Fitzmartin, July 21 at 5:24 pm #

Cooperation with law enforcement is necessary.  If you already have a chip on your shoulder and refuse to cooperate with police, what kind of outcome would you expect?  Police don’t know what to expect when they knock on a door or when they ask you to lower your car window.  Police are being killed every day.  I would rather be working at Harvard than in the Police Dept.

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It is unreasonable to ignore or diminish the flood of evidence that many policemen are biased or prejudicial in their treatment towards blacks and hispanics. The evidence is plain and the nature of the job, being dangerous, is certainly not a reasonable excuse for such prejudice.

Hell even the court systems display such biases, sentencing for blacks far exceeds that of whites for similar crimes. Until we all stand up and refuse to allow this to continue we live in a troubled and sick nation.

Here’s how I think Homeland Security works in the police cruiser: the cop gets a call and it shows up on the screen of his onboard 24/7 laptop wireless secure wifi shit. He scrolls down and sees every call to that adress for the last 7 years. he sees a picture of the house from the real estate websites and sees a photo of the owner with all pertenant information. He assemesses the information and makes sure his taser is on and his side arm is loaded just in case. He brings his super mag lite with him and shines it in the face of whomever opens the door or if no door opens he shines it in the windows. He calls for backup. They are on the way with their screens loaded with the latest intel. They all jump out. Officer 1 already has the perp in custody… all is quiet on the western front.

Cooperation with law enforcement is necessary.  If you already have a chip on your shoulder and refuse to cooperate with police, what kind of outcome would you expect?  Police don’t know what to expect when they knock on a door or when they ask you to lower your car window.  Police are being killed every day.  I would rather be working at Harvard than in the Police Dept.

hippie4ever, July 21 at 12:08 pm #

“almost all participants here believe in tolerating such hatreds,perhaps because they are literate and intellectually couched rather than framed in typical redneck fashion?”

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Ardee, I find such accusations, while understandable, to be ultimately unhelpful. We need to be unified in order to persevere; the inability of the American Left to find cohesion has enabled the Right to dominant policy even in post-Bush times. Put five liberals in a room and you’ll get at least that many opinions.

Actually I find such commentary to be most necessary, especially in view of the myth most people have of a free America. Also, someone distorting the reasons for policies that are harmful also distort and prevent the necessary steps that must be taken to end those harmful policies.

I also draw a distinction between anti-semitism and Israel; and while I’ve heard many disdain that distinction I hold to it. Israel is a fascist state imposing genocide on the Palestinian people, who have a right to THEIR homeland. I also support Israel’s right to exist, although I wish they had been given part of Prussia as a homeland following WWII. That way the karmic circle would have remained intact. The situation today is simply less than equitable and refuses to resolve itself.

I also draw that same distinction, but those I referred to believe that it is the religion at fault and not the govt. I think there was historical precedent for granting the land now called Israel by the by. The Balfour Declaration, which was used for that decision also noted that the rights of the current residents were to be honored, which, of course, they were not.

Does my opinion make me anti-semitic?

You seem to be blurring my point here, and I have been as big a critic of the actions of Israel as anyone anywhere. What makes those two posters anti semitic is the way they refuse to lay blame anywhere but on the entire Hebrew religion and its adherents.

As to that ridiculous poster and her equally ridiculous claims, I try to ignore the childish shrew…She has never shown one single example of the charges she levels at me, thus only diminishing herself. Odd that she seems so obsessed with fork lifts?

Virginia777, thank you for illustrating my preceeding comment:

“Americans are ready to hate anyone at the drop of a hat—how tiresome and ignorant.”

Ardee is such a hypocrite, he is a bully-troll and nothing less!

and he is here on his “knees”, asking for our “sympathy” to the supposed “antisemitic comments” he has “painfully” suffered here on TD??

give me a break! Ardee is Mr. “Obama is a fascist” pundit who demeans other commentators all the time on TD.

we are the ones who have suffered his bully-troll crap.

Ardee, hop in your forklift (take all your troll pals with you), and back off a cliff.

I represented an older black gentleman who habitually walked his dog along a major street in Newport Beach for years.  He was detained and questioned dozens of times by the white police officers of the exclusive city.  The police chief blamed the minority use of the public beaches in the city on the enactment of a proposition that made all beaches “public”. in California.  I lost the case, the judge lived in Newport Beach.

“almost all participants here believe in tolerating such hatreds,perhaps because they are literate and intellectually couched rather than framed in typical redneck fashion?”

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Ardee, I find such accusations, while understandable, to be ultimately unhelpful. We need to be unified in order to persevere; the inability of the American Left to find cohesion has enabled the Right to dominant policy even in post-Bush times. Put five liberals in a room and you’ll get at least that many opinions.

