A lot of Leftist-Yank-twitter seems to be openly calling for armed revolt now, to the point I suspect a lot of them are Russian as it's really not a smart move for them, tactically. They don't have the arms for it.

>>27147

Cowardice isn't a good enough reason to suffer tyranny.

Why do so many of them have their shields upside down?

>>27149
These are not highly trained men.

>>27149
From their perspective if they look down it'll read correctly.

>>27146
>alt-right militia

A 17 year old, out of state nutter more like. Granted he is a product of his time and upbringing, but "militia" is a strong word in this context.

>>27148
I'm sure some are sincere, real Americans but I don't think it's cowardice to focus on building your strength to the point that you have a fighting chance before you engage in violence. Though obviously they're already dealing with violence aimed at them.
Don't mistake me, I'm not claiming to be a prophet or anything and I am rooting for them, I just don't fancy their chances right now. Enough Americans and their media are already poisoned against them, they're on the back-foot and it wouldn't at all surprise me to discover that it's just an intentional plot to create an excuse to violently suppress all dissent there.

>>27152
The distance from Antioch in Illinois to Kenosha in Wisconsin is about 15 miles. Granted it's a different state but it'll be the nearest city to where he lives.

Militia may not be the right word, but I wasn't sure what else you'd call a group of armed civilians patrolling the area.

I'm fully expecting him to get away with it on self defence. One of the people shot dead had hit him over the head with a skateboard and I don't know if the other was the one pointing the handgun at him.

>>27150
The kid is though. He goes to the ground, clears a jam, fires and executes a tactical stand up in the space of about 15 seconds while under attack and remained calm, he has been drilled by a police officer or a soldier for years to have that level of proficiency.

The fact he is 17 makes it doubly impressive.

>>27154
>I'm fully expecting him to get away with it on self defence. One of the people shot dead had hit him over the head with a skateboard and I don't know if the other was the one pointing the handgun at him.

From watching a bit more footage, the first death occurred outside a car dealership. The gunman was there to protect it from rioters, who have been filmed en route shouting about how they were going to torch it, and when he was charged at he shot someone in the head. He's shown afterwards in the footage on the phone to the emergency services before fleeing.

https://twitter.com/livesmattershow/status/1298558424213594118

When he was running away he was set upon and he shot a guy who attacked him with a skateboard. Another guy thought his semi-automatic had jammed so approached him with a pistol, which led to him getting shot in the arm.

https://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/igwaeb/video_shots_fired_in_kenosha_on_this_tuesday_night/

From what I can gather everyone involved was a monumental idiot.

>>27156
Why were they set on torching a car dealership?

That kid just painted a lifelong target on himself.

That kid just painted a lifelong target on himself.

>>27157
Lots of small businesses have been targeted, including several car dealerships.

https://www.fox6now.com/news/kenosha-dealership-owner-says-violent-protests-caused-1-5m-in-damage-50-cars-torched

https://www.foxnews.com/us/kenosha-protest-riot-fires-car-dealership

>>27156
Why do people keep leaning in to this "he was protecting property" thing like it's a justification for murder? Then you frame the second murder as though it was self defense in an unrelated incident and not someone trying to disarm him for already having murdered?

That's a rhetorical question, I know why.

>>27161
The laws are actually quite clear in those states that have it - Texas for instance, you can protect your own property - the minute you step over the threshold, I can pretty much shoot you - but that doesn't carry over to protecting everyone elses property. Of course, there will be many who will defend him.

It will be interesting to see who else gets prosecuted - he isn't actually old enough to have that rifle, for a start - that is on either the parents/adults who bought the rifle, or the gun dealer that sold him it - they'll be part of the charges. Additionally, when he crossed state lines, this become a federal, not a local offence. I'm sure he'll get off.

What an awful business.

>>27161
>Why do people keep leaning in to this "he was protecting property" thing like it's a justification for murder

The so-called militia were there under the guise of protecting property, a lot of businesses were looted or badly damaged, which is why it is being mentioned. Nobody is using that as justification for killing someone.

>Then you frame the second murder as though it was self defense in an unrelated incident and not someone trying to disarm him for already having murdered?

The two killings were separate incidents, although one obviously led to the other. He was fleeing back to where he knew there were police officers when he tripped over and was pounced upon by protestors. If you're being hit over the head by a skateboard and have someone else drawing a gun on you I bet you'd find it difficult to know whether they were trying to kill you or simply disarm you.

Everyone involved is a colossal idiot whose hot-headed behaviour put them in a situation well outside of their depth. Being critical of both sides does not mean you are supportive of the gunman.

>>27164

>Being critical of both sides does not mean you are supportive of the gunman.
Okay mate.

Do you think as the lad who did the shooting walked, hands up, through the police lines, presumably expecting to get nicked, the penny dropped and he thought "oh, I get it, this is white privilege. This definitely isn't on, I should be arrested by now"?

>>27165
Sorry, did that not fit into your Good vs Evil worldview?

>>27167
You're continuing to equivocate between some people who were murdered and the person who murdered them as though they're both equally culpable.

>>27168
They were all convicted felons, apart from the kid. The one with the pistol who got shot in the arm isn't legally allowed to own a firearm, yet was carrying a pistol. One of them was a sex offender, can't remember which.

They're hardly innocent bystanders.

>>27169

>They were all convicted felons, apart from the kid

The fact you think that is somehow a relevant factor really demonstrates your abhorrent nature.

>>27170

Yeah, how dare FASCISTLAD besmirch the good names of those poor blameless crims.

>>27169
They're all innocent of murder, apart from the kid. Which is really the only thing that's relevant in this context, despite >>27171 pretending it's about "besmirching" their names.

>>27168>>27172
>murder

Manslaughter at most. Recent events have been a real shot in the arm for the Supreme Court of the Internet.

>>27169
>all convicted felons
>innocent bystanders

Oh come the fuck on. That is a quite ridiculous argument to make.

>>27165
It's quite simple, lad.

The gunman was a monumental twat.

The people he shot were monumental twats. You've got to be pretty thick to charge at and attempt to attack someone with an assault rifle; the first victim was bragging about how he was going to beat militia members up and steal their weapons. I believe he's also the one who was filmed repeatedly using the n-word, which is very strange for a white man to do at a BLM demonstration.

It's not a difficult concept. People can be twats regardless of which "side" they're supposedly on.

>>27175
This. This entire situation is born from the increasing efforts directed at creating division. The stupidest lap it up and run with it, across the board. Just see how politicised this is and how it's being used to create further division. The goal is to have them attacking eachother, and it's been working well so far.

>>27176
>the increasing efforts directed at creating division

Ah yes. If only there was an explanation for it.

>>27177
It's mental that it's essentially confirmed, but nobody cares. Maybe it's too late for them.

>>27176
Lucky for you to be such a wise centrist able to do nothing at all except create a division between yourself and everyone else.

>>27179

Russia is trying to start a civil war in the US, as part of a broader campaign to destabilise NATO. Most of the BLM protests and right-wing counter-protests are being orchestrated by Russian intelligence. This is not a conspiracy theory, but a verifiable fact. The people out rioting and the people shooting AR-15s at them are just pawns in a political game. If you side with either faction, you're having your strings pulled by Putin. The only way to win is not to play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

>>27179
Oh dear, lad..

>>27179
If you look down you'll see yourself firmly grasping the wrong end of the stick.

>>27180
You don't win if you don't play, you just bulldozed by the people who do. Putin pulling strings doesn't mean black lives don't matter.

This new thread is a lot less intelligent than the previous one.

>>27184
It's moved straight into /pol/think of "if you criticise x that must mean you support y" and "any actions done in support of the side I'm on are right."

>>27183
>Putin pulling strings doesn't mean black lives don't matter.

Literally nobody said this.

>>27186
Oh I see, so they do matter but "the only way to win is not to play" so not to support or do anything against about it.

>>27187
>not to support or do anything against about it

Nobody said this either.

>>27188
Someone said
>The only way to win is not to play.
I'm not sure in what convenient way you're choosing to interpret that.

>>27170
So is everyone who discusses this from a perspective that doesn't laser align with your worldview abhorrent now? Fuck sake. They were part of a violent dissident mob which was committing criminal damage, assaulting people and they were all armed. The guy with the pistol had a warrant out for his arrest for rape as well as being a felon. The kid crossed state lines and is too young to carry that weapon, and he'll be punished accordingly, but you need to understand that is the only reason this is even contentious. If he was 18 and in his home state, he wouldn't even be charged with a felony.

