Being supportive of rioters

[Mark Leavy]

So here's a story just for fun.

I was in Montenegro - and I swear to god that Darwin blessed them all. The native gals are all 1.7m supermodels and the men are 2.0m strapping hunks. I don't know where they hide the rest of the population, but I guess they aren't allowed near the waterfront without a sign that says "I'm sorry, I'm not Montenegrin". I had that sign all over me.

The language is Serbo-Croation but they use the Cyrillic alphabet - otherwise the same as Croatia. So, I could sort of communicate.

On the town quay in Kotor, a couple of Russians would setup a card table each day and "play cards" for a few hours in full sun while wearing nothing but their banana hammocks. At the entry to the quay six or eight burly Russians would "sunbathe" crisscross across the concrete blocking access to anyone stupid enough to try and approach the conversation.

Even after two months, they never invited me to the conversation. Hell, I'm a nice enough guy. What could it be?

[Mountaineer]

Facebook post from Dr. Robert Gagnon regarding the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd:


Everyone has a constitutional right to gather to protest (just as everyone has a constitutional right to gather for worship), even in a pandemic. But these protests have become counterproductive occasions for violence and virtue signaling that have only produced greater suffering for the poor and disadvantaged.

Is the offending police officer and his stand-around cohorts (which include an Asian and a Black) not being punished? They have all been fired and Chauvin is being prosecuted for murder. What else is the system supposed to do? Is anybody for what happened to George Floyd or for racism generally? What concrete policies are being protested?

The civil rights protests in the 1960s were reacting to actual deficiencies that existed in the law and to governing authorities that were really promoting racism. Today's protests are nothing like that.

What racist laws are now in place? Which governing authorities are promoting racist policies? The tragic death of George Floyd is abhorred by everyone who has a voice in the public sector. It happened in a city whose police chief is black and in a state that have been Dem-controlled for decades. Apart from banning a police knee to a struggling arrested party's neck for more than 2 minutes, what concrete policy do protesters hope to effect?

What new federal policy against racism did Barack Obama fail to put in place or enforce during his 8 years in office? What new policy did the Dem-controlled city of Minneapolis or the Dem-controlled state of Mississippi fail to institute or implement in the decades that Dems have been in power?

Are the protesters protesting a disproportionate pandemic of unjust killings of blacks by white police officers? Studies (including a study by a black professor at Harvard) show that blacks are killed at no higher rate by white officers than blacks are killed by black officers or than whites are killed by white officers. In fact, police are 47% *less* likely to shoot black suspects who hadn’t already attacked them compared with whites. Every death of this sort is tragic but what looks like a disproportionate rate of killing apparently only seems so because of the disproportionate media attention given to the killing of blacks by white officers. Whites per case are also more likely to be arrested than blacks for robbery and assault.

Do racist attitudes and thoughts still exist? Yes, but what official is advocating such or what policy is promoting such? When these attitudes and thoughts issue in actions that can be dealt with by the system, they are being dealt with.

So far as crime is concerned, the major issue is not racism since blacks are far more likely to be victimized by fellow blacks than they are by white people in general, much less by white police officers in particular. Blacks are just 13% of the population but responsible for a majority of all murders in the U.S., including over 90% of all murders where a black person is the victim. Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do.

As regards interracial crimes, “In 2012, blacks committed 560,600 acts of violence against whites (excluding homicide), and whites committed 99,403 acts of violence (excluding homicide) against blacks,” writes the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, citing federal Bureau of Justice Statistics data. “Blacks, in other words, committed 85 percent of the non-homicide interracial crimes of violence between blacks and whites." Blacks are also 12 times more likely to rob white victims than whites are to rob black victims.

Here in Pittsburgh (a Dem-controlled city for decades), although starting peaceful, two days of protests have left scores of injured police and protesters and over a hundred businesses looted or destroyed. For what? Justice for George Floyd, they chanted. What do they think is happening? Has the city of Minneapolis or the state of Minnesota been deficient in firing and prosecuting Chauvin for murder? What do you want them to do? Flay him alive before a trial? Hang him on a pole and have the public hurl rocks at him? It is we, the taxpaying citizens of Pittsburgh, who have to pay for all this damage, these injuries, and the round-the-clock police presence. It is our community that suffers.

