This is spreading fast , Much like the Arab thing a few years ago in the middle east . Glad i am in the uk

 

I can attest to that personally just today. On the way for a drive to the BR Parkway a couple of good-ole-boy red-necks tried to run me off the road. At first I thought they had just drifted across lanes but horn blowing seemed to excite them even more. They followed & made a couple more attempts as they managed to get close for a few miles.....of course their pickup was no match anyway.
BTW, the two racist fascists had their stars and bars in full display front and back!

 

Just the other day, some redneck in a beat-up rolling meth lab started harassing me at a stop light, yelling that I should have bought an American car and that a Camaro would woop my a**.

From watching the KTLA 5 live broadcast last night, it appears the mayor and the LAPD has finally gotten serious about this. It looked like the entire police force was playing wack-a-mole in Hollywood, Van Nuys, and Downtown but it seemed to be under control fairly early in the evening. Its strange to see these things happening live on TV at places and areas you're so familiar with. They looted the Gower Gulch Rite-Aid on Sunset where I used meet my drug dealer in the parking lot back when I was stupid kid!

 

Holy smokes.
I hate that for you. You know if I was driving behind you and witnessed that, you would be bailing me out of jail.
I dont know if its always going to be like this, but till people find work and the economy is rolling again, please be very defensive.
Its going to bring out the worst in people.

 

Just read on sky news that the National Guard are now deployed in 23 american states

 

If you poke around, you will find there have been Antifa attacks in the U.K. in the past.
It might not make a difference before long.
I could point to youtube videos of Antifa thuggery as recently as your last election.

To antifa, anyone not part of their communist agenda is a "fascist".
To misquote a former U.S. president, "either your are a communist, or you are a fascist."
If you are not a communist, and they are allowed to prosper, they will come for you.

George Orwell got to experience this first hand when he left the UK to a foriegn land as a volunteer to fight the fascists.
He personally witnessed the hell on earth of a May Day and his worldview and writings were changed forever.
This is not a US only movement or a US only problem.
Ultimately is a different sense of right and wrong that is very strongly felt that is their driving motivation.

What is needed most is a strengthend sense of community combined with a very real coming together to keep things clean.
There is a lot of misnformation from unsubstantiated suggestion and withheld information that has led to a lot of divides in the past few years.
I am thinking I might need to speak my mind more often with an aim to working out differences and smooth out those divides.
People fear those who they don't know.

The northwestern US is the one region I've never set foot in, only flown over.

I do hope for the opportunity to change that some day.

 

Our impotent Mayor Garcetti has handcuffed police for a week, a week of mayhem, looting, burning, and violence because he plans on running for President in 2024, and he's showing his base that he has LIBERAL cred. Talking about acting in a timely manner? The only reason he's finally allowed the Police and National Guard to step in and do their jobs is because he's getting pressure from donors because nice neighborhoods like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, etc. are being affected. Again, he sent police out a couple of weeks ago to arrest beachgoers for not wearing masks at the ocean but wouldn't allow Police to arrest looters, arsonists, and violence instigators. He's a gutless, confused politician, and his handling of these riots will come back to haunt him when he tries to run in the future.

 

You're not alone. We have to deal with the incompetent, gutless mayor of NYC, comrade De Blasio. My wife works in Manhattan and they're starting to talk about reopening her office building. She's terrified of commuting into the city. COVID and riots! It's the end of days.

 

See my Post #17, above, for the official portrait of Mayor de Blasio.

Free speech and the right to protest ends when looting begins. Elected officials who refuse to condemn looting and enforce the law condone criminal behavior, which does nothing but encourage more looting and crime. It's the beginning of open hunting season on all of us who are law abiding. Welcome to the United States of Anarchy.

Wake up, America. Don't reelect anyone who is an apologist for criminals. Without law and order there is no society and the winner will be the man with the biggest gun. That's why I gladly chose to serve my country - to protect our freedoms - and am appalled by today's un-American apologists.

Violonce is not the solution to our civil rights problem. It just makes it worse.

 

With all of his happening and the background of highly contagious sars-cov-2 virus the stock market is going up. Helicopter money is flooding the market. It's very difficult to see and navigate through all the smoke-and-mirrors. This can go any number of ways--this is America on fire. China and Russia are laughing...It is also a sign the US has resigned as world leaders. What a shame it has come to this.

 

Tberg, g;ad you're OK and not just another victim. Societies are complex things, born of mutual interest and predictable behaviors. Some of the comments here presume what ails us now could be cured
by heavy hands and heavier boots. Perhaps. But history is full of lessons to be learned, and apparently relearned. Yes, the communist states have faltered and failed, but so have most Fascist regimes.
Mussolini, the father of Fascism was hung by his own people, and yet if we look closely, some are playing by the same book. Those who study history worry less about Macy's losing some off-the-rack
designer-licensed wear, and more about are we reliving the 30's. Demonized intellectuals. The press is the enemy of the state. And now the citizens are military targets. This isn't new, though the level of
intensity is foreign to us as a nation state. The closest we've ever got here is during the early 20th Century, and the birth of anarchists and the first domestic bombing. The molasses massacre in Boston
was blamed on anarchists because people would believe it. It took years of court battles for the truth to finally emerge. Corporate malfeasance.

