Another angle on the recent events in America and the world

[dualstow]

I think Antifa majorly overestimated how popular they are with most Americans. It looks like most everyone hates them.

If ever there was a misnomer, it’s the name Antifa. I know, they chose it for a reason, so I can’t call it a true misnomer. But it’s like cockroaches calling themselves the The Anti-Termite Federation. But they’re cockroaches.

[Hal]

I think this might be somewhat related to this topic.

How close or far do you live from any of the unrest of the last several days?

Closest to me is Boston - 1.75 hours / 90 miles away.

Where I live is quite rural, economically diverse neighborhood, houses with wide ranging values ($100,000 to $500,000?). I'd expect us to be one of the last areas to be affected, if ever.

Vinny

We live about 100 miles from Dallas, surrounded by cows. If the Antifa creeps ever come out here, they won't last long.

Tech, the first thing that came to mind when I read your comment was the song below.
I think I need help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

[Libertarian666]

I think this might be somewhat related to this topic.

How close or far do you live from any of the unrest of the last several days?

Closest to me is Boston - 1.75 hours / 90 miles away.

Where I live is quite rural, economically diverse neighborhood, houses with wide ranging values ($100,000 to $500,000?). I'd expect us to be one of the last areas to be affected, if ever.

Vinny

We live about 100 miles from Dallas, surrounded by cows. If the Antifa creeps ever come out here, they won't last long.

Tech, the first thing that came to mind when I read your comment was the song below.
I think I need help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

You certainly do!

[Mountaineer]

I think this might be somewhat related to this topic.

How close or far do you live from any of the unrest of the last several days?

Closest to me is Boston - 1.75 hours / 90 miles away.

Where I live is quite rural, economically diverse neighborhood, houses with wide ranging values ($100,000 to $500,000?). I'd expect us to be one of the last areas to be affected, if ever.

Vinny

We live about 100 miles from Dallas, surrounded by cows. If the Antifa creeps ever come out here, they won't last long.

Tech, the first thing that came to mind when I read your comment was the song below.
I think I need help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

That was a hoot and a half! The steak pun was awesome, well done, rare indeed.

[Kriegsspiel]

Clever Churchgoers Avoid Arrest By Disguising Themselves As Rioters

LOS ANGELES, CA—Religious people in Southern California have found a bold, creative solution for in-person meetings in spite of the continuing lockdown. This past weekend, several area churches attended church services disguised as righteously indignant rioters.

"We already have the righteous indignation thing down," said one church elder. "Now, we've simply added black balaclavas, hoodies, Guy Fawkes masks, and baseball bats! We found that when we do this, we can meet in large groups without much interference from the local authorities. It's been a delightful experience."link

LOL, Babylon Bee bringing its A game.

[Libertarian666]

When I say that owning a gun is not so much about burglars etc., I don't mean to say it's not an effective deterrent. What I was implying was that the principle of gun ownership and the second amendment is first and foremost about the public's relationship to government. It is, as a principle, so dangerous to have a well armed government and unarmed citizens. The defense of oneself from burglars just wasn't as relevant to the political stance I was talking about in the OP.

If the military turned against the citizens I don't care how well armed those citizens are, they are not going to win. Do any of you know any well-armed citizens who can fight against tanks and planes? The 2nd amendment was written way before either of those was ever imagined.

Vinny

I recommend asking the Afghans and the Soviets how that worked out for them.

I would not compare the typical Afghan to the typical American. We live a much softer life than them as evidenced by 35.5% of us being obese while only 5.5% of them are.

Vinny

So the ability to resist tyranny is dependent on having the correct BMI?
That's certainly a novel theory.

[Libertarian666]

Clever Churchgoers Avoid Arrest By Disguising Themselves As Rioters

LOS ANGELES, CA—Religious people in Southern California have found a bold, creative solution for in-person meetings in spite of the continuing lockdown. This past weekend, several area churches attended church services disguised as righteously indignant rioters.

