First, regarding your statement and this video, it's not a matter of "that cop should act perfectly." It's more that the officer had no reason to handcuff a guy who is not a threat has already been searched and is sitting there doing nothing.

But in general, the bigger problem is not with this specific cop's actions; it's that this kind of behavior is indicative of a systematic problem in law enforcement and society's lack of concern for how their abuse of power is not being kept in check. It's becoming more and more acceptable for police to separate individuals from their civil rights and with less and less reason, motivation, or consequences.

The explanation is really not just that "Hey, cops are human, bro. They totally make mistakes. They can't all negotiate perfectly. They can't all have compassion. They aren't all like super-patient. They can't all only shoot guilty people." That's quite a bit of a naive opinion.

The issue is that cops are no longer just making mistakes and bad judgement calls. At least that kind of thing could be chalked up to human error or inadequate training.

They're now intentionally deciding to do things to people they know they really have no legal explanation for and that they will face no consequences for.

If you're really defending that, then what you're really saying is cops should be able to do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want, just because they want to, and everyone else should shut up and take it because everything any cop does is acceptable because of the very fact that they're a cop. And besides, it's not going to happen to "the vast majority of people," so who cares, right?

Bullshit. Maybe in communist Russia or China, but not in the land of the "free."

@lantern53

learn to read and stop injecting your own bias on the comments towards you my friend.

nobody said you were racist (not on this thread anyways) they said you "seemed",which is to say 'appeared" "your intent may possibly be".

i have not seen anybody on this thread state with conviction that the cop was in the wrong.in fact i am seeing most here postulate the exact opposite i.e:the cop may just have been in the right.

what i was attempting to put forth was that this may be a systematic flaw and not just one individual incident.the "US vs THEM" is a technique that works particularly well with most people and even more so with police (at least the ones i have spoken with).this polemic can be evidenced in this very thread."you lefties".."you progressives" .

all labels meant to divide people.
and they are meaningless.

but it easier to judge someone when they have been demonized.

Oh, I missed that! Sorry! : )

But now I understand what you mean about your insane people; I've seen Once Were Warriors.

I think that's a key difference: Cops in some parts of America have to deal with systematic violence (not to mention police hatred) on a much more frequent basis.

Yes, the Australian ban and resulting lack of gun massacres is what I was referring to.

And I wasn't providing an excuse, just explaining why it's a fact that it will never change. Gun ownership is ingrained in the fabric of our society.

Saying "things change" is nice and all (and goes great with a verse of Kumbaya), but when a third of the people want to have guns (and they come from a long line of gun owners) and they have #2 in the list of the country's core principles backing them up, a few (or even many, or even nations worth) of people declaring, "You're better off without guns," is meaningless. (It's like telling a fart it'd be better off not stinking.)

Not an opinion, nor an excuse, just a description of reality.

@A-Winston @lantern53

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I'll simplify it for you - those who are not well educated in a subject greatly overestimate their ability at the subject, because they don't know all of the things that they don't know.

Those who are better educated in a subject greatly underestimate their ability at the subject, because they know how complicated it is.

Now you two don't know about science, and that's ok - that's not an insult and i don't want any of this to be insulting. But it is meant to be a reminder that you are talking about one of if not the most technical and complicated abstract subjects that we as a species pursue. If you don't even understand the "scientific method" (a distinct term) and how the "scientific community" (another distinct term) works and comes to consensus, how can you possibly hope to decipher fact (science) from fiction (propaganda)?

I keep having to post this, but i'll do it again. The scientific community is made up of all kinds of people such as university lecturers and students (yes, your kids might be part of the community), amateur scientists, people at research institutions.... anyone who cares enough to approach things methodically and systematically, anyone interested in finding out as much as we possibly can about everything we can. Real science does not get paid based on results - the funding is provided for the research and the research finds whatever it finds. You can't lie about science, because other anal bastards (far worse than me) are just waiting to find something wrong with it and pillory it. That's how the scientific community works, it's like internet comments only worse. You can't get away with doing bad science for long.