But back to the issue at hand. This is not about looting, riots or hooligans running amok. The nation witnessed a city police officer kill a man on a city street in plain view while being recorded. We watched
his fellow officers do nothing to stop or hinder the killing. We learned they were complicit in the false report submitted. Forget the looters, think about a country where police feel free to kill at will. This just
happened to be a white cop and black victim. It happens mostly to black males, but often to black females, and frequently to white males. Add the rhetoric of "far-left" and "liberal scumbags" "fake news" etc.,
and the grip of Fascism, a natural progression from Uber-nationalism, is being tightened around our necks (Kevin Passmore is a good place to start on this before diving into the deep end of the pool).

The rage here shouldn't be about the difficulties of policing during civil unrest. Especially from the same folks who probably praise the protesters in Hong Kong. The rage should be against a institution that puts
its members corrupt behavior against the greater good. Remember. This all started because four cops murdered a guy in public over an alleged $20 counterfeit bill. Tomorrow it'll be because they tried to form a
union (yes I know, it happened in the 30's, though it was Ford's "private" police force that did the killing), and left unchecked we'll have our own version of the "Black Shirts" patrolling our banana republic streets.

 

"...I don't understand why the government isn't doing more to arrest the people causing these crimes to restore order..."

I think that's what the riots are about. What does it take to get the government to stop the killing? Here in sunny South Florida, the local forces are juiced-up on HGH, aggressive as a
beaten pit bull and still as corrupt as they were in the cocaine infused 80's. You can't have law and order only for some. Everyone seems to know how bad our brave cops are, we witnessed
that during one of the school shootings when the sheriff ran the other way, and yet nothing can change. These are crimes. You can't cherry-pick your bad guys to make a point.

 

So budhaboy, is your solution to let the violence and looting just play itself out since you don't believe that "heavy hands and heavier boots" will do it (your words not mine). Anarchy will not improve anyone's life, not black lives, not white lives, no one's life. Your eloquent response is simply nonsense. Why bother to have police departments or a military at all. Things will just work themselves out. Sorry to disagree with you publicly, but the looting, the violence, the fires, the destruction are destroying society and ruining lives, and it won't magically go away by itself. It's the reason societies have universally set up institutions to deal with these kinds of situations.

My parents were "guests" of Hitler's Concentration Camps during WWII. "Heavy hands and heavier boots" liberated them and the rest of the world from that tyranny, not fanciful dreams of a utopian society cleansing itself. The killing of Mr. Floyd was tragic and certainly unjustified but no justification for the unraveling of society. Should I have just cheered the looters on and looked the other way? This pharmacy is a family owned small business, should they have lost everything to assuage the rioters?

 

Failure to condemn is to condone and encourage. It's like Groundhog Day whenever a white man kills a black man with protests followed by looting. Why doesn't this happen when a black man kills a white man? The script never changes. The black looters have a field day of looting and burning while the police simply watch and let them do it, mainly because they're destroying their own communities. It's so sad and counterproductive. I know this is not what the vast majority of the African-American community wants.

Without sufficient consequences for violent behavior, it will never stop. Long live Groundhog Day deja vu! CNN can save money and just rerun the old news and no one will know the difference.

Has anything really changed since the '60's? Haters of all stripes still teach their children to hate. Is National Brotherhood Week dead?


Tom Lehrer - a true American genius:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

 

I don't know what particular group is doing the majority of the looting, however, in the case of where I confronted them at the pharmacy, it was a "rainbow coalition." There were whites, blacks, hispanics and males and females. Looters are criminals, I don't classify them by race or gender.

 

Looters and arsonists are not protesters. they are opportunistic goons making patsies out of our various governments and legitimate protesters and they need to be stopped now before they do any more damage

 

No truer words have been spoken. Barney Fife on amphetamines. I had one put a gun to my temple as I was about to start my car, in the parking lot of Opa. His words were 'crank that car and I will shoot'. The restaurant owner came out pleaded with him to calm down. Remember that immigrant* police officer who shot the woman in Bocca couple years back. Guess how many lost consciousness from the knee to the neck by that same police dept. 44.

I dont know why people are looking at just the violence from a very small percentage (that happens back home after a ball game) and not looking at the volume of outcry, around the country no less. And the disgusting crime of a citizen being killed by those paid to protect him, not one, but all the others who watched.

*point being we are importing police officers...that's how low the bar is.

 

I couldn't agree more on any one word!
This whole thing didn't start with just one overt systemic racial killing by those we expect to "protect & serve".
If you can't fully condemn racism then you must surely be racist! That applies not just the the ranks of law enforcement but in each of our own lives.
As to looting and hooligans, I too agree they need to be dealt with, but at this point, one can only speculate who they are. It is going to take honest level headed authorities to sort that out in the end.
Personally, the issue of race aside, my greatest concern is how national politics is turning us into the Fascist police state our parents fought to defeat so many years ago. Too many of us seem to be OK with that direction, either because it suites our current level of anger and frustration or we embrace that ideology.

 

One thing people should keep in mind when the National Guard is deployed is if your property is destroyed while they are called, insurance may have to pay for damage. I found this out from a friend in NYC whose insurer said to get his stuff out ASAP of his now shuddered business as they will not pay a claim if the NG is deployed. I wonder if this is partly DeBlasio's reason not have them deployed in the City?

 

Statistically, those killed by police is very slim. There are 800,000 law enforcement officers in the US: https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/law-enforcement-facts

Under 1,000 were killed by police (all races & for whatever the reason) last year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...olice-by-race/