I’m not k9bfriender. But ‘take the protest away whenever anyone, police or otherwise, becomes violent’ reads to me a great deal like ‘just go home now’, yes.
People protest in a specific location for a reason, generally. And even for a protest that can be readily directed onto a different route, there’s nothing to keep any violent actors from simply following it onto the new route.
I thought we were talking about Portland?
I rather thought this was about Portland as well. Did I miss the cite re the restaurant owner (apparently in Seattle, not Portland, so not sure of the relevance anyway)?
Agree that is the title of the thread, but frequently threads go other related places, especially 900 posts into the thread, but if you think my posts shouldn’t be in this thread then I am happy to stop posting about anything that is not specific to Portland.
It said that the violent groups should control the actions of the peaceful protesters.
thorny_locust summed up the rest better, and I’m trying to eat.
I agree but even this is too generous.
Not only is the expectation on the protestor to have stellar behavior, if any protest anywhere breaks out into violence, it gives the police carte blanche to use indiscriminate force against a protestor who isn’t even in the same city where the violence is happening.
And not just the police, the public as well.
We have a poster in here that is trying to justify police actions in Portland by citing acts in Seattle.
Pretty serious punishment of the collective that is being advocated for here.
But, once again, we have a situation that is illegal in war, but legal in peace.
There does not seem to be a law in the US against collective punishment, but it seemed to be a big enough concern that the world is against it.
To my understanding, it’s legal - in terms of how the Feds are allowed to act. But, likewise, a cop is allowed to shoot people. That doesn’t mean he can’t be prosecuted for shooting someone if, for example, he murders his wife without cause. The right isn’t unlimited.
For one, if the side of a van suddenly opened up, some men jumped out, grabbed me, hauled me in, slammed the door, and burned rubber getting out of there, I’d generally think that I was about to get tied up in some basement by a group of kinky psychopaths and have a heart attack. Failing the heart attack, I’d still have a pretty good chance of developing PTSD.
Just right there, you have a pretty strong basis for a legal suit - probably one that you will win. And if any of those officers does anything inappropriate, they’ll probably be individually liable for it as well. I’ll come come back to that point.
That said, it is also arguably criminal what is being done:
If a person has a right to self-expression, to peaceably protest, etc. and these agents are conspiring to remove those rights - then that is criminal.
And we also have Oregonian law:
If this activity is clearly unnecessary and intended only to create a terror campaign then this sort of activity could be considered criminal menacing, if the state of Oregon decided to go Fed hunting. (I recommend snatching them off the street from unmarked vans.)
But getting back to what I was saying before, one thing to note is that this is the sort of activity that is liable to cause misbehavior.
As I understand it, one of the agencies involved is FPS - the Federal department of security guards. These are guys who wanted to get into law enforcement and weren’t smart enough or stable enough to do it. They want to have a job going around shooting guns, acting macho, and bossing people around. Instead, they’ve been spending the last decade checking name cards at the Federal Court. These guys have just been empowered to roam around in unmarked vans, wearing masks, with free license to snatch hippie chicks off the street and tie them up.
Even ignoring the involvement of FPS, the above is still a bad setup and encourages people to do bad things. It’s like in Iraq where the couple started to use the POWs as sex toys, because if the military is torturing people then, really, anything else goes …right?
And, one might note, the guys in the vans are probably the ones who were the most up for it, when their boss asked. And the boss who asked was also the one who was the most up for it as well - and will have given the greatest impression that their job is to get out there and scare the ever-loving-fuck out of them protestors.
Oregon probably should arrest these guys. There’s almost zero chance that this won’t turn into something very bad.
The new Multnomah County DA is taking office early on August first and my fondest hope is that his first prosecutions are Goon Squad kidnappers and tear gas lobbers and rubber bullet point blank shooters. Oh please oh please oh please!
Oh, there was a reason alright - he’s a little person who didn’t know his place, who dared to speak up. What most of the Trumpists don’t realize is that nearly everybody is a “little person” to those in power on the right these days.
If they’re mercenaries third party contractors they’re loyal to whomever signs their paycheck, and beating on people is their profession. It’s what they do.
Just curious before I jump in. I couldn’t read through the 900 plus posts. I was focused on another Portland/Fed thread.
Hypothetically, if someone had the viewpoint that its all perfectly legal, albeit ill advised, and that there is a certain amount paranoia/conspiracy theories surrounding the issue, would that person get drowned out in a tsunami of accusations of being a fascist? fail to understand logic? not understanding how Trump is evil incarnate? Just trying to judge if there is any debate in this great debate before I give my two cents.
I believe it’s been established that the aspect of federal LEOs operating in US cities, not identifying themselves and arresting people without stating why is legal but I’ve read probably less than 10% of the posts and the discussion has moved elsewhere.
They likely cant and that is exactly what Barr wants them to do. Havent you been reading thise posts? That is the excuse Barr wants to declare insurrection,
Someone told me the other day that Trump was building the wall so that the military could have a way to keep the cartels from invading the country. And I said, "Okay, well let’s assume that you’re correct. We need the wall to protect us against tanks that Mexican drug dealers are going to try and send over the border.
