[QUOTE=jlzania]
One young man in Oakland remains in critical condition and from the video footage I watched, other Occupiers had one or more projectiles fired at them when they rushed to assist him.
[/QUOTE]
He was hit by a gas round.
From the videos I’ve seen and reports I’ve read I’d say that the police, by and large, have shown restraint. YMMV, obviously.
In situations such as these? Yeah, all of those things are possibilities. Or, you know, they could just leave when asked to leave and stay away when asked to stay away if they don’t want to risk injury. It’s really their choice, in the end. If they really believe in their cause then the risks should be all part of the cost of doing business, yes?
Here is what you said:
So, you are using hyperbole similar to my ‘gunned down ruthlessly by the police.’, because, you know, they AREN’T using lethal force on the protesters.
Is that the sum of your point here, XT, the semantics of “lethal force”? A young man very nearly died, is that “lethal force Lite”? What level of force do you think is appropriate for surly and scruffy malcontents, threatening propriety and public order? Or was there some compelling need, some potentially lethal disaster in the offing? Anthrax hacky-sacks being distributed? Somebody advocating the violent overthrow of the Oakland City Council?
He doesn’t have a point about the appropriate level of force, specifically. It’s Frost/Nixon: if the police do it, that means it was not unreasonable.
From the videos he’s seen of the police in the middle of their response, and from the reports he’s heard of the police saying that they did not do any of the things that they’ve subsequently admitted that they did, he’s determined that the police had no recourse but to do whatever it was that they did, in response to whatever it was that it was in response to.
The Oakland thing has been a very big local story here, and after seeing the coverage to date, I would say the police over-reacted. The demonstrators were not being perfect little Civil Disobedience guys, but the police seem to have come down on them much too strongly. Part of the problem, it appears, is that they had “assistance” from cops from outside the area and those cops were not in sync with the SOPs used by the Oakland police. The OPD does not use rubber bullets because they don’t have rubber bullets, for example. Cops from other jurisdictions were not so limited in their arsenal.
It appears that both sides have taken a step back. The protest are a lot more peaceful and the cops are more restrained in their actions. That is not to say that this episode should be forgotten about. An investigation is in order, and heads should roll if they are found to be culpable. Oakland is a pretty damn progressive city, and I doubt the residents will sit idly by and let city officials off the hook.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Is that the sum of your point here, XT, the semantics of “lethal force”?
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much, yeah. ‘Lethal force’ has an actual definition, you see.
He was hit in the head by a gas shell…a gas shell that was meant to be ‘non-lethal’ force. If the cops wanted to use ‘lethal force’ they would, you know, have fucking shot those gun thingies they carry on their hips or in their cars.
Yeah, a young man nearly died (last report I saw he was in stable condition)…that’s the sort of thing that happens when you confront the police in situations like that. See, even if you are trying to use NON-lethal force, shit happens, and accidents happen, and people get hurt. Like, you know, in this situation here.
The exact same level of force that’s appropriate to keep public order regardless of who is threatening property or breaking the law, no matter what their scruff co-efficient is, or how content or malcontent they may or may not be. You? Should the police not trying and maintain public order, enforce the law or protect the public and property if someone might get hurt in their enforcement?
Oh…so, if there isn’t a lethal disaster in the offing the police shouldn’t maintain public order and prevent people from breaking the laws? Gotcha.
[QUOTE=Jimmy Chitwood]
He doesn’t have a point about the appropriate level of force, specifically. It’s Frost/Nixon: if the police do it, that means it was not unreasonable.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for trying to talk for me, but since you don’t have a clue what my actual position is on this or what I meant to say or didn’t mean to say, how about letting me field the questions from now one, ehe?
Short answer though is that you are full of shit…I most specifically did not mean that whatever the police do is A-Ok. But thanks for your input.
Ah, thanks. And you know this how, exactly? Since you don’t seem to have a clue what my actual position was on this, I’m curious how you were able to read my mind, know what I’ve seen or haven’t seen, what I’ve read and haven’t read, who I’ve talked to or haven’t talked to, and what I had for breakfast yesterday as well…
No, no, a thousand times no. Risk being arrested? Certainly. Risk injury just for being there? No, no, no. If the police ever engage with any weapon anyone who is not actively attacking them–and I’ll make allowances for tear gas here if a majority of a given section of crowd is actively engaging in anti-police violence–they are wrong and should be prosecuted for assault and battery.