Stop being a histrionic idiot, attacking people on an imageboard for disagreeing with your worldview and applying your own subjective moral compass to the pissing US, you'll drive yourself mental.

>>27189
And what about that says to you that black lives don't matter? You're making things up in your head that nobody has said and getting upset about them.

>>27191
Oh I see, so they do matter but "the only way to win is not to play" so not to support or do anything against about it.

>>27192
I think you're stuck in a loop, lad. We can't help you.

>>27192

I think he's suggesting that the system is set up to allow for minor outbursts of rebellion like this, that raging against the machine is useless if that's what the machine feeds on.

>>27194

Okay, but rather than suggesting anything that would actually help he's just throwing up his hands and saying fuck it. Which one could equally argue is exactly what "the machine" wants you to do.

>>27195
>he's just throwing up his hands and saying fuck it.

It really doesn't read like this to me, he could well be supporting/helping in other ways, how would you know? Why would he have to state that he is? Why is the onus on him to start pitching different ways to support?

His post was on the well documented tactics Russia has been using to create division, not about "how can we support black lives matters more effectively?". In no way does it read to me that "black lives don't matter", it just seems like you've got some serious hangups that you're projecting onto someone elses post here.

>>27196

Again, I'm not sure how you're choosing to interpret "the only way to win is not to play" as the words of someone who is actually involved in anything.

>>27197
We can't help you here, lad. Your inability to see this any other way is your problem. Personally I took it as talking about the politicisation of civil movements in the US, they are being gamed from the get go, which would mean it's time to start thinking about alternative tactics to work outside of this/rise above it. This is commentary as an aside from BLM, as it relates to any social movements in the states. It's not one or the other, and if you don't support one you support the other, mate..

>>27198

Thanks, I accept that explanation.

>A couple of protesters/rioters have been killed after they were driven by the police towards an alt-right militia, with this planned in advance

I keep trying to parse this and drawing blanks. Are you saying the two separate incidents of protesters being targeted by non-LEO individuals constitute a pre-meditated militia? Are you saying the police conspired with these individuals prior to the attacks? I can't find enough on reliable news sites to figure it out.

>>27195
The only way to fix this is stop letting the US police militarise, have them be trained by civilian contractors in appropriate restraint and conflict resolution and stop sending them to Israel to get trained to shoot anyone browner than them just incase.

The US police kill more white people than black people, but white people are sleep walking on this issue like it's a black issue and it isn't. As stated, Russia has succeeded in making this a "black issue" so white people have no inventive to change the system because they've been told they're privileged and the riots, again stoked by Russian interest in creating a Civil war in the US, have polarised the populace further. The US is circling the failed state drain.

>>27200

Here's a member of the militia saying the police told him they were going to drive the protesters towards them:
https://twitter.com/sicksadgirI/status/1298713121637326849
Here's an article discussing the pre-meditation of the militia:
https://apnews.com/64ff4770fe1f1daca001b2fbaae0933b

>>27202

And this one which is terrible quality but seems accurately described:
https://twitter.com/berniebromanny/status/1298509857134465025

I wish the bloody Americans would give it a rest already. I'm getting fucking sick of hearing about every time they shoot a black person. Can they not just fucking leave it now.

I know that's a very white privilege thing to say but I don't give a fuck, I don't live in America and no matter how much of a screaming twitter liberal you are, you can't convince me we share their issues. I can't be fucking arsed enduring this steaming shit-heap of a current affairs topic warmed up like yesterday's Chinese again, for fuck's sake.

It really can't be difficult to just not shoot people. Can't they just put out a nationwide order for pigs to just not shoot people. They have tasers and tear gas and rubber bullets and shit. What exactly is America's problem beyond the fact they all have cholesterol clogging up their brains and multi-generational mercury/fluoride poisoning rendering the majority of the population borderline lobotomised.

>>27204
I think when you're next in the office you should say this, verbatim, to your co-workers.

>>27201

>The only way to fix this is stop letting the US police militarise, have them be trained by civilian contractors in appropriate restraint and conflict resolution and stop sending them to Israel to get trained to shoot anyone browner than them just incase.

And the possible routes to achieve that point directly to the systemic dysfunction of the American political system. The US has nearly 18,000 different police forces at federal, state and municipal level. There is no federal agency responsible for police standards or oversight and the federal government has very limited ability to intervene in local policing - the Department of Justice can sue a police force, but they can't take control over it. Many parts of the US have elected police chiefs, sheriffs and judges, which can easily create a nepotistic quagmire of corruption, particularly in smaller jurisdictions where fines and civil forfeitures represent a large proportion of local government funding.

A lot of people have inferred a causal link between a racist president and racist policing, but bad policing is a long-standing and barely tractable problem in the US. Police brutality wasn't meaningfully better or worse under Obama, because the president really doesn't have much power to reform the police.

>>27205

If I worked in an office, I might understand the point you're trying to make. But among my current set of misfits and weirdos it wouldn't even be the most controversial thing someone has said this week.

>>27206
Let's also remember it's only been coming to light more now that everybody has a camera in their pocket.

>A lot of people have inferred a causal link between a racist president and racist policing

Unfortunately it's more to do with the fact that the FBI warned the police that they were getting infiltrated with white supremacists since 2006 and nothing was done about it. It's been left unchecked and this is the result.

>>27208

It's a much older problem, particularly in the south; the racism that exists in policing is largely reflective of the racism that exists in the wider community.

>>27204
> Can't they just put out a nationwide order for pigs to just not shoot people.
If the police don't shoot, they might get shot.

>>27203
That's mentioned in a time line the New York Times have cobbled together:

>About 15 minutes before the first shooting, police officers drive past Mr. Rittenhouse, and the other armed civilians who claim to be protecting the dealership, and offer water out of appreciation.

What I've found most telling about the whole sequence of events is this:

>In most of the footage The Times has reviewed from before the shootings, Mr. Rittenhouse is around this area. He also offers medical assistance to protesters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting-video.html

In a lot of the interviews I've seen with the militia they were quite supportive of the protestors, they just didn't agree with the looting and destruction of property.

I don't think the killer was a bad person or went out looking for a fight, reflected in him offering medical assistance to the protestors; he was simply a dumb naive kid caught up in a movement who expected that standing there with an assault rifle would be enough to deter those looking for trouble. We all know that was a grave miscalculation and the end result is what happens when you've got a scared child in a situation that has escalated well out of their control who is armed with a fucking assault rifle. In other words, he's human.

>>27211
A risk our own police manage fine. Seen a raid team disarm and restrain 2 people in a drug bust in England somewhere with only armour and tasers, yet they managed to not get anyone killed or get killed themselves even though it was later revealed that both were armed.

Seppo police are fucking nancy boys.

>>27213

One big difference - America is absolutely lousy with guns. If a British police officer suspects that someone might have a gun, they'll call in an armed response unit and leave them to it. Here, pulling over a driver who has a pistol in their glove box is a rare and serious incident; in the US, it's a daily occurrence. British police officers are shot at a rate of about two per decade, while American police officers are shot at a rate of about one a week. If you do get shot in a less-populated area (particularly at night), there's a real possibility that the nearest officer might be half an hour away on blue lights.

Policing in America is uniquely dysfunctional for a variety of reasons, but the solutions that work here won't necessarily work there. Seppo police are broadly incompetent and trigger-happy, but they need a different set of skills to British police.

>>27214
Their "Warrior Training" is part of the problem. The best officers in the US are usually the ones who are ex-military, because their rules of engagement are stricter than the polices, where they just escalate everything.

>>27214

That's all well and good, these arguments have been gone over many times before. And I'm not even disputing them, there's truth in a lot of what you say- But it fails to address one question. Do they need to shoot people?

Obviously the line of logic is that if the baddies have guns, the goodies need to have guns, and that's doubly obvious in a place where you find guns laying around like we'd find a quid down the side of the sofa cushions. But is it actually a logically correct, helpful, assumption? Do the pigs actually have to shoot anyone, even if cunts are trying to shoot them?

What is wrong with non-lethal alternatives? Why are they unsuitable and shooting people dead is the only answer? I'm not asking these questions as smart-arsed rhetorical devices, if you have an answer please give me them. But I have a feeling it's less to do with the efficacy of non-lethal weaponry, and everything to do with an entrenched culture and lack of willingness to change it, because if I were a Yank copper with a moustache and sunglasses, I'd be about as willing to give up my gun as have my penis cut off too.

