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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean” UK Black Lives Matter on 29th June 2020:
When we say ‘Defund the police’ we mean ‘Invest in programmes that actually keep us safe like youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing. Key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system’.
UK Black Lives Matter on 21st June 2020:
We are an ABOLITIONIST movement, we do not believe in reforming the police, the state or the prison industrial complex. It is a direct contradiction to BLM for events to be held promoting reform and subduing valid criticisms of the police, the government and Boris Johnson. And when events are meant to be those heavily affected by police violence like the LGBTQIA+ Black community, this is especially disrespectful.
Perhaps I should not be so harsh. Among the multifarious possible meanings of the phrase “Defund the police” there are a few I could support. While I think about it, please send me a million pounds.
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I’m sorry, were you expecting consistency and rationality from these people? Leftists seek power, and will say/do whatever they believe will give them more power and advance their agenda. Their cause is just and righteous, so minor inconsistencies are of no importance on the path to victory and Utopia.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Silence is Violence, Racism is Anti-Racism, Churchill is Hitler and Ignorance is certainly their very very very great Strength. 🙂
The transitivity of BLM’s post-Orwellian additions varies. Racism is Anti-Racism describes BLM equally well either way round, but sadly, though our Silence is Violence, their Violence does not seem accompanied by any lack of noise. BLM’s anti-semitism (I’ve seen the LA BLM riot described as turning into a pogrom, and it certainly reminded one that BLM are not fond of Jews) would suggest that ‘Churchill is Hitler’ has some transitivity, though I feel confident they’ll not replace statues of the former with those of the latter (I suppose we must be glad of such small mercies).
In the Orwellian double-speak of BLM, I take it ‘valid criticisms’ mean violent ones.
Someone pointed out to them that they still need votes to do what they want to do, and so they’d better lie about what they want to do.
People speaking of Higher Truth instead of Truth have always bedeviled us. Right now, they’re working overtime.
P.S. I’ve now read the Minneapolis City Council’s written proposals to begin the effort. They do indeed mean to defund the police.
P.S. I’ve now read the Minneapolis City Council’s written proposals to begin the effort. They do indeed mean to defund the police.
Well good luck in maintaining a tax base then.
All of these groups (Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, etc.) share common cause and common roots with the radical left and the radical left have used the tired old trope of “Refusal to justify the state terrorism of Israel over the Palestinian people” as a thin veil to cover their anti-Semitism since Israel was founded.
Before 1948 they used the “World Jewish Conspiracy” and the “Protocols of the elders of Zion” as justification. All lies and claptrap. It’s almost as if the radical left just don’t like Jewish people or something…
Remember Bader-Meinhoff aka Red Army Faction from the 1970’s? Their bullshit propaganda justifying the anti-Semitism had exactly the same justification as the stuff being pushed by Corbyn, Long-Bailey and the rest of the hard left right at this moment.
The fact that this thinly veiled anti-Semitism appeals to the “newly British” who celebrate diversity by praying to Mecca is just an added bonus.
As for the 300,000 Jews living in the UK, they are right to be worried, mostly because the streets are filling with people that hate them and there is nowhere else to go that is any safer. Sure, they are happy that their is a homeland for the Jews, just as long as they aren’t forced to live there.
This is Minneapolis, the mostly-white city that looted and burned itself because it wasn’t being racially nice. They were protesting themselves.
So I can’t imagine a little money will inhibit them. (Heck, they’ll just get the state to pass more “revenue-sharing” with the burbs.)
Sure, but as Detroit illustrated, it takes a long time for white flight to reach critical levels. It’s like the line from Ernest Hemingway’s, The Sun Also Rises
The consequences of Minneapolis’ moment of collective madness will take years to come to full fruition as New Detroit, but by the time it does, it will be too late.
I’m cynically assuming that the “Defund the Police” and Community Policing initiative will be a disaster…
What I think would cure the country would be if the Minneapolis police department realized that they were about to be abolished, and they all quit their jobs on the same day. Preferably tomorrow, or perhaps two weeks from now to give the good people of the city time to get out.
I’d worry about my friend Bobby B, who I believe lives near there, but from what I hear his basement is an armory. Though fair warning, apparently now, according the the AG of Missouri, it is a serious crime to defend your life and property from a rampaging mob with a firearm.
I’m guessing the city would be a wasteland before the election and would serve for a lesson for us all. Perhaps it is worth sacrificing one city to save the rest.
Perhaps what all those out of work policemen could do is form themselves into a private corporation to provide private security to all the decent people of the city for a fee.
