottles of liquor on the shelves, Lalani said, only about 40 remained that November morning.

Still, Lalani said his family was fortunate. Looters twice tried to set the market on fire. Both times, he said, police officers arrived shortly after to extinguish the flames.

"For me, personally, thinking about coming in to work is not the same," Lalani said. "But my relationship with the customers is still the same. We have so many great people coming in and showing their support and giving us hope."

 

[BGIF]

The more things change the more they stay the same.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

FERGUSON, Mo.: Few candidates file for Ferguson election despite protests | National Politics | News Democrat

BY ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated PressJanuary 20, 2015 Updated 15 hours ago

FERGUSON, MO. — Ferguson's first municipal election since a fatal police shooting sparked months of protests and exposed the city's deep racial divide drew relatively little interest from prospective candidates as Tuesday's filing deadline passed.

Three of the St. Louis suburb's six City Council seats are up for election on April 7 and none of the three incumbents decided to seek re-election. Three of the eight residents who did declare as candidates waited until hours before Tuesday's late afternoon filing deadline.

...

Knowles said that two of three incumbents who are stepping down decided long before Brown's death not to seek three more years in office, primarily due to work obligations.

Activists who initially sought to oust Ferguson elected leaders and Police Chief Tom Jackson, who also remains on the job, said many residents remain disillusioned with local politics. Others believe the most effective way to push for new laws and policy changes on issues such as police conduct and voting district boundaries is to agitate from outside rather than to negotiate from within, said protest leader Ashley Yates, co-founder of Millennial Activists United.

"It's more about building power within our own community," she said. "Ferguson really gave us an idea of what the City Council's powers are — it's not much. And there's a realization that the system has failed black America at large. So why operate in a system that does not work?"

...

 

[BGIF]

It's been a busy news cycle in Ferguson.

 

[phgreek]

FERGUSON, Mo.: Few candidates file for Ferguson election despite protests | National Politics | News Democrat

BY ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated PressJanuary 20, 2015 Updated 15 hours ago

Man if I were a part of Millennial Activists United, I'd be asking for some clarification from my leadership. So people should not seek to attain the political offices that literally oversee the police department...because the system is broken...the system is broken because it did not do what you thought it should...but you shouldn't occupy the political seats that can make it work...K. So the hopelessness folks feel is actually FUELED by leaders who guide people to keep being helpless...why, so its easier to hire them to "agitate from the outside" ?

 

[Irish#1]

FERGUSON, Mo.: Few candidates file for Ferguson election despite protests | National Politics | News Democrat

BY ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated PressJanuary 20, 2015 Updated 15 hours ago

Evidently Ms. Yates doesn't understand that regardless of what they do in the community outside of the government won't help if they don't have the city council to help them. She think they can over throw the local government? lol

 

[autry_denson]

Black lives matter.

Mother charged with murder in newborn's fiery death

Is there a reason this was posted here?

other than: a) you don't like black people; b) you're an asshole

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Is there a reason this was posted here?

other than: a) you don't like black people; b) you're an asshole

Can you pull anything BUT the race card? The reason I posted it is because when stories like these pop up, people like Sharpton and Jackson are nowhere to be found.

And people like you and NJNP will cry racism, systematic oppression, and everything else under the sun for the struggles of certain groups of people (not all). A black woman BURNS her infant child on fire in the street and...silence.

FYI...I'd be just as furious/ disgusted if a white woman or Hispanic woman did it.

 

[ulukinatme]

Gotta admit that the story does make my stomach turn, regardless of race. Any mother that could do that to her own child...I couldn't live with myself if that was one of my kids.

 

[Irish#1]

Is there a reason this was posted here?

other than: a) you don't like black people; b) you're an asshole

Are you serious? Get over yourself. Not everyone is intent on trying to make black people bad or stupid.

 

[autry_denson]

Can you pull anything BUT the race card? The reason I posted it is because when stories like these pop up, people like Sharpton and Jackson are nowhere to be found.

And people like you and NJNP will cry racism, systematic oppression, and everything else under the sun for the struggles of certain groups of people (not all). A black woman BURNS her infant child on fire in the street and...silence.

FYI...I'd be just as furious/ disgusted if a white woman or Hispanic woman did it.

You shouldn't be on this site. it's really embarrassing to Notre Dame.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Can you pull anything BUT the race card? The reason I posted it is because when stories like these pop up, people like Sharpton and Jackson are nowhere to be found.

And people like you and NJNP will cry racism, systematic oppression, and everything else under the sun for the struggles of certain groups of people (not all). A black woman BURNS her infant child on fire in the street and...silence.

So Sharpton and Jackson, as civil rights activists, have an affirmative duty to publicly denounce every act of violence within the African-American community? And their failure to do so amounts to hypocrisy on their part? I'm not a fan of either of man, but that's not even remotely logical.

FYI...I'd be just as furious/ disgusted if a white woman or Hispanic woman did it.

Disgust, anger and sadness are all appropriate emotional reactions to that story for anyone with a shred of a humanity, but the race of the mother should be irrelevant. Evil and mental illness afflict all racial groups.

Edit: And autry has every right to take offense at your post, Leppy. Prefacing it with "Black lives matter" implies that not even African-Americans believe it, so why should American society at large? Had you instead prefaced it with "Why don't Sharpton and Jackson comment on this stuff?", you would have been fine.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

You shouldn't be on this site. it's really embarrassing to Notre Dame.

There's the difference between you and me. I disagree with people, but welcome and enjoy the debates/ discussions.

You don't like my opinion or disagree and want me banned. Good thing you don't run the show.

 

[ulukinatme]

I think posters should put other posters on ignore more often.

 

[kmoose]

Are you serious? Get over yourself. Not everyone is intent on trying to make black people bad or stupid.

^^white privilege^^

 

[Grahambo]

Shut down this thread for good. If we can close down the greatest thread IE has ever seen, we can certainly close this one down.