I’ve been seeing this on other fora as well… specifically, right-wing forums. They’re currently scouring the news, looking for any reports of anything which might be construed as a riot. When they find something, they gleefully report it to their buddies.
Why, it’s almost as if they *want *rioting.
Makes me a little ill, it does.
No. Because that’s not what people predicting a riot meant. They didn’t mean tiny pockets of people throwing a brick within huge crowds of peaceful protesters. It’s silly as hell to watch you all grasp at these quiet “riots”.
Are there more than 20 people breaking shit? Sure, that’s a riot.
Wait a minute. The OP asks us to guess if there will be riots. I said Small ones caused mostly by a few looters and outside anarchists.
Said riots occur. We then, in a thread devoted to prediction of whether or not there’s going to be riots, post that so far, small riots, limited violence.
But somehow, posting** THE FUCKING NEWS ABOUT RIOTS IN A THREAD ABOUT POSSIBLE RIOTS** is some sort of weird right wing racist thing.:dubious:
This is a thread about such news. Such news occurs. Thus, we post it in the very thread devoted to it.
If it “makes you ill” I suggest not reading the news. Try putting your head in the sand, that always works…:rolleyes:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Waiter-attacked-freeway-blocked-in-3rd-Oakland-4667042.php
The crowd eventually headed back to 15th Street and Broadway, and at 10:45 p.m. people smashed windows of a Comerica bank, a Men’s Wearhouse store and a vacant retail space. Police rushed in to make arrests, which led to skirmishes between protesters and police. During the chaos, a tear-gas canister was detonated, and officers were the target of rocks and bottles.
As the night wore on, violence grew. About 11 p.m., a masked protester hit a waiter at Flora Restaurant and Bar on Telegraph Avenue in the face with a hammer as he tried to protect the restaurant, whose windows were broken two nights ago.
By night’s end, police had arrested six men, two women and a male juvenile, with most of them hailing from outside Oakland, said Officer Johnna Watson, a department spokeswoman. The offenses included assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest and vandalism.
Smashed windows , tear-gas, officers were the target of rocks and bottles, assault with a deadly weapon, arrests= riot.
I don’t want riots.
I want accountability for wrong predictions, especially wrong predictions delivered in a confident, brook-no-debate manner.
So what’s your opinion? Are the California events riots? If not, what constitutes a riot?
See, this would be an example of a correct prediction. “Will there be riots?” DrDeth says, yeah, maybe small ones caused mostly by a few looters and outside anarchists.
What do we see? Small ones evidently caused mostly by a few looters and outside anarchists. So this prediction would be correct.
Someone who says “No, there won’t be,” would be wrong. Not hugely, dramatically wrong, but wrong.
But apparently there’s some mystical force that prevents people from saying, “Yeah, I was wrong about that prediction,” or even “What I meant, and should have been more clear about, was large-scale riots; I always knew that small stuff like this might happen.”
Where are those types of concessions?
Great. I agree. That’s a riot.
So what would your opinion be about a prediction that said, “No, there won’t be riots?”
(A) The prediction was wrong
(B) The prediction lacked clarity, and the person offering it didn’t mean to include such minor events in his denial
(C) Questioning the prediction’s accuracy after the fact is a right-wing, racist tactic and must be deplored by all persons of correct social consciousness
(D) Other (please specify)
Thus my question now. What, specifically, constitutes a riot?
(D) the prediction was accurate, because we’ve only had one riot, rather than riots plural. What was it you were telling me about precision in language a couple of weeks ago? 
Seriously, though, any blanket no-riot predictions are now wrong. Except mine, which was limited to Central Florida because fuck you California:
Yes – another example of a correct prediction.
And this:
An example of an incorrect prediction.
I’m not joyful over it, or sad over it, or anything over it. I just want the author to man up and say that he might have been a tiny bit in error.
I did not see this item from the Baltimore Sun referred to in thies thread yet:
Police investigating whether Hispanic man was beaten in response to Zimmerman verdict
Short version:
Most of the article details how a large group of protesters peacefully demonstrated their displeasure with the Zimmerman verdict.
However, in a Facebook post one witness describes how a small group of black males and two black females assaulted a Hispanic male. One of the black males had a handgun which he pointed at the back of the Hispanic male. The witness claims the black males repeatedly said “This is for Trayvon” while hitting the Hispanic male.
If true, I would call that assault a hate crime.
If true. But the account is from some semi-anonymous Facebook user, and is not subject to any meaningful questioning, review, or verification.
The poster is identified. She could be questioned.
I would hope there will be an investigation and then, depending upon what the evidence dictates, appropriate charges be leveled against responsible persons if they can be identified.
Of course this is not directly comparable to the Zimmerman case in many ways. No one is dead. It was multiple people assaulting one person. That group of people fled and have not yet been identified.
Its still racist, even if correct in this instance. Racism isn’t about one instance of something happening that they happened to be correct on. The racism occurs when one thinks “those people” are going to riot no matter what, and always riot, because of their race.
Everyone predicting riots because they think black people can’t control themselves are racist, and still racist today despite what happened last night. A few dozen black people and others did some damage. Tens of millions of blacks did not.
Exactly this.
There are lots of things known in history as riots, Bricker. Which would you compare this to? Watts? The ones after MLK’s assasination? LA after the Rodney King verdict? Detroit after their sports teams win? Vancouver after the Stanley Cup?
If whats happened in the last couple of days constitutes a riot, a few broken windows, a dozen arrests, some vandalized cars, then we have about 50 of them every Saturday during college football season. Hell, I’ve been in some of them. Funny how nobody ever called them riots, though.
I suppose the media who reported the riots are “racist” too, as well as the shop-owners who had their stores vandalized or the dude who got beat with a hammer. :rolleyes:
And, of course, no one said or even implied that “those people" are going to riot no matter what, and always riot, because of their race.” Putting words in peoples mouths like that, or impugning racist thoughts- that is racist.
The other thread restricted it even further by asking about “race riots.”
No, it isn’t. Racism doesn’t enter into it, and it’s reading between the lines accurately.
Agreed that the disturbances of last night were limited to very few people.
And I’ll agree, too, that the prediction was racist.
But if I’m walking down the street with David Duke, and we see a black man on the corner, Duke might say to me, “Hey, there’s a criminal, huh?”
“What? How do you know?”
“He’s black,” Duke might reply.
“That’s an absurd and racist conclusion,” I would answer.
If we then see the guy take money from a passing car and deliver a glass tube of heroin, it’s incumbent on me to acknowledge that Duke’s prediction was correct. Still racist, but facts are facts - the guy WAS a criminal.
Right?
And $10,000 damage to a hotel lobby? That’s also par for the course every Saturday?
Where do you live?