Should I attack everyone I disagree with? I know that’s the American Way, but after living as an expatriate for many years, I grow weary. I have my comfort level too, and miss the civility of Europeans who can disagree without being disagreeable. Americans are ready to hate anyone at the drop of a hat—how tiresome and ignorant.

I also draw a distinction between anti-semitism and Israel; and while I’ve heard many disdain that distinction I hold to it. Israel is a fascist state imposing genocide on the Palestinian people, who have a right to THEIR homeland. I also support Israel’s right to exist, although I wish they had been given part of Prussia as a homeland following WWII. That way the karmic circle would have remained intact. The situation today is simply less than equitable and refuses to resolve itself.

Does my opinion make me anti-semitic? Must one offer unwavering support to everything a society does, in order to be an ally? Isn’t that more an expression of insecurity based upon a subconscious inkling that one’s chosen people have committed ironic crimes against humanity?

“Those liberals who believe racism to be dead, religious hatred a thing of the past, might wish to reconsider that view. Especially in the light of the antisemitic comments, however politely couched, one finds here.”—Ardee

Actually it has been the Conservatives who constantly say that so that Affarmative Action, and Voting Rights can be removed, so that they can get back to their neo-Confederate way of doing things as has been done since 1619. [For them the ‘good old days’]

You can’t catch a cab in New York if you are black, Yafet Cotto tried it on an older show by Michael Moore just to show that racism, despite what conservatives like Pat Buchanan says, is alive and thriving. He got a good 7 minute reaming by Rachel Maddow for his appearance the previous time where she corrected his many errors. Good for her!

I have wondered how different my life would be if I just looked black but everything else about me were the same. It wouldn’t be pretty.

I hit a wrong key. Les Payne, noted journalist, on his Les Payne’s blog tells of his NYPD police racial profiling incident, recent on his
blog: http://blog.lespayne.net It’s systemic in police departments.
 
NYPD has huge numbers of illegal stop and frisk totals. The NYCLU has had a long (and legal)struggle to get info from the NYPD, along with NYC City Council.

It results in police killing civilians
and undercover cops who are African-American and/or Latino in large numbers. See http://www.october22.org for the October 22 Coalition Against Police Brutality.  One of
their projects is the Stolen Lives Project documenting
deaths by police in the US:names, incident.
I had been doing my own list,in art, begun with acquittal verdict of NYPD in killing of Amadou Diallo. Art/list:  Since Amadou Diallo, but since NYPD is secretive (hard to get data in media coverage:names, etc) and lies,
I stopped due to volume and use the list(Killed Since Amadou Diallo) of the October 22 Coalition.  It’s a group whose work I
know for years. The Stolen Lives Project is national compilation of those killed by police and
security “forces” (my word).

Racism! Alive and well and living on Planet America.
It is ironic that the Cambridge Police Department, rushed to the scene of a supposed break in, and while investigating this ‘alleged’ crime, having been shown identification that Professor Gates was the lawful owner of the residence, still arrested him.
This is indicative of an inherent racism and nothing less can explain the matter. Professor Gates is well known in the community, and the country having been seen on television and heard on radio hundreds, if not thousands of times in his academic career.
I am appalled at the lack of sensitivity and respect shown a man of Professor Gates’ stature. He has certainly earned my respect and admiration, not only for his outspokenness, but his scholarship and advocacy in the community, for people of color and his identification with the common man.
Surely this incident could have and should have been resolved without the arrest of Professor Gates. Yet this person, a supervisor, or rather a stupidvisor, showed such a lack of intelligence that he arrested a professor of Harvard University in his own home.
It is high time that we, the people in America face up to the fact that racism, is not a thing of the past and that as a nation, we are not progressing as
far as we should have towards the dreams and aspirations of such men as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those liberals who believe racism to be dead, religious hatred a thing of the past, might wish to reconsider that view. Especially in the light of the antisemitic comments, however politely couched, one finds here.

It isnt so much that a couple of posters hold such views, but the fact that there is no great uprising of disgust addressed at them. That is, in fact, the reason I have made myself scarce here, that almost all participants here believe in tolerating such hatreds,perhaps because they are literate and intellectually couched rather than framed in typical redneck fashion?.

When one finds a debate regarding the policies of a government sidetracking into the discussion of religiosity and how it attempts to subvert foreign policy one might wish to avoid standing downwind from that poster.

Ironic that, here in the twenty first century, with America’s first black President ensconced in the White House, we find people to be as they have always been, separated by prejudice and hate.