Most people in scientific research do not have a lot of money, do you understand that? I can tell you right now - i contribute to scientific papers and such, so that makes me part of the scientific community. I'm just a post-grad student living on a student loan and doing something that i enjoy. My lecturers make a living, but they are not well-off by any means. We also suffer tax when politicians take our evidence and twist it in front of our faces. And we're left standing here, exasperated, wondering why you'd listen to non-experts over experts. If your doctor said you had diabetes, you wouldn't ask a politician to confirm it? If you want a scientific opinion, consult the scientific community.

I would love you to ask yourself the following question; "What do i really know about the scientific community and the scientific method?" Because if you took half an hour one day to go to an accredited university and ask the science department about how science works, how consensus is formed, and what makes good scientific practice, you'd be able to rid yourselves of these myths that somehow all scientists (i.e. average people, doing scientific research for the sake of science) are in some kind of club or gang or being paid to say that humans are causing climate devastation. The reason the majority of people say that is because the science speaks for itself and is not open to interpretation. The facts are facts.

Are you really thinking this through?

I want to show you one final thing, and it comes from the wikipedia page on Scientific method (which i recommend you read to avail yourself about which you speak, please don't speak from ignorance).

"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."

The science speaks for itself, and i recommend you start listening to real scientists. Why prefer the opinion of a few individuals who are either flawed in their scientific reasoning or flat out being paid to lie? The scientific community is in full agreement.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but you're talking about something you don't understand and it exasperates me. You wouldn't come here and talk about the details of internal medicine, but you're quite happy to tell a scientist, to his face, that he doesn't know science.

@Trancecoach - they respond in literature all the time. A scientist's response is to prove it, scientifically. They do, and are, all the time. But most people do not understand science and those that do still find scientific papers daunting and difficult to follow. People like the two i mentioned above, they don't have a hope in hell of understanding the source of the information, and they sadly look to the wrong people to explain it to them.

Yes, I think we understand that, and we think it's fucked up.

The other point Jon made is where are you expected to run ?
Do I need to remind you that Israel shelled children playing on the beach and missile attacked a U.N. hospital and school.
The whole city is surrounded, under seige, being systematically destroyed, and no one is allowed to leave.

Strategic Ethnic cleansing. War crimes.

Saddam started the Iran Iraq war, which saw over a million dead, including the most prolific deployment of chemical weapons since WW1.

Saddam followed that up with the Al-Anfal campaign. Read up on it, it's one of the most brutal attempts at genocide in recent history, including chemical weapons, concentration camps, over a hundred thousand deaths and an effort to breed the Kurds out of existence through systematic rape of Kurdish women.

Saddam followed that up with the complete annexation of Kuwait. Effectively removing a UN member state and claiming at as part of his Iraq.

Saddam followed up his forced removal from Kuwait with a retaliatory genocide of Shia Iraqis again topping a hundred thousand dead again.

But yeah, he fortunately lacked the military might to succeed in such ventures for a time. He was bluffing having stocks of chemical and nuclear weapons to keep his neighbours in check. Pity he was removed from power then and we didn't wait till he could make good on his bluff.

Can we have one discussion on economics without the libertarians derailing it with their nonsense? No-one wants it. Get over it. The rest of the world has learned from history that libertarianism is a fucking disaster when actually implemented.

Earning $200k isn't actually that big a deal. Yeah, you're well off, but you don't have the kind of unbelievably obnoxious level of wealth that the 1% have.

@RedSky 70% isn't hyperbole. Top marginal rate in the US in the 50s was actually 91%.

Ultimately it's an incredibly short sighted position. America has systematically destroyed it's middle class and over time will remove it's own market. Keep going down this track and eventually China owns you.

Racism in the US is exclusively anti-black racism. I don't think black people can be racist against white people. Discrimination, maybe. But its still not the same= there is not an entire society backing it up. Anti-black racism carries with it an enormous historic force of precedent that remains in Amerikkka today. A black person is shot by the police every 26 hours there.

Its not just about individual ignorance. Its a consciousness that is reflecting economic relations that the US is built on, mainly slavery and its later apartheid forms.

This video remains interesting, but there are actual substantive arguments to be made against inter-racial relationships that it doesn't elaborate. Mainly, a systematic critique of whiteness and the many forms of anti-black racism, some subtle, some not so much, that are bound to come up in inter-racial relationships.

