Black Lives High — jacked
The chaos on the world stage and the three ring circus prevailing in many of the Western democracies provide a fertile backdrop for U.S. adherents of the dystopian vision of “bread and circuses” with gladiators and blood shed for distraction — the hunger games with shallow and greedy elites focused on wealth and power and reverting to a feudal system where the masses are tax slaves to the glitterati who live like kings and pharaohs. Quote, “it was the British feudal system that motivated our ancestors to travel to North America to escape the brutality and slavery of the wealthy ruling class, and now we are being subtly shaped into the same system”.
I would say that this body of opinion is too simplistic and has been expressed far too late in the game. Maybe, it took something as unsubtle as the Trump phenomenon to alert Americans to the realization that they have been sleepwalking to the brink of fascism. Bill Maher’s impassioned plea for the Bernie brigade to eschew the LGBT bathroom debate and focus on the basics is well founded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PDkVWn213g
More foreign affairs below.
Back in the UK meanwhile, during a week when Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith finally had their kickoff debate, which may — in the fullness of time — address the fact that there is no effective opposition to Theresa May, the UK was treated to the spectacle of protesters linked arm by arm through PVC pipes, blocking access to Heathrow and other rights of way to express solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and protest the appalling level of indiscriminate victimization of black people by the “Old Bill”. I am afraid that Mr. Elliott’s platform is worm ridden and his rationale is decidedly wobbly, despite the mealy -mouthed treatment of the matter on the BBC Any Questions panel, and in the case of the labor MP for Edmonton, downright piffle.
A quick review of the statistics in the UK versus US as regards deaths in police custody during the arrest process lays bare the paucity of Elliot’s case.
The most recent period where US Government statistics are fully compiled (2003–2009), during those seven years, 4,813 persons “died during or shortly after law enforcement personnel attempted to arrest or restrain them”. About 60 percent of these (2,931) were classified as homicides by law enforcement personnel. However, in turn, 75% of these were reported to have taken place in response to a violent offense (force-on-force response), such as an ongoing assault, robbery or murder. Put another way, arrests for alleged violent crimes were involved in three of every four reported homicides by law enforcement personnel, whereas 8% took place in the context of public-order offenses, 3% involved drug offenses, and the reminder was unclassified. (Source: Death in custody; Bureau Justice Services).
Total custody deaths averaged 700 per year, or two a day. Slightly more than one death each day was caused by police acts, or roughly two deaths a week were unrelated to a violent crime in progress. Of those who died during the process of arrest, 95 percent were male. About 42 percent were white, 32 percent were black/African American and 20 percent were Hispanic or Latino. More than half (55 percent) were between ages 25 and 44, and juveniles (persons under age 18) were about 3 percent of all arrest-related deaths.
Of course, this is analysis at the nine inch brush level, and no death should be dismissed as a mere statistic. That said, the population of the US is 320 million people. The Bureau of Justice figures have been criticized for under reporting deaths in custody by as much as 30–40%. BLM protagonists will criticize the age of the statistics. However, even at the higher end of projection, and given that there is no statistically — supported worsening trend data, there is no basis to accept that a regime of arbitrary and unlawful killing of US citizenry persists in the US. Furthermore, in the context of the second amendment and the stew of indifferent educational and social opportunity for many communities, the lack of funding for “community provision”, US police forces, and their officers should be commended as a group, and supported in the effort to marginalize the tiny minority of rogue operatives. The annual death toll of police officers is statistically well short of other “dangerous” professions, but should be considered in the context of the stressful and highly — charged environment within which they work — another post maybe.
Other factors implicated in deaths at the state level are as follows, according to BJS:
In in England & Wales, total deaths in police custody or following contact with the police, during the 2003–9 period were 291, or well under one a week. 44 of these deaths were black or minority. The Independent Police Complaint Commission reporting confirms that the vast majority of deaths in custody are suicides or the result of medical conditions suffered by — in the main — persons with poor mental health. There is no case to answer as to systemic police abuse and practice. Elliott you need to channel your ardor into more meaningful wrongs and injustice.
“…Did you get all that Donald…”
China’s sand banks: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/chinas-dangerous-game/380789/ “Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice” is a tenet of wisdom going back before the British were in Hong Kong. China has historically looked upon the South China Sea as its Mare Nostrum, and in the last five years has been turning the screw on the five other nations who share economic and political interests in those waters; Japan, Vietnam, The Philippines, Korea, Taiwan are long — established US allies. All of these countries have military capability and potential to spark conflict.
Vietnam has a well — established military culture, as the United States learned in the 1960s. The Chinese, too, should be familiar with the disposition toward resistance: In 1979 Vietnam repelled a Chinese invasion of the country’s northern borderlands in a war that was under reported, leaving as many as 20,000 Chinese soldiers dead.
In December 2012, Japan returned to power its most nationalistic prime minister in a generation, Shinzo Abe, who has increased Japanese defense spending and promised to revise the constitution, which bans the use of force in disputes, in order to provide freedom of maneuver with or without the support of the US. Korea meanwhile is supplying materiel to the Philippines, and India is “prepared to fight China to the last Vietnamese,” reportedly, that it would bankroll Vietnam as a proxy in any conflict with the Chinese. Delhi has already agreed to train Vietnamese sailors in submarine warfare and has offered a $100 million line of credit to Hanoi to buy military equipment, including maritime patrol vessels.
In summary, China’s ambitions have commanded the attention of states around its entire perimeter, formed unlikely and subtle partnerships with the same interest in mind: restraining Beijing from hegemony. As for historical contrasts, analogy and background analysis, Edward N. Luttwak, a contributor to The Atlantic, endorses “the web approach” to counterbalancing international ambitions as one of the most fundamental reflexes in the realm of strategy. A sound example of this, he states, is the futility of the Dreadnought Race pursued by Imperial Germany from 1889–1914 (where building oceanic warships resulted, not in the acquisition of oceanic naval power in an otherwise unchanged world, but in a global strategic transformation and Germany’s ultimate defeat). and he goes on to parallel this with today’s fast-rising China, Whereas the global political transformation already under way during the first two decades of the twentieth century were not understood in time by the German political elite (“Only a militarily nonthreatening and diplomatically conciliatory grand strategy could have served Germany well — accelerating its peaceful rise to new heights of cultured prosperity.” In the world of internet and broader dissemination of knowledge, (thanks Julian) today’s elites cannot hide behind the inadequacies of the Telegraph, as happened in the blundering into War in 1914. It is probable, moreover logical, that the more China sees a coordinated response to its military buildup and naval forays, the more likely it might be to turn toward diplomacy and step back from conflict. This is a chalk line that the next US President has to persuade Xi Jinping, and China’s political elite not to cross.
Did you get all that Donald?