"We already have the righteous indignation thing down," said one church elder. "Now, we've simply added black balaclavas, hoodies, Guy Fawkes masks, and baseball bats! We found that when we do this, we can meet in large groups without much interference from the local authorities. It's been a delightful experience."link

LOL, Babylon Bee bringing its A game.

I'm not sure that wouldn't work...

[Xan]

Examining the numbers on police violence:
Police Violence against Black Men Is Rare

Larry Elder's (who happens to be black) take on the Georgia situation (he doesn't seem to have a piece on Floyd yet). This one has a lot of hard numbers, and also explains the delays (not a cover-up).
Black Man Killed by Two White Men -- Cue the 'Race' Hysteria

A Rutgers study finding two things:
a) the race of the policeman has no correlation with the race of suspects killed, and incidentally
b) less than 1% of victims in police killings were unarmed
Study: Killing Of Unarmed Black Men By Cops ‘A Police Problem, Not A White Police Problem’
It seems to go on to assume without evidence that there's racism in "the system", having cleared [almost all] individuals of it, but based on the numbers from the first article the rate of killings is proportional to the rate of violent crime, so the results seem to me to be rational (if tragic) rather than racist.

Raw numbers: number of people shot to death by police by race: 1.5-2x more white people than black:
Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2020, by race
Combined with the 1% unarmed number above, we should expect 3-5 shootings of unarmed white people each year, and 2-3 shootings of unarmed black people. We certainly hear about the latter on the news. Not so much the former. Really both are phenomenally low numbers in a country of 300+ million. (Granted this is only "shooting" which wouldn't cover the George Floyd situation.)

More numbers: "hate crime" statistics:
FBI Releases 2018 Hate Crime Statistics
By my computation, this means that black people are 2.6x more likely than white people to commit a hate crime.


Summarizing: 90% of the 600,000 violent nonhomicide black/white crimes that took place in 2018 were a black perp and a white victim. Blacks kill twice as many whites as whites kill blacks. Blacks are 2.6 times more likely to commit a hate crime. So who's being treated unfairly and should be rioting in the streets?


Well it's because they're dealing with the legacy of slavery, you might say. Thomas Sowell (also black) explains how the problems in the black community are not a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but of feel-good "help the poor blacks" policies which drove fathers out of households, and of a culture of victimhood:
A Legacy of Liberalism

[dualstow]

Thank you for those, Xan. Going to go through them. Except the last one, which I'm already familiar with.

Tech, the first thing that came to mind when I read your comment was the song below.
I think I need help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

So enjoyable.

[Xan]

Thank you for those, Xan. Going to go through them. Except the last one, which I'm already familiar with.

I'd be very interested to hear what you think!

[dualstow]

I read the National Review piece just now, by Mr Lemoine. It reminds me of when people were complaining that too many blacks were shown as the criminals in the, I guess you call it a reality show, Cops ("Bad boys, bad boys" ♫ ). I laughed at the notion and thought, they're just filming the people who are committing the crimes! They're not editing out white suspects.

The BJS numbers are hard to argue with. 70,000 is not a small sample size. Did you listen to the beginning of the Eric Adams interview I placed in the podcast thread? All my life, I've been in contact with those kinds of stories so I admit that anecdotal evidence is what I've been going on. I think you and I even had a similar thread here on this forum before, and I probably told the story of my experience as a young, low-level employee at a big firm. Two quick ones, actually:

(1) I walked in together with another employee, black guy, and the guards immediately stopped him, letting me through. "Can I see your badge." He caught up with me, shaking his head, and said, "I hate that."
(2) Another day, a well dressed man came through our floor, quietly stealing laptops and other valuable items. Our supervisor laughed about how none of us saw him because we were hard at work, glued to our screens. Black policeman arrived and asked my black supervisor (an islander, not African-American, to be accurate) about the suspect, whom she did see. Boss: Tall, well-dressed-
Cop: Yeah, what was his complexion?
Boss: (pause) He had clear skin, I think-
Cop: Was he black?
Boss: Yeah.