These protests may be making a lot of people feel good about themselves ("Look at me: I protested for civil rights and laws that are already in place!") but they are doing plenty of concrete harm. They have become protests for the sake of appearance that produce harm in reality. Speaking as someone who lives in the city, consider why there is so much flight from urban areas.

Bottom line: The protesters are protesting what no person publicly promotes and what no major policy furthers. Their protests have become vehicles for criminal elements to endanger lives and inflict massive destruction on property that in the end are hurting far more people than these protests are helping (if indeed they are even helping anyone), blacks as well as whites, poor as well as rich.

well said...

[dualstow]

...
Vinny

... I don't think you are ready for Italy at all. You would be massacred. My Italian is good enough that I can switch between Florentine, Sicilian and Venetian dialects without a hiccup. But I have American written all over me. No way would I ever disagree with being told to go to the other room.

Just a side note- that is really cool! My friend taught me to say “I drank three bottles of wine” in Veneto dialect, but even then there were hiccups.

[Cortopassi]

You're right about the tribe aspect. From birth to about 12 years old, I had exactly one friend who wasn't either family or Italian. I lived in Chicago , but pretty much never saw a black person except for yearly visits downtown for an eye doctor appt.

I speak Italian well, and on our honeymoon in Italy, we were in a candy shop. The lady in front of me got some candy, and they weighed it by the gram. I got to the counter, and they were going to charge me by the piece, which was going to be a lot more. I let her have it. I could speak Italian, I was Italian, but I really wasn't because I obviously stuck out.

My parents were initially really really cold to my wife, who is Chinese. It's gotten a lot better, but never as good as for my sister-in-law who is Italian.

I've had daydreams of the whole world turning some same shade of dark brown and all speaking the same language. I wonder what would happen.

[dualstow]

I've had daydreams of the whole world turning some same shade of dark brown and all speaking the same language. I wonder what would happen.

We’d still find enough differences to massacre each other, like the Hutus vs the Tutsis or the Biblical story that is the origin of the word shibboleth.

[vnatale]

You're right about the tribe aspect. From birth to about 12 years old, I had exactly one friend who wasn't either family or Italian. I lived in Chicago , but pretty much never saw a black person except for yearly visits downtown for an eye doctor appt.

Wow! You grew up in a much bigger Italian enclave than me! I thought Rhode Island and where I lived was "Little Italy" but I'd not be able to make the same statement that you did. My Catholic church which was for the Italians had 10,000 people in it. We shared our parking lot with the Irish Catholic church which has about 3,000 in it. Therefore we had quite a few Irish mixed in with our Italian population. But in all of this, none of we Italians ever reveled in our Italian-ness. We were brought up to be Americans.

Vinny

[vnatale]

I've had daydreams of the whole world turning some same shade of dark brown and all speaking the same language. I wonder what would happen.

It's a daydream. Same as when John Lennon wrote the song "Imagine" he was in a three year period of not at all seeing his son Julian (by Lennon's choice).

Vinny

[WiseOne]

We all had an opportunity to go to really good schools, and live in great neighborhoods.

I don't think most of us have any concept of living in neighborhoods like some of the ones where we are seeing the riots. Of going to shitty schools. Of being in fear of gangs.

Here's the thing about the "blame the bad neighborhoods they have to live in" theory: what primarily determines a "good" or "bad" neighborhood is the behavior of the neighbors. Same for the local public school: it's "good" or "bad" primarily based on the behavior of the students and parents.

So yes, you could pick an individual person and say "here's the problem with this guy: he had to grow up in that neighborhood. If he'd lived in a better neighborhood he'd have been just fine". That may well be true.

But at the group level, that doesn't make sense. Saying it boils down to "Black people are having these problems because they have to live near other black people, and you know what trouble THEY are." ...Okay, but why is THAT, then?

YES.

Same logic as "Nobody goes there. It's too crowded." I tend to think that criminal behavior is a choice, not an inbred trait or a law of nature. It is in the power of the black community to fix this problem. They're not interested.

There is no way that a confrontation between a police officer and a criminal is going to be anything but adversarial in nature, with an element of danger to both parties. In a way, it's amazing that there are so few incidents. Approaching it by assuming that police officers must always act like self-sacrificing angels is bound to fail. Reducing the number of such confrontations is the only solution. And there are just two ways to do that: 1) commit fewer crimes, and 2) don't try to enforce laws in black neighborhoods. The black community seems to be asking for the second solution, but they need to think hard about what that would mean.