It has always struck me as ironic that the ONLY time I have every heard the left calling for a reduction in public spending is to “Defund the police”, one of the few things I think the government should spend money on. But the more I think about it the more I like it. Let’s all think that “Defund the police” means “Privatize the police”. That is something I could definitely get behind.
(God help all the poor people of Minneapolis though. You see, I actually think that “black lives matter”, and the idea that we should subject those who are black and poor to the justice of the crazy mob rather than protect them with a professionally trained, often flawed but mostly honorable, police force, is about the most careless way you could treat black lives that I can think of.)
@bobby b
P.S. I’ve now read the Minneapolis City Council’s written proposals to begin the effort. They do indeed mean to defund the police.
I think you are telling only half the story. They are defunding the police for everyone except themselves. They are instead paying large amounts so that they, the city council members, can have a private protection detail.
It’d be funny were it not so monstrous.
But you don’t think that we’ll ever see a bit of that budget savings again, do you?* They’ve already earmarked all of the “excess funds” to other, more palatable causes. There won’t be any “here’s your police money back, spend it as you wish . . .”
So now you can pay twice. Which you could have done before. Except now demand is way up and prices are going to follow. (But, I do know two sheriff deputies (county, not city) who are getting out because they saw how much they can now charge protectees privately. So maybe supply catches up . . . )
(* I shouldn’t say “we.” I’m outside the city line.)
Minneapolis is anticipating a Biden victory in November.
Within days congress will propose and Joe will approve massive federal bailouts for spendthrift Democrat states and cities.
Why worry about losing your local tax base when you can plunder the national one, at least until the Thatcher doctrine kicks in.
BLM might kid themselves but that’s the real game plan.
Isn’t this classic Leninism? The Party is always right even if what it says today is totally different to what it said last week. (And woe betide if you still believe last week’s truth. It’ll be the gulag for you comrade.)
Anyway, these guys are all well educated in critical theory so ‘truth’ is a capitalist plot to keep down the proletariat.
Detroit Threat Management is a very successful private security firm which provides protective services. Its founder has created a system that employs violence as a last resort and screens out psychopaths and power seekers from his employees ranks. This is not just idealism–his firm protects many businesses and homes and has a 100 % success rate in preventing serious crime. Zero murders or home invasions in 30 years for example.
So getting rid of govt cops might help those who can afford it. And the more customers the lower the price can go.
@ Mr Ecks – I’m not – unfamiliar – with Dale Brown and TMS, and for what they do, they do a fine job. Problem is, what they do is about 1.5% of what a police department does. If we want to analogize them with an existing police agency, they are most like the Secret Service. Not the right answer at all.
llater,
llamas
What they do is what police should do. They don’t come around trying to enforce the states BS on folks. They keep peace and stop/prevent REAL crimes. 1.5 % might be about right.
We don’t need the rest.
‘ Invest in programmes that actually keep us safe like youth services…’
Hello is that youth services? There’s a man in the garden with a knife trying to break in through a downstairs window. I’m 80 years old on my own. Can you send somebody quickly?
There is a lot of untreated mental illness… the failure of closing lunatic asylums and replacing them with ‘care in the community’, the imbeciles are free to run among us.
BBC Radio 4 had a BLM spokesperson on this morning, the interviewer asked “but isn’t it true that you aim to overthrow capitalism?”
Theys reply “let me be quite clear, nobody is calling for equality of outcome, what we must have is equality of opportunity…”.
Interviewer “well no-one could disagree with that”
Made BLM seem almost reasonable, useful idiot
bobby b
But you don’t think that we’ll ever see a bit of that budget savings again, do you?* They’ve already earmarked all of the “excess funds” to other, more palatable causes. There won’t be any “here’s your police money back, spend it as you wish . . .”
Yeah, well that is what happens when you live in places like Minneapolis (or Nr. Chicago, like me.) They never actually give you your money back. (Actually, I think they think that all your money is their money, so anything the deign to let you keep is their generosity.)
So now you can pay twice. Which you could have done before. Except now demand is way up and prices are going to follow. (But, I do know two sheriff deputies (county, not city) who are getting out because they saw how much they can now charge protectees privately. So maybe supply catches up . . . )
It sounds to me that, in Minneapolis, there is soon going to be an abundant supply. As ever, the people who claim to be helping the poor, like the BLM movement, are really using the poor for their own political power. And the actual poor and the actual black population will get hosed in the process. This past weekend in Chicago 18 people were shot to death including a 20 month old child. If you watch the news you might be shocked to find than not a single one of them was shot by some rogue cop. I wonder if that mother burying what is left of the eviscerated body her 20 month old baby is thinking “if only I had less police protection and more social workers things would have been different.”