I don't know what to make of these, exactly. Perhaps I think about it the way you do. But, #1 just has a strong pull that is more powerful than a very young reporter from the National Review. I'm not saying the numbers are wrong or even that his analysis is flawed, but there is still a lingering doubt. I can't help it. Does that mean I'm superficial and unscientific or that I am aware of the reality on the ground? Even if I vote for the former...it's a strong pull, as I said.

The last time we talked about this, I probably said not to derail, but this reminds me of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are plenty of bad actors among the Israelis, but from what I remember, they have the facts on their side. The Palestinians have the emotions of the world on their side. Perhaps I am guilty of doing exactly what I detest about Palestinian sympathizers who prefer propaganda memes to facts.

I will continue to go through your list and gather more facts. (Why do I feel like I'm Vinny when I type that sentence?)

[dualstow]

Sorry for quoting myself.

The last time we talked about this, I probably said not to derail, but this reminds me of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are plenty of bad actors among the Israelis, but from what I remember, they have the facts on their side. The Palestinians have the emotions of the world on their side. Perhaps I am guilty of doing exactly what I detest about Palestinian sympathizers who prefer propaganda memes to facts.

Someone* on twitter said it more succinctly this afternoon:

Pallywood has gripped the entire world.

*An African-American, btw.

[dualstow]

Looks like Heather McDonald is reading the same stats, Xan:

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

from:
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism
Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-o ... 1591119883

[pp4me]

Am I the only one here that thinks part of the reason the rioting has gotten so out of hand is bc of the Covid lockdown? I agree with Scott Adams that this has set the progress of Black back 10 years. But doesn't take much to make people snap under the conditions we've been under.

I’m with you Pug. My wife and I just had that conversation. And we added hot weather to the mix. Pressure cooker times indeed.

Yes, in fact Scott Adams explicitly said on his podcast the other day that he thinks a big contributor to the riots and looting has been "pent-up energy" created by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

I tend to agree with this. As a matter of fact when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

All that was really needed was for someone to light a match to the powder keg and that's what happened. And then you have the media and liberal/leftist politicians standing by ready to fan the flames into a full scale conflagration.

[Dieter]

Am I the only one here that thinks part of the reason the rioting has gotten so out of hand is bc of the Covid lockdown? I agree with Scott Adams that this has set the progress of Black back 10 years. But doesn't take much to make people snap under the conditions we've been under.

I’m with you Pug. My wife and I just had that conversation. And we added hot weather to the mix. Pressure cooker times indeed.

Yes, in fact Scott Adams explicitly said on his podcast the other day that he thinks a big contributor to the riots and looting has been "pent-up energy" created by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

I tend to agree with this. As a matter of fact when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

All that was really needed was for someone to light a match to the powder keg and that's what happened. And then you have the media and liberal/leftist politicians standing by ready to fan the flames into a full scale conflagration.

Really. All the lefties fault. Trump is such an f'ing uniter that he has peaceful protests tear gassed for a BS church photo opp.

Threatening to use military to dominate protesters.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics ... index.html

Blaming it all on left wing agitators and not actually doing any investigation of right wrong agitators.

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

[Edit: who has been calling the press the enemy of the people for how long?]

[pp4me]

Am I the only one here that thinks part of the reason the rioting has gotten so out of hand is bc of the Covid lockdown? I agree with Scott Adams that this has set the progress of Black back 10 years. But doesn't take much to make people snap under the conditions we've been under.

I’m with you Pug. My wife and I just had that conversation. And we added hot weather to the mix. Pressure cooker times indeed.

Yes, in fact Scott Adams explicitly said on his podcast the other day that he thinks a big contributor to the riots and looting has been "pent-up energy" created by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

I tend to agree with this. As a matter of fact when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

All that was really needed was for someone to light a match to the powder keg and that's what happened. And then you have the media and liberal/leftist politicians standing by ready to fan the flames into a full scale conflagration.

Really. All the lefties fault. Trump is such an f'ing uniter that he has peaceful protests tear gassed for a BS church photo opp.

Threatening to use military to dominate protesters.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics ... index.html

Blaming it all on left wing agitators and not actually doing any investigation of right wrong agitators.