I think American policing, if anything, is under-funded. Calls to de-fund the police are naive, short sighted, and counterproductive. But it's also true to say that despite all these cultural idiosyncrasies, the American copper could learn a lot from the more civilised, developed countries of the world.

>>27216
>I think American policing, if anything, is under-funded.
Really? This chart is a bit meaningless without some non-American cities to compare it to but it seems a bit of a stretch.

>>27217

Considering how miniscule Yank public spending is in general, yeah, that's probably still a less than adequate funding level. Fire departments do next to nothing but installing fire alarms these days and they're not getting a much smaller cut. I mean... Parks? Parks only cost 1/4 of what the entire police force of Portland costs?

There's also the fact American cities/states are mad huge. You need a lot of coppers to cover the kind of territory they have there, and as other lad alludes to, if the nearest back up is 30 minutes away a copper backed into a corner is probably much more prone to act combatively.

>>27218
I suppose a European city would have other public services; housing and such that would change the proportions a lot.

>>27215
A great example would be the PSNI, who at the height of the troubles were getting shot at constantly and still had a lower body count than the US police. A lot of PSNI officers, even to this day, are ex armed forces.

So it's not the military training per se that makes yank cops mental, it's whatever they got taught during their IDF lead training that makes them like that. I suspect they are being trained to treat everyone browner than them as if they were a Palestinian teenager.

The IDF can claim all the like that they never taught the US police to kneel on people's necks or whatever, but we have the video evidence of the police using those techniques and they trained them.

>>27217

The US employs 35% fewer police per capita than the world average.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/underpoliced-and-overprisoned-revisited.html

>>27216

>What is wrong with non-lethal alternatives? Why are they unsuitable and shooting people dead is the only answer?

The sheer ubiquity of handguns in the US means that routine encounters can go very wrong very quickly. This makes British-style de-escalation less useful in a wide range of circumstances, because things can go from perfectly calm to a gunfight in a couple of seconds. American cops do need to learn those de-escalation techniques (particularly because they deal with an absurdly large number of mental health related call-outs), but it's less broadly useful to them.

Tasers are the only reasonable substitute for guns in most of the situations where they're used in the US, but they aren't especially reliable. You only get one shot before you have to reload, you only have a range of about 20 feet and an accurate shot is often ineffective because the probes don't always penetrate through clothing. The latest generation of Taser improves some of these issues, but a) I still wouldn't necessarily trust my life to it and b) most US police forces just can't afford to upgrade.

The most important problem in US policing is poor recruitment and training, but that's very difficult to systematically address for reasons I outlined here >>27206.

>>27220

>A great example would be the PSNI, who at the height of the troubles were getting shot at constantly and still had a lower body count than the US police.

There are some very big differences. Northern Ireland presented the police with a relatively small number of armed criminals/daft militant wogs/freedom fighters with a generally unarmed population, whereas guns are totally ubiquitous in many US states. Northern Ireland is geographically very compact which makes it far easier to draw in other police resources. Ultimately it was the British Army who did most of the dirty work - we can't praise the RUC without acknowledging that the British government was using internment and assassination to pre-emptively deal with threats.

Isn't one of the major issues with the police in certain jurisdictions in America the lack of accountability? The police force will always attract bullies with tough guy fantasies, similar to how financial services will always attract fraudsters, but the ability to act with impunity can turn them into monsters.

>>27222
The accountability is definitely one issue - but the militarisation of so many federal forces is the other. Many of these police departments got their kit and vehicles direct/free from the federal government under a "recycling" program - I mean, what the fuck are they doing with Mine-Resistant vehicles?

As an example, I found it very amusing (but sinister) that earlier in the week Steve Bannon was arrested on a boat - that was done by a SWAT team from the US Postal Inspection Service - again, what the actual fuck? Postman Pat armed to the teeth?

>>27227

Don't fuck with the USPIS.

Americans are all complete mentaloids. Mine the Atlantic to defend European sanity.

>>27221

>The sheer ubiquity of handguns in the US means that routine encounters can go very wrong very quickly. This makes British-style de-escalation less useful in a wide range of circumstances, because things can go from perfectly calm to a gunfight in a couple of seconds.

That still doesn't answer the question I posed. You only have a gunfight if someone opens fire, and the coppers are shooting back. If they don't return fire it's not a gunfight. Why do the coppers have to shoot back? Can't they just retreat and chuck a few flashbang/tear gas grenades while they wait for backup?

Tasers can let you down and they only work on a lightly dressed assailant from close range, that's fair enough. But what about those riot police rubber bullets? Salt loaded buckshot? Those things put anyone on the floor. This is what I'm trying to get at-Just because someone has a gun and is prepared to use it, doesn't mean the only way of solving that situation is shooting them dead with your own gun.

There are alternative options and they are being blindly dismissed because people can't get their head out of this action movie paradigm where the only way to protect oneself from a shooter is shooting them. I'm not trying to sound like a smarmy smart arse and I'm certainly not devout anti-gun type, I do like me some guns. I wish we had them here. But I think the Yanks have a really fucked up mentality where they still treat everyday life as though it's the old West, and getting over the inherent psychology of conflict and standing one's ground would go a lot further to helping them, as a society, than any kind of gun laws or restrictions or political interference with racial demographics etc.

Of course, you're right that a large part of it is simply training. US police are trained to shoot people dead as the first resort, not the last. But that's what I'm getting at, it has to be a drastic reversal to de-program those police officers into reaching for their guns as the very last option, and in turn I think that could even cause a ripple effect in the way American criminals use firearms, and indeed American civilians. It's all a very deep rooted psychological counter-offensive thing I reckon, not defensive.

This seams relevant to context

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-too-smart-to-be-a-cop/5420630

If you are 'too smart' you are disqualified from being a cop in the United States. Regardless of the soft institutional racism of theses organisations being historically slave patrols, there is a hard institutionl requirement for them not to have deductive reasoning skills.

>>27180
The presumption that Russia is hyper-competent at implementing these plans seems misplaced. The odds of the US descending into civil war aren't too high all things considered, while the potential political advantages that come from the current instability could be quite high indeed for one side or another in US politics. All it takes is for Russia to be slightly incompetent for their plans to be usurped and the whole thing to end with President Sanders-Skeleton in 2036.
(Also, the last US protest I'm seeing in that article which is assigned to the Russian-IRA is from 2017.)

>>27242
The report was published in 2017, it's not going to have updated intelligence.

>>27242

You are wrong, because you haven't understood the Russian agenda properly. You assume clear end goal, when there is no clear end goal. The purpose is not achieve any one position the point is to keep all debate and decent flowing constantly no matter how minor and to exaggerate it to position of ineptitude. You never need to start a fire, in fact it works better if you don't you just have to fan the flames


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE


I'm sure Russia never expected to get Trump into the White House they just wanted the political landscape to look like shit show, but the fact that they did is double win.

I don't understand why anyone here cares. 400 people get shot every day in the US.

>>27250
What is empathy?

>>27251
It's a finite resource, and best reserved for people you know.

>>27250

Because if you don't constantly virtue signal how much of a tragedy it is that racism still exists you're a thought criminal.

>>27251
Almost certainly not what you think it is.

>>27252
>>27254
What a bunch of miserable buggers. Anyway you missed the joke.

>>27252
>It's a finite resource
No it isn't. Dunbar's number may have an upper capacity limit but it's fluid, people can be added and removed as need be to suit any given moment. You could be up to your maximum and yet unless you're just angry and bitter at life, you'd still stop to help out a child in need.

>>27256
But it's cool and edgy to say, innit.

>>27256

Without Googling it, who is the current president of D.R. Congo? What happened this week in Niamey, Niger? Ten children were killed this morning in an incident in the north-west of Uganda - how did they die?

We're now constantly being told that black lives matter, but we're also constantly directed to only pay attention to the 40 million black people in America or the two million black people in Britain, while studiously ignoring the 1.2 billion black people in Africa.

Empathy may or may not be a finite resource (the science would certainly suggest that it is), but there is most definitely a limit on how much stuff we can usefully pay attention to.

We have a cultural belief that paying attention to the news is a civic duty, but it's called the "news" not the "importants". Outlets like the BBC do a remarkably good job of avoiding political bias, but they have a fundamental bias towards stories that are a) anomalous, b) fit into a constructed narrative about current trends and c) are easy to report on.

