@bareboards2
pure and utter sophistry.

and i resent the fact that you slyly attempt to imply that i will just sit back and remain silent to injustice.

when i feel quite confident my records on this site prove the exact opposite.i have vociferously and aggressively taken on those who would bully,berate and belittle anyone who would voice their opinion.

i believe i have come to YOUR defense on more than one occasion.

what i found disturbing in your comment and maybe i should clarify is this "As Homeland Security says, if you see something, say something."

this is LITERALLY what was posted on almost every open venue in east germany.

and for you to tacitly excuse this statement by dismissively stating that "the stasi operated in secret".as somehow being evidence of your own righteousness belies an ignorance of just how oppressive and fearful those people were living in those conditions.

so you are morally superior because you openly called to out,and i quote "benevolent dictator with a light touch",and did not do so in private?
THIS is your justification?
THIS is the evidence you present to me to...what? exactly?

if you truly feel that you have somehow struck a blow for justice and taken a stand for moral integrity,then i submit that you have no clue what free speech really entales,nor do you understand the implications when we,as a community,start calling in the big daddy in the sky every time someone writes an offensive potty/racist or bigoted word.

and just LOOK how you consumed @gorillaman 's comment.
you made no reference to his salient point,but rather focused on ONE thing:nigger prince.

now was this appropriate?
taken singularly i would have to agree with you.
no..it is not appropriate.

but when we take our understandings of @gorillaman,who has been a contributing sifter for over 10 years,and consider his humor..which is dark and incredibly dry (like sahara dry),then with this context added to the mix,we can conclude that he was probably making a joke...you are certainly within your rights to find that joke in poor taste,and with this community,you are also within your rights (and even encouraged) to take @gorillaman to task for his poor taste.

but instead you called for big daddy in the sky to bring the hammer of justice down,and punish this dirt potty mouthed racist.his crime?
racist verbiage.

no consideration of who was writing it.
no consideration of his history on this site,which you openly admitted is a community.
you just..focused..on..the..word.

and then you preen like a peacock thinking somehow you have struck a blow of righteousness?

please sister.....you accomplished nothing except to put dag in an awkward position,and came across as a self righteous moralizer.

when you simply could have done what other sifters here actually DID.
you downvote his comment.
and if you felt so inclined,and it appears you ARE so inclined,directly call @gorillaman out for his poor choice of verbiage.

look BB,
i actually find you to be a sweetheart,with a huuuuge propensity for empathy and compassion,but every time i engage with you my sphincter tightens up like it is preparing for a colonoscopy.there is this ever-present apprehension that my words will not be taken with humanity that they are written,or the open honesty i am trying to convey.

i am sure that if we were actually sitting in a cafe,sipping that delicious coffee you guys are so proud of, i would not experience this anxiety when engaging with you,but it seems EVERY time i disagree with something you post,or an opinion i may take issue with,i offend you in some manner.

you ..and i am sure this is not done on purpose..make it incredibly difficult to disagree with something you post,because i always feel i have hurt your feelings somehow.

real or imagined...i am just being honest here.i always approach any interaction with you as if i am walking on eggshells,underlined with landmines.

i am simply disagreeing with you here.
calling for a ban on gorillaman because of a joke made in poor taste,while simultaneously disregarding his contributions to this site,and taking his personality into consideration,is simply an over-zealous reaction and in no way deserves the attention of dag.

because if gorillaman deserves to be banned for an offensive phrase,than i should be banned as well.

free speech is just that...free.
of course we are free to ridicule that speech.
yaaay free speech!

@newtboy
hey man,thanks for giving him a shot.
this was the first video i ever watched of officer izzo,and i forgot where i even came across him.

maybe facebook?
i dunno,but i have many facebook friends who are cops and corrections officers.so probably.

i really dug how he addressed the disparity of poor neighborhoods,and the working poor to those of more privileged backgrounds.how he,as an officer,is forced to further compound their struggles by:tickets/racial profiling and as he pointed out..arrest arrest arrest.

from what i gather (because i couldn't find the original) he had posted a video that many of his fellow officers had found offensive and controversial.this video appears to be a clarification directed towards his fellow officers who could not understand why he was criticizing his own profession,and therefore criticizing THEM.

it appears he didn't go the "hey guys,i am sorry" but rather doubled down by clarifying what he felt law enforcement SHOULD be and not what it had become.

he blames the command staff,and in many of his videos he repeats that accusation.i remember even here on the sift we had a cop explain that many of the things we were all bitching about,and being offended by,were actually due to the command structure and not the patrol officers themselves.

which has a ring of truth to my ears being ex military.