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

[Edit: who has been calling the press the enemy of the people for how long?]

You either missed my point or I'm not making it very well.

I didn't blame it all on left wing agitators. I blamed it on the Covid-19 lockdowns which I believed at the time would go down in history as a moment of temporary insanity, probably without parallel in America history. The economy was doing great, unemployment was at all an all time low, and there was real hope for a better life for a lot of people. And then one day you decide to put 40 million people out of work, mostly on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder, and crush whatever dreams they had for years to come. What could possibly go wrong with that?

It's not surprising that there are both left and right wing protesters. If you stopped and asked them I wonder what percentage would even know who George Floyd was.

As for the left wing media and politicians fanning the flames I stand by that. Because that's just what they do.

And as for Trump threatening to use the military, what is he supposed to do when all-out war has been declared on America?

[Tortoise]

...when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

Yeah, I thought the same thing when the lockdowns first started. But I thought that the rioting would be sparked by the lockdowns themselves, which wasn't the case. They ended up being sparked by a seemingly unrelated event. The lockdowns largely filled the powder keg and the George Flynn incident ignited it.

[flyingpylon]

Trump is such an f'ing uniter that he has peaceful protests tear gassed for a BS church photo opp.

This is false.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/uspp/6_2_2 ... onahan.htm

[pp4me]

...when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

Yeah, I thought the same thing when the lockdowns first started. But I thought that the rioting would be sparked by the lockdowns themselves, which wasn't the case. They ended up being sparked by a seemingly unrelated event. The lockdowns largely filled the powder keg and the George Flynn incident ignited it.

I just heard that protests were breaking out in Australia, France, and some other European country supposedly over the death of George Floyd. Go figure.

[dualstow]

As Glenn Lowry put it, "The truth hardly matters here."

https://youtu.be/2RMEiclpA7E

[Kriegsspiel]

Owning a gun has scant relevance to defending yourself against terrorists, burglars, or flying saucers. It’s about defending yourself against a police state that does not care for your well-being or your liberties.

Man arrested for holding a rifle while group of protesters advanced on him.

It appears he was part of a group of people defending a neighborhood from protesters/potential rioters. The article said someone from his group said something to the protesters. In the video you can see some of the protesters had to be physically restrained by other protesters from going after the defenders.

“On June 1, 2020, the Upland Police Department was monitoring a peaceful protest in their city. The police officers were notified by protestors of a potentially life-threatening incident. The officers immediately investigated the incident. Bracken was arrested by the Upland Police Department, and the case was forwarded to our office for filing consideration,” the district attorney’s office said. link

A protester who witnessed the incident said he felt “nothing but hate and racism.”

“We’re just here to peacefully protest and you don’t want to take anything further. You don’t know what these people are capable of,” the man, with his face covered by a black bandana, said.

LOL

The same crowd later threw rocks and bottles at police, who dispersed them with non-lethal rounds. We're now at DEFCLOWN 5

[Hal]

...when the lockdowns first started and I saw millions of people being put out of work I remember saying that I believed we were going to eventually start seeing rioting in the streets. For once, I guess my crystal ball worked pretty well.

Yeah, I thought the same thing when the lockdowns first started. But I thought that the rioting would be sparked by the lockdowns themselves, which wasn't the case. They ended up being sparked by a seemingly unrelated event. The lockdowns largely filled the powder keg and the George Flynn incident ignited it.

I just heard that protests were breaking out in Australia, France, and some other European country supposedly over the death of George Floyd. Go figure.

Any reason....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrjvCXq-LZY

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots

[shekels]

Project Veritas INFILTRATES ANTIFA: “Practice things like an eye gouge...injure someone's eyes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc12eBPuxwg

edit: correct link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxcSKvx-rB4

[Libertarian666]

Project Veritas INFILTRATES ANTIFA: “Practice things like an eye gouge...injure someone's eyes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc12eBPuxwg

But I thought Antifa wasn't even an organization? I'm so confused!

[Smith1776]

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