Baltimore Riots

kimmy · May 11, 2015

No, its not false........using the example of the OP, who sent in special investigators.......police or the politicians? Likewise, to whom to these black communities pleas fall upon deaf ears to?

We were discussing direct power over life and liberty, and there's no greater example of someone having direct power over another's life and liberty than a cop taking someone into custody and killing them.

No, its not false........using the example of the OP, who sent in special investigators.......police or the politicians? Likewise, to whom to these black communities pleas fall upon deaf ears to? You suggested these riots are required to bring forth change.......who do you expect, or hope, will bring forth your desired change? Police of Politicians?

Both, actually.

I expect there'll be political pressure to review Maryland's "Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights", and I expect the police will be implementing changes to make sure this doesn't happen again.

The police are just instruments of the State......

In theory, perhaps. In practice they're also instruments of covering their own asses. As we saw repeatedly during the Braidwood inquiry, they're certainly capable of doing plenty of stuff that no politician authorized them to do, both when it comes to snuffing a suspect as well as covering up for each other after the fact.

Sure.....didn't find the part that suggested riots were a prerequisite for a conviction though....

Your own source said that the track record of holding police officers for crime is "very problematic", so I'm sure you can appreciate why citizens who've seen years of injuries and deaths in Baltimore police vans were likewise not optimistic that justice would be forthcoming.

Clearly having the State attorney's husband, a councilman representing the community that felt the riots, helped.......

So first you were saying that rioting wasn't needed to bring outside investigators into the situation.

Now you seem to be suggesting that the reason the state attorney got involved is that she was influenced by her husband, who was in turn influenced by the riots.

Don't those two ideas seem contradictory to you?

Was this situation going to get due scrutiny without riots?

Or is this scrutiny because a state attorney is married to a city councilman?

Is all of this just really unfair to the cops? Are they getting railroaded because Ms Mosby has an undue bias?

Before you seemed to be of the view that justice would come without rioting. But now you're echoing the cop talking points about how prosecutorial bias. Do you feel like these charges should just be thrown out?

I trust if the charges are dismissed against these officers, or if it goes to trial and the officers are found not guilty by a jury of their peers, you'll accept that justice was down?

Or does that mean they just need to riot some more?

If, by some chance, they manage to find 12 people dumb enough to believe that none of the police charged bear any responsibility for Freddy Gray's death, then no, I don't support further rioting.

However, I suggest that even if these goons get acquitted, there will still be changes made within the Baltimore PD.

-k

Je suis Omar · May 14, 2015

Derek2.0: Sure.....didn't find the part that suggested riots were a prerequisite for a conviction though....

Omar: Riots, combined with terrorism, were exactly how the USA was founded. They are as American as apple pie.

kimmy · May 15, 2015

Derek2.0: Sure.....didn't find the part that suggested riots were a prerequisite for a conviction though....

Omar: Riots, combined with terrorism, were exactly how the USA was founded. They are as American as apple pie.

Honestly, are you going to post the same crap in every thread? Does every single discussion on the board have to be about your pet ideological agenda? Are you that juvenile?

-k

Je suis Omar · May 15, 2015

Honestly, are you going to post the same crap in every thread? Does every single discussion on the board have to be about your pet ideological agenda? Are you that juvenile?

-k

Je suis Omar, on 13 May 2015 - 10:47 PM, said:

Derek2.0: Sure.....didn't find the part that suggested riots were a prerequisite for a conviction though....

Omar: Riots, combined with terrorism, were exactly how the USA was founded. They are as American as apple pie.

You have to think, Kimmy, instead of reacting in a knee jerk fashion, opening your mouth and saying the first inane thing that comes into your mind. You've done this a number of times, as have others, a quick snipe and then you disappear.

"riots" - the euphemistically named "boston tea party" is a good example of a rioting people. The revolution against the British was a dictionary definition of terrorism.

Do you see now how important it is to think before you speak?

Would you like to continue to discuss its relevance? How, on the one hand, America exalts rioting and terrorism then, need I mention, hypocritically deplores it.

Haven't you ever noticed how hypocrisy is also as American as apple pie?