Those biases create a popular understanding of the world that is hopelessly wrong, not because we've been told and believed facts that are incorrect, but because we have constructed a picture of the world based on unrepresentative samples. We are fed a constant stream of not particularly relevant information with very limited context and believe that we're becoming more informed about the world, when in fact the opposite is happening:

>>27258
I competely agree, but this is a thread about US news/politics involving BLM and a discussion about how it's been influenced, as well as addressing the other socio-economic issues related to it all. Everything on this thread is on topic, isn't it? A fair few posts in this have been very informative as well, so I'm not quite sure what the other lad was on about when he said he's surprised people care. Some people in this thread were just looking for more clarity on the core issues too. Otherwise couldn't we just dismiss everything with "Why do you care? Do you even know what's going on in the congo?"

>>27258
The fuck are you talking about? Are you genuinely confused why Black Lives Matter doesn't have a branch in the Congo?

>>27229

>That still doesn't answer the question I posed. You only have a gunfight if someone opens fire, and the coppers are shooting back. If they don't return fire it's not a gunfight. Why do the coppers have to shoot back? Can't they just retreat and chuck a few flashbang/tear gas grenades while they wait for backup?

American police undoubtedly shoot people when there were other options, they're undoubtedly trained to be needlessly trigger-happy, but they also face the kind of situations where your only realistic options are to shoot back or get shot. Better training can substantially reduce the number of officer-involved shootings, but they won't eliminate them entirely.

Someone who has decided to start shooting at you is unlikely to stop firing if you run away, nor are they likely to just stand there looking confused because you've run off.

If you start shooting at the police in the UK, you won't be taken down by a rubber bullet or pepper spray - you will be shot with live ammunition until you are very definitely dead. British people very rarely shoot at police officers, they rarely have guns and those that do are rarely stupid enough to point them at other people with guns, but Americans do it with alarming regularity. That's not an easy problem to fix.

>>27260

No, I'm saying that we should try and step back from whatever the heated argument of the week is and try and look at the bigger picture. I'm saying that if you do genuinely believe that black lives matter, you should take some time to learn about the continent where the overwhelming majority of black people live and reflect on whether the issues there are more pressing than the issues that the news is telling you to care about. I'm saying that the news has decided that Nigel Farage deserves more airtime than an entire continent, but thanks to the internet we don't have to be complicit in that process.

The really important stuff in the world changes over a period of decades rather than days, so a relatively small shift from "news" to "importants" has a vastly disproportionate effect on your understanding of the world.

>>27262
You're a concern troll, and I'm not going to take you seriously.

>>27263
The only reason you care about this one shooting out of tens of thousands is you've been told to. This isn't about BLM, it's a social media proxy war between Trump and anti Trumpites. Why it should concern any Brit is beyond me, yet its top news on the BBC every day.

>>27264
Addendum: fuck, BBC news has the US election as higher priority listing than UK news on their own bloody website.

We are obsessed with that fetid nation.

>>27262

There's a particular strain of left-leaning liberal, these days, who think they are anti-racist, anti-imperialist progressives, when in reality they are at best very lukewarm centrists. The whole narrative surrounding BLM and America's racial tension is a strange kind of doublethink that seeks to somehow eliminate racism without meaningfully affecting any of the structural systems that actually cause, perpetuate and subject black people to poverty and oppression.

You won't get through to these people trying to logically explain why their attention is misdirected or their priorities skewed. Just go look at the rabidly pro-Biden lads in the US election thread. To their mind, you have to pick a side, and trying to retain an independent, rational perspective on the world makes you as good as the actual fascists on the other side.

>>27261

>Someone who has decided to start shooting at you is unlikely to stop firing if you run away, nor are they likely to just stand there looking confused because you've run off.

Are you sure? This is what I'm trying to hypothesise, really. I think that assumption is flawed.

I mean. If I was a criminal, the very last thing I would want to do is kill a cop. If I was shooting at a police officer it would be a result of having absolutely nothing left to lose. If shooting at them made them appear to back off, I'd try to use that opportunity to leg it- The last thing I'd want if I was already in deep water would be a charge for killing a cop.

>If you start shooting at the police in the UK, you won't be taken down by a rubber bullet or pepper spray - you will be shot with live ammunition until you are very definitely dead.

Indeed, but you have to start shooting first. You're not liable to be riddled with bullet holes just for reaching towards your glove box.

>British people very rarely shoot at police officers, they rarely have guns and those that do are rarely stupid enough to point them at other people with guns, but Americans do it with alarming regularity. That's not an easy problem to fix.

That's exactly what I mean, really. It's a sort of mutually assured destruction mentality, and at some stage someone has to break that cycle.

Broadly speaking, it's impossible to eliminate shootings entirely 100%, because there will always be some kind of drastic situation that does actually warrant it at some point. But America needs a drastic clamp down. Training is all well and good, but with Yank police it's like training monkeys, not people.

They have to give them all piddly .22 handguns with 5 round magazines or something. Some kind of disincentive. Training alone won't do it, they just need forcefully reprimanding from using their guns in anything but the direst of need.

>>27281
I see you got that image from a rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk about "critique of identity politics from a Marxist perspective" i.e. white men upset that socialism isn't all about them anymore.

>>27284

More like socialists upset that socialism isn't about socialism any more.

>>27281
>Just go look at the rabidly pro-Biden lads in the US election thread.

You've misunderstood why people are rabid. Biden could be deeply flawed and for all I know he is. The point is, that he isn't a Russian asset that has done exactly everything a Russian asset looking to Sabotage America whilst leaving enough space for people to pretend there is doubt.

Could you imagine any other American president in history entertaining conspiracy theories about people attempting to plant tracking devices and there for deserve to get brained by the police. We all know that is bullshit but we have accepted that as something the president can do now.

All Biden has to do is actually tell the truth and not operate on naked self-interest and he is a better choice that will repair the US.

>>27287

>a Russian asset that has done exactly everything a Russian asset looking to Sabotage America whilst leaving enough space for people to pretend there is doubt

You are overestimating Trump. He's not some cunning KGB FSB best-and-brightest sleeper asset, he is very honestly thicker than pig shit as a person and only has unflinching presumption to belie the fact that he has been in over his head from the day he took office. I'm sure even the FSB has standards and has no place for an overweening senile cunt like Trump on their payroll.

That doesn't mean the Russians couldn't have contributed to Trump's election win in 2016. They very likely did, because anything that has the potential to destabilise the U.S. internally as a country is conducive to Russia's own geostrategic goals. They probably supported, even financed scores of Internet trolls and fake news outlets that made audacious claims and spread lies and half truths.

But it's worth remembering that the U.S. has been doing near enough the same the world over for well over 100 years. They have not only supported regime critics or bankrolled armed rebel factions, but they have also invaded countries simply because they didn't like the guy who was in power.

What goes around comes around, and my sympathies are limited if the Russians actually made inroads into American domestic politics like that. Just imagine if it came to light that the U.S. covertly supported the BNP with guns and manpower in an attempt to overthrow the Tory government. That's the kind of treatment that they've given many second- and third world shithole countries over the years.

>>27371

The Russians just wanted to destabilise the US political system. How better to achieve that than to get an amoral dunce into the highest office? The fact that he is in over is head is precisely why the FSB chose him - they can trust him to be absolutely useless, absolutely shameless and too vain to ever suspect that he's being used. In all likelihood, Trump genuinely believes that Putin is just a pal who wanted to help The Greatest Businessman In American History to Make America Great Again.

>>27373

Gives new meaning to the words "useful idiot".

Without intentionally sounding like a crazy person: I don't see why we should oppose the destabilization of the US political system just because the Russians want it too. America hasn't had a healthy political system in decades and while it would be a bugger if the whole thing collapsed into a massive civil war, if it just lead to the collapse of one of the political parties or at the least the formation of a Seventh party system the odds are acceptable that we'd live in a much better world for it.

Maybe because despite everything, I don't think the Russians are behind this so much as they're playing their cards well while America's stuck in a trap that it set up for itself. My view is that if Russia cheated Trump into office in 2016, it was because the US political system itself set up a situation where it was possible for them to do so. Russia couldn't have cheated the 2016 election in Trump's favour if Trump had never been the nominee of a major party, something that could've been avoided absent the craziness of the Republican base, the Democrats actively trying to elevate his profile and positions in the hopes that he'd pull the Republicans away from the center ground, and much legitimate resentment against the US political class, and it's going to take more than a hard line on Russia to make sure this kind of thing doesn't keep happening.

Here's a cute little point you're all missing in the frenzy of paranoia: Russia is completely irrelevant.

Christ there's some Trump Derangement Syndrome in this thread.

