monomial wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 9:14 am It is the same anger that made Warren Buffet express concerns that pitchforks may be in America's future.

Don't let that Buffet nerdy style fool you, he is a red blooded man like all the others..

Missing link...

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop ... 427&sr=8-2

"The last days of colonialism taught America's revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America's cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other - an enemy.

"Today's armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit-which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixon's War on Drugs, Reagan's War on Poverty, Clinton's COPS program, the post-9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.

"In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians' ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society."

Big Daikon wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:47 pm

orichá wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:11 am There is no defense of the gross inequalities between opportunities in America that stem from race and congruent divides of socio-economic class. Own up to the facts: poor educations for blacks and systemic poverty; meanwhile, Caucasians have easy access to the Ivy Leagues, especially if mommy and daddy already went to Princeton before you. This is the first step towards understanding.

Then why are East Asians on average more successful than the white majority?

Uhhhm, this is a seemingly off-the-wall and irrelevant question, hmmm... But let me think...

"...why are East Asians on average more successful than the white majority?" ...Maybe because East Asians in America are forced to go to school and study hard by their insane, conservative parents..? That's a good scenario -- for achieving a career, becoming a productive worker as well as a successful consumer -- of course. But, these East Asian kids have no choice. Often, they study what they are told to study by their mom and dad. If their parents are well-to-do, as is the case of many Asian immigrants living in America, then it is even easier to excel: they only need to go to university, or let mommy and daddy fund their business start-up.

Asians in America, by the way, whether they are from the Indian Sub-continent, or from East Asia, tend to be more socially conservative than the wider Caucasian social spectrum. Like Latinos, many Asians are religious, or they own businesses and take higher education much more seriously. Caucasians comprise all classes and social types, with a much wider range of wealth to poverty, and Caucasians generally have quite a different growing-up experience with totally different social attitudes and mores than the majority of Asians: for example, in America you have more "liberals" and "extreme conservatives" among Caucasians than Asians of all types. Yes, many Asians are extremely conservative, too. In consequence, only a few Asian daughters in America are permitted to make their own life choices or inter-marry with guys who are not the same color or religion. That is quickly changing, thankfully. But, I would say that the only Asians who travel abroad from America belong, necessarily, to the middle to upper-middle class; maybe these traveling kids' are also the product of parents who are professionals as well as interracial couples, too... Anyway, the vast majority of Caucasian Americans never travel much further than Mexico. So, maybe that isn't important to this comparison.

If you are, on the other hand, trying to compare Asians in Asia to the average middle class Caucasian person, who is a product of the public education system in America, well, that's not an easy comparison to make; let's just say that the quality of public education in America is not very great: the students are not compelled to excel and the quality of their curriculum suffers as students show little interest in learning math or how to read novels and poetry. Asians in Asia, however, are compelled to learn by rote -- by memorization and copying -- and that does very little to stimulate original, independent thinking. It isn't until you uproot a young Asian and then place him or her in America that they enjoy a higher chance of really doing well, especially if they are exposed to the usual forceful discipline that their parents inflict upon them. How did they get to America in the first place? Most children of Asians in America who are doing well today often do so because their immigrant parents, who maybe did not even learn English very well, worked very hard at whatever they could, just so that they could help their kids go to university. (The Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese gangs who have free-loaded on the West coast of America for years represent only a small cross-section of East Asians in America, but I don't think we can include them in this discussion as they are not relevant to your query.)

There are all kinds of Asians in America, and right here in Asia, too --if that satisfies you. There are good and bad, hard workers and thieving louts everywhere you go. But there is no doubt that American Caucasians represent the widest cross-section of social extremes, while the American blacks are still pretty well boxed-in by systemic limitations on their social advancement: usually, blacks don't have the money or an education good enough to go to a better university; that is called the "cycle of class poverty." It is real. You see the same limitations put upon the First Nations in Canada, where I grew up -- they have long been kept out of sight and mind, on impoverished reservations with nothing to do. By bloodline, many or most of the aboriginal peoples of North America were once East Asians, too! Today, the East Asians of America are able to climb higher because of their upbringing and the fact that their parents may be well-off or, at least, hard-working disciplinarians...

Anyway, the upsetting thing for me is the growing numbers of people with fanatical opinions that they take for truth. So much nonsense in the world today, and I can't understand why people need to take opinions as facts and truths. Much better to study things statistically and figure out sensible solutions rather than prognosticate a lot of hogwash. But corporatty TV lobbies and Hollywood hoods wanna sell more guns and big gas-guzzling cars to help keep the people slaving for the system and totally oblivious to the richer thieves, the likes of Jamie Dimon, and the rest of the 1% working for finance and corporations, including hedge-fund brigands of yore. ...Don't forget what happened in 2008. Guess who got the free money then? This time around, during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump handed out cash "stimulus" to the oh-so needy corporations before he came up with "Treasury checks" for the average peon, hey? Did you wonder about that chronology? Fox sows more racial strife à la Trump, and helps a handful of rich men sell yet more guns to your unjustly terrified East Asian American comrades, too. CNN is partisan on the other extreme. What happened to just reporting the news? Add to all this inanity, Youtuber propagandists and other obsessive-compulsive fabulist and fantasist "vidiots" -- and we see that the war against reason and truth is being lost. It is a great waste of time trying to argue about all this rot. The whole American domestic political and the current global geopolitical situation is really pathetic -- a great handicap upon the achievement of unbiased intelligence and the genuine comprehension that we should be reaching for, instead. China is dictatorship of brainwashed hyper-nationalists, while America is crawling with morons. Every south-east Asian country, with the possible exception of Indonesia, at the moment, is a dictatorship, too. Look at rotten Thailand -- six years suffering under an ego-maniacal military dictator. Duterte in the Philippines, a braggart murderer. You want more? Watch more bad videos, brother, we'll get it for sure. I'd rather watch old reruns of "Star Trek" or "the getdown" or "narcos" or old Luis Buñuel movies from the 1930s and 40s...