The police should not and must not have more rights to defend themselves than private citizens do, in terms of levels of force authorized. In point of fact, I believe that properly riot suited police should not be authorized to even respond with force when accosted with intermittent improvised projectiles like bottles or whatever.
Hang onto your fucking hat, here, but the way I figured out what you think is I read what you posted.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
He was hit by a gas round.
[/QUOTE]
Every single declarative statement you’ve made has had two things in common: one, it’s factually unsupportable, and two, it mirrors what the police have said, including where the police – but not you – have later recanted and said ah, shit, yeah, that totally wasn’t true. Most of what you’ve said hasn’t actually been declarative statements, though, it’s been you speculating, again without any factual support, about what kinds of dangerous threats were probably being posed to the police. This wasn’t the world’s most difficult profiling exercise. You’ve been saying exactly what the Oakland police’s PR people have been saying. Lately you’ve diverted course and started talking about legal definitions of lethal force, as if that matters in a context where the protocol for even non-lethal force was almost certainly violated.
Long before the police waded in with clubs, I told you all, they would say someone threw a bottle. You can not prove it did not happen, and many believe the cops. I don’t know why but they do.
I have been in lots of demonstrations in my life and I can assure you the police cause the confrontations. The people are scared shitless, but are there because they believe they can help by being there. Like the Iraq vet in Oakland, they know there is a risk. The cops will be perfectly happy to fuck you up and claim it was your fault. Most right wingers will accept it completely because they are getting the results they want.
That’s somewhat of a different goalpost than I was expecting–that cite orders said states by “percentage of population on assistance”, not by “number of population on assistance” or “total federal assistance dollars received”. I think in particular the latter number would result in a very different top fifteen.
I think you counted wrong. The top 10 unemployment states are:
42 GEORGIA
43 NORTH CAROLINA
43 RHODE ISLAND
45 FLORIDA
45 MISSISSIPPI
47 SOUTH CAROLINA
48 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
48 MICHIGAN
50 CALIFORNIA
51 NEVADA
Putting aside the fact that DC isn’t actually a state, I count three red states on that list…Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Also, is North Carolina a “blue state”? It voted for Obama in 2008, but that was an aberration. Before that, it hadn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976 when Carter carried the South.
Also, if we’re saying blue states are states that voted for Obama in 2008, 13 of the 25 states with the lowest unemployment are blue states, 12 are red states. of the 25 with the highest, 15 of those states are blue states, 10 are red states. That certainly seems a more even distribution.
So, I think the data there is ambiguous and can be interpreted different ways depending on what you want to prove.
I often see this sort of argument coming from the right, and with my perspective as an ex-pat living in a “socialist” country I just have to shake my head. If your argument is, “The generous social welfare programs in the US have resulted in a population of spoiled, coddled babies who sit around expecting hand-outs,” you have to explain to me why it is that we don’t see more of this sort of behavior, and these kinds of attitudes, in societies with SIGNIFICANTLY MORE GENEROUS WELFARE SYSTEMS. Compared to Sweden, the US social welfare system is horrifyingly inadequate. As I mentioned a few pages back there are free riders in the Swedish system as well, but they are a tiny fraction of total assistance recipients. You never hear Swedish pundits, or politicians, arguing that the system has created a class of spoiled brats, nor do you encounter too many spoiled brats in your daily life, despite the fact that we have much much much better welfare here than in the States.
I’m not saying your general impression of how things are in the US these days is wrong – I’ve not lived there for over twenty years now – but I do seriously question the causal relationship the right often posits between social welfare, on the one hand, and these sorts of attitudes, on the other. Because the empirical evidence doesn’t support it. In fact, using your logic, the evidence argues the exact opposite – the worse the welfare system, the more people feel entitled to a hand out.