Trump 2020 just like Boris 2019. Keep digging that far left politik hole komrad!

>>27376
They don't have to be incredibly competent super destabilisers, they just need to fan the flames which they are doing well all over the Anglosphere. It's in Russia and China's interest to destabilise the US because it weakens NATO.

Russia is still one of the largest nuclear powers on the planet, whereas we rent ours from America. They are more relevant than we are.

>>27377
Literally 3 posts in the last ten have even discussed him at any length at all, but who am I to look a useful strawman in the mouth.

>>27382

Putin is ex-KGB. Not FSB, KGB. He was at the pointy end of the Cold War. He has a mindset and a set of skills that are almost extinct in the west, but are still just as effective as they ever were. The Russian economy is completely shagged at the moment, but since when has that ever stopped the Russians from being a colossal pain in the arse?

>>27385
>He has a mindset and a set of skills that are almost extinct in the west

Are you seriously claiming that we don't fuck about in people's countries?

>>27386

I'm claiming that post-perestroika, we've lost our instincts for the dark arts of intelligence and counter-intelligence. We saw the bread queues in Moscow and concluded that we had won the cold war and needed to give it no more thought. Post-9/11, the intelligence community in the west totally shifted their attention from geopolitical threats to militant daft woggery. Most of the people who can remember what it was like to butt heads with a savvy nation-state operator have long since retired.

One person was shot and killed in downtown Portland amid clashes between supporters of President Donald Trump and counter-protesters on Saturday night during a Trump 2020 Cruise Rally that started earlier in the afternoon.

According to images posted by Getty photographer Nathan Howard, as well as reports by New York Times journalist Mike Baker, the man who died at the scene was a white man wearing cargo shorts, gloves, leg-strap saddle bags and a hat with the logo of Patriot Prayer, a local conservative group led by activist Joey Gibson.

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/478365-386651-man-with-patriot-prayer-hat-shot-dead-at-portland-protest

I guess shooting people at protests is a thing now.

>>27388

It's America. Their murder rate is nine times higher than ours, so it's pretty much a statistical inevitability that someone will get killed at a large enough event.

>>27385

>He has a mindset and a set of skills that are almost extinct in the west, but are still just as effective as they ever were

Do you think the CIA is any different? CIA and KGB were more or less evenly matched during the Cold War, both of them engaged in destabilisation operations in the enemy's country, and the CIA has the added benefit of continuity since the Cold War, i.e. it was not disbanded and reorganised like the Russian secret service. A lot of the CIA's senior top brass came up during the Cold War and have found it pretty easy to revert to Cold War ways of thinking since the Ukraine crisis, and they are able to apply the skills they learned in the mid-80s at the last height of the Cold War.

>>27389
In the past week we've had a Trump supporting kid blasting BLM protestors with an assault rifle and a Trump supporter attacking counter-protesters with paintball and mace getting shot dead by them.

America seems to be in a very precarious position where shooting demonstrators with a different position to your own becomes the norm, with both sides using this as justification to go to protests armed to the teeth.

>>27390

This is what we have to keep in mind in the modern era- Whichever side of the media narrative you support, you have to keep in mind one of them is the CIA's, one of them is the KGB's, and between them is whatever China's intelligence agency wants you to think. When you try to pick apart the pieces and assemble the truth you start to get called a tinfoil hatter by members of either tribe looking to shame you into falling in line with their dogma.

America are the baddies, let's be honest.

>>27392

>Whichever side of the media narrative you support, you have to keep in mind one of them is the CIA's, one of them is the KGB's

Much of the British media were especially pro-Western during the Cold War, and the Americans made sure of that by exerting their diplomatic influence both on the BBC and independent media outlets. After all, as Airstrip One, we had to be kept in line. Much of what became known as the "special relationship" between the UK and the U.S. was based on the necessity of preventing public rejection of U.S. military presence on our soil. When in reality, we had painted a target on ourselves by letting the Americans station their long-range bombers here. As a NATO member, we probably would have been bombed to shreds either way by the Soviets in a global nuclear war, but it didn't help that American military installations about doubled the number of strategic nuclear targets in Britain.

>>27390

The CIA operate autonomously from the US government and have their own agenda. Their interests are only sometimes aligned and mainly operate through a quid-pro-quo - the CIA does the government's dirty work in a deniable manner and the US government turns a blind eye to whatever the CIA are doing of their own initiative. The CIA didn't do a great deal of direct confrontation with the USSR - their primary focus during the Cold War was counterinsurgency and subversion in peripheral and non-aligned states.

For all practical purposes, the Russian state apparatus is the FSB and vice-versa. The American need to keep up appearances means that their political and intelligence systems are far less integrated, with no-one really in charge. Putin has no qualms about being directly implicated in the dirtiest of dirty business, which makes Russia a far more co-ordinated actor.

>>27393

We were the first target on the list because of RAF Fylingdales. If you want to nuke the Yanks, you need to take out Fylingdales and Clear first.

>>27394

Russian politics has always tended to be more crude, the last example being that Putin flat out annexed Crimea to ensure that his Black Sea Fleet was not going to be at risk of being evicted from a newly pro-Western Ukraine. If there had been an anti-American revolution in a country where the U.S. maintains considerable military installations, then the Americans probably would have instigated plethoras of covert operations to destabilise the new government. They would have thrown all their resources at undoing or mitigating that revolution. But they would not have declared the area surrounding the military installations new U.S. territory.

>>27393
I'm still upset that we didn't copy the French example in the cold war. Still Western aligned, but with the theoretical capability to stand back and let the superpowers vaporise themselves (or just thumb their nose at US policy) thanks to a genuinely independent (that is, made in France) nuclear deterrent and armed forces largely outside NATO's integrated command structure.
Meanwhile it's difficult to imagine practical circumstances where Britain would do much more than send a strongly worded letter to the US if we had disagreements with their policy. More than most countries we seem determined to sacrifice our national interest on the altar of US national interest to preserve a "special relationship" that we don't seem to actually get very much out of.

>>27397

Many conservative politicians still see us as the colonial power that they drove off American soil with our tails between our legs. It's doubtful that they will ever actually agree to requests by the British government that go against American exceptionalism. There are enough fucktards in American politics still today that would jump at the chance to remind us that we no longer rule them.

It's like when you tell somebody that they can ask anything of you, as long as that anything is that you whip out your dick so they can suck it some more.

>>27396

>But they would not have declared the area surrounding the military installations new U.S. territory.

They would love to, but in Crimea the Russians had the advantage of pro-Russian sentiment among the people. I can't think of anywhere in the world besides the US itself that fosters genuine pro-US sentiment.

>>27397

Much of post-war UK foreign policy seems to come down to the idea that the Empire died, but out of it's ashes was born NATO, which for all intents and purposes does and acheives the same thing- With the distinct advantage that the Yanks shoulder most of the bill.

I mean, it doesn't sound so shit when you put it that way, it just feels a lot of the time like the memo never made it as far as people like Thatcher or Blair, who were determined instead to make us into a client state, more or less.

>>27409
>Thatcher or Blair, who were determined instead to make us into a client state
To what end?

>>27409

>Much of post-war UK foreign policy seems to come down to the idea that the Empire died, but out of it's ashes was born NATO, which for all intents and purposes does and acheives the same thing- With the distinct advantage that the Yanks shoulder most of the bill.

Kind of sounds like a pretty shit sale and lease back agreement.


>it just feels a lot of the time like the memo never made it as far as people like Thatcher or Blair, who were determined instead to make us into a client state

Thatcher was the first PM since WWII who had genuine imperial aspirations.

My suspicion with Blair has long been that the CIA had a file on him, full of compromising secret information that they dangled over his head to keep him in line. Which meant that even against a pitifully weak U.S. President like Dubya, Blair's back was against the wall and he was forced to play ball. Don't be fooled by George W. Bush's demeanour which was a bit like your slightly dim country hick uncle. He was installed as a useful idiot, and as a mouthpiece of ruthless decepticon circles of power that pretty much got a free pass to push their vision of American ethnocentrism on the rest of the world.

>>27410

Britain destroyed itself by declaring war on germany those two times, we have been airstrip one AND a client of germany (may as well rub more salt) ever since.

Kenosha killer Kyle Rittenhouse recorded fighting female.

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1299847372185403392

>>27421
What is his problem? Jesus.

How is he still walking around free?

>>27428
I can't qwhite put my finger on it.

>>27429
I'm getting a bit sick of this Twitter 'joke' despite being in agreement with the sentiment, please stop.