i love how he directly speaks of how some patrol officers are forced to do unethical and immoral acts,while the command staff ignores those officers with the most facile of justifications:hey,it's legal.

that puts the officer at risk.just like a bad command staff in the military puts the enlisted man at risk.i mean,just look at the suicide stats for todays military..twenty two military men commit suicide daily,and how does the military brass respond?

those men had mental issues.

oh really? EVERY single one of them?
either there is a suicide epidemic or maybe..maaaaaybe...those who are in command,and whose responsibility it is for the well being of their men,are a gaggle of incompetent fuckwads.who do not have the courage nor integrity to own up to their own epic failures as commanders.

listening to officer Izzo,i suspect there are many parallels between military service and law enforcement.

i respect how he states he is doing this for the everyday patrolmen,even the ones who disagree and are criticizing him.

i think it is a good thing to hear a perspective from a man who does the job.to hear that even the cops are going "what the fuck".

anyways,thanks for watching man,i hope others give officer Izzo a chance as well.

Like Esoog, I've only got the one, which is a bit of hard work but easily manageable. Even then, though, I don't think anyone knows exactly how hard it's going to be until you have one... or two, or three, or four. OK, maybe by your fifth you should realise how much harder the next will be.

I think that no matter how many you have, so long as they're all still ok, it's great to go and sneak away for a treat. It's not like she went to the pub for a couple of hours; she was right there with them and would have heard a bump or a scream. I don't see any justification for complaint about her.

Teaching yourself independence from your kids is the first step to teaching them independence from you.

It's like people who complain about kids left in an air conditioned car while the parent drops in to the shop for 5 minutes. The chance of injury is minuscule, especially if the kid's asleep. Everyone has the right to parent their own way so long as it doesn't damage the kids permanently (within reason).

Of course, I have a low bar: I say that my parenting is successful if the three of us are still alive and talking to one another.

@bobknight33
why is @newtboy a dumb fuck?

for pointing out that historically suicide bombers have not been exclusively muslim.newt is not disagreeing that radical islamic suicide bombers exist,he is simply pointing out that the practice of bombing in the name of religion is not an exclusively muslim practice when viewed through the lens of history.

the problem is NOT exclusively the religion of islam,the problem is fundamentalist thinking.so while at this point in history it is islam that is the theology that is twisted for a sinister and destructive purpose,the same justifications can be found in ALL religions,predominantly from the abrahmic:judaism,muslim and christianity.

this is not a simple issue,there are many factors to be considered on why people will strap a bomb to their chests and walk into a crowded cafe and blow themselves up.

factors such as:education,employment,community,family structures and most of all...hope.we need hope.all of us need hope but when conditions for normal people are so oppressive and hopeless,people will seek to find hope anywhere,which can be in the form of religion.

look,
words are inert,they are meaningless until someone reads those words..and then interprets them.

this is particularly true when addressing religion.
if you are a violent person,then your religion will be violent.
if you are peaceful and loving,then your religion will be peaceful.

no matter which sacred text you adhere to,be it the quran,the bible or the torah.you will find justification for any and all acts you choose to engage in,be it violent or peaceful.

and THAT is what sargon is addressing!
sargon is dissecting the apologetics of those who are just not getting the plot.radical islam is a problem,a big problem,and attempting to dismiss the underlying factors in order to make a more "palatable" explanation is wading into dangerous waters.

so we can understand the politics and motivation of a young man from palestine who straps explosives to his chest and blows himself up taking innocent civilians with him.we can look at the events that led up to that grievous choice.we know,because there is historical record,how badly the palestinian people are being treated,and have been for decades.the young man was stripped of hope,and the only solace he found was in the quran and so began his radicalization.

it is the politics that always,and i mean ALWAYS,sets the stage but it is the religion that lays out the justification.

which is what newt was basically talking about.
we can use the exact same calculus for fundamentalist christians,or zionist jews.

think about it,how many radicalized muslims live in america?
how many?
deerborn michigan has the largest muslim community in america.now go look at how many suicide bombers are born from that region.
notice anything?

politics is the fuel,religion is the match.

some here may take issue with sargon's take on this situation,but he is making valid points in regards to how some people (mainly on the left) engage in apologetics,while ignoring the larger implications.

if we,as a species,wish to curb the tide of religious fundamentalism and the radicalization of whole communities.then we need to address the politics first and foremost.otherwise this "war on terror" will become never-ending.because the "war on terror' is actually on "war on ideas",really bad ideas,predicated on even worse politics.

today it is islam.
tomorrow it may be christianity,and there is a whole army of fundamentalist and dominionist christians just waiting to be called for their "holy war".

or should i just call it "christian jihad".

