When you make ridiculous claims like "he was just being a good guy cop trying to help", I see nothing wrong or argumentative in pointing out where you made your mistake in logic thinking that might be the case.

"Huge dissertations of bullshit arguing into thin air."
Well! If that's not the pot calling the kettle black! LOL!!!!

You must have replied without reading the entire post. I thought my last paragraph illustrated clearly why THIS cop was not 'being a good guy helping' as you wish to think. That does not mean it doesn't happen, or even that it's not the norm, it means it wasn't happening this time. I'm sorry if that's a difficult concept for me to properly illustrate.

It is a cop's job to find crime. They often find it where none exists. In order to protect yourself AND honor your ancestor's sacrifices, intelligent and patriotic people exorcize their rights and remain silent. Every time. My grandfather, the successful lawyer, taught me that. It's not paranoid any more than wearing your seat belt is paranoid.


Bad day?

Why would there be "a hell of a lot more traffic?" It's in a neighborhood. At dusk. The one or two cars you see are cruising around slowly checking out the cool show from the ground. How is that hard to believe?

You guys are all paranoid fuckers. Lay off the herbs.

Guards have the power to make it what they wish. Inmates do not. The guards choose to make it gross, dehumanizing, and worse. We should NOT feel sad or understanding for them, as they did it to themselves intentionally. Feel sad for the one's with 0 power to control the situation, less and less control over their own actions and surroundings, and the one's that are the victims of the system they didn't set up, not the one's perpetrating and perpetuating the one sided system set up to punish and control rather than correct and re-habilitate. Not the one's that lobby to create MORE prisoners for smaller and smaller crimes, including the crime of poverty.
BTW....boring is NOT more humane in most cases. Lack of stimulation leads to psychosis, behavior problems, and does absolutely nothing to re-habilitate. "Idle hands are the devil's tools..." and such. Just look at any study of what happens to those in solitary, a normal 'boring' type of imprisonment today. You don't get well adjusted citizens from that, you get angry, violent, paranoid, psychotic people out of that....and they go right back in. It's perfect for the prisons, but not for anyone else. I think private prisons should have to pay back part of their 'fees' if a prisoner re-offends. (EDIT: or better yet, they should have to re-imprison them for free, since they failed the first time and 'created' the re-offender by not re-habilitating them. Guaranteed, it would change overnight if that was the case.) It means they failed completely in re-habilitation, a large part of what they're paid for, and so they should not be paid in full.
'Would rather live out west'?....as opposed to living in prison? Um...yeah, I think most people would choose that.

I'm guessing the BBC's coverage is pretty comparable to PBS's coverage you might see on Newhour.

What I don't get is why the private for-profit networks in Britain don't get in on the sensational fear mongering. It's got to be profitable; assuming they have their share of paranoid older conservatives.

I hate that fucking TV show so much.

Ozzy was always a messed up shambles, but it didn't matter, because he was Ozzy Fucking Osbourne, godfather of metal and writer of War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man and about a million other amazing songs. He was our* messed up shambles.

Now? He's been appropriated into wider culture, most of whom know nothing about the immense cultural contribution he's made to music.

Don't get me wrong; I'm glad he got clean and I hope he's happy with where he is, but it genuinely saddens me that he'll be remembered as that shambolic old guy who yells "Sharon!" while trying to work an over complicated TV remote.

* our = metal fans.

How is it not surprising that the problem sees no problem?

You say : "I don't see people getting beat up, or shot, or assaulted, or arrested for no reason"
So, those that were "beat up, or shot, or assaulted, or arrested", were for a good reason, right?

Ever consider that those reasons are often made up?
Ever consider that the stories you heard around the water cooler were simply B.S., and it was in fact the police simply preying on innocent people?



Just what exactly does LE do for me, or anyone?

Do police have super powers and spidey senses?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting raped, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting run over, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting beaten, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting robbed, and prevent it?
The answer is : no.

Police can't actually /help/ anyone.
They can only show up after the fact, and ask you what happened, and if you know who did it.
If you don't know who it was, tough shit. Sucks to be you.
Unlike on TV, there is no in-depth investigation. The most they do is tell you to call them if you remember something else. (This is speaking from experience)

What if you're not around to even tell them anything? Almost every murder committed by an unrelated stranger without witnesses or video goes unsolved.
Why? Because all police know how to do is ask friends/family where they were, and if everyone has an excuse, police got nothing.

At least when a normal person [that you can identify] harms you, you /can/ call the police, and maybe, just maybe, if they feel like it, they will round them up after the fact.

(They often don't. We've had people dumping trash on our land : police didn't respond. We've had people hunting [strangers shooting guns] on our property : police didn't respond. Brought evidence of a fraud to the police station, with account numbers, names, addresses : we won't investigate. The only time they ever came was to talk with my mother after she reported her credit card number was being used by a stranger - LOL, of all the things, they bother coming for /that/?)