“Why are drug dealers going to try and send tanks over the border…?”
There’s a popular sentiment among partisans that you can’t use logic or just say things that are rational and common sense and have that go somewhere. And that’s largely because the partisans have confused themselves out of ever thinking rationally and with common sense - since that’s what is necessary to hold their own grab bag of political positions.
But, it’s like dealing with children. You’ve got two kids fighting, calling each other names, accusing the other of being bad first, etc. And when an adult comes in, they just ignore all of that because it’s childish BS that’s not even worth sorting through or giving even cursory attention to. They’re both being bad, adults have figured out how to not end up in this sort of situation so obviously there’s some other way to have handled things that they didn’t do, and they’ve just got to figure out what they’re doing wrong while they sit staring at the wall for the next hour. That’s the reality of the situation, and there’s no value in debating the merits of idiot childish argument 1 versus idiot childish argument 2.
Let’s say that Bill Barr says, “This is insurrection!”
Well, he’s just said something that’s stupid. Now you can treat him like a real adult person, who should be respected, or you could just ignore the BS and just do your own adulting. If someone asks why you’re not paying attention to the BS, you just explain clearly and reasonably why you would do so, just like you would explain why you don’t pay attention to the details of a child’s argument that he wasn’t doing anything by hovering his finger an inch away from his brother “not touching” him. You’ve got better things to do in life.
If someone breaks the law, arrest them. If that’s your duty as a keeper of the peace, then do your duty. If the children think that they can weaponize that somehow, than you need to trust that most people can recognize who is the adult and who is the child and will side with the adult.
At the moment, neither side is winning because even if Team Trump is way way worse, the nicer, friendlier child is still just that. There’s no adult in the mix.
All that needs to happen is for someone in the country, who isn’t lost in one of the fantasy lands of the political parties to step up and start being the adult.
No, obviously they felt that opposing them is unAmerican, so he had no right to hold that flag.
Sigh. If trump declares a insurrection, then he declares martial law, suspends habeas corpus, and of course- no elections. And if you dont think trump will try this- you havent been living in America. Why do you think Barr sent those ‘troops’ to Portland? Keep the peace? It is to laugh. They have been doing the exact opposite. The goal is to hope someone does something stupid then 1. a insurrection,2.martial law, 3. suspends habeas corpus, and 4.- no elections. Right there in Hitler’s playbook. This is the Reichstag fire.
You cant just ignore the 101st Airborne with tanks.
Democracy in America would be over.
Yes, and indeed we have selected one, one Joe Biden, who will very likely be elected in November- assuming we are allowed to have elections. Joe may be many things to many people, but he is certainly a adult.
Meanwhile the ACLU is fighting the good fight.
It may be BS, but it’s BS that needs to be taken seriously, becuse he is head of the DOJ. He’s not just some random person, he actually has power behind his words.
And even is trump & barr dont go quite that far, here is what one pundit thinks the plan is:
So, we end up with a Trump who not only encourages racism but must depend on it to win. It has to come through for him in greater numbers than it has so far, or he’s toast. As far as I can tell, his strategy (if it can be called that) boils down to five moves.
1. Turn heel. With much hang-wringing and rending of garments, Trump declares war on America.
2. Rely on FOX News to tar the protests as ultraviolent. Trump’s overlords at FOX are doing their part ( at least at night ), hyping the moral panic that the protesters are burning down American cities. Trump is all too happy to let Americans believe they are, even if it’s not true.
3. Hope some federal officers get killed. Trump aims for a Remember the Maine-style outcome where America sees the federal troops he put in harm’s way as the victims. In his twisted fantasy, these sacrificed soldiers become his George Floyd, and white America rallies to his side.
4. Have Bill Barr and Chad Wolf commit some atrocities. In response, Trump’s quislings will “put down” the protests in some awful way, blunting their message and terrifying people away from the protest sites.
5. Turn face. After a summer of violence, Trump declares the mission accomplished, reins in Wolf, and returns to his smiling ways, taking credit for saving America. The cheers roar again, and carry him to victory.
What rights of innocent people are being violated? Are the feds burning down businesses or looting? Are the feds assaulting people for merely wearing the wrong hat? Are the feds shooting at random jeeps? The feds and the police actually aren’t even enforcing the law until the riot gets really out of hand and then they do a pathetic job of enforcing the law at that point.
This is the part that I don’t get. Don’t they know that they are putting themselves into harm’s way unnecessarily? Are they actually willing to sacrifice themselves to the risk of injury or death in order to advance another’s political ambitions?
Or are they so enthused at being given permission to bust heads that they don’t realize that they are pawns?
They’ve brutalized a whole lot of peaceful protesters, like that Navy vet who stood tall while he was beaten and pepper sprayed, and like that Vietnam vet I posted about above who was pepper sprayed for nothing.
Some of us think it’s wrong to brutalize peaceful protesters. That appears to be the difference in opinion here - you appear to be in favor of it, at least in some circumstances.