Recently I read an on-line article from England that was very critical of the United States!! I do not remember the writers name and I will have to go back and see if I can find the whole article!! I did copy and paste a section of it and it appears below!!

If there is one thing America hates it is having its mask of democracy and liberty removed to reveal the true face of a nation founded upon the genocide of the indigenous population before being built on the back of slave labour – a country which continues to exist at the negation of people of colour and poor people to this day. Regardless of the long and courageous struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, regardless of the raft of laws passed against racial discrimination, and regardless of a constitution that enshrines the principle that, “all men are created equal,” in 2016 America has yet to come to terms with the racism and inequality that lie at the heart of its culture and cultural values.

I'll second that. And Wells Fargo is just the tip of the iceberg and nowhere near the most dishonest or corrupt. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and several other banks have cost their customers billions of dollars and no one has yet to spend a night in jail from these companies. The sheer idiocy of someone (Wells Fargo) being able to steal $5 million dollars and no one being arrested is absolutely ridiculous.

The leaders of both major political parties bear blame for this as do the Attorney General's office of the US and the FBI but mostly, it is the political hacks in Washington. I have little hope that any of this will change if either Trump or Clinton is elected based on their past histories.

There is no reason for police officers to be 'violent and brutal' with anyone. The statistics are clear however, that for what ever reason, black males from the ages of approx. 34 down are much more likely to engage in violence than their white counterparts. That is no excuse to be arbitrarily harsh in their interactions with young black males, it is reason to be cautious. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s..._race_2015.xls

As I said early on in this thread, the United States is a deeply racist nation. This does not mean that all its citizens are overtly or even knowingly racist. Rather, it means that racism is baked into the cake.

If you grew up in the United States, as I did, you grew up surrounded by racism, perhaps not explicit, but most certainly implicit. You cannot escape it. Even if you try mightily not to be racist, the societal racism infects and influences you most insidiously. Denying that racism exists is racism's best friend. (Warning: the link points to an unabashedly liberal website. If you can't deal with that, don't follow the link.)

Cause or effect?

I submit that is more likely effect than cause. When you spend your life being kicked, all you know is kicking. Randomly shooting good citizens for being while black is unlikely to improve the situation.

Furrfu.

Return of "jim crow" type racism by the authorities.

In tulsa on 09/19 he was killed because he looked the woman police officer in the eye and that scared her. (This was a common reason given to justify some lynchings). Also Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Same reason, different modus operandi. Killed inside the police van.

OK

Evil is not part of the "human condition" (anymore once we understand the "human condition") it is learned behavior!

On and on it goes: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragrif...p34#.ommvmaGDX

A cop doesn't have to pass a psychology class to become a cop,
let alone get a good grade past 101!

A relevant cartoon:

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You have more faith in humanity than do I. I would argue that "original sin" is not just a religious concept; it is a sociological one. Self-preservation and aggrandizement will trump charity and kindliness nine times out of ten--nay, ninety-nine times out of 100.

If you have not done so, you might consider reading Lord of the Flies one day. (If you haven't heard of it, it describes how a society becomes a Libertarian paradise.)

Harry Shearer, who creates the magnificent Le Show every week, has a occasional feature he calls, "We're Number One!" in which he commonly points out something in which the United States is not number one, such as health care, crime prevention, preventing infant mortality, disaster relief, and the like. Undeniably, though (and I speak here as the historian I trained to become until I realized that, in academia, those folks would end your career over a comma), the United States is Number One in one thing: forgetting, even denying, its own history of racism, oppression, exploitation, and, as regards Native Americans, genocide. If indeed there is an "American exceptionalism," it's in self-delusion and self-exoneration.

This came into one of my RSS feeds today. I think it is germane.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/cult...peoples-fears/

I can see why he is angry and writes like he does about his anger.

So excuse me if I take his prose with a grain of salt. Since everyone has a agenda of some sort in today’s world. Noticed not a word on Black on Black violence. Like it don't exist.
I'm just another crème fill Wedo, in a Hispanic Oreo world here on the Tex/Mex border. That sees all kinds of stuff in life that no one else on this forum sees. Unless they live in West Texas. Spitting distance from Mexico.