To see the effects of solution #2 in action, go no further than certain neighborhoods in Philadelphia e.g. South Philly. The police don't go there except rarely and in pairs or groups - never alone. You can literally stand in an upscale area of Center City, look south, and see the destruction. With plenty of open parking spaces that no one from Center City will take, just half a block south of the border.

[vnatale]

Heather Mac Donald was on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?472662-4/ ... ds-killing

June 3, 2020 | Part Of Washington Journal 06/03/2020
Heather Mac Donald on Protests Following George Floyd's Killing

Heather Mac Donald talked about policing in the U.S. and the protests following the death of George Floyd.


And, here is her Wall Street Journal article of yesterday:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-o ... 1591119883

The Myth of Systemic Police Racism
Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.

By Heather Mac Donald
June 2, 2020 1:44 pm ET



A demonstrator kneels before a police line in Washington, May 31.
Photo: samuel corum/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist. On Friday, Barack Obama tweeted that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ ” Mr. Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal,” in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts.”

Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.” That echoed a claim Mr. Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Rioters Torch the Rule of Law
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz denounced the “stain . . . of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement during a Friday press conference. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.

This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.


In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued—a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day. This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.

The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” they concluded.

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilization-destroying violence. If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighborhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.

The Minneapolis officers who arrested George Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics. But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.

Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “The War on Cops,” (Encounter Books, 2016).

[dualstow]

I posted that article. Don’t know if anyone saw it. I should have posted the full text as you did, since it’s paywalled.

[stuper1]

I've had daydreams of the whole world turning some same shade of dark brown and all speaking the same language. I wonder what would happen.

This is the fantasy of the globalists. This is what they want. To me, it sounds awful and boring. If I want to go visit Japan or Nigeria, I don't want it to look like Omaha. Differences are wonderful, as long as we treat each other with respect. If people want respect, they need to start by respecting themselves. If they act like animals, they will likely get treated as animals.

[vnatale]

I posted that article. Don’t know if anyone saw it. I should have posted the full text as you did, since it’s paywalled.

If you read it -- which I presume you did - you'd probably also want to watch the video of her on Washington Journal today.

VInny

[Cortopassi]

I've had daydreams of the whole world turning some same shade of dark brown and all speaking the same language. I wonder what would happen.

This is the fantasy of the globalists. This is what they want. To me, it sounds awful and boring. If I want to go visit Japan or Nigeria, I don't want it to look like Omaha. Differences are wonderful, as long as we treat each other with respect. If people want respect, they need to start by respecting themselves. If they act like animals, they will likely get treated as animals.

I always wondered what the rest of earth that wasn't in Starfleet did. Everything was automated, unlimited energy, unlimited food. I wonder what life was like on that earth.

I love differences.

[Libertarian666]

We all had an opportunity to go to really good schools, and live in great neighborhoods.

I don't think most of us have any concept of living in neighborhoods like some of the ones where we are seeing the riots. Of going to shitty schools. Of being in fear of gangs.

Here's the thing about the "blame the bad neighborhoods they have to live in" theory: what primarily determines a "good" or "bad" neighborhood is the behavior of the neighbors. Same for the local public school: it's "good" or "bad" primarily based on the behavior of the students and parents.

So yes, you could pick an individual person and say "here's the problem with this guy: he had to grow up in that neighborhood. If he'd lived in a better neighborhood he'd have been just fine". That may well be true.

But at the group level, that doesn't make sense. Saying it boils down to "Black people are having these problems because they have to live near other black people, and you know what trouble THEY are." ...Okay, but why is THAT, then?

YES.

Same logic as "Nobody goes there. It's too crowded." I tend to think that criminal behavior is a choice, not an inbred trait or a law of nature. It is in the power of the black community to fix this problem. They're not interested.

There is no way that a confrontation between a police officer and a criminal is going to be anything but adversarial in nature, with an element of danger to both parties. In a way, it's amazing that there are so few incidents. Approaching it by assuming that police officers must always act like self-sacrificing angels is bound to fail. Reducing the number of such confrontations is the only solution. And there are just two ways to do that: 1) commit fewer crimes, and 2) don't try to enforce laws in black neighborhoods. The black community seems to be asking for the second solution, but they need to think hard about what that would mean.