Edited May 15, 2015 by Je suis Omar

H10 · May 22, 2015

Americans are silly, they whine when blacks riot, and celebrate the boston tea party riots.

bush_cheney2004 · May 22, 2015

Americans are silly, they whine when blacks riot, and celebrate the boston tea party riots.

Canadians are silly....they whine when Americans riot, and riot when American teams win the Stanley Cup.

H10 · May 22, 2015

Canadians are silly....they whine when Americans riot, and riot when American teams win the Stanley Cup.

Damn'd straight, Canadians love to burn down every m.f. if Americans eliminate our team, don't make Canada cross the border and beat you in war again.

Edited May 22, 2015 by H10

bush_cheney2004 · May 22, 2015

Damn'd straight, Canadians love to burn down every m.f. if Americans eliminate our team, don't make Canada cross the border and beat you in war again.

OK...the U.S. will be very careful...because the powerful British Empire will back you up.

On Guard for Thee · May 22, 2015

OK...the U.S. will be very careful...because the powerful British Empire will back you up.

I guess you are realizing how bad yall screwed up there eh...

H10 · May 25, 2015

Cop violence is among the most serious problem of our time, government armed agents trained in deadly force who seldom follow the law and have the right to shoot and murder anyone who doesn't comply with their orders. Its a modern day police state, a state run and governed by and for the cops. No one else can be caught on film murdering someone and not even be indicted. I often wonder what are these juries smoking.

bush_cheney2004 · May 25, 2015

Cop violence is among the most serious problem of our time,

Nope....one is far more likely to be shot by a fellow citizen. Most people go about their lives without any interaction with the criminal justice system except for jury duty. The perps just don't get it...

eyeball · May 25, 2015

They must get it otherwise crime rates wouldn't have fallen as far as they have.

cybercoma · May 25, 2015

They must get it otherwise crime rates wouldn't have fallen as far as they have.

I guess the absolute number of deaths from cops needs to be equal to or greater than the number of overall deaths by other means before it's a problem to some people. :rolleyes:

H10 · May 25, 2015

Nope....one is far more likely to be shot by a fellow citizen. Most people go about their lives without any interaction with the criminal justice system except for jury duty. The perps just don't get it...

Cops have a high per capita murder rate. Not to mention all the other crimes they do. There are about 1 million cops in the usa. They murdered around 1200 people per year. If there were 300 million cops in the usa, you'd have a jaw dropping 120,000 murders per year. That type of murder rate would make colombia look like paradise and the wild west look tame.

Je suis Omar · May 25, 2015

That type of murder rate would make colombia look like paradise ...

.

And why, we must ask, is the murder rate so high in Colombia? Once again, it's the USA and UK backing of a brutal right wing dictatorship.

This, of course, has long been the pattern for the Latin American countries. The USA overthrows democratically elected leaders and installs their own brutal right wing dictators.

One only has to look at the USA's pattern around the world. Despite the rhetoric, the incessant propaganda emanating from the mouths of USA politicians, from USA media, about the USA being the saviour of the oppressed, the opposite is true. The USA has always supported right wing dictatorships that have viciously brutalized their own populations so American (and UK) businesses can exploit their wealth.

We must end this collusion with terror in Colombia

by Seumas Milne

As talks to end a 50-year war hang in the balance, violent repression carries on and the US and Britain stand behind it

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

@seumasmilne

Wednesday 30 July 2014 20.45 BST Last modified on Wednesday 8 October 2014 10.05 BST

The Colombian port of Buenaventura is a place of misery and fear. Four-fifths of the mainly black population live in dire poverty and paramilitary gangs exercise a reign of terror. Most of Colombias imports come through the port, which is being massively expanded to meet the demands of new free trade agreements.

But theres no sign of any benefit in Buenaventuras slums, whose deprivation is reminiscent of the worst of Bangladesh. Most of the citys population have no sewerage and many no power. Tens of thousands have been forced off their land around the city to make way for corporate megaprojects.

Most horrifically, paramilitaries have been dismembering those who cross them with chainsaws in shacks known as chophouses. The police admit a dozen have met these grisly deaths in recent months, but Buenaventuras bishop says the real figure is far higher.