But if the police harm you, you've got nowhere to turn to - but them. And they care more about each other, than some stranger.

Heck, I've been tailgated by a cop, on a multi-lane road, so close his headlights weren't even visible over my trunk. He could have gone around me any time. After miles, when I finally sped up - BAM. Ticket.

I've pulled up to a roadblock by my house, and asked if I could go by. The guy was so incensed that he detained me for hours, and told me I was threatening his life, reckless driving, and not wearing a seatbelt.

I've been threatened by a cop - because I interrupted her chat with her girlfriend to ask for directions around a road they were closing off.

I've been pulled over with gun drawn, for trivial speeding (well below reckless).

Seriously people, every time you get pulled over, you are at risk of getting shot, because someone is trained to be suspicious and paranoid, and they saw something shiny.

Just look at how they behave. Cop shoots his daughter in his own garage, because he thought she was a burglar.
What, too much to ask just to look at the person to see if they're even a burglar? Shoot first ask questions later.

Every year there are multiple cases of police raiding a house and shooting people - only to find out it was the wrong house. What, too much trouble to be a decent human being and just knock first, and ask for whoever they need to come out?

Oh, but that might put them at a greater risk. And we all know that police take MINIMAL risks themselves, and instead risk the lives of the citizens. (Why not approach with gun drawn? At least you're ready to shoot the suspect. And if you accidentally shoot the suspect, oh well, just say they 'attacked'. No biggie. Why take the risk.)
The biggest risk they take, is the one they dream up for when they want to take credit for being the heroes they never were.

Look at the friggin VT shooting. Swarms of cops surrounding a building. Man inside, could be killing more people by the moment... and the cops just camp out and wait for him to kill himself.
Worst part, is if it were my family inside, and I tried to go in and stop the shooter, the police would just shoot me for trying to enter.

(And no, police don't deserve heroic praise. They deserve the _pay_check_ they signed up for. If that's not enough, they should take life more seriously and really think about what it is they're getting into, before they do it. Take responsibility, like an adult should.)

The police are a liability. They're armed. They're selfish. They're paranoid and suspicious. They're jumpy.
IMO, the best thing to do is keep away from them, don't look at them, don't talk to them. Stay away, and stay safe.

Oh yeah, and the police are also immune form the constitution's equal protection clause. "Because interpretation".

Look at the numbers. You are less likely to be arrested or go to jail in NORTH KOREA, than here in the U.S. of A. By a factor of 4 last I checked.
What the heck is going on here?

1 in 18 men is either in jail, on parole, or somewhere in the process of going to jail.
Most of the countries in Europe have smaller populations, than the people that we have 'in the system'. And most of the people we have 'in the system', never even harmed another person. They're just arrested for 'behavior crimes' - simply doing things that are not allowed. This is madness. The system is mad, the police are mad.

You don't end up with videos of a gang of police acting like gangsters, if it's a matter of 'a few bad apples'. They all have to be in the same frame of mind.
If they weren't all of the same frame of mind, one would do something bad, and the others would say "whoa there man, you're out of line".
But instead, they all do it. Because there are no 'bad apples'.
There is 'bad training', and 'bad culture', and it permeates the profession.

And when I say bad, I don't mean that "they are trained to be thugs".
I mean that the police don't see suspects as 'citizens (members of the state) that the police are on the side of'.
Whoever crosses their path is dehumanized. Some kind of "other", that the police need to protect society from. Not realizing that those people /are/ society, and /they/ need protection.
The kind of behavior that I see in these kinds of videos, it's simply treason. Betrayal of the state.

If the laws of this country were written to provide restitution to victims - and there were no laws to simply tell people how to live, and if the police spent their time providing restitution to victims, then I would have nothing but the greatest appreciation for the police.
As it stands, there's very little nobility around this profession. Majority of the job is simply picking on people - sometimes because they did harm, but usually because they mind their own business in an unapproved of way, or for kicks.

-scheherazade

Up until I saw my fellow countrymen (including many I respected) fawning like chimps at a tea party during that whole "jubilee" thing I might have agreed. There seems to be a huge cognitive dissonance for most people when it comes to the royals.

On the one hand most don't really take it very seriously, on the other many (maybe even most) appear to have a sub-conscious desire/need to submit to their natural betters. Our whole national identity is built on the myths of Kings and failed rebellions and I fear for many the Monarchy represents a kind of bizarre political security blanket. We claim to not really care but deep down I think many of us secretly fear loosing our mythical matriarch.