This is the crux of the difference between us I think. You work hard and contribute to the society you live in. I’m not saying you are necessarily entitled to NFL tickets, or a new computer, or whatever – but you ARE entitled to more than than a fucking movie and a burger once a month. YOU ARE. You are worth better. You work hard and have a right to demand a decent standard of living in return: affordable health care, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, is that so unreasonable? Maybe a little paid vacation. Affordable education for your kids, so they don’t have spend half their lives paying off college loans. When did that suddenly become a socialist idea? (It sure wasn’t when I was growing up in the States – I got my education in part thanks to a Pell Grant – we were poor. I’d have never been able to go to school without grants, loans and scholarships. Now I hear the Republicans are trying eliminate the Pell Grant system.) You’re entitled to some form of job security, so your boss can’t fire you just because he doesn’t like your looks. And should you lose your employment through no fault of your own, in a system where others have made large profits off your labor, you’re entitled to some sort of financial help while you get on your feet and find another job. Those are very reasonable demands to make on a system that profits off your hard work and sacrifice.
Because that is the way the system works you know. Those CEOs who buy NFL tickets and computers and iPhones, they do so by taking the fruits of your labor and selling them on a market for much more than they pay you, and then stuffing that difference into their own pockets. Are they somehow more entitled to this things than you are? Sorry, I can’t see it.
Capitalism always goes in cycles of boom and bust, and sometimes economic hardships are just systemtic. BUT – THIS PARTICULAR BUST IS SOMEONES’ FAULT. It didn’t just happen, in a vacuum. Goldman Sachs sold investments it knew were bad, and then turned around and bet against them, just to take one example of many. And there are regulations we can put into place to minimize this sort of behavior in the future. We can break up the “to big to fail” banks for example. That is what these protests are about. How many times does this have to be repeated before the right actually hears it, I wonder? I mean, Christ on a pogo stick (again), it ain’t exactly rocket science.
You don’t have to be a left wing radical to find common ground with these protests. Hell, even Scylla agrees with the demand that we need some reasonable limits on CEO salaries, a central tenant of the protests.
I agree with you that this is your responsibility, and commend you for taking it. I have the exact same responsibility over here, and take it just as seriously even though I’m a pinko commie bastard.
But I would add that we also have a common interest to make sure that we all have the opportunity to keep our kids warm. I would work for a system that guarantees that possibility for everyone.
A very odd offering from Scylla. Usually, we get conjecture without citation, now, he has played changeup, he is pitching citation without conjecture, leaving us to our own creative devices.
Well, what have we got? We are clearly offered to be stunned by this statistical thunderbolt, you can almost hear him chortling with glee over the “tap…tap…tap” of the keyboard. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it, lefties!”
Well, OK. We can take it as a given that this data point pie conclusively proves that he has been right all along, so there! But how? Does this prove the utter superiority of rightish views? Well, yes, most assuredly, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the effort. But how? Being of lesser minds, we are abandoned, where he leads, we cannot follow, there are no footprints when one leaps as nimbly as does Scylla! We know what it proves, we just don’t know how it does so. Is there an unbreakable chain of logic, or just a winsome pile of Scylla-putty.
Why aren’t the Pubbies trumpeting this devastating insight to the skies? This data has been witheld from them? Or they don’t see the blazing obvious, that these data clearly demand that all thinking persons draw the obvious conclusion. Which is what, exactly? Yes, we see the rabbit, we see the hat, but aren’t we supposed to see the rabbit come out of the hat? Or at least wear the hat?
I am always prepared for such an eventuality. I keep a set of Republican Party registration forms close to hand, in a box with a glass front, a tiny hammer dangling, and a sign saying “If Scylla proven right, break glass, take drugs, gnash teeth and fill out forms.” I mean, no other major Republican has connected these facts into an undeniable agenda. I suppose it could mean that no other Republican is smart enough to connect the dots, and Scylla is the only one who clearly sees the implications.
A mighty sobering thought, to be sure. So, what is it, Scylla? What stunning conclusion do you draw from this statistical salad? That has, apparently, eluded even George Will and Newt Gangrene, the intellectual powerhouses of the GOP?
I’m sorry. I can’t read your post. Each time I try I just get bored waiting for you to actually say something. By the time I’m finished I feel certain that you’ve asked a question or made a statement or something, but I can’t really say what it was.