Ahhh, that's what you meant.
I submit that because you might not fear in one situation doesn't mean that, for someone less able or more cautious, fear isn't justified.
There are many legal justifications for homicide. Self defense is the most often used, but is far from the only justification. Enforcing a proper citizen's arrest for instance may use any force needed, including deadly force, to affect the arrest...but you better be ready to prove it was needed.

In this case, he used force to effectively stop a continuous attack and stopped the instant the attack was neutralized, and not even deadly force. I don't see why that's wrong, one hit for two, he just hits harder, a chance you take when hitting much larger strangers, no? Had she scratched his eye with her next attack, she may have ended his career.

Granted, with no audio, it's one person's word against another's as to what may have been said, but didn't she claim he attacked her unprovoked before the video surfaced? That's why I used the qualifier "allegedly", I can't tell for myself. It's pretty clear to me that she was instigating while he was walking away, though.

Really? And what video were you watching, because this one didn't have him in it.
He certainly should have feared bodily injury, since he suffered bodily injury. In my view, when someone is so irrational that they physically attack a larger, stronger, younger person, it's reasonable to assume that they are extremely dangerous.
He could not, from what I saw, turn the other way. Scooters don't turn on a dime, and it wouldn't help anyway, she follows him to continue the encounter, she would have done the same thing in the other direction, imo.
Being detained by force is kidnapping. In no jurisdiction that I know of is kidnapping not justification for killing someone, no matter how little they threaten onlookers. ;-) Lucky for her he wasn't a stand your ground don't back down asshole in a stand your ground state.

That is nonsense. He never looked to me like someone who reasonably feared death or grave bodily injury. Furthermore, he could have turned the other way; in states without a "make my day" law, ordinary people in public spaces have a duty to retreat, if possible, instead of using deadly force.

In no jurisdiction that I know of is the threat of missing a doctor's appointment justification for killing someone, not matter how ignorant.

I agree with Oliver here, but I think he sorta missed an opportunity to talk about confirming exactly who our US Constitutional protections should apply to.

It has been all-to-common in the past decade-plus for people / bodies in our government to "justify" questionable actions by saying that they were performed on people who aren't US citizens. Detain and torture suspected (or *known*) terrorists indefinitely without trial? That's fine, they aren't citizens. Send drone strikes against people outside of US borders that we suspect may be aiding terrorists, even though collateral damage is likely? Meh, they aren't Americans. Spy on people, record and intercept their communications to the greatest extent possible without a warrant or probable cause? Never mind -- we're not doing it to our own citizens (even though we now know that even that justification is an outright lie).

It would be nice for the government to take a stand and state that ALL of the protections that are granted by our constitution and have made our country what it is should actually be considered universal and binding in terms of how our government interacts with ALL people, not just US citizens.

Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, fair trial, no unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. etc. Consistently and universally applied whenever the government has any interaction with any human being on the planet -- inside or outside of US soil, and whether that person is a US Citizen or not.

I suppose it would take a constitutional amendment to codify that. That would require 2/3 support in congress -- so I won't hold my breath. But here is where a president with true leadership could step up and say that whether there is an official amendment codifying that or not, every government office under his (or her) command should behave as though that was law. All the 3-letter agencies, the military, etc. I think that would get the ball rolling and make an amendment possible on down the line.

Our constitutional protections are arguably what made our country great. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by proving that to the rest of the world by actually standing by the courage of our own convictions.

I've heard this revisionist history BS so many times now I just can't stand it anymore. There was no magical 'gifting' of Palestinian land to invading European Jews. That's a completely baseless self justification for Middle Eastern anti-jewish hate mongering.

Jewish people were a significant percentage of the population in Palestine long before the Nazi's and their ilk started making Europe look unpleasant. They were Palestinians themselves, not invaders. Both Arab and Jewish Palestinians lived side by side in Palestine for a long, long time before the 1940s. Clearly, come the 1940's there was a large influx of Jewish people from Europe. Calling them 'invaders' versus refugees though seems an easy call given the holocaust and Nazi occupation of the whole of Europe. Still, you insist on calling them invaders. I don't have words for how disgusting that is.