One might liken it to celebrity worship backed by 100's & 1000's of years of religious mythology. The Royal's aren't really human to us, they are more like some closely related parent species born to a life we could only dream of. I realise that when asked directly most people would consciously acknowledge that was silly, but most would also respond the same to say Christian sexual repression. They know sex and nakedness when considered rationally are nothing to be ashamed of, but they still continue to treat their own urges as somehow sinful when they do not fall within rigidly defined social parameters.

We still haven't gotten over such Judeo-Christian self policing because the social structures built up around it are still with us (even if we fool ourselves into thinking we are beyond the reach of such sub-conscious influences). I don't think we will ever get over our master-slave culture while class and unearned privilege are still built into the fabric of our society. Having a Royal family, no matter how symbolic, is the very living embodiment of this kind of backwards ideology.

It's like trying to quit heroin while locked in a room with a big bag of the stuff.

It's true to say most don't take the whole thing very seriously but that to me is almost as concerning. Most people when asked don't believe advertising has a significant effect on their psyche but Coke-a-cola still feels like spending about 3 billion a year on it is worthwhile. One of them is clearly mistaken!

Our royal family here, is to me working in the same way as coke's advertising. It's a focal point for a lot of sub-conscious concepts we are bombarded with our whole lives. Naturally there are many sides to this and it wouldn't work without heavy media manipulation, state indoctrination etc. but it's an intrinsic part of the coercive myth none the less. Monarch's, Emperors and wealthy Dynasties are all poisons to me. No matter the pragmatic details, the sub-conscious effect seems significant and cumulative.

"Dead" symbolisms IMHO can often be the most dangerous. At least one is consciously aware of the devils we see. No one is watching the one's we have forgotten.....

The above is reason enough for me but I have bog all better to do this aft so I'll dive into the rabbithole a bit.....

(We do very quickly start getting into conspiracy theory territory hare so I'll try to keep it as uncontroversial as I can.)

A. The UK is truly ruled by financial elites not political ones IMHO. "The city" says jump, Whitehall says how high. The Royal family being among the wealthiest landowners and investors in the world (let alone UK) presumably can exert the same kind of influence. Naturally this occurs behind closed doors, but when the ownership class puts it's foot down the government ignores them to their extreme detriment. (It's hard to argue with people who own your economy de-facto and can make or break your career)

B. The queen herself sits on the council on foreign relations & Bilderberg group and she was actually the chairwoman of the "committee of 300" for several years. (and that's not even starting on club of Rome, shares in Goldman Sachs etc.)

C. SIS the uk's intelligence services (MI5/6 etc.), which have been proven to on occasion operate without civilian oversight in the past, are sworn to the crown. This is always going to be a most contentious point as it's incredibly difficult to prove wrongdoings, but I have very strong suspicions based on various incidents (David Kelly, James Andanson, Jill Dando etc.), that if they wanted/needed you dead/threatened that would not be especially difficult to arrange.

D. Jimmy Saville. This one really is tin foil hat territory, but it's no secret he was close to the Royal family. I am of the opinion this is because he was a top level procurer of "things", for which I feel there is a great deal of evidence, but I can't expect people to just go along with that idea. However given the latest "paedogeddon" scandal involving a extremely high level abuse ring (cabinet members, mi5/6, bankers etc.) it certainly would come as little surprise to find royal family members involved.

Points A&B I would stand behind firmly. C&D are drifting into conjecture but still potentially relevant I feel.

But even if we ignore all of them, our culture is built from the ground up upon the idea of privilege of birth. That there are some people born better or more deserving than the rest of us. When I refer to symbolism this is what I mean. Obviously the buck does not stop with the monarchy, England is hopelessly stratified by class all the way through, but the royal family exemplify this to absurd extremes.

At best I feel this hopelessly distorts and corrupts our collective sense of identity on a sub-conscious level. At worst....Well you must have some idea now how paranoid I'm capable of being about the way the world is run. (Not that I necessarily believe it all wholeheartedly, but I'm open to the possibility and inclined to suggest it more likely than the mainstream narrative)


On a pragmatic note: Tourism would be fine without them I think, we still have the history and the castles and the soldiers with silly hats etc. And I think the palaces would make great hotels and museums. They make great zoo exhibits I agree, just maybe not let them continue to own half the zoo and bribe the zoo keepers?


Anyway much love as always. You responded with considered points which is always worthy of respect, regardless of whether I agree with it all.

As for the audio of the shots fired, I fear it actually supports the cop's story, as heinous as it still is.

It appears there were a series of quick shots, a pause, then four more shots at a measured rate.

Michael was shot six times from the front.

The cops have stated that the police officer fired several shots at Michael and his friend as they ran away. None struck either of them -- no bullets entered from the back. (And luckily no bystanders were shot. Bullets travel far!!!)

Which means that Michael stopped, turned and was shot. There was a pause, at which time Michael could have "charged", hence the more measured firing.