>>27428
I'm sure I read he has a few coppers in his family. I know he was in the Seppo version of the police cadets.

>>27429

You know, funnily enough I doubt I'd be getting away with it as effortlessly as he is, if it were me, and I'm as white as they come.

The reductionism of this whole thing is becoming quite tiresome.

>>27434
>if it were me,

Wonder why that would be.

>>27435

I won't code switch for you m8. #northernlivesmatter

>>27436
>#northernlivesmatter

It makes you wonder if policing differs in the North. Obviously London is its own dystopian hell but are you more likely to be nicked in Sunderland than Bristol?

>>27388
The killer in this incident, a member of antifa, has been shot dead by police when they've gone to arrest him as he allegedly drew a gun on them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/michael-reinoehl-arrest-portland-shooting.html

>>27459
>“There’s blood on your hands. You murdered Michael Reinoehl,” someone had posted in the street outside a law enforcement building. “Michael was murdered,” said another posting.

Glad to see the "rules for thee, not for me" mentality is alive and well in white middle-class America. In an interview prior to his attempted arrest, he says he acted within the law (self defense of a friend) but then actively evaded and aggravated not just police but federal agents leading to his death.

>>27467
Moments before the shooting someone says "we got one right here, we got a couple right here" but it's disputed whether that is Trump supporters hunting Antifa or the other way around. There's a cloud of mace and then the shooting happens.

https://twitter.com/zerosum24/status/1299938822915006464

Thousands of people have complained to Ofcom after Diversity did a BLM inspired dance routine on Britain's Got Talent where they re-enacted the death of George Floyd. It does seem a bit crass.

>>27563

They should have re-enacted Mark Duggan getting shot while vaulting over a barrier. Why is it always Seppo things?

>>27565
>Why is it always Seppo things?

That's one of the things that always irks me, trying to transfer American social issues over here. The internet has definitely accelerated the issue; the other week black Americans and white British people who blindly follow them got their knickers in a twist on Twitter over Adele dressing up for Notting Hill Carnival, accusing her of cultural appropriation, whilst black people from London thought it was great and defended her.

>>27566

America has such an egotism and a low concept of different social environments it talks about its problems in over generalised terms. And thick people either can't distinguish the difference, or find it convenient to believe it applies to them when it is beneficial.

>>27565
>>27566

Every time I bring this up I get grilled saying that septic issues are our issues, and whilst this is true to a limited extent, there is a definite cultural difference and there needs to be a different approach to them.

Americans are the fucking worst; why are we importing their culture blindly? Can't we blindly import the culture of somewhere that isn't a shithole capitalist dystopia?

>>27583
I think with many Seppos it simply doesn't even enter their head that people in other countries think differently to them and have different social norms; they're so insular that America is the default setting in which all of the world should be viewed.

It doesn't help that they have it regularly drummed into them that America is the best place in the world so even if they were aware this they'd view other cultures as inferior, dirty and third world. I have been unironically asked by Seppos whether we travel by horse and cart in England and about our Sharia no go zones.

>>27586

American exceptionalism has a lot to answer for. The cruellest part of it is how their ongoing social and economic unravelling is going to plunge many of them into the kind of world they were wholly unprepared for, because they have simply taken it for granted their entire lives that USA #1 and that nothing bad can possibly happen in their modern, first world country. Such is their hubris that the only thing they've ever seen as an existential threat is Russia's nuclear arsenal, something devastating enough that it would wipe out civillisation on Earth as we know it.

I've heard it argued that 9/11 was the kind of culture shock that fundamentally changes the character of a country. It made ordinary Americans wake up from the dream that their country was different, invincible, untouchable. The 21st century has just seen that fantasy evaporate faster and faster by the day.

>>27589
Do you reckon 9/11 played a large part in where we are now?

I know conspiracy theories aren't new but "9/11 was an inside job" was the first one to have gained a substantial amount of traction in quite some time. I wouldn't be surprised if the truther movement was the catalyst for everything becoming so polarised as people become more deeply entrenched in their beliefs and cherry pick information that backs this up whilst disregarding information that doesn't.

>>27590

It coincided with the mainstreaming of the internet. Windows XP had just launched, broadband was starting to become widely available, free dial-up was widespread and Google was starting to become a household name.

In 1999 the internet was a weird hobby for nerds. By 2001 the cool kids were flirting on MSN and downloading Eminem songs on Limewire.

God, I'm so old.

>>27593
>By 2001 the cool kids were flirting on MSN and downloading Eminem songs on Limewire.

That was only among young people. I don't think it took off with adults, by which I mean middle aged people and beyond, until they all had smart phones and were on Facebook.

Also


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh_j9xrwUb0

>>27283
>Indeed, but you have to start shooting first. You're not liable to be riddled with bullet holes just for reaching towards your glove box.

No, if in the UK and in front of an armed officer someone has a gun they will be shot before they start shooting assuming clear line of shot no bystanders etc

>>27590

It's probably the single most important event in living memory, but it's hard to say how directly it's responsible for the current state of things.

I don't put much weight in conspiracy theories usually, but in this case the truth is more or less irrelevant. Something definitely doesn't add up with the "official" story, but what really matters is that the levels of public scepticism and mistrust in the government are probably the highest they've ever been, and Yanks are known for being hostile to authority to begin with. Don't tread on me and all that.

It wouldn't be stretching it to say the chain of events post-9/11 has indirectly led us to the situation of the Trump presidency and such. I still believe Trump was elected mainly out of anti-establishment sentiment, not any particular faith in his MAGA, Build The Wall slogans- Or at least, he wouldn't have won without it. Furthermore this is what I think the Democrats are still underestimating, and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

I remember reading a good article on some trendy leftist news site - I can never remember the one, frustratingly, only that it had a very brash sense of design - about the influence of right-wing grifters in US politics.
Basically the gist of it was that even in the Reagan years, there were people pushing absolute crank ideas on the American right, not because they believed them and not even really because they hated the Democrats and wanted to win, but simply because it was a great way to make a buck. There was a good line about lists of names and addresses of aged US rightists being one of the most valuable commodities with these people because these people were very easy to manipulate into giving you money. Because you're marketing a product rather than pushing politics, there's no reason to retain any connection to reality. Say that Dukakis is a satanist, it doesn't matter if it backfires on Bush: If the Republicans lose that will just send the people on your list into a frenzy and make them even easier to wring money out of.
It dovetails pretty well with your Alex Jones types. Lizards are running the world - but they won't be able to read your mind if you buy Brainforce!

>>27596
A fun line of alternate history is that Britain would've remained in the EU but for 9/11. It rests on a lot of assumptions, but it's fun to say "9/11 caused Brexit" and then run through this sequence of events: On 9/11 Blair was going to give a speech to the TUC pushing for his Euro referendum. That alone isn't essential, but without the sudden turn to focusing on foreign policy caused by 9/11, he would've had the time to face down Brown and put a referendum on the Euro to the public. If it was defeated, which it almost certainly would be, it would release some of the anti-EU pressure that had built up over the years - or at least frighten Cameron out of calling a vote later. Intersecting with this is the fact that much of the Cummings bunch originally started their planning in preparation for winning a referendum on the Euro, with much of the same themes as in the 2016 vote. (I swear one slogan was "Keep the pound, Keep control.")

>>27597
You also see the grifter sort of thing here. The likes of Tommy Robinson and Britain First are always begging for donations and being a loudmouth like Katie Hopkins or Piers Morgan can be quite a lucrative career even if you don't really believe a word of it.

>>27598
>>27597

These grifters are every bit as much a part of the "left", or what constitutes it in today's warped political landscape. That's where most of the controversial excesses of identity politics come from. That woman with her White Fragility book is a prime example- It isn't a political ideology, it's a managerial ideology designed to be sold pre-packaged to HR types and diversity consultants. There's no authentic interest in reversing the material hardship of minorities, it's all just empty bluster to circulate cash in the echelons of upper middle class and PMC busy-bodies.

>>27599
There certainly does seem to be a bit of a gravy train about it. Rachel Boyle, who was in the news earlier in the year for calling Liam Fox a white privileged male on Question Time, is a lecturer on race and ethnicity at Edge Hill University and Kehinde Andrews, who regularly spouts absolute bollocks in the Guardian and other media outlets, is a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University (not to be confused with the University of Birmingham - this was formerly Birmingham Poly).

It seems that it's in their best interests to regularly perpetuate nonsense in order to keep their careers going.

