The dog felt betrayed, he thought he was getting Sanusages.

The Kryptonian Mind Raper, standard issue personal retcon. It's like an emp blastwave except that it gives everyone within a mile radius crippling anxiety and false memories of rape and/or molestation.

Now Superman can change wherever he likes and no one is gonna say shit. Just slinging his super dickery dock around whenever and where ever he pleases without fear. Like dad after the midlife crisis.

The sight of Superman causes the afflicted to obey all commands, urinate uncontrollably, and even with 100 years of therapy and behavioral analysis, they will NEVER betray his most secreted lifestyle as Clark Kent, mild mannered asexual prick.

It's really an awful technology but it's either that or Superman has to be Superman all the time. Or he has to locate a photobooth or retro arcade with the Jurassic Park machine -- Para Paradise might work, but he would have to mask his intent by flapping his arms around wildly.

When I first started volunteering to serve at a homeless shelter, many years ago, I didn't know exactly why I was doing it. Certainly it felt like the "right" thing to do. I was at least confident that I wasn't doing it for personal gain because I didn't wear it on my sleave, didn't brag about it or hang my ego on my personal identity of being a good person. When dissillusionment set in, when I realized just how many of the people I was serving were homeless by choice, I pushed through and carried on...and I still didn't know why. I just trusted that I would get it one day.

Eventually I made a connection to the time I spent living in Sweden. In the town I lived in, every night a group of vagrants assembled in the market square. Every bit as dirty and drunken as the worst homeless person that most people imagine them all to be. Fighting, having sex in the public restroom, vomiting and carrying on loudly all night. But this was socialism, so they went home every night to their government payed for apartments. I realized that no matter what you do, there will always be a segment of society that just doesn't give a Fuck and is happy to take and never give back. We've all known these people. Family members, friends, acquaintances, who use up the good will of everyone they meet until they've got no one left to use and it falls to the larger community to support them. No economy, government or community planning will ever compell them to support themselves. We loathe them and shun them. Politicians with ulterior motives tell us that ALL homeless and disadvantaged ARE them. But it's a lie. There are the mentally and physically ill who have no support structure, who NEED their communities to help them. Most of these people were once functioning members of their communities who no longer have the ability to survive on their own.
And so I came to understand that it's better to feed a hundred leaches to serve a single helpless individual.

Boy was I proud of myself for realizing that.

And then I was layed off and my job shipped to India, followed closely by my wife spending a year in and out of the hospital, with no insurance. A careers worth of hard work, reduced to a data point on a corporate profit sheet. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, when the medical debt comes for me and everything I've built in my life is taken, to become a line in someone else's ledger. Betrayed by the greed in the system. Because I upheld my end of the social contract. I worked hard in school, excelled in my career, had two kids and bought a house in a neighborhood with good schools. But the system is run by the greediest and most power hungry. Politics and business is the domain of the high functioning sociopath. And to a sociopath, you're not a real person like them. You're a data point, a line in the ledger.

Then I came to respect the other segment of the homeless. The ones who rejected the social contract, who don't feel societal pressure to give more than they take. Because they got it right. It's all a lie. You don't earn anything in America. You don't deserve the fruits of your labor. You subsist at the whim of the people with money and power. And when it serves them, you get nothing.

We are all standing in line for food, hoping there's a room for the night.

@Jerykk
i cant make heads nor tails what you are trying to convey.
are you making an argument for harsher prisons?
or an assertion that if they were less harsh people would WANT to go to prison?
that recidivism is irrelevant so we should just execute prisoners?

i agree that poverty leads to desperation which can lead to criminal activity.there is plenty of statistics to back that up,though interestingly those numbers are dropping in regards to poverty=crime.

as for your deterrence argument.
yeah..no.the numbers obviously dont add up.
right now there are more american citizens incarcerated than the soviet gulags of the 80's.in fact,america incarcerates more citizens per capita than any other nation in the world.

americas prison population=2.4 million..and rising.

which leads me to my next point.
what is the purpose of prison?
well,it should be to remove those violent elements from society and for the offenders who are non-violent a way to pay a debt to the society they betrayed (fill in the offense here ____).

when their time has been served (paid) then they are free to rejoin society and reintegrate themselves back into society.

but what if that system of punishment strips you of all dignity and humanity?treats you like an abandoned dog at the local animal shelter?physically beaten and spiritually shattered,just HOW to you rejoin normal society?

what then?
do you blame the inmate who was thrown into a inhumane system?or maybe..juuuuust maybe..it may be the SYSTEM which is the blame.

let us look at some stats shall we?
the private prison industry is the 9th largest lobbiest in the country.who lobby for stricter sentencing,zero tolerance and mandatory jail time.a new trend in this area is now regarding teens AND pre-teens.they also make contracts with the local government to have a certain % occupancy.(meaning that even if those beds are not filled,the company STILL gets paid).

