mcity

A guy smashes some windows in a restaurant with what's basically a long crowbar. Police show up, one with a dog, and ask him to stop. He ignores them. One pepper-sprays him, and he shrugs it off, likely from drugs. As the nearer officer tries to back away and draw his weapon, the suspect advances, and is shot dead by the other officer, holding the dog, who has had his gun drawn and pointed at the suspect the entire time.



I was having a somewhat intense discussion with someone who thinks the shooting was unjustified.

Among their ridiculous claims;

-Suspect was just "intimidating" the police.
-The dog could've stopped him.
-He had the crowbar behind his head, and could not have swung. (I pointed out, several times, that it takes a fraction of a second to swing a crowbar from that poisition, once in range.)
-The nearer cop could've dodged. (Note how the cop is actively trying to get away from the perp.)
-The officers could've stopped and disarmed the suspect in hand-to-hand. (Yes, at substantial risk to themselves.)
-UK cops never kill anyone. (Such a shooting was what kicked off the London Riots last year.)
-Using "Bobbies" to refer to cops is patronizing.

Most prominently, they keep insisting there are "other options" when it's been shown there were no other options that did not present a risk to the nearer officer. Release the dog? Suspect has time to swing. Farther cop tackles the perp? Suspect has time to swing. "Martial arts"? Unnecessary risk to the officers. Pepper spray? Tried, didn't work. Taser? Couldn't be drawn in time to be effective, even if the suspect couldn't resist it with the drugs he was probably on.

The funny thing is that they are constantly saying UK cops would've been able to resolve the situation without guns. They receiving different training and equipment and face different challenges. No matter how many times I pointed this out, they kept insisting that they could've done it, along with a few dozen other Straw Men. As evidence, they cited a case where a guy assaulted three cops and struck them with a crowbar, leading to the hospitalization of two. Yep, the UK cops are doing so much better.

The biggest fly in their ointment, of course, is that UK cops don't usually carry guns in the first place.

Let me summarize:
1. Police break up Occupy UCD camp, arrest only those who interfere.
2. Angry crowd surround police, prevent them from transporting prisoners.
3. Angry crowd of dozens threatens about a dozen armed police, saying they will let the cops go if they release the prisoners, and if the cops let the prisoners go, they will continue to protest peacefully. (7:00)
3b. The implication is that if the prisoners are not released, the cops will not be let go, and the crowd may stop protesting "peacefully".
4. Police do not comply with angry mob.
5. Mob partially disperses when backup arrives, leaving only about a dozen sitting-down students with interlinked arms directly blocking the path.
6. Officer(s) issue verbal warnings to the protestors directly blocking the path.
6b. The police cannot carry the prisoners over the sitting down prisoners.
6c. Those protestors were obstructing officers, under California Penal Code 148, and were subject to arrest.
7. Officers attempt to remove obstructing students via gentle physical compulsion. It fails.
8. John Pike spends several minutes shaking up some pepper spray. The seated students were warned by other protestors. And chose not to leave, to continue obstructing the cops.
9. John Pike deployed pepper spray against the students.
9a. Verbal requests and gentle physical compulsion were both tried and failed. The next step, under standard police procedure and that of UC Davis, is pepper spray. Check just about any police manual in America. Or Canada. Or Tasmania, even.
9b. The next step after that is physically wrestling with protestors, which carries a risk of dislocations and other injuries. Pepper spray, by contrast, is most likely to cause an hour or so of discomfort.
9c. According to a man who literally wrote the book on the matter, the police officers used appropriate force.
10. Students were broken up and arrested, still struggling, while the crowd continues to chant.
11. Someone recording the video edits out everything but 9 and 10, then posts it online.
12. Some English professor says the students had their mouths forced open by the cops, and were coughing blood 45 minutes later.
12a. This forcing is not visible in any video, nor were photos taken, nor have his remarks been corroborated.
12b. Someone "still" coughing blood 45 minutes after the incident should've been removed to medical care by then. Coughing blood is not a noted effect of pepper spray, and again, no pictures, video, or corroboration.
13. Shortly thereafter, partially due to an article by Wolfe in the Guardian about an alleged coordinated crackdown on OWS, the term "militarization" enters the Occupy rhetoric in reference to police. It sounds scary, so everyone uses it, despite it being false. The only thing cops have in common with the military is that they wear helmets, uniforms, and boots and carry firearms. Riot cops are often not even issued firearms.

Anyone who is actively threatening cops cannot be reasonably considered a "peaceful protestor", unless one stretches the definition of "peaceful" to mean "is not actually charging at them with a knife".

I hate to put politics on this LJ, I really do, but the common impression of this incident is so slanted that it's effectively worthless. Either the people who edited the original videos were actively trying to obscure OUCD's behavior, or worse, they thought threatening and obstructing the police was entirely irrelevant in light of the fact that the police were mean to them. And that second possibility terrifies me. It means they think they should get to break the law and not suffer the consequences. The people who claim to want equality really want special privileges for themselves. And this is a constant; Occupy versions of the events often leave out the fact that they confronted police, not the other way around.

If a cop lies, he has to answer to his superiors or IA. A reporter lies, she has to answer to an editor. Someone lies by omission to Youtube, and who are they accountable to?

Four legs good. Two legs better.

1. The Translation.
2. This thread.
2b. This post, highlighting that thread.

Ferrari would be a super hot chick who just stands in the center of the room and whenever anyone touches her she lights their pants on fire.

Alfa would be an incredibly beautiful woman who looks amazing and then she takes a step forward and her legs fall off.

Ford would be a good looking girl, seemingly well balanced but she cant use her phone properly so you give her a bad rating

Chevy would be girl who used to be overweight, droll and just not nice. Now shes ok.

>The Lorax trailer comes up
>blogger complains about the Implications of the last joke in it
>joke is the Lorax, who is kind of a dick, being a dick
>blogger makes all sorts of inferences about how the boy clearly just wants to get in redheads pants

The irony is that the blog in question is dedicated to the oft-neglected issue of men in feminism, but the blogger, in a fit of fanpersonism, is perfectly willing to assume a boy wanting to do something for a girl he likes=he wants to tap that.

GOOD JERB.

Assassin's Creed 2 EP1: The Life and Times of Desmond Miles - Spoiler Warning - Youtube

Spoiler Warning, in the video above, is mocking Ubisoft for making the protagonist Assassin's Creed a twenty-something white guy so most of their target audience can identify with him.

Funny thing; minority video game/comic fans say there aren't enough minorities to identify with all the time. Problem is, if you need someone to be like you to identify with them, wouldn't it be impossible for the white people to identify with anyone not-white, or cisgendered to identify with non-cis, or men to identify with women? Because I think we all know that doesn't happen. And even if it did, what makes the identification of the minority in question a greater priority than that of the majority? We're supposed to be equal here, right?

I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to have minority characters. I'm just saying the "minority readers need to identify with them" is a terrible, terrible reason to do so. Superman is a white-collar white American with superpowers, and he is the world's most recognizable superhero. He's better known than Jesus Christ. Most of the world is not white, white-collar, American, or superpowered. As a general rule, if you can't identify with a character, and it's by accident, you have a case of plain old bad writing on your hands, not underrepresentation.

seriously

I mean



seriously

TVTropes has this on the "Unfortunate Implications: Ads" page.

I'm not sure how it's an "implication" when "she's stalking him" is the premise of both the commercial and the very dark joke, but I guess you know best, TVTropes.