>>27600

Not otherlad, but it makes sense to me that such nonsense views also have a much easier time finding platforms than any genuinely redistributive arguments. The right are happy for the left to be portrayed as disingenuous and identity obsessed, while the left are just happy to be airing any vaguely "progressive" views at all, with out without the awareness it's performative.

>>27602

With or without*

>>27598
There are plenty of people like that though on the right - see the Milo Yiannopoulous history in recent years for another cast-iron example. He was specifically trying to commercialise that kind of outrage using social media; it was interesting so read that he has claimed since getting "cancelled" from most of the platforms that he can't make a living anymore.

Same for people like Alex Jones, Prison Planet or dear old David Icke - there is a rich seam of right-wing lunatic that consumes this kind of media who can be weaponised/commercialised. I'm quite sure equivalents exist on the left.

>>27563
Over 10,000 people have complained to Ofcom now, making it the second most complained about TV moment of the past 10 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54099894

>>27603
Alright Bono.

>>27604
Alex Jones is an interesting case as he's stated in a court of law that he is an entertainer putting on a character. It put an interesting spin on his scene in Waking Life.

I think it's common knowledge now that shock jocks have taken over the world. It started on the right which found a tool to generate revenue for radio shows (and eventually political power) but has easily been adopted by the left's structures of ideological purism. Dan Carlin did an overview of how this came about in his last show owing to the practicalities of radio shows needed short and explosive opinions for people getting in and out of cars.

>>27625
Ofcom really missed a trick in not having a premium rate line for complaints. It would be a sin tax on curtain twitchers with revenue put towards new risky programming.

>>27628

>Alex Jones is an interesting case as he's stated in a court of law that he is an entertainer putting on a character.

You have to put that in context he was in the middle of a custody battle. And he was trying to convince the Judge he wasn't completely fucking bonkers so he wouldn't lose access to his children. That doesn't mean he was putting on a character and the judge seemed to think he wasn't.

>>27628>>27629
I think it's common for celebrities and media personalities to claim this.

>The breakfast TV presenter Lorraine Kelly is performing the role “of a friendly, chatty and fun personality” when she appears on ITV each morning and not simply appearing as herself, a tax tribunal judge has ruled.

>The presenter of the magazine show Lorraine “presents a persona of herself”, Judge Jennifer Dean ruled, and as such can be described as a “theatrical artist”, meaning payments to an agent were allowed as a tax deductible expense.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/20/lorraine-kelly-theatrical-artist-tax-tribunal-judge-rules

Managed to dodge a bill of £1.2million in tax and NI with that ruling.

>>27630
That's ridiculous, why is this bullshit allowed?

>>27630

I would assume the 1.2 million is her total tax not the deductable expense.

>>27631

Are you suggesting tax deductable expenses shouldn't exist?

>>27630
>>27629

I've always suspected its an act, frankly. The thing is it's an act where you can't let it drop or you have betrayed the whole thing, like professional wrestling. You have to stick to it so religiously that it might as well be real.

People are easily confused when they're presenters or what have you using their real name, but I mean, it's pretty naive not to think they're putting on a front. For an extreme example, look at the recently revealed disconnect between Ellen Degeneres' persona and her actual personality. I always knew there's no way anyone can be that sickeningly positive in real life.

My faith in the human species might be misplaced for someone so jaded and misanthropic but I think Alex Jones is a lot more intelligent than you'd have to be to seriously be Alex Jones. I would probably also say the same thing about Katie Hopkins, except that she might have allowed to mask to consume her- She has stepped over the line of what you're allowed to say that you're not allowed to say a few too many times at the risk of actual career damage.

To contrast this, I would say David Icke is entirely earnest and means everything he says.

>>27631

Even if it wasn't allowed, all we would see is TV presenters changing their names very subtly and saying it's a character.

>>27634

A lot of things fall into place when you realise that practically everyone in the public eye is an attention-seeking narcissist. Public speaking is consistently rated as one of the most anxiety-inducing experiences, so someone who voluntarily chooses it as a career is almost by definition psychologically abnormal.

Our politicians are weirdos for essentially the same reason that stand-up comedians are weirdos - most people wouldn't put themselves through the ordeal of being booed off stage or pilloried in the tabloids. The people who are willing to endure that experience have an extreme need for validation that overwhelms the natural fear of rejection.

>>27634

I frankly don't see how you could be the person in real life that you are on the telly. By and large TV panelists are a lot of fun but if they behaved that way outside of a dinner party in real life they would be insufferable. You wouldn't be able to have an adult conversation with them they would be just saying stupid things.

I don't want to spoil the magic for anyone, but if they were trying to win the quiz shows they were on they would be acting completely differently, they think it is all over would be just as dull as a question of sport. It is a performance, where the line is between that and them as real people probably varies from person to person.

>>27634
I reckon Icke has been playing a very long, very committed game. One day he will reveal himself as a master trickster, and thank his cultists for their money before fucking off to Thailand.

That or he's with MI5.

>>27638

My money is on a coup d'etat of the Isle of Wight.

>>27636
That's much too simplistic. Successful politicians are just like any actor or athlete, they are very good at lying to themselves and dealing with inconsistency whether that be to lead the faith, never show weakness or being loyal to the degree that up becomes down. It's what we're made for as social animals after all.

The road to (good) public notoriety requires decades of hard graft for little reward that necessitates zealotry. I can't imagine a narcissist enjoys door knocking or would hire press officers to speak for them. It's not a rational calculation for these careers but one where you have to lie to yourself about the pyramid scheme as a means to survive and convince others (nobody elects a loser). As a result all criticism is rationalised and they always act in good faith because the alternative would be an outwardly weak leader or someone who is going to prison.

I wouldn't call it narcissism, the rank and file party members usually join for good reason - certainly not the money. Then they become swivel eyed loons or otherwise will end up disheartened and go work a proper job.

Or to put it simply: Who in their right fucking mind goes to work without playing an act? Sounds like a liar or someone who otherwise lacks self-awareness. A shit manager flinches and stutters, a good one projects confidence even though they are always the least informed in the room. That's the game.

>>27636
I wonder how many of them subscribe to my preferred toxic blend of narcissism with self loathing and a loathing of percieved narcissism in others. (It's one thing to be a narcissistic, it's another to let anyone catch on by expressing any sense of self worth whatsoever...)
I suspect it's a fair few, especially for backbench MP types who're a strange mix of public celebrity and total nonentity.

>>27638
I don't know if anyone saw those programmes the BBC did on the Troubles last year, but apparently it turned out almost everyone on all sides was a spy, so it wouldn't surprise me if Icke was an intelligence liability asset.

>>27640

Anyone who has the talent and drive to become an MP could earn more money, do more good in the world and get a lot less shit in a different job. The only real upside is the status of being an MP and the occasional glimpse of fame/notoriety. It takes a very particular sort of person to think "yes, I will take this awful job where everyone hates me".

>>27645
I thought the advantages of being an MP were getting your snout in the trough and making connections that can set you up for life? I've known a few local councillors and many of them are full of their own self importance.

>>27647>>27647
Lad I know from school became a Parish Council member for the Lib Dems at the last election. He's gone from a coke fiend to thinking he's Donald Trump. Had to laugh because he posted on one of the local Facebook pages and threw a fit because nobody knew who he was.

>>27647

There are plenty of jobs where you can stick your snout in the trough without any real risk of being humiliated on Newsnight. Amoral bastards can make a lot more money with a lot less grief in the arms trade or the marketing department of a tobacco company or the shadier end of the financial services industry, but that doesn't offer the ego hit of politics.

>>27648
I used to be in a local Facebook group, Mirfield Matters, and one of the town councillors was a right little brat on there, frequently acting like a petulant child even though he must have been pushing 40. I'm fairly certain he got the role through his mum, who used to be the mayor, and I believe she encouraged him to stand down because he was embarrassing her. The group was changed to private from public because people in the nearby Dewsbury group kept sharing posts taking the piss out of him for doing things like boasting about how he called the police about ungritted roads.

>Two officers have been shot as thousands of people protest in the US city of Louisville after a grand jury decided no-one would be charged with the death of Breonna Taylor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54275346

Here we go again.

>>27959
>Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old woman, was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove on March 13, 2020.

>The officers entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, executing a search warrant. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a gun at the officers he believed to be intruders, who fired over 20 shots in turn. Taylor was shot five times, according to her death certificate.

>The Louisville police claimed that none of the officers were wearing body cameras, as all three were plainclothes narcotics officers.

