Why no mention of the School of the Americas (cum: The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation)?

Roland

Oh bullshit, Matt. Pre-segregation, my ass. How about people's right to representation? Communities are best served by those living in those communities. Like I pointed out already, this generates rapport and a sense of trust between the officer and those under his (or her) watch. A community needs the presence of law enforcement officers with a personal stake in that community. It’s a win-win for both the police and the policed. By dragging firemen, teachers, garbagemen and so on into this, Matt, you are only watering down the focus of the discussion. Firemen, teachers and garbagemen don’t go around armed with pistols in holsters, nor do they have the power to arrest and detain people on the streets. Gimmie a break.

Stripey,

You are correct, sir.

Roland

P.S.: I think it was really the National Security priests, the same who convinced LBJ to continue the Viet Nam war if he did not want to share JFK's fate.

Matt, religion belongs in church. Science belongs in school. That's not me pushing a personal agenda on anybody; that's the separating of church and state

Like many others, I argue that science/secularism is a religion in itself. At least it is a belief system, just as religions are. It's a way of explaining the world around you.

Alice has a belief system - that science/secularism is not a religion. If Alice wants the school her children attend to teach that, that's Alice's right. But saying that EVERY school MUST teach that, now you're imposing your beliefs on others.

There are many religions practiced in this multicultural, multiethnic country of ours.

The legal corporate mandate to maximize profit can be rephrased as 'extract as much as possible from the physical/social environment.' The long term result of this behavior by all corporations is an inevitable collapse of the environment and, of course, the capitalist economic system. Stated briefly, the corporate system, when uncontrolled, will self-destruct taking all else with it.

Reply to posts #13 & #19: Eatraum, you’ve repeatedly pointed out the obvious: that policing is a difficult job, one that most of us have not elected to do. Nobody’s going to argue those points, least of all me. BUT what is also true is the fact that no one is forced at gunpoint to enter that profession either. And what these various murder-by-cop incidents have proven, time & again, is that (1) We still have a race problem in America, and a class war, simultaneously influencing how police work is practiced in our communities; (2) Whatever "training" these officers-in-training received was inadequate; (3) Policing, as a profession, is attracting people with the wrong attitude and temperament for the job; and (4) Too many racist bullies with loose trigger fingers are wearing the badge. These guys are clearly not “serving” or “protecting” those they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Intimidation and control is more like it. And there is no reason why any unarmed person should EVER have to be shot. There are plenty of non-lethal means cops could be using to apprehend their subjects, so why aren’t they using them?

The obvious solution to item #4 is to have police officers serving the communities they live in, where they have a rapport with the residents of those communities and a personal stake in the outcomes of their own police work. I’ve heard and read this point made up, down and sideways, via more sources than I could possibly recall. So why haven’t policies like this been established? A question worthy of further scrutiny.

Beyond that, there needs to be a much more rigorous screening process for policing candidates, to weed out predators of all stripes: the racists, the misogynists, the perverts, along with standard, run-of-the-mill bullies and control freaks. These types of personalities are attracted to policing for obvious reasons. They are the ones giving policing a bad name. The militarization of police departments doesn’t help either. Decked out and armed like military invaders, these guys act as though they were occupiers in a foreign country, and tend to treat people accordingly, more as enemy combatants than as citizens... ESPECIALLY in communities of color. This is enormously destructive to the society at large. It plays a major role in what is poisoning race relations in this country. Keeps those old xenophobic attitudes reinforced on both sides of the proverbial tracks. I believe this benefits only a small elite class of kleptofascists whose interests are best served by keeping the "masses" divided, at each other's throats and therefore, too distracted to recognize the magnitude of what is being taken from us and destroyed.

The behavior of the police often is what triggers any violence that occurs. I’ve seen it over and over again at peaceful protests, where no crimes are being committed prior to police attacks. It is disgusting. But it is worth remembering that stirring up trouble at peaceful demonstrations serves the same interests as stop-and-frisk type policies. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, in person as well as on video, where people get attacked by police officers, with little to no provocation. Between that and racial profiling, and the stop-and-frisk types of policies and practices targeting people of color (decided by city legislatures, by the way, not by the public; often not with the public's best interests in mind), we see ample opportunity for bad cops to abuse the power entrusted to them. And what about the horrible crimes committed by those men wearing the badge, who should never have entered that profession in the first place?! And why should the blemishes bad cops leave on policing’s public image surprise anyone paying attention to all this?