The government insists the rightwing paramilitary groups that have terrorised Colombias opposition have been dissolved. But in Buenaventura, they can be seen openly fraternising with soldiers on the streets, and they even publish their own newspaper.

Hundreds of miles away in Putumayo, a remote rural area at the heart of the 50-year conflict between the state and the leftwing Farc guerrillas, local peasant farmers are blockading roads and bridges in protest against the destruction caused by oil exploration and the governments drug-war fumigation of their crops.

In the village of Puerto Vega, locals line up with stories of atrocities and abductions by the police and army. Family members describe how four young trade unionists were shot in May by soldiers who later claimed they were killed in combat. Its not the guerrillas they fear, villagers say, but the authorities.

Its a similar story in the working-class Soacha suburb of Bogotá, where mothers of young men abducted and murdered by soldiers who falsely claimed they were guerrillas to qualify for bonuses weep as they describe years of campaigning to have those responsible brought to justice. More than 3,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in this way in the past decade.

This is the reality of Colombia today. But its not, of course, the story sold by the Colombian government and its US and British backers. As far as theyre concerned, the peace talks with the Farc are heading for success after Juan Manuel Santos was re-elected president last month on a peace ticket.

Colombian officials talk peace and human rights with an evangelical zeal and a dizzying array of flipcharts. But, as one independent report after another confirms, there is a chasm between the spin and life on the ground. Laws are not implemented or abusers prosecuted. Thousands of political prisoners languish in Colombias jails. Political, trade union and social movement activists are still routinely jailed or assassinated.

A quarter of a million have died in Colombias war, the large majority of them at the hands of the army, police and government-linked paramilitaries. Five million have been forced from their homes. Although the violence is down from its peak, the killing of human rights and union activists has actually increased in the past year.

One of those jailed is the trade union and opposition leader Huber Ballesteros, arrested last year as he was about to travel to Britain to address the Trades Union Congress. Speaking in La Picota prison in Bogotá last week, Ballesteros told me: There is no democracy in Colombia, we are confronting a dictatorship with a democratic face.

Meanwhile in Havana, where peace negotiations have been in train since 2012, Farc guerrilla leaders warn that the process could break down unless the government agrees to meaningful democratic reforms and stops trying to kill the organisations leaders.

Theres no doubt the Farc wants to end its armed campaign, which first emerged as a defence of peasant farmers and has been used to smear and terrorise the countrys opposition for decades. But the guerrillas frustration with a one-sided process and a government that refuses to respond to their unilateral ceasefires is clearly growing.

Its people like Ballesteros and the mothers of Soacha who have attracted the solidarity of British and Irish trade unionists and MPs, regularly brought to Colombia where close to 3,000 union activists have been murdered since 1986 by the British NGO Justice for Colombia.

But its the Colombian state and military, responsible for decades of dirty war and the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, that the US and British governments stand behind. Colombia is Washingtons closest ally in Latin America, the third largest recipient of US military and security aid in the world.

Thats why the Colombian conflict has been branded Americas other war, as it morphed from a fight against communism to a battle against drugs to another front in the war on terror. But Britain is also intimately involved, as it strengthens what the British ambassador in Bogotá, Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, calls a close and long-term institutional relationship with the military.

The interests are both strategic and economic, as Colombia has opened up its resource-rich economy to privatisation and foreign investment. Western corporations such as the US-owned Chiquita banana company have been found to have directly financed paramilitaries that have cleared peasant farmers off prime land and attacked trade unions.

Santos represents that part of the Colombian elite that wants to end the war to make way for large-scale corporate investment. The progressive tide that has swept Latin America and brought leftwing governments to power across the region is also less favourable to the traditional death-squad model of rightwing politics.

A peace deal with effective protection for the opposition could open up the possibility of real change in Colombia. But that demands support for those genuinely trying to make it happen and for the global powers that preach human rights to end their backing of repression and terror on an industrial scale.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/we-must-end-collusion-terror-colombia

Edited May 25, 2015 by Je suis Omar

H10 · May 25, 2015

Don't have to convince me, America is the number one exporter of crime. They have single handled raised the crime rate in all of the americas.

bush_cheney2004 · May 25, 2015

Don't have to convince me, America is the number one exporter of crime. They have single handled raised the crime rate in all of the americas.