So, in the mid 1940's we have a Palestine loaded with Jewish and Arab Palestinians, plus a good number of Jewish refugees. The tensions between those groups escalates into a full on civil war. Not an invasion, but a civil war between Jewish and Arab palestinians where the only group remotely fitting the 'invader' role are holocaust survivor refugees now in a country were there is AGAIN a war against them on the basis of being Jews. I'm not sure I think they are as callously the aggressor. What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'. So now a fledgling independent Jewish state spent it's first day receiving a join declaration of war upon it by all it's neighbouring countries that each out numbered it grossly. I again can't but see the Israeli fighting as defensive. In fact, I must insist it was an existential fight that, should they have lost, would have us discussing the second and even worse holocaust of the European Jews that fled to Palestine.

But I know it's popular today among pseudo intellectual circles to just declare Israel an invasion and occupation by a foreign army of vastly militarily superior super jews. It's a fantasy though, and it's one that was scripted up by hateful racists to justify their hatred. None of that says anything about white-washing Israeli policies in the decades following. If you want to call them invaders from the start though you are speaking a truly horrific set of lies.

When you really think about it, this is insane. I've read all the discussion and everyone seems to agree that there is no justification possible. There's not even room for confusion or panic or any irrational emotion here.

In my opinion, anyone deciding to shoot on the basis of the conversation that took place was doing so deliberately, knowing that it was not legal or appropriate.

So did he do this in retaliation to the attack on police, or would he have done this anyway?

And was the man left bleeding on the ground for fifteen minutes in the hope that he would die? And therefore leave no mentally sound witnesses available for the hearing - they did not know of the recording at the time?

Once a person is in your custody, their life is in your care. You have a duty to protect them and provide them with appropriate assistance. It should be the number one priority of any person present, once the subject(s) have been controlled, to offer immediate medical assistance regardless of their prior behaviour.

Could you imagine being the person with blood pouring from your leg, not allowed to stand up, stood over by three people walking around and radioing around ignoring your cries of pain and/or cries for help? You have no idea if you're going to bleed out, you only know that these people are refusing to help as you lie there possibly dying.

Think of that for a minute. They didn't know the extent of the damage..... they stood impassive as a man potentially died in front of them.

Even scarier? How many times has this happened in the past?

Unless clear action is taken by authorities or government, this is a time bomb waiting to go off. You can't have state sponsored ethnic cleansing without expecting a backlash - you can't expect a people to allow themselves to be killed.

What I think newtboy is saying is that, at some point, this turns into a justified resistance to an oppressive and violent regime... and describing them as thugs or anarchists becomes state propaganda. And who is anyone to decide when that time has come but those who have most to fear? Let's hope there is still time to fix this problem without further violence.

I'm far enough away from these issues to admit that I don't have anything like concrete knowledge on the subject, but I feel like I should mention some of the more obvious counterpoints to some of the things he's said in this video. Otherwise I'd get that dirty echo chamber feeling, and no amount of showering seems to wash that away. Could be I'm just a masochist, though, who enjoys arguing.

I think there's racism in every culture. I think it's often much more subtle than described in the video, often even subconscious. I also think that modern western culture is among the least racist cultures to have ever existed, despite our many complaints.

I guess I'll talk about Libya first. The west (the white people he was talking about) is continuously demonized for supporting tyrants and the like. Yet when they participate in overthrowing a clear example of a extravagant super villain tyrant, they are demonized for that. I'm not saying they didn't have other motives, I'm just saying that it's an example of a tautology. No matter which choice they make they are labeled racist.

Now, when beleaguered folk make a desperate attempt to dangerously cross a sea, well knowing the risks they are incurring, it is again the fault of the Italians for not rescuing then with sufficient alacrity. Yes, many of them are coming from countries the west had a hand in destabilizing. But it would be pretty racist for you to demand that the Italian navy take full moral responsibility for the actions of other western nations, simply because they are white too. Also, if the only number you pay attention to is the number that drown, your bias is showing.

Next the issue of the Commonwealth. It seems absurd to expect the UK to treat former colonies populated by citizens that had moved there the same as former conquests that have since shrugged off the yoke of empire. The justifications for this discrimination would seem to be a combination of racism, cultural chauvinism and sober pragmatism. The latter two factors clearly scale with the gap between the culture of the colony in question and the home country, and probably ought to in some sense.

The incarceration thing is tougher to poke holes in, and clearly a much more touchy subject. Once could argue all sorts of justifications for why more members of ethnic minorities are apprehended, but it's nebulous and smells of bias and chauvinism, at best ending in a chicken vs egg conundrum. But once you're in police custody, I think can agree on demanding a higher level of equality of outcome. So I checked out a charity called Inquest who had compiled pretty comprehensive stats on police custody deaths since 1990. Here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
To summarise, since 1990, ethnic minorities have made up a total of 153 out of 1557 deaths in police custody, or roughly 10%. Given that they currently make up 13% of the population, that seems to be well within an acceptable range of results, so I was confused at first. Then I thought maybe he had misspoken and had meant to say state custody, or inmate deaths. So again I looked for some numbers, and again Inquest had the most comprehensive data, broken down by year and ethnicity etc. Again here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-prison
It shows 453 out of 3963 prison deaths are suffered by ethnic minorities. This seems almost perfectly in line with the 13% population of said minorities. So again, I'm a bit confused by the point he's making.

