31–40 of 428 posts
Just a side note: certain countries in Europe have much more military style uniformed police force, including police living in barracks. None of them have the track record of armed violence the police in the US have. I'm just saying, the militarization is at most a symptom (one of many), not the root cause for the US "war against the people".
After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. All the more reason to never speak to the police. Ever. What happened to 'protect AND serve'? The police have made their jobs harder by syst…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to take away from your message but you can just say "Native Americans" and leave the "Indian" part off. Otherwise I totally agree with your post.
Also generalizing to all native Americans everywhere is sort of a needless display of ignorance.
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Even then, hammers have uses. People like this don't.
Sorry if this is off topic, but: I think that taking reasonable steps for both protecting our rights as citizens and not screwing up the environment are sort-of the same topic: making sure that future generations have life as good as our generation (or my generation, I am in my early 60s) have it. Native American Indians have a philosophy that our actions should be guided by what is best for future generations. Being…
Not to take away from your message but you can just say "Native Americans" and leave the "Indian" part off. Otherwise I totally agree with your post.
In order to stay safe from the government, 1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student 2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution 3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage 4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car"…
Point 3 is patently false. All of my Facebook friends, and I, regularly say that the United States government abuses its power, some from the right, some from the left, and many from a general freedom-loving perspective, and we all go on posting as we please. All of these statements are exaggerations. Many of these statements refer to problems that are much worse in other places. (If you think that arbitrary abuse by the police is the worst it can be in the United States, you haven't traveled very much.) Sure, protest fearlessly about any abuse you find anywhere. But don't lose sight of reality.
AFTER EDIT: People who follow my comments on Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tokenadult
will be well aware that I participate in public protests here in the United States, in full view of TV news cameras and police observers. (The last protest I participated in was across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police department.) I am an equal-opportunity democracy movement activist, desiring more power for the people in every country of the world. As one of the grandchild comments to this comment has now said, it's silly to exaggerate conditions in the United States, as that just robs a comment of credibility. If you want to establish a better trend line for United States policy, be specific in your policy proposals, and make your policy proposals public fearlessly, early and often. Don't be an anonymous coward. Put your name behind your convictions.
People power democracy movements that nudge countries from dictatorship to democracy can really work. I have seen it done. A successful movement for greater freedom requires great courage, and a degree of social trust among the movement participants that is not easy to find. Allow me to repeat advice I have shared here on Hacker News before. If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the free, downloadable publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html
remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from. You can find publications in more than a dozen languages there to share with your friends around the world.
Reposting this from the killed-dog-thread. It certainly won't help when the SWAT team is already in your home, but for the creeping sense of out of control cops everywhere: "Most of us carry video cameras in our pockets now. Filming police needs to become ubiquitous. There should be no police officer in the United States that doesn't know that at any time they could be being filmed and held accountable for their acti…
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.ht...
By the way, my father recalls from when my country was a dictatorship that "you couldn't take photos of police or military, or you were arrested". Democratic U.S.A. is doing the same..
Sorry if this is off topic, but: I think that taking reasonable steps for both protecting our rights as citizens and not screwing up the environment are sort-of the same topic: making sure that future generations have life as good as our generation (or my generation, I am in my early 60s) have it. Native American Indians have a philosophy that our actions should be guided by what is best for future generations. Being…
Not to take away from your message but you can just say "Native Americans" and leave the "Indian" part off. Otherwise I totally agree with your post.
We have to ask ourselves: where is the money? Our rights aren't being lost to a sprawling military-police state just because there's a Big-Brother wannabe conspiring to destroy the constitution. Police departments grow the same way our project departments grow in engineering companies: by managers arguing for bigger budgets and spending more, sometimes wastefully, to justify bigger budgets come next fiscal year. Thes…
Don't forget all the war-on-terror funding and politics that have provided even rural police departments with armored personnel carriers and the like.[1] Or outfitting police departments with tons of equipment in advance of protests planned there which then filters down into daily use. In some cities, there is so little for the "anti-terror" cops to do that they have been conscripted into arresting drunk people and p…