But millions of others are not convinced based on the number of emigres still going to the United States. Far more than Canada...and many other nations.....combined.

There are more foreign born Americans than the entire population of Canada.

Edited May 25, 2015 by bush_cheney2004

Je suis Omar · May 25, 2015

Don't have to convince me, America is the number one exporter of crime. They have single handled raised the crime rate in all of the americas.

I certainly wasn't attempting to convince you, Hernanday. I just picked up where you left off. I really just continued your point.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Je suis Omar

Je suis Omar · May 25, 2015

But millions of others are not convinced based on the number of emigres still going to the United States.

That truly is a very lame argument. Those millions of others, the emigres, aren't any more enlightened, any more knowledgeable about USA war crimes and terrorism than the millions of others in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, even the USA.

These hundreds of millions of people continue to operate under, and continue to believe the longstanding mother of all myths, that the USA is a kind and benevolent country, a saviour of the oppressed, a rule of law country.

Such has been the success of the USA propaganda system. Yet another thing the USA has done better than the Nazis.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Je suis Omar

Argus · May 27, 2015

Cops have a high per capita murder rate. Not to mention all the other crimes they do. There are about 1 million cops in the usa. They murdered around 1200 people per year. If there were 300 million cops in the usa, you'd have a jaw dropping 120,000 murders per year.

So let me see if I have your 'thinking' straight. If a guy stabs a woman to death, and a cop confronts him, and he rushes at the cop and is shot, that's a murder, right?

If a guy walks up and down the street shooting everyone he sees, and is confronted and then shot by police, they're guilty of murder?

You appear to be one of those special people with unique views of life and reality.

Bob Macadoo · May 28, 2015

So let me see if I have your 'thinking' straight. If a guy stabs a woman to death, and a cop confronts him, and he rushes at the cop and is shot, that's a murder, right?If a guy walks up and down the street shooting everyone he sees, and is confronted and then shot by police, they're guilty of murder?You appear to be one of those special people with unique views of life and reality.

When cops are in a car chase and the perps are pulled over and a cop stands on the hood and immediately empties 13 shots through the windshield and the unarmed die....well that's just fear for his life and needs to be acquitted.

Argus · May 28, 2015

When cops are in a car chase and the perps are pulled over and a cop stands on the hood and immediately empties 13 shots through the windshield and the unarmed die....well that's just fear for his life and needs to be acquitted.

I get that. But his statement equated every police shooting as murder. I'm pointing out how ludicrous that is.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/12/la-cops-kill-gunman-shooting-at-hollywood-motorists/1#.VWZsc0ZUXgI

Edited May 28, 2015 by Argus

Bob Macadoo · May 28, 2015

I get that. But his statement equated every police shooting as murder. I'm pointing out how ludicrous that is.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/12/la-cops-kill-gunman-shooting-at-hollywood-motorists/1#.VWZsc0ZUXgI

Hmmmm I wonder if he was black? Race was glaringly missing from your cite. No hoodies mentioned. No thug references. Curious.

H10 · May 28, 2015

So let me see if I have your 'thinking' straight. If a guy stabs a woman to death, and a cop confronts him, and he rushes at the cop and is shot, that's a murder, right?

If a guy walks up and down the street shooting everyone he sees, and is confronted and then shot by police, they're guilty of murder?

You appear to be one of those special people with unique views of life and reality.

That almost never happens. it happens but very rarely. much more often is guy is holding knife and cops shoots him, guy is walking toward cop, and cop shoots him, guy put his hand in his pocket to reach for his wallet and cop shoots him or cop just plain old shoots him in the back. There are only a small handful of cases where cops are really justified in killing and someone is actually trying to butcher them with a knife and they are almost always mentally ill people because any killer knows gun beats knife 99% of the time. You might get in one or two stabs but he'll get off 10 shots and you'll be dead.