AdmiralMemo wrote:So, if something like this were to have happened in Vancouver instead of Ferguson, I'm assuming that you would be perfectly OK with someone burning down your house in the name of protesting. Goodbye game collection. Goodbye Transformers. All in the name of... I'm not even sure what.
A) False equivalence. No one's house has been burnt down. A place of business has.
B) The people engaging in violence are
not the same people as the peaceful protesters.
C) In the name of what? In the name of ending systemic racism in the United States. Put yourself in these peoples' shoes; have a little empathy. They're
angry. And justifiably so, I think. They have been denied every other means of pushing back. Does that excuse violence? No, at least not always. But it does make it
understandable.
Yes, he was 18. He was legally an adult. He could have voted. He could have enlisted in the armed services. Had things turned out differently, he would have been tried as an adult for his robbery of the store. "Kid" and "child" are the same thing. There's no difference. I'm not even sure why you're bringing your own age into this. Are you saying that anyone younger than you is a "kid" perchance? That would make you a "kid" to me, since I'm 32. Should I treat you as a "kid"?
A) There is serious question as to whether Mike Brown stole anything, or whether that was a story made up after the fact to justify his shooting.
SourceB) What does this alleged robbery have to do with anything? He was still shot multiple times and killed while unarmed.
C) "Kid" and "child" often do
not mean the same thing. Perhaps that's a quirk of the difference between Canadian and American idiom, but I've understood "kid," when applied to someone like Brown, to mean "young person, in the 15-25 range." It implies youth, a certain naïveté, and a future. It is a different category from "full adult."
That, I do agree with, which is why I said that Robert McCulloch was the one who really is to blame for most of this.
I'd blame the system as a whole, frankly, as well as American society. To point to one man when the entire thing is rotten is disingenuous. There are serious issues of systemic racism in play, here.
So, you're telling me that arson and violence are the "correct" response to losing a sporting match? I find that dubious at best.
That's not what he's saying. What he's saying, I believe, is threefold:
A) When white people riot over stupid things, there's nowhere near the level of police response that we're seeing in Ferguson. Ask yourself why.
B) When white people riot over stupid things, the media don't go apeshit about it. The story is "stupid people being stupid," not "dangerous people attempting to destroy all peace." Again, ask yourself why.
C) That tendency of the media has the knock-on effect of completely steamrolling the peaceful protests and the actual message of those peaceful protests. Because the media do not report on those things. Ever. They only report on the violence, and reinforce the narrative that it's just looters and rioters out to make trouble. Which is a half-truth at best, and a deliberate falsehood at worst.
Regarding violent overthrow of oppressors, yes. That happened. We "stuck it" to the Brits.
In this analogy, it would be OK to fight the police and National Guard. It would be OK to trash police cars, the police station, the courthouse, etc. That is completely different from torching the place of business of some people who are just trying to make a living.
I think you have some deep misconceptions about the American Revolution. I'd encourage you, as a start, to educate yourself about the United Empire Loyalists. They were regular American citizens who opposed the Revolution. They were driven out of their homes and places of business, by force, by the revolutionaries. They came here to Canada (and to other parts of the empire) to escape that. Your revolution isn't as clean as you like to believe. Bad things were done. Things that you are
explicitly condemning here. That's a bit hypocritical.
Edit:
I'm thinking the only way to turn them off would be a hardware dongle that's back at the station, under secure circumstances.
Also, it's possible for them to just cover the lens up so it can't film. It's not perfect, clearly.
The only way to ensure compliance is to make it an offence to do anything like that. And then actually have the courts enforce it. Ditto obscuring badge numbers. That's hard, sure, but I don't think the solution is technological; it needs to be legal.