Okay... Maybe they got a point this time. What are people meant to do if people with guns just kick down your door?

>>27964

>What are people meant to do if people with guns just kick down your door?

Especially in the US, where people are encouraged to buy guns for exactly this sort of thing.

>>27964

The case very much hinges on whether they shouted "police, nobody move" before booting the door down. Some yanks are mad cunts who'll start a gunfight with three cops, some yank cops are utterly gormless bastards.

>>28003
There seems to be other cases where this sort of thing happens. The chap who shot the police has had all his charges dropped. He even called the police and shouted that armed men shot his girlfriend and are invading his home.

So it appears that they may have not shouted police, but nobody knows since they elected to go in with no bodycam, and in plain clothes. It just seems a bit suspicious. It also doesn't help that the state this happened in has stand your ground laws. I don't know what they were thinking.

>>28003
It makes very little difference. There's nothing to stop a gang of home invaders from shouting the exact same thing.

>>28003
Consensus among the witnesses is that they didn't do anything to identify themselves between bashing the door in and getting shot.

There were three officers present. The one in charge got shot, and his mate fired the shot that killed Taylor. A third was outside and just fired at the window, and was rightly fired for his recklessness. The third guy was the only one to get a charge, for endangering the white residents in the unit nextdoor. The lead officer wrote an email to the entire force making clear just how little he regrets the whole thing.

>>28010
> The lead officer wrote an email to the entire force making clear just how little he regrets the whole thing.
If it's the email I'm thinking of, that's a bit of an understatement.

It almost feels like they're trying to provoke hostility and provoke racial tensions.

Other cases had at least a bit of ambiguity, where the victim was a known crim or did something that could be charitably interpreted as threatening; but this was nothing short of an execution. This verdict is more or less a deliberate "Yup. And we're gonna keep on doing it."

What's the endgame?

>>28013

>What's the endgame?

Countrywide riots, marshal law, civil war, all good ways to avoid/cripple an election.

>>28015

But Trump is a Russian plant, surely the US establishment wants to topple him by any means necessary.

Also civil unrest of this kind, historically speaking, tends to make people more favourable to conservative parties, and makes the left (as much as that term means to Yank politics) look like the troublemakers. They don't need to sabotage the election if they want him in.

Some things don't add up. There's a deeper motive.

I've been arguing with a lot of seppos on twitter and the anti BLM lot seem very entrenched in the idea that property damage is equal to if not worse than homicide. They seem to lack a grander understanding of their own history, I had one tell me that the Boston Tea Party wasn't looting or rioting, that the "teenagers" who did it were reasonably punished and that it was the limit of the "violence" of the revolutionary war.

Yeah I don't know what to make of that.

>>28018

>Yeah I don't know what to make of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#%22Southern_strategy%22

>>28016
I don't think there is anything bigger at play here. Maybe they just don't like non-whites. Their history contains a lot of weird stuff like this anyway, like Emmett Till.

>>28013
>What's the endgame?

I don't think there actually is one. The police in America are largely above the law so they often don't care about being brazen or reckless because they'll close ranks to protect one another; it's only because of the current political climate shining a light on this plus reporting and footage being more widespread that there is raised awareness of this. You've only got to look at police crime reports and statements from the heads of police unions to see that they don't give a shit if what they say outright contradicts what has been recorded happening.

>>28016
The Republican party have shown that they're happy to forego just about all of their principles if it means they cling on to power.

Not sure which thread this is most appropriate for but this one isn't particularly covid related.
>Teaching material calling for end of capitalism banned from schools as ministers brand it ‘extreme’
>Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters.
>Examples of extreme political stances include, but are not limited to: a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections, opposition to the right of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion and conscience.
So it's "outlawed" to teach anything from the viewpoint of any but the status quo.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/teaching-material-calling-for-end-of-capitalism-banned-from-schools-as-ministers-brand-it-extreme/ar-BB19s5gB
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools-told-not-to-use-anti-capitalist-material-in-teaching

>>28071
>Not sure which thread this is most appropriate for but this one isn't particularly covid related.

You make a new thread and then we have a cunt-off about how this doesn't change teaching materials at all.

>>28072

Seems weird they'd introduce a law about teaching materials that doesn't have any impact on teaching materials.

>>28073

Some of the more fringe faith schools are teaching very spicy ideas.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/23/growing-proportion-private-faith-schools-fail-ofsted-inspections

>>28074
See,
>Some of the more fringe faith schools are teaching very spicy ideas.
I think what's happened here is he's implying something about eskimos teaching "dangerous" ideas in schools but he's linked to an article that's just about religious schools underperforming in general. What it does link to though, if you read it, is this article:
>In 2014, documents alleging a conspiracy to Islamise Birmingham schools were leaked to the media, sparking a national scandal. The papers were debunked
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/01/trojan-horse-the-real-story-behind-the-fake-islamic-plot-to-take-over-schools
Not surprisingly, this all fits rather neatly into the whole "daft militant wogs are out to get us, better give up all our rights in the name of 'security'" thing.
This law affects* the teaching of History, English, Social Studies, Sociology, Philosophy, Geography, RE and fuck knows what else. I know Orwell and Bradbury get overused but...

>>28079

Not eskimos specifically. To quote the article:

>The Ofsted report, published on Thursday, said: “The new standards on fundamental British values look at requirements in relation to written policies on the curriculum, the quality of teaching and the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils.

>“While numbers are small, a higher proportion of the weaker faith schools are failing on these requirements when compared to those with no faith.”

>According to Ofsted figures, 81 out of 139 independent eskimo schools were found to be less than good at their most recent inspection, while 39 were inadequate. One-third of Christian schools were judged less than good, and of 58 Jewish schools, more than half were either “requires improvement” or inadequate.

Independent schools aren't legally required to follow the national curriculum and so aren't assessed by Ofsted on that basis, but they are required to have a written curriculum that does not "undermine the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and belief". A significant proportion of independent faith schools (of all faiths) are failing to meet that standard.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-association-independent-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-as-at-31-august-2017/non-association-independent-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-official-statistics-as-at-31-august-2017-main-findings

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/800615/Independent_School_Standards-_Guidance_070519.pdf

>>28080

That's not 'spicy' that's 'very boring'. I don't see what that has to do with banning works that are critical of capitalism.

>>28081

They're not banning works that are critical of capitalism. They're banning the use of materials produced by extremist organisations in the PSHE curriculum.

Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation. Examples of extreme political stances include, but are not limited to:

a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections
opposition to the right of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion and conscience
the use or endorsement of racist, including antisemitic, language or communications
the encouragement or endorsement of illegal activity
a failure to condemn illegal activities done in their name or in support of their cause, particularly violent actions against people or property

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum#choosing-resources

>>28083
It all seems completely fair enough to me.

>>28079

I wish people would not do things like tie themselves in a knot defending religious nuts, just because the mean old nasty people on the right don't like them. All the Abrahamic religions are fundamentally conservative and in a right thinking world we'd have rid of them by now.

>>28081

It's no different from what Daveycambles brought in nearly ten years ago (itself being something May dreamt up when she was doing a job a bit more suitable to her capabilities), if I remember rightly. I did an adult apprenticeship a few years ago and had to attend Sheffield college- Naturally, because the place is crawling with Esk so racially diverse, they had propaganda posters everywhere about "British values" like democracy, tolerance, and so on.

Needless to say I hardly expect endorsements of redistributive left wing ideology or revolutionary social upheaval were on the list of acceptable "British values" back then either. The cynic in me wants to suggest that the reason not as much fuss was made before, is that the other side knew they'd be doing more or less the same thing in reverse if they were in charge.

HaTE SpEeCH IS nOt FrEe SPeECh

>>28083

If you don't see how every part of that can easily be twisted to shut out anything they feel like coming down on then you lack not just imagination but historical grounding too.

>>28085

I'm not defending religious nuts, I was pointing out what he appeared to be talking about was bullshit.

Honestly some of you have this weird knee-jerk reaction to bad news where all you can do is respond by pretending it's all going to be fine, somewhere at the top, sensible adults are in charge. Public money won't be misused, vague laws won't be abused, etc etc. It's starting to sound just as delusional as Qanon; "The Patriots are in control! Trust the plan!".

>>28086

>If you don't see how every part of that can easily be twisted to shut out anything they feel like coming down on then you lack not just imagination but historical grounding too.

The guidance only applies to PSHE. Are you seriously worried that they can't teach socialist values in sex education?