I’m going to try to get this straight in my mind. The people who advocated for the removal of Trump from office because of his lack of ‘mental capacity’, are planning to put Biden in office in his place?
What are the odds, Biden’s running mate, Hilary no, Chelsea Clinton?
I’m currently possessed by the insane idea that either Biden will be replaced by someone electable at the DNC in Milwaukee or they make Michelle Obama (or is it Mike Obama?) his VP.
Only the Democrats could imagine this addled old fool is electable.
For all his faults at least Trump is worth watching. Half the time with Biden it’s clear that nobody’s home.
@John Galt
Only the Democrats could imagine this addled old fool is electable.
You are sorely mistaken JG. The democrats are not running Joe Biden for President they are running “The Other Guy” for president. They could run a ham sandwich and Trump’s re-election would still be in extreme jeopardy. The election isn’t about Biden. Do you even know any of his policies? I don’t, and I pay attention, except some vague generalities aimed to hit certain PC buttons without making any serious commitment.
If the election were held today, the ham sandwich would win. In a landslide, and take the senate with him. The Democrats’ strategy is a good one. Generate a general sense of chaos. Have people answer the question “are you better off today than you were four years ago” with a “you must be f-ing joking”. Most people will not notice that two two primary sources of chaos — Covid chaos and law and order chaos are both firmly attributable at the feet of the democrat local governments (like the reprehensible manner New York handled Covid, or the chaos in Chicago under the horrible Lori Lightfoot). People vote on a feeling, and the feeling isn’t good.
Trump’s only hope is to hang the chaos on the Democrats, but that is getting more and more difficult as the left’s control of nearly every channel of communication is shutting down his ability to present an alternative narrative — billions in the bank notwithstanding. It looks to me that the last holdout on the social media area — facebook — is about to fold under the relentless pressure.
Cap that off with angry mobs or gun toting loons at the polling booths, and a narrative that the opposite side have no right to defend themselves without being labeled white supremacists (witness the lefty lawyer in St. Louis defending his home from an angry mob being threatened with the violent retribution of the law by the state AG.)
With all those forces arrayed against him, especially with the last vestige of the cowardly politician — recognizing his views are so unpopular that they have to shut down the opposition’s ability to speak — it will be nothing short of a miracle if Trump can win in November.
And if Biden is elected you might want to consider upgrading your life by moving to Venezuela.
The left is waging psychological warfare against mainstream society. The constant barrage of hysterical accusations is intended to make us doubt the legitimacy of our history, culture and identity. They want to discredit all our heroes and cheapen everything we value so that we will be too demoralized to resist anything they impose on us. That’s why their slogans have no fixed meaning. They are tools of psychological manipulation so they mean whatever is most useful at any given moment. But society can develop a herd immunity to wokism if a critical mass of people realise that it is all utterly fraudulent and manipulative, and therefore all its demands and accusations should be dismissed out of hand.
Sure, but that presumes that “The Other Guy” is just some stooge, proxy or other unknown.
Biden (as well as being VP under Obama) has been in congress for nearly 50 years and been involved in lots of corporate shilling and dodgy practice. He’s known as “The Senator for Mastercard” for a reason.
If anyone cares to dig back through his congressional record they’ll also find his relations with Strom Thurmond a bit too friendly and his position on segregation would be called outright racism by today’s BLM/Antifa race-baiters.
Most of all though is that he is clearly suffering from dementia. If he hasn’t got an ear-piece telling him what to say he looks like a broken automaton (actually he looks like that whether he has the ear-piece telling him what to say or not).
…and you expect Americans to vote to give this guy the big red button to launch the nukes?
I mean Ronald Reagan’s dementia was bad enough, but that didn’t get really bad until the middle of his second term. Biden is a drooling idiot and we’ve not even had the Presidential TV debates yet!
@John Galt
If anyone cares to dig back through his congressional record
And who is going to do that? And if they do, how are they going to communicate their findings to the public?
Under any normal circumstances this would be a slam dunk re-election for the President for some of the reasons you state. But these are not normal circumstances. Discussion about the election is not allowed. The candidate communicating with the public is not allowed. Holding a view other than the mainstream is not allowed. And this “not allowed” is enforced by a coordinated cabal of almost every channel of information available to the public, and an organized system to destroy the lives of anyone who prominently speaks out, either by doxing, losing your job, losing all your friends, destroying your family.
