rigorousintuition.ca

I don't get the argument that COVID-19 is supposed to be so damn scary to protesters that they are somehow effectively killing themselves by protesting obvious injustice.

Another more positive way to look at this is that millions of people just said "Enough is enough" not just to police brutality but also to authorities cowing them to continue hiding in their homes indefinitely.

And the same authoritarian worshipers who until recently got their rocks off by shaming people who broke the first mass quarantine of healthy people ever staged in human history are currently more afraid of legitimately angry minorities than they are of COVID-19.

I think the protests are an extremely positive development, at least in regard to what our elites had been planning to subject us to (contact tracing, vaccination status and social credit apps) before allowing us to use public spaces and reopen our small businesses.

Elvis » Fri Jun 05, 2020 11:09 pm wrote:Someone made the observation that the police are just well-equipped counter-protesters.

That is exactly what they are and what I've always said. (They are also the substitute "masses" or "real Americans" given that too many of the real ones still don't conform to spec; it's one reason why there are more shows about them than about anything else in "real life.")

Every protest I've ever seen comes with its own ridiculously well-paid group of professional anti-protesters. There they have been, right in front of you, after all your years of paranoid speculation (or false parallels to US activities in other countries), and their paymaster isn't Soros, it's your own town government, often with your approval.

These professional anti-protesters also happen to be

a. a gang and a cult with rituals and uniforms and an officially sanctioned self-heroizing ethos (more aggressively and totally a cult than almost any group of protesters anywhere, making the white middle-class nicepeople ritually shedding their privilege on the sidelines of the present uprising look like the minor mostly harmless spinoffs of liberal Protestantism and New Age la-la that they are),

and

b. extremely violent and prone to riot and mayhem.

The contexts for the present uprising are legion. They are found in the political economy and society, in the racist reality, and in the C19 lockdown-prompted crisis. In regard to the main proximate cause, however, every explanation is confusionism and distraction and disinfo, except for the obvious, the one that the protesters themselves tell you every minute:

Police forces engaged in constant generalized and specific brutalizations of communities based on race and class for many years. This was a matter of policy, training, professional culture, group "solidarity," the psychology of those likeliest to recruit themselves, and a kind of social mission (to suppress the perceived insubordination or threat of democracy to the republic, to provide a kind of exemplary terror against populations considered especially threatening). Some of this brutalization was excess, most of it was systemic and in conformity with policies such as the "war on drugs," "broken windows," zero-tolerance, nudge-based cooptation psychology, etc.

During this time the police were the only municipal and state public services that saw stable and increased budgeting. All other social services were cut. Cops were sent in to act as security forces in the schools. The "schools-to-prison pipeline" became a well-known phrase. Millions of people became the objects of an ever-expanding carceral state, even decades after crime rates plunged to historic lows, and private for-profit involvement in this industry mushroomed. During this time, they were increasingly militarized. Many exemplary incidents of excess and terror were recorded on video, and sparked justified but localized outbreaks of rage, until finally, as has happened in many other eras (choose your metaphor) the final straw breaks the camel's back, the dam bursts, the bucket overflows, the water boils.

Even then, the first night of protests is peaceful, and most protests begin peacefully, until the cops initiate their usual, predictable, ultra-violent, humiliating, and arbitrary forms of crowd control, mostly in the ways they have been trained to do, with a bit of enthusiasic or neurotically driven excessive force. Then, at least this time, at least for a number of days, things slipped out of their control.

.

Was anyone here talking about cults, by the way?

Note: The video of the Buffalo incident in the following story gives a wider angle and goes on for much longer than the one that's been most widely diseminated.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-e ... y-of-cops/

nypost.com
Buffalo Emergency Response Team quits in solidarity of cops
By Lia Eustachewich

The entire Buffalo police Emergency Response Team has resigned following the suspension of two officers who were caught on video shoving a 75-year-old protester to the pavement, according to reports Friday.

A total of 57 officers resigned from the emergency team in solidarity with the two suspended cops, who pushed Martin Gugino, causing him to stumble backward and crack his head on the ground, WGRZ reported.

“Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” said John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association.

The special squad was created in 2016 and is deployed for mass protests or riots, the network reported.

The officers who resigned are still employed, just no longer part of the Emergency Response Team, according to WIVB.