Edit: The murder capital of north america.

People like to pretend it doesn't matter: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-co...Imprimis_April...
The Danger of the “Black Lives Matter” Movement
Heather Mac Donald

'Every year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered. This is a number greater than white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the national population. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined.
In Los Angeles, blacks between the ages of 20 and 24 die at a rate 20 to 30 times the national mean. Who is killing them? Not the police, and not white civilians, but other blacks. The astronomical black death-by-homicide rate is a function of the black crime rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone. The police could end all lethal uses of force tomorrow and it would have at most a trivial effect on the black death by-homicide rate.
The nation’s police killed 987 civilians in 2015, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post. Whites were 50 percent—or 493—of those victims, and blacks were 26 percent—or 258. Most of those victims of police shootings, white and black, were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.
The black violent crime rate would actually predict that more than 26 percent of police victims would be black. Officer use of force will occur where the police interact most often with violent criminals, armed suspects, and those resisting arrest, and that is in black neighborhoods.
In America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, for example, blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of all murder defendants, 45 percent of all assault defendants—but only 15 percent of the population.
Moreover, 40 percent of all cop killers have been black over the last decade.
And a larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths are a result of police killings than black homicide deaths—but don’t expect to hear that from the media or from the political enablers of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Twelve percent of all white and Hispanic homicide victims are killed by police officers, compared to four percent of all black homicide victims. If we’re going to have a “Lives Matter” anti-police movement, it would be more appropriately named “White and Hispanic Lives Matter.”'

Tragedies happen and yes, as with all of Man's endeavors, some police are 'bad' but the truth is that if you are black and law abiding you are in much greater danger from someone 'black' than someone 'blue'.

So ... back to the original, original post here. I finally took a bit of time to watch this video. First some guy, likely a property owner/manager is telling these "kids" to stop skating, it's not allowed, next time blah-blah-blah. They COMPLETELY ignored him and just kept going. So he picks up the ramp and they pretty much ignore him and skate at the ramp he just picked up. The kid in the black shirt is entirely obtuse and seems to be like "Whaddup? What's wrong with you?" sort of attitude. So they call the cop. A cop shows up, spends some very long time lecturing. Eventually handcuffing a 13 year old. .... The kid in the black shirt. All the kids were white I think, the kid detained was clearly white, and in my book he was acting like a "little s#@$!" both to the first man and then the cop. I mean ... how "brutal" is that, the kid won't listen, is 100% defiant, won't stop, won't be respectful, so he gets arrested. Now, he wasn't face planted, didn't get his face bloodied, didn't get shot. But here we have this whole question about why US cops are so violent and brutal?!?

I mean, c'mon!!

Seriously, the moddly-coddling of today's youth is sickening. My neighbors older brother kicked me and my friend's (his little brother's) behind one time because we were doing wrong. Lighting matches in the woods and watching small fires of sticks burn. He cuffed us on the back of the heads, walked us back to the neighborhood telling us how stupid we were, and he was right. I sort of felt OK thinking that at least he wasn't going to tell "Mom", because he was another family. So I get home, sort of crying and my older brother says "What's up?" "So and so hit me", and my brother knew that the older brother, who was his age did that for a very good reason and he dragged that out of me and then I got in more trouble, I got a lecture from him and Mom and Dad and punished. But that was all correct, me and the other kid were being stupid, little kids! Not saying it was all handled perfectly, however somewhere along the line we learned to respect our parents, and our older brothers and sisters and their judgment. Those kids in that video had ZERO respect for anybody, they seem to feel fully entitled to behave however they wished and were defiant because someone told them they were doing wrong.

THAT'S the problem here, not cops being brutal and violent!!!

I'm absolutely not proposing hitting kids (after all I didn't enjoy being cuffed in the head by my neighbor's older brother), but I'd like to see some proper behavior from those kids!

“Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”—Author Kristian Williams

Quoted from: https://www.rutherford.org/publicati...er_with_police

If you have decent police where you live you are fortunate!! However if you live where the police and the criminals all act in the same way then you are being terrorized!!

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Some " police officers " are not out to serve and protect; some are out for - look for yourself!!

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