All of that said, I think I agree with the sentiment of his presentation, which perhaps confuses me even more.

there's kind of this weird rhetoric that i keep noticing that implies that "gays" and "islam" are the same category of thing and can be compared but can't be prioritized because they're somehow equal. they're not.

homosexuality is an inherent quality. there is nothing to critique or change other than our views of it.

islam, however, is just an idea and needs to be treated as such. it absolutely can be critiqued and changed and i would argue this is required.

the tricky part i see is the conflating of "islam" with "muslims" and using the ugliness of islam as justification for mistreatment and ostracizing of muslims. sometimes to the extent of treating them as sub human, most notably in refugee conversations. islam is gross, imo, and should be criticized (fervently) but muslims are still people and need to be treated as such, just as the gay community should. they both have the right to live and have the opportunity to live with some semblance of safety. people deserve compassion. ideas do not.

none of what you said makes any point showing why gun control shouldn't be discussed or implemented. and i specifically didn't say "a collection of gun laws/regulations". i said "a collection of laws/regulations/policies". there is a plethora of policies or lack thereof that are talked about often to deflect from the gun debate after [yet another] mass shooting but it's always lip service. the main deflection de jour is "mental health" but very little if anything is done about that. and the problem stems from way beyond guns and mental health. minimum wage laws, health care, education, income disparity/poverty, mental health care, gun laws, etc. all play big roles in an event like this. guns are obviously the first issue that needs to be looked at but because of the second amendment, there is never a real conversation about it. it's just shut down. all without even validating the justification for the second amendment to begin with. it's just presumed to be an axiom.

but even accepting that it is, move on to the next issue and it's the same thing: obstruction of any conversation or modernization. "oh we can't do that 'cause it costs money". well, all the data shows not doing it (investing in education, health care, poverty, etc) is many times more expensive than investing in it. across the board.

so now your whole country just sits there feeling bad for itself, wallowing in how fucked your social structures are, and passing the buck from one issue to the next until the news cycle forgets about one specific event effected by all these things and moves on to the next event effected by all these things but is aesthetically different and the whole process starts over again. meanwhile complaining about ineffective your political system is yet consistently voting in low numbers for the entrenched or the psychotic. certainly never for the thoughtful or nuanced. [i'm being hyperbolic here, but your politicians and voting record as a poplulation are fucking terrifying if not useless]



point being: watching this happen time and time and time again: the tragedy, the grief, the looking for answers, refusing to see the answers that are plain as day from the outside, pointing to the closest issue you aren't directly effected by, and finally forgetting the whole thing and/or accepting it as normal is really, truly sad and tragic.

"When human slavery was the norm, one could have made a similar argument. Unless we were living outside of society, it would have been difficult to be 100% slave-free. Sure, we could have avoided owning slaves ourselves, but it would have been impossible to avoid all items that contained even a small degree of slave input. Slave labor would also have been used in public and private construction. Would it make sense to tell someone who was trying to abolish human slavery that unless they stayed off the roads they’re a hypocrite? Would it make sense to say that since we can’t 100% avoid items made with even a small amount of slave input, therefore human slavery is morally okay and we should go ahead and own slaves?

Of course not.

What we would say is that slavery is morally wrong and we must fight for society to abolish slavery. And in the meantime we should avoid items made from slavery to the extent possible, particularly the primary owning of slaves ourselves and any products made primarily through slave labor."

http://freefromharm.org/common-justifications-for-eating-animals/100-vegan/

“A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard.” ~ Gandhi

"If you care about animals and feel compelled to defend them, chances are you’ve come across knee-jerk accusations claiming you are “pushing your agenda,” forcing your ideas down their throat,” or “spreading propaganda.” So, why don’t other social justice advocates face the same accusations? It is very telling that human rights activists who campaign against violent and exploitative practices, such as sweatshop labor or sex trafficking, are rarely, if ever, criticized for pushing their beliefs on others. On the contrary, these activists are often lauded for their passion and commitment to justice and for exposing injustices."

http://freefromharm.org/common-justifications-for-eating-animals/animal-advocates/

"To close your eyes will not ease another's pain." - Chinese Proverb