And that final line of defense the 2nd Amendment? The narrative is that if you are white and own a gun you are a white supremacist. And all the power of the state and the press and the public will come crashing down on you. Viz. what is happening right now in St. Louis.
Remember, the cop in Atlanta who shot the kid who fired the taser at him. His mother was fired from her employment. You know, just like in North Korea where you are punished for the sins of your family.
And we are still four months out. They have barely even started. Imagine if they cut off Trump’s twitter account. What if the network TV channels, the cable channels and the newspapers refuse to carry his advertisements because they are “hate speech”. They are already on the way to doing that on nearly every social media outlet. What if he has a billion dollars in campaign funds and can literally not spend any of it?
Are the TV companies going to put profit over principle? Perhaps, perhaps not, but they might not have that choice. If you watch what is happening with facebook right now, they have tried to take a more moderate line and they are being absolutely crushed as woke companies (which is to say nearly all of them) pull their advertising dollars, employees stage walk outs, customers threaten to abandon you. FB is down 10%. Zuckerberg is $7 billion dollars poorer. My god, if weak man-child Zuckerberg is Trump’s best ally in social media then we are in a very bad place.
And irrespective of the woke agenda at these social media companies, they have it in their self interest to sabotage Trump, because he has made it very clear that he plans to reign in their nonsense.
And let’s not forget the whole of the deep state is fighting tooth and nail against him too. The FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the NSA, all are lined up to try to bring him down. Except for his inner circle, nearly all his advisors. I’d wear a tin foil hat if it were not obviously true.
This is a completely different situation than we have ever seen. Don’t make the mistake of judging this by past elections. It is a completely different animal. It is not a normal election with a few dirty tricks. It is the denouement of all that the left has worked for for the past thirty years. This is not an election, it is a revolution.
And what will it look like afterward? Will this crazy left power structure built around BLM say “thank you very much” and fade into the background? Of course not, they will want to be paid. This is the main strength of Biden for these people — he is a marionette, and they pull the strings. So fully expect to see that $14 trillion reparation package (almost none of those dollars going to poor black people, BTW), expect to see the stripping of the police forces, and consequently violence and property crime double, triple or quadruple. Expect to see the stringing up of political adversaries. Expect to see Green New Deal policies that will completely cripple the economy. Expect to see “tax the rich” which means tax the middle class, because the real rich have enough influence to protect their own hides. Expect to see the destruction of the supreme court. Expect to see DC as a new state, making the senate blue forever. Expect to see a massive gerrymander after the census making the house blue for ever. Expect to see open borders and soaring unemployment. And, I might add, expect Biden to be 25th amendmented and see his Vice President, maybe Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams take over.
Like I say, you might want to move to Venezuela to upgrade your life.
If someone can offer a more rosy outlook on this I would love to hear it, I would love to be proved wrong. But to me they seem to have all the bases covered.
So the voters of America can see what the media and democrats are but are still going to vote for them knowing that it is goodnight for the USA? And that by any sane standard there is no way back once they get in short of civil war?
Because no one in the USA has any opinion not put on them by the media and have no memory for why they voted against leftist tyranny last time –not sufficient at least as to motivate them to vote against far worse resulting from a leftist victory this time.
Trump’s biggest danger is vote fraud IMO.
Republican controlled Fort Worth (in supposedly conservative Texas) has shown terrible cowardice – but the Democrat cities are worse.
The words of the violent (indeed vicious) Marxists of “Black Lives Matter” are policy in many Democrat cities.
Ask the shade of 74 year old former Captain David Dorn – like so many others murdered by the Social Justice Looters.
Ask the shades of so many people (mostly BLACK people) murdered after the police were taken out of various areas – in a process that started years ago in some cities.
New York City is the largest city in the United States and one of the largest in the Western World – already the Castro loving Mayor has abolished the Plain Clothes division and he is taking a BILLION Dollars out of the police budget to give to his BLM Marxist friends – in schemes to “help people”.
New York City is going to be Hell on Earth – those who can leave should do so, NOW. It does not matter if you get only a fraction of what your property is “worth” – because soon your property may just be ashes, and you may be ashes (and dried blood) yourself.
And Big Business?
They have SUPPORTED the Marxists – every step of the way.
The Big Corporations are just as responsible for the murders as the Marxists are – for they KNOW the nature of the movement they support.
Damn the Woke Corporations – damn them to Hell.
They have the blood of innocents, many innocents, on their hands.