Don't even know where to begin with the statement, ' I also attribute this to black people and their culture--after all they should be better than crime since their roots come from an afrocentric value background.'

Even if you were hinting at sarcasm, that's a pretty fucking 'clueless-of-history' slavery in the U.S., POV

Afrocentric??? Gimme a fucking break, that's a rarity in black culture in the U.S. because it was systematically beaten and tortured out of the slave-class.

As to the other so-called groups cited well sir, it's your responsibility to associate and that with discretion, with any and all PEOPLE according to your own standards (or lack thereof) of ethics and morality, isn't it??

Life won't get any better for whom?? For youm???

@shatterdose,
Would you have examples of the farmers Monsanto has sued or driven out of business over cross contamination? I'm not familiar with any myself despite hearing the claim repeatedly and would hate to be blind to such a serious injustice.

I also have trouble understanding your overall position. You seem to spend most of your time arguing how terrible GMO is for farmers and seem to be arguing it is bad because it is harmfull to them. You end your post arguing in favor of farmers again and calling for a return to showing them greater respect than they are being shown today. I hope I followed that much correctly? As a guy who grew up as a farm kid, and have a very big portion of my family and social circle running family farms I would second the importance of those businesses. What I wonder is if you understand that virtually all family farms whose primary income is that farm have been choosing by their own free will to plant GMO crops because it helps their bottom line.

It's not a corporate conspiracy driving the GMO domination of seeds planted here in North America. In fact, all the family farmers I grew up around are well agreed that GMO crops have been one of the biggest factors that has helped them keep their family operations profitable so they didn't have to close up shop and sell things off. The picture you paint of Monsanto systematically driving family farms out of business is simply put, fictional from what I see in the Family farm dominated economy of the region I live in. I haven't looked outside of North America nearly as closely, but for this region your account just does not bear out to the reality I see around me everyday.

@VoodooV
when i use the term "extreme nasty" i am not referring to a civil war but rather the american public finally reaching its boiling point.

it started bubbling with the tea party,and if people recall it was NOT the rabid christian rightwing fascist group it is today.
they had real grievances and rightly so.

but they got co-opted by private monies.

then occupy blew up and they too had real grievances and since the power elites could not co-opt them like the tea party they were systematically shut down by targeted governmental edict.

thanks Obama.

for years the poor and working poor were disenfranchised,made irrelevant in a political system that only used them as talking points to garner sympathy during an election cycle.

but now the middle class are finding themselves falling into the ranks of poor and working poor and ALL have been made irrelevant and inconsequential.

the american public has been kept in a constant state of fear for over 25 years.
fear of brown people.
fear of losing their job.
losing their house.
hell they even fear their own neighbors!

while the beautiful and poetic nationalism of american exceptionalism and ingenuity sound great,most americans are aware its all bullshit.
the political system is corrupt and sick on its own hubris and greed.

the american public know that this government no longer serves their interest.just look at the data.time and time again the public has a strong opinion on a subject and yet our elected officials vote to serve their masters.
war in iraq? americans shouted NO!
bank bail out? resounding NO!
the examples over the past (especially the past 15 yrs) are staggering.

so while i admire your optimism in still using the political system to enact positive change.i just dont see it ever becoming a reality.
mainly because the system is rigged and not in our favor.

so that leaves only ONE option:take to the streets.
refuse to go to work.
keep your purchases to a minimum and trade with each other.
refuse to feed the beast.
clog it with bodies.
clog the streets..halt business from operating properly.

but avoid violence.

thats what the state uses and to give it reason to engage in violence will only serve to beget more violence.

make those in power afraid.
remind them who they really work for and that if they dont the whole fucking thing is gonna come crashing down.

its the only real option i see and if it comes to pass you will see those who wield power do so..and it will be very nasty.

see:the labor movement
see:civil rights
see:anti-war
see:woman sufferages

C-Engines' right, a war wouldn't do anything unless you're talking about the systematic elimination of individuals behind an empire that's designed to instill a lasting, generational fear in those who would continue the push for ultimate power and control. The only changes that will come will be more total control unless a dialog manifests with meaning and purpose directed at the control mechanism's infrastructure by a majority of regular peeps unsullied by the indoctro-education of so-called knowledge of the the way the world works.