What’s going on in our country today is a class war in which racism helps fuel the flames. Unfortunately these militarized police forces have played a major role in that ongoing drama, where real lives are destroyed on a daily basis and often arbitrarily; where ramming down people’s doors in the wee hours of the morning, terrorizing and shooting them in their own homes constitutes business as usual. The seizure & forfiture of people’s personal property by the police, often without evidence, let alone charge or trial, is indefensible. This sort of "police work" would be unacceptable in any genuinely decent, civilized society. It constitutes theft with impunity on the part of “law enforcement”, further eroding the credability of the police in the eyes of the policed. It clearly is an abuse of power. This kind of shit has got to stop if there is ever to be a relationship of trust and mututal respect, between police and the communities they “serve”.

Abuse inflicted on the public by bad cops, however many or few there are, is a reality we ignore only at our peril if a free & open society is what we really want. I’m talking about murders, rapes and torture committed by police officers, on prisoners of both sexes, hardly unheard of in this grrreat country. I’m talking about unarmed black men arbitrarily executed in the streets, usually in broad daylight, with no indictments let alone prosecutions ever forthcoming on these trigger-happy cops. Is our outrage over that not justified?

When your answer to that, eatraum, is to defensively remind us that good cops exist, you’re not telling us anything most of us don’t already know. And it’s not helpful, because the problem persists despite the fact that good cops exist. Yes there are good cops performing their duties well, even with heroism, in behalf of others caught in some of the most perilous circumstances imaginable. But the fact remains, there’s enough bad policing going on to make its presence known, thus showing by example that as a society, we have a problem. The so-called “war on drugs” (translation: war on drug users, especially in poor communities of color) has been a major factor in that equasion.

The solutions to such problems don’t seem all that complicated. But as usual, politics gets in the way. I believe these kinds of issues involving the police are symptomatic of something much larger, but I’ll save that for another conversation. - AIW

The most important documentary of the year is "Cowspiracy." It begins and ends every conversation about our precious environment. There is no point in enumerating the symptoms of an unhealthy environment when the cause is so obvious.

Give it a rest. Most of the "false" evidence came from people lying about seing Wilson shoot Brown in the back, etc. Quit beating a dead horse and race baiting. 2 cops were murdered in NYC. Isn't that enough?

Not everybody's on the same page. The cop murderers must've thought they were "getting even".
Violent methods almost always harm a nascent movement. They turn people against it and make them less likely to join it and serve as a justification for violent repression by the authorities - so much so that reactionary authorities often anonymously commit acts of violence and blame them on the movement or send provocateur infiltrators to goad the movement's members to adopt violence.
The protesters perhaps should denounce the cop killings more publicly and more vocally.

Thom, you're unfortunately incorrect in saying President Carter didn't start any wars. In a 1998 interview, his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed that Carter approved his plan to aid the tribal/feudal/fundamentalist mujehedin in Afghanistan five months *before* the Soviet invasion of that country: http://nadeemmalik.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/osama-bin-laden-us-national-...

Richard, I’ve already made my feelings very clear regarding Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders’ deference to Israel. I don’t know what “reasoning” you’re referring to. And I didn’t mean to suggest we all sit around waiting for politicians to do something. I believe we need another mass movement like the one in opposition to the Vietnam War. (I don’t know what it is about my “assessment” of that war you disagree with, by the way.) I just don’t know what it’s going to take to motivate enough people to get involved in such a movement. I don’t see much evidence of that where I live. Just business as usual. - AIW

Astute and important observations. For many years, have lived close to Richmond, CA -- a home of a huge Chevron Oil refinery for much of the past 100 years. The incidence of respiratory disease in Richmond is dramatically higher than in many other portions of the San Francisco Bay Area.