Was the cop in danger? Were there other things he could have done? Could he have shot at his leg and dropped him? No. Yes. Yes.

But see my post above.

Fucking Stand Your Ground fucking paranoid irresponsible fear mongering bullshit that is used to exonerate racist and/or stupid actions.

Pisses me off. Can you tell?

@VoodooV

two dimensional thinking at its finest.

just because i point out that your commentary is tantamount to harassment does not automatically equal my condoning lantern or bobs oftentimes ridiculous commentary.

just because i am pointing out your hypocrisy does not mean i disagree with your actual comments.

if my fly was open or i had a huge booger hanging from my nose i hope you would pull me aside and point that out to me not stand from the bleachers,point and laugh.

your obsession with always being right has clouded your judgement in regards to what i am trying to point out to you.

is your ego so massive that the words of another should be so easily dismissed?each consecutive comment towards me is becoming more and more irrational and paranoid.

you mentioned calling me out on another thread.
yes you did.
which was a response to ME calling YOU out first.
and i smacked you down pretty handily.mainly due to the fact that you base your commentary towards me rife with presumption and conjecture.

which is exactly what you are doing here...again.

instead of hearing my words,you marginalize me in order to dismiss and ignore them.which is what all weak-minded people do in order to hold onto their own misconceptions.

bob does it.
lantern does it.
and so do you.

but never for a second deceive yourself into thinking i do not have the stones to say what needs to be said.your commentary reveals such an ignorance about who i am that i am literally laughing while i type this to you.

stop projecting voodoo.this persona you write about is not i,but rather you.

one last thing for your consideration (since we have totally hi-jacked this thread.sorry OP,please forgive).one of the main reasons i called you out was due to multiple private emails i received in regards to your current..and i quote one.."douchey attitude".

so the silence you hear is NOT due to agreement or consensus but rather many sifters fear confrontation.

i hold no such fear.

All below exercised, and the point is lost to so much sophistic treason. The cop get's a glimpse of ego-loss and goes about his merry cop way, and Billy here making a non-violent public statement of laws vs rights is fingered by a paranoid delusional (cop-caller), harassed-with-the-hope-of-a-fumble by a dutiful enforcer/instigator (cop), and the ONLY thing that kept him off the National Terrorist Database was his acumen and legal knowledge...in publicly showcasing his RIGHTS under the LAW, he barely escapes arrest.

The point being, that with increasing frequency, a routine police-encounter because of someone's 'suspicion' may quickly and more often than not, escalate into an innocent citizen being FUCKED into a state-system of the state-sanctioned organized criminal business of keeping people in a state of fear of arrest and incarceration, oh ye clueless dumb-asses who think the world works or should work in some universally, equitable fashion.

Bravo for this Mainer's low-swinging balls and fuck the vortex of the US police forces in retrograde-The entire justice machine is rotten with institutional corruption and overdue for a major douche, or the future of Americas' headed for boots, clubs, and riot shields.

If you really want to go down that rabbit hole, just google "Alex Jones" "black helicopters". Jones has been warning about the militarization of police and the national guard doing policing for at least a decade. He spews all kinds of other paranoid crap though, so it's hard to take him seriously.

I consider most libertarians to be right wingers, so your definition may be more granular than mine.

It was a fine theory, but I don't think the reverse psychology of saying it's gay to insult gays actually works on homophobes. And teasing them about potentially being gay seems to validate their childish attitude.

As the culture moves away from homophobia being accepted, I almost think those insecure macho men will be relieved. It's got be be exhausting to be that paranoid.

I really wouldn't be able to pick Piers Morgan out of a line up. I wrote that first comment over a year ago in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shooting and it was largely a response to the rhetoric pro-gun advocates were displaying all over my Facebook feed.

What I wrote is not at all an over-reaction to what I saw during that time.

Totally normal and sane friends of mine applauded a ten year old girl who shot and killed a home invader, enthusing that this is how America should be.

Totally normal and sane friends of mine waxed romantic about how concealing and carrying a weapon transforms a vanilla suburban dining experience into a potential battlefield. Whereas most people get lost in one of the many flat screen TVs at an Applebees, they spend their time sizing up potential adversaries and keep close tabs on every exit as they feel the reassuring bulge of their Glock at their side.

I totally agree that most of these guys will never end up needing to use their weapons in an adversarial situation, and I totally agree that these guys are responsible gun owners if responsible gun ownership is defined by a safe stewardship of the guns you acquire, but that is not the point that I'm trying to make.

The problem is that these sorts of people and the gun culture they have created has an enormous impact on the type of gun laws we pass. This wouldn't be a problem if they were coming from a place that wasn't obsessive and wasn't paranoid and wasn't delusional, but they are and this is unfortunate because it enables and accentuates much of the violence you lament in inner city culture.