T'berg glad your OK, no more heroics please, you're getting on old chap!

OK, to the issues related to the current unrest stateside, I was discussing it with my 16yr daughter yesterday when she told me her social media was awash with it and how disgusting it was. I said that it was and that any loss of life was sad, but she needed to take his and/or the police officers ethnicity out of the mix.

Then she needed to google and find out if the deceased was a fine upstanding pillar of the community. If not was his death a great loss to the world?

Thirdly that the riots weren't about 'standing up to racism' but were fundamentally bad people looking for an excuse to go rioting and looting, with a catchphrase of "One of the brothers got killed by the popo, I am so incensed I'm gonna get me that 55" flatscreen I've always wanted". If the victim in this latest case had been of the same ethnicity as the perpetrators would there have been this national outcry and unrest, it would have been no more unjust?

I'm sorry if anyone finds this insensitive, but to my defence I am a man (of colour) who works in a caring profession & also volunteers with ex offenders and am a retired magistrate , I just take the emotion out of things an look at them logically when working out solutions. The approach doesn't make me friends but then I AM almost always right

Stay safe everyone

 

Doesn't Trump use Syntech 10-W30 to get his marvelous orange glow?

 

Good point @SinF ! Which brand and rating of oil should we use to make the fastest getaway?

 

Dunno but I'd have thought you'd have been a supporter since he looks more like the Michelin man than most

 

who in hell does his hair ? Must be a wig lol a huge fat man making himself more richer running your country shame on you for voting him in we're are the snipers when you need them lol

 

Same celebrity stylist that does Boris's I'll bet!

 

George05,
Even in jest, your comment about the snipers is in extremely poor taste, but you knew that when you made it. And although I was a registered Democrat for 49 years (no longer as of about a month ago), shame on me for voting for Trump and I'll do it again this November.

Moderators, this is precisely why I don't go to off topic any longer, I started this thread but I think it should now be closed to further comments. It has outlived is usefullness.

 

Yes, this thread is deteriorating.
I was a registered Republican for about thirty years, and now I'm embarrassed by the debacle of Trump. Everything he does is wrong or corrupt. Oh well. I may still vote for a good GOP senator or Rep, but never for an incapable nincompoop like we have already as a 'leader'.
</Rant>
Yes, closing this thread would probably be beneficial.

 

I didn't think I was defending or condoning the looters. But merely saying view them for what they are, which is not the core issue. Outrage at public killing by state/city sanctioned police is the issue. What the administration an some others are attempting to do is make this the story. It isn't. I didn't say things will work themselves out. Things don't. But it is a law of science that things that cannot gone on in perpetuity do not. Had the Minneapolis police dept reacted differently we wouldn't be here. But they did not. I loved in that city for 6 years. The department had a regional reputation as a bunch of drunk cowboys on a long leash.
It appears things haven't changed in 20 years.
Your assertion is we either have bad police or no police is nonsense. And using the US military against US citizens is alarmingly close to a place I'm sure most would not want to go.It exactly why James Miller resigned today.
And I certainly wasn't arguing for anarchy. I was attempting to illustrate that events allow opportunities for unintended consequences, and when we act out of fear those consequences may be worse than the pain of randomized property damage.
Heavy hands and heavier boots did not liberate your parents. My family left three sons in Europe. One on Normandy, one in Italy and one in Germany. None were jack-booted gestapo or Mussolini's Black Shirts. They weren't bent on oppressing, but were boys determined to liberate.
I get more angered when I see Americans parading with **** symbolism, and I see red when they're classified as "nice people".

My distaste is with the rhetoric and the too-quick willingness to slip into third-world reaction. Militarizing criminal behavior as acts against the state or a ruling party is how the Reich rose to power.

I think your act was appropriate, I would probably have done the same. I was only trying to separate the chaff from the wheat. Soccer hooligans looting and terrorizing are certainly another such problem, but we don't lump the players and the game in with the problem, which is what's
being attempted here, so now it's your either for all police ( law and order dog whistle) or an enemy of the state (left-radicals dog whistle). Sums up as political rivals are attacking the country. Justification for military action. What's next martial law? Suspended elections?

 

I almost agree with you. Yes. Race is not a factor. NO. Whatever he was does not justify, rationalize and make right his killing. It's the excuse autocrats use to 'disappear" people. That, and your assumptive role as moral arbitrator of who has worth and who does not.

cheers

 

I read your statement above, a response to the OP, with great interest. But as you claimed that you are almost always right, this was not that time. I don't take offense to what you are saying, because it really sounds like you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to American culture and the continuing saga which is race in America. I too am a person of color, which means nothing over here. That you could be a minority from India, Thailand, China, Aboriginal means you are missing the one ingredient that would change your interaction with some police officers over here. You are not African-American. For the most part you Brits have been able to move past the institutional racism that affects the U.S. Yes you had some bigotry and prejudice practiced by some, but not the overt racism that was cast by the ruling power structure and placed into every facet of life. Maybe if you had been a person of color in South Africa you might understand better.

Your first mistake in giving advice was that you could not throw out the race of those involved. Notice I did not say ethnicity, that is something that may or may not play a role here. Race does. There have been several white people killed in police custody in America, but when you compare the statistics you will immediately see the disparities. I almost laughed when you told her to Google the suspect's past, like that would tell you about him as a person or even if he had a past conviction. You see in our judicial system, Mr. Floyd was accused of passing off the counterfeit $20 bill, but he is still innocent of that crime until proven in court. It is the exact opposite of your system, where the burden of proof falls on the accused. If the person killed and the cops had been of similar races, you are correct, his death still would have been unjust, but that fact that Mr. Floyd's death was not the first or the second or the third or the fourth, or....in a year that is only 6 months old and in the last five years hundreds of unarmed African-American men and women have been murdered under the guise of self-defense/officer was threatened. The rage could not be contained. The surprising part was that Black people were joined finally by White, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Indian, Native-Americans in support of the police being charged with a crime. They finally got to see for themselves the racial inequities used by the police. Did you tell your daughter to Google when the last time a British citizen was shot or choked to death by a constable while making a routine arrest with no weapon involved?

Lastly if you had bothered to read any of the news stories being reported about the riots and the looting, than you would be aware that most of that mayhem was not committed by the protestors. In fact several of the arrest for arson and break-ins showed that the people caught were from neo-****, criminal gangs, and the people who were not even associated with the protestors in many instances. The people that would come to protest at night were not the same people that were there in the afternoon, they just used the protest to rob, steal and cause destruction.

The first time I saw an Indian-American getting treated like an American Black person, the look on their face showed the shock and awe.

You should do more research before you comment on things you really know nothing about. You can have an opinion, but it should be based on something.

 

I left it here for the reason you gave in your original post:

I agree that those who wished to comment on your experience at the pharmacy have had opportunity to do so and that it has now outlived its usefulness.

THREAD CLOSED.

Graham