Or maybe read a FREE book...

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2530-p ... 9a78cbc342

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-t ... 9a78cbc342

Big Daikon wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:47 pm Then why are East Asians on average more successful than the white majority?

bamboo

orichá wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 7:46 pm What happened to just reporting the news?

It is an anachronism. 2 problems.

1. Media corporations realized they can charge more for advertising during the news if they can characterize their audience rather than just having a general audience. It is much more economically viable vis-a-vis ad revenue to offer a biased politcal reality show that brings in a very particular demographic.

2. Viewers tend to gravitate towards biased sources that reinforce their beliefs. You can't increase your viewership vs. the biased sources except by becoming biased yourself.

Walter Kronkite and old-fashioned journalism is dead and buried. Just doesn't pay well enough. Insulated bubble news is the new normal and the only thing on offer anymore.

newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:15 am They bend with the wind, just like bamboo, and grow.

lol
network

I completely understand and share the outrage of people at the killing of George Floyd, and the violence that US police seem to perpetuate towards black citizens.

I also understand people wanting to protest about it, and where applicable raise any similar issues which might exist in their own countries, and I respect their right to protest.

I don’t however see the need for wall to wall media coverage of a BLM protest in the UK (any more than I would a white lives matter protest) and I also don’t believe that the violence or aggression perpetuated by a minority of those involved in the UK protests is justified by the events in America.

Make no mistake, Antifa, Anonymous and the like contain some of the country's most hateful and aggressive people (the other side of the same coin as the people they most oppose), who are before any particular cause first and foremost anti-establishment and pro-conflict and division. As are much of the modern media that they seem to work hand in hand with to negatively influence and undermine our society.

Whilst I am 100% in favour of the equality we have worked so hard to establish in the UK in the 21st century which as a country we can be so proud of, and opposed to racism and discrimination, I am therefore predisposed to opposing these groups (just as I am racists) who undoubtedly had some involvement in organising the protest marches we have seen in the UK’s cities over the weekend.

When they and others attack British police with no justification or logic whatsoever, and when the media is shoving it down my throat every time I turn on the tv or the internet, it is inevitable therefore that I will begin to view the marches negatively.

Of course black lives matter. Who the hell beyond the odd extremist nutcase thinks they don’t ? What is the point of this message in 2020 Britain ? What kind of justification for defacing war memorials and attacking the police is the spreading of such a completely obvious and universally accepted message ? None whatsoever.

Even if the marches were particularised as being anti police racism in the UK, there would seem to be no merit to such a cause. Prosecutions in England and Wales from arrests of people who identify as black are almost exactly proportionate to those of whites. Of those arrested, statistics show that a white person is MORE likely to die in custody in England and Wales than a black person.

In fact, it seems to have been a case of march first, think of the cause later: Windrush, a statute in Bristol, a guy who was found out on Monday to have died after being arrested last month, a tennis player saying that people confuse her for more famous black tennis players, a make up artist on Hollyoaks telling an actress that her hair was the same as the other black actresses. All of these have surfaced in the media SINCE the protests took place, as if they were somehow what the protests were about.

Perhaps it might not be too much longer before somebody involved stumbles upon the real issue relevant to black communities in the UK, which is that they suffer from a disproportionate amount of income poverty compared to other ethnic groups in the UK. Is the right way to try to establish how such disparity can be addressed, to run around London attacking the police ? Not in my view.

In fact this approach seems all the more peverse when there are so many people in the world who – unlike ANY people in the UK – are played unwinnable decks of cards in life and face genocide, slavery, a high likelihood of gang rape, child labour, honour killings, forced marriages. Yes, even in 2020 all of this is going on in huge numbers around the world. If it made the slightest bit of difference, these might be causes worth defacing statutes about and even throwing things at a horse.

People who face these unimaginable horrors around the world today would need no post-protest search for the reasons for their actions, if only they had a voice to protest against their oppression in the first place, such as we have seen with the Black Lives Matter (UK) protest.

And what would happen if I was to protest in London about violence against women in Cambodia, or child slavery in Vietnam ? Would it be broadcast wall to wall on every channel and every news page of the internet ? I somehow doubt it. People don’t care. It's not on their doorstep. And what's more the media doesn't care. How does a protest about such matters in Asia undermine the UK establishment ? It doesn’t, and that is what makes our media tick, not injustice, but scandal. Do you think that other countries around the world are constantly subjected to such subversivness and negativity from their press ? like hell. This is a 21st century UK phenomenon.

In fact, if anything it strikes me not that people in the UK think that black lives don’t matter, but rather that to some of the protestors, their right to destabilise and protest in some way about the UK and to vent their personal angst, is a more important cause than highlighting oppression and horror faced around the globe in third world countries.

It seems almost not in fact that black lives don’t matter to those not protesting, but that lives of people who are not in first world countries like they are themselves, don’t matter to those that are protesting.

By the way, I hugely respect Anthony Joshua and think he’s a fantastic human being, but what the hell was he doing reading out a speech telling people to support black owned businesses by boycotting other businesses ? In a sub-world where positive discrimination is in some ways acceptable, this might not seem racist, but if the message was the other way around would it be considered so ? Whilst the idea might be approaching a solution to the cause in the right way, the message needs some further consideration. The western world is so swamped in perpetual negativity and self-indulgence anyway, I think I’m past caring.

Irrespective, for the avoidance of any doubt, I think there might be one thing that everybody can agree on, and that's that BLACK LIVES MATTER.

[Admin Edit: Merged this post with 'Kicking off in America.']