To see the effects of solution #2 in action, go no further than certain neighborhoods in Philadelphia e.g. South Philly. The police don't go there except rarely and in pairs or groups - never alone. You can literally stand in an upscale area of Center City, look south, and see the destruction. With plenty of open parking spaces that no one from Center City will take, just half a block south of the border.

Philly is my home town. I was born there and spent a fair amount of my life either there or in the suburbs.
When someone asked me to describe it, I said: "South Philly is a slum, North Philly is a slum, and West Philly is a slum." Then when they asked "What about East Philly?", I would say "There isn't any East Philly."

[Kriegsspiel]

"We're on your side!" as rocks come smashing through the windows. Doesn't seem to work.

[dualstow]

Thomas Chatterton Williams & John McWhorter making sense, as usual.
twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1268219204542611456?s=20

EDIT: more to the point (same as Xan’s link below) https://www.thedailybeast.com/antiracis ... w-religion

[Xan]

Thomas Chatterton Williams & John McWhorter making sense, as usual.
https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/sta ... 11456?s=20

Had to dig a bit to find anything by McWhorter. Well worth a read:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/antiracis ... w-religion

[dualstow]

Thomas Chatterton Williams & John McWhorter making sense, as usual.
https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/sta ... 11456?s=20

Had to dig a bit to find anything by McWhorter. Well worth a read:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/antiracis ... w-religion

Yeah, I noticed the original encapsulated tweet got wiped out. I just came here to put a direct link to McWhorter. Thanks for providing it!

[stuper1]

Anti-racism as a religion sounds about right. It's a huge strawman argument. They say racism is the problem, but the problem is the breakdown of families, especially among poor minorities. Take Minneapolis for example, where everything started this time. As some have pointed out, Minnesota has been a liberal state since forever. When was the last time they voted Republican? Probably none of us were alive the last time. So, with all that liberality, we are supposed to believe that racism is still a major problem in Minnesota? Is it just possible that the problem is not racism, but rather failed liberal social policies?

Big government is the problem, not the solution.

If you want to help poor people, don't vote for big government.

[Libertarian666]

Anti-racism as a religion sounds about right. It's a huge strawman argument. They say racism is the problem, but the problem is the breakdown of families, especially among poor minorities. Take Minneapolis for example, where everything started this time. As some have pointed out, Minnesota has been a liberal state since forever. When was the last time they voted Republican? Probably none of us were alive the last time. So, with all that liberality, we are supposed to believe that racism is still a major problem in Minnesota? Is it just possible that the problem is not racism, but rather failed liberal social policies?

Big government is the problem, not the solution.

If you want to help poor people, don't vote for big government.

No matter how big the government is, the "progressives" claim it's not big enough.
You would think people would be able to figure this out but apparently the lamestream brainwashing is too effective.

[dualstow]

"We're on your side!" as rocks come smashing through the windows. Doesn't seem to work.

Loved the comment "Two red pills were just thrown thru the window" LOLOLOL

under the original posting of the video,

Inside this guy’s pleas of “we’re on your side” is the value that it is ok to do this to your political rivals.

Reminds me of Michael Moore on 9/11/01 saying the targets shouldn’t have been in states that voted for Gore.

[Smith1776]

a2W53N1_700b.jpg (43.1 KiB) Viewed 2503 times

[dualstow]

[vnatale]

White natuonalists posing as Antifa.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/t ... r-n1221456

I'm glad Twitter is preventing white nationalists from horning in on Antifa's racket! What has this world come to, that a wonderful organization like Antifa can't organize their own riots without interference?

Where is your proof Antifa is an organization?

Proff that they have been organizing any of the violence?

What has this got to do with the point that FA organizations are trying to invite violence?

Being anti fascists in and of itself doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

If you want to join Antifa, their Facebook page is a good place to start: https://www.facebook.com/antifa.usa/
Welcome to my ignore list.

Clicking on that link now gives you the below.

Vinny

Capture.JPG (24.7 KiB) Viewed 2316 times

[Hal]

a2W53N1_700b.jpg

Must have been influenced by those radical Japanese

https://japantoday.com/category/nationa ... ne’s-money