Until people stop trying to work within the framework of rules and engagement that has been created by the same perpetrators of our enslavement, the majority of our sentient, big-brained species may as well get used to the idea that the few freedoms you imagine yourselves to have now are illusion and your children will not enjoy one one-hundredth of that same illusion in 30 years.

Guerrilla-tactics with a broadband and well-coordinated take-down is the only way to end the paradigm that has been in place for thousands of years. That or some unifying world-wide catastrophic necessity for the survival of the species....like a frikkin' meteor storm some other worldwide natural disaster or some influence from without.

This might be throwing a bit of a lit match into the whole thing, but there has been a lot of discussion about how "the media" failed women, and how some sort of unseen force is trying to keep women down, or even men.

At some point in the production of any music video you care to point a finger at, some women have been quite happy to accept money in exchange for portraying whatever it is that certain people are unhappy about.

I have to insist that the question is asked - does everyone WANT equality? There are a lot of women out there quite happy to make a lot of money based on photoshop'd depictions of how they might look in a make believe world. Or to dance around in their smalls, trying their very best to MAKE men interested in their sexual prowess. Their primary money making skill is sexual.

So before we criticise this invisible and possibly make-believe machine that systematically holds women down, how about we consider the individual decisions of prominent women? The women in the blurred lines video weren't forced at gunpoint to strip off and dance around titillating viewers, they accepted payment for a job and did what they were paid for knowing full well that young girls might be watching and imitating them, or whatever.

I mean, great job insulting the hell out of the producer of the video or the choreographer or the guy who made up the song. But all they did was write out a script or imagine out a vision of something they would consider sexually appealing. How about blaming the vacuous bints that wobbled their tits around without considering the consequences?

Perhaps not everyone WANTS equality. Men or women, but women are the easy example; perhaps some or perhaps even many women WANT to be able to use their bodies to gain interest from men or money. If that is the case - as it is for "sexy" music videos, photo shoots, modelling contracts or anything you care to name that involves a complicit woman representing an apparently undesirable or harmful skill - then it is equally unfair to force "equality" on those who do not want it. I see everyone as a person - all equal. And if someone wants to accept payment for wobbling their bits around then that's their decision until it becomes illegal, and it's ridiculous to turn around and say "oh how terribly oppressive of <someone else> for paying that women to flaunt herself." She accepted the fucking cash and did it. She could have pursued any career she wanted. It isn't like she had no other choice.

Additionally, I'm not going to even enter into any discussion that involves "rape" or terms akin to "rape culture" (what a bullshit term) because i actually believe that it detracts hugely from actual acts of rape and the pursuit of justice and prevention of rape.

Your video, Midnight Juggernauts' "Systematic", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@messenger
rational and reasonable as always my friend.

but here is the cold,hard and highly cynical interpretation on the situation,based solely on my own understandings and continuing dissection of the dying throes of a global empire.

and it is simply this:humans have become commodities.

this young rich elitist fuck has parents who can raise his value in the eyes of a more and more corporatized state.
they can purchase his ticket into the political class.
so he can walk the gilded halls in the ivory tower and participate solely on the virtue of his ability to pay.
he can pay to play.

conversely,
the young black mans future ability to participate is systematically blocked for a myriad of reasons:race,economic status,regional opportunities etc etc.
and therefore has more value as a commodity to participate as a prisoner in the private prison system.

so while your analysis is born from a humanistic and reasonable origin,it is mainly due to the fact that you are..well..human.you express empathy and compassion.

a corporation is not hindered by such non-productive emotions.
they seek profit by any and all means.
and if that means commodifying a human being,then that is what they shall do.
and they have done exactly that.

many humans find that reality repulsive and repugnant (because it is) and balk at even accepting the reality that stares at them in the face.

because if they actually ever DID accept that truth,they would have to do something about it.

so they spin some rather creative internal narratives to avoid seeing the slow degredation,dehumanizing and outright cruel practices and call the profit good.
and oftentimes blame the victims for their situation,conveniently ignoring the actual perpetrators.

because if they did,they would have to take responsibility.
cant have that can we?