and lets not forget those kick backs to the local judges.already 25 judges this year got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

the idea that prison is a deterrence has been debunked.
there are over 5000 federal laws NOT including state and local.so at any given time,in any given day,YOU have perpetrated a federal crime.

the idea the prison is for rehabilitation is utter bullshit,another liberal feel-good "look at the good we are doing" trope.

prison is a business.
based on the mafia principle.
it is about making the poor a commodity and exploiting their lack of resources to fight back.
recidivism?
thats just repeat customers.american prisons care zippo about recidivism.

again i reference the milgram experiment.
treat people like animals and they will soon behave like animals.
treat them with humanity and dignity and the outcome is far more positive for a society as a whole..we ALL benefit.

but the private prisons dont want that..it means less profit for them.

the norden is doing it right and the results are impressive.

On the subject of feces, I am reminded of an aspect of the Uygur/Harris debate that I wanted to pick up.

As they were discussing torture, Harris was rather convinced of his understanding that death would be worse than having your holy book mistreated or being sprayed with (fake) menstrual blood.

This fails to appreciate a major drive behind the use of torture: to "reset" a human mind, to have the subject betray whatever is most sacred to him/her. The torture at Gitmo/Baghram was directly aimed at one of the most defining aspects of their victims' personalities, namely their religious beliefs.

All of this was beautifully illustrated in Southern America when the torturers' aim was to completely negate the societies' strong sense of solidarity by forcing selected people to betray one another, by putting them into either-you-or-them situations. As horrible as death is, to have the core of your very being negated by force is, in fact, worse for quite a significant percentage of people, as proven by those who would rather endure torture/death than deny what made them human.

They manage to wipe a human's mind alright, as you can see by the mindless husks in those torture camps that were once human beings. And by setting them up as examples, entire societies are reprogrammed.

The more "civilised" version of it would be the treatment of whistleblowers. It sends ripples through society, just like its uglier cousin, inducing a chilling effect that I would at some point love to see quantified.

what an odd dynamic here on the sift in regards to lantern.

many here (myself included) have seemed to put the mantle of responsibility squarely on lanterns shoulders,as if he represented ALL police....everywhere.

this is not only patently false,it is very unfair.

BUT....

and @lantern53 this is very important you understand this very crucial,pivotal point:

the outrage you see here playing out on the sift in regards to police abuse of power and authority (oftimes directed AT you) comes directly from a perspective on how we all view HOW a true police officer should behave.

we feel (i dont mean to speak for everyone..but im going to anyways) that those in a position of power and authority have to be held to a much higher standard than the rest of us.

why?

because they are in a position of power and authority!!!!

and to abuse that public trust.
be it by the use of violence or intimidation,is the greatest of all betrayals.

so when we see a cop abusing his powers,in whatever capacity,we become outraged and angered.
justifiably so in my opinion.

i know you like to poke the hornets nest from time to time and it gives you the giggles.
ok..thats fair enough...
but stop defending the indefensible.

as a police officer you should be the first one condemning those cops who have obviously stepped over the line.
i am willing to be that you have done just that in your time on the force.most cops i know do it that way.
police policing themselves in a roundabout way.

i have full confidence you are good at what you do and have built a skin so thick not much really phases you anymore,but stop defending those cops that are NOT good cops...they are a cancer on your institution and they make those of you who ARE good at what you do treated with suspicion and wariness.

so listen to those here who are telling you how they feel about the bad cops.these are not criticizing you in particular,so dont feel you have to defend every bad cop out there.

so just as you do not represent every cop on the planet,dont allow those bad cops define you.

we are counting on you to be better.

/rant off

No kidding. Shit like this hidden behind the "wall of blue" is such a betrayal of public trust. It takes egregious stories like this for them to ever do anything about it. (Which, fortunately, sometimes they actually do.)

edit: Jesus, I watched a second time and it's brutally clear that the camera is actively manned (pan/zoom), and that there are at least three officers physically present. Yeah, egregious is the word.

Why yes it certainly does seem like hyperbole when you fail to read everything I said. I also said this "You do not get that kind of money without the help of others, exploiting others, doing illegal shit, or basically being a fucking thief." Bodies of course being hyperbolic (sometimes, not in the case of Oil Barons) and also metaphorical.

I don't think I have to address Zuckerbergs thievery it's pretty well documented that he had to pay people off to avoid lengthy court cases. It's pretty obvious he isn't Self Made in any way.

Bill Gates well a lot of people have plenty of stories about him stealing things and doing shit that's very sketchy but how about we ignore that. Let's go to the fact that he developed (stole) programs to run on something that was made from public funds by the military. Computers are completely anti-free market, they come from and were created by massive intervention in the market.

If you use a computer and the internet you're basically supporting socialism and betraying the free market.

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

Not only do i think this is wrong, but i think it is obviously and patently wrong.

It is demonstrable that a confrontation does not necessarily escalate the longer it goes on for. If you've been taught that in training by someone purporting to be an expert then i despair. I almost feel at a loss for where to begin - i have been in thousands of confrontations that de-escalated due to more time passing allowing both parties to explain or understand better, or for the blood to cool down. I've seen thousands of the same types of confrontation happening to other people. It literally happens all the time; misunderstandings get corrected and the situation de-escalates.

I hope that the brief explanation has betrayed what you really meant. Perhaps you were talking about a specific range of situations with a violent individual.

Or perhaps that's the problem and someone has been training law enforcement this falsehood which effectively encourages you to use the most extreme measure you have to end the conflict more quickly and keep it at a safely low level of escalation. And then you end up with mine- and rocket-resistant urban combat vehicles patrolling the streets, teams of camo'd police holding weapons INCORRECTLY in the presence of civilians on your own streets, and the mowing down of unarmed shoplifters...... all because it's more kind that way? I refute that, and before anyone says the most dangerous words ever spoken 'but we've always done it that way', in a discussion about the ineptitude or otherwise of law enforcement you aren't allowed the premise "law enforcement's methods are and always have been the best way to do things." -- Law enforcement, along with politics, should be the most heavily scrutinised and re-scrutinised systems that exist - because of their unique position to affect people.

I do NOT consider the concern for the safety of a police officer to be greater than the concern for the rights of a citizen; i was under the impression that police were the defence line between citizens and criminals, they put their lives on the line to keep society safe and running. Their job is to ensure we can be citizens, and they are paid to uphold the ideals of the society - freedom, respect for the individual and personal security. I genuinely hope they do so safely, but you don't play with feathers unless you're willing to get your arse tickled, as the saying goes. It is very possible to be safe, respectful and understanding all at the same time in the pursuit of law enforcement. If a person does not have the ability to behave that way they should not be in the job in the same way as someone who finds kids irritating and hit-able shouldn't go into childcare.

In what way was i wrong? I said that you made a bias speculation, and you reply with "Wrong again! I actually made a speculation." - Well, that confirms what i said, sans the word bias, obviously because from your point of view you aren't biased. But your ...colourful language betrays you.

The stand-your-ground nonsense doesn't fly in what i consider (that's MY bias, my opinion) more civilised areas. Zimmerman wanted a fight, chased and got the fight he wanted, got out of his depth and killed a man all in the name of self defence. That is absolutely insane to me, but i respect any people's right to self determination; it's why i don't live somewhere that has laws which allow someone to pursue and kill without repercussions. I think you'll find that the law is contentious at best, and is only seen as a shining beacon of justice by racists. Those of us with less bias on those particular matters see it as a tragedy that could have been avoided if a certain person hadn't willingly pursued someone out of a desperate desire to be some kind of rentacop.

Your video, George Takei: Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Sorry you felt so betrayed and that this was my response to your first submission in years, but my being an admin does not exclude me from having or sharing an honest opinion.

I wasn't expecting any kind of physical assault, and if there was any I would've down-voted rather than abstained.

It comes down to a simple matter of opinion. In mine, there wasn't anything said that was clever or witty or poignant or a real potent zinger. He didn't shut her down, he just kept trying and failing to give her a good tongue lashing and she still kept right on yelling back. (Being shut down requires a person to desist.)

While he was digging for something good to say I kept watching and listening and waiting for him to hit paydirt and finally put her in her place, but it never happened. I think it's a matter of managing expectations; perhaps if the title didn't mislead me into expecting her to really be shutdown I would have been more neutral about his failed attempts to shut her down (though I still wouldn't have voted).

It's worth keeping in mind that when you slaughter an animal for food, the process is often :
a) Hit it in the head
b) While it's dazed hang it by its hind legs
c) Cut its throat, and let it bleed out *alive* (so that the heart pumps out the blood, so the meat doesn't taste like liver.)

During which the animal will come-to, and stare at you, and you can read its expression pretty clearly. As a creature that's only ever been fed by you, and lived seemingly among you, the betrayal is rather stark.
I say this from life experience, not anecdotes read on the interweb.
(I'm not a vegan. However, if I'm not gonna finish my meal, I make sure to at least finish the meat.)

TBH, not enough people are taught about life and death.
If I had my way, every child would have to slaughter at least one animal and eat it (seeing as hundreds will be slaughtered over their life time just to feed them personally - it's a business they're already personally involved in. So they should have the respect to look their food in the face at least once.).

Then they can make an informed decision about their food.
And maybe even about things like war, or careless driving, etc. Seems like everyone is a tough guy, and everything is "all fine, don't worry"... so long as death is just 'something actors pretend with on TV'.

-scheherazade

How appropriate to have no comments. Your unease at racialism betrays you all!