Gugino, an activist who is well known in Buffalo, was listed in serious but stable condition.

The shocking video shows blood gushing from his head after he fell.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier Friday that the city should pursue terminating the two officers, who were suspended immediately by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown.

Solidarity!

Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:56 pm wrote:There are definitely cult-like aspects to what is going on. Every revolutionary movement tends towards Red Guards, so how much you see it tends to be a matter of how much you want to see it -- all analysis, like all journalism, is motivated.

Still, it's hard to miss the smell of the secular evangelical ceremonies whereby a herd of crackers take to their knees, raise their hands into the air, and seek absolution for their white privilege. Something is afoot there.

Speaking of motivated analysis, I was utterly unmoved by the early attempts at .jpg phrenology asserting that that Derek Chauvin who was arrested wasn't the real Derek Chavin. I've just spent too much time doing photo / video analysis with money on the line, I know how easy it is for angles and foreshortening to confound your read.

So it really bothers me to have to report this latest juxtaposition really makes me wonder. Photo attached.

What are the forensic details that make you wonder? I know nothing about how this works but that appears to be the same nose to my eye.

I think Brekin hit the nail on the head with his post earlier. Either coronavirus is a pandemic so deadly we need to fundamentally change our way of life or it isn't (personally i think it's the latter).

If it's a deadly pandemic all the mainstream media, politicians and big corporations now egging people on to gather in large groups and shout their lungs out are provoking a genocide among vulnerable minorities under the cynical slogans of #blacklivesmatter and #icantbreath. If it's not a deadly pandemic all the (same) media, politicians and big corporations that were coercing people to stay at home and self-isolate for the last three months have terrorized the people (in some cases literally to death i suspect) and ruined the economy without valid reasons under the cynical slogans of #savinglives and #strongtogether.

Both events showed ritualistic cultlike elements, from washing your hands to taking a knee.

Even if worn correctly all the time covering your mouth won't protect you against getting infected, at most it will decrease your chances of infecting others somewhat and even for that, there's no real evidence (see: https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/06/coronavirus-fact-check-6-does-wearing-a-mask-do-anything/). But whatever your thoughts on that, the same logic applies. Either outside gatherings (with or without mouth masks) are safe, in which case obviously this goes for all gatherings, or they aren't

0_0 » Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:37 pm wrote:the cynical slogans of #blacklivesmatter and #icantbreath.

Have you considered going to one of these actions to take the mic and tell the crowd this just how "cynical" these slogans are and that they are being pushed by politicians and corporations. Maybe you could report back after you do.

i probably couldnt't and i suppose you'd be okay with that

JackRiddler » Sat Jun 06, 2020 7:36 am wrote:Was anyone here talking about cults, by the way?

Note: The video of the Buffalo incident in the following story gives a wider angle and goes on for much longer than the one that's been most widely diseminated.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-e ... y-of-cops/

nypost.com
Buffalo Emergency Response Team quits in solidarity of cops
By Lia Eustachewich

The entire Buffalo police Emergency Response Team has resigned following the suspension of two officers who were caught on video shoving a 75-year-old protester to the pavement, according to reports Friday.

A total of 57 officers resigned from the emergency team in solidarity with the two suspended cops, who pushed Martin Gugino, causing him to stumble backward and crack his head on the ground, WGRZ reported.

“Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” said John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association.

The special squad was created in 2016 and is deployed for mass protests or riots, the network reported.

The officers who resigned are still employed, just no longer part of the Emergency Response Team, according to WIVB.

Gugino, an activist who is well known in Buffalo, was listed in serious but stable condition.

The shocking video shows blood gushing from his head after he fell.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier Friday that the city should pursue terminating the two officers, who were suspended immediately by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown.

Solidarity!

Bet some of the Buffalo LE terrorists knew Gugino. Did not watch the expanded clip but from the clip most have watched the cop clearly knocks Gugino ddown then sees he is bloodied and marches on as do other cops on the team. Cold. They should all lose their jobs and be sued in civil court for putative and actual damages. I have very little sympathy for those in LE. They make their choices.

0_0 » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:37 am wrote:I think Brekin hit the nail on the head with his post earlier. Either coronavirus is a pandemic so deadly we need to fundamentally change our way of life or it isn't (personally i think it's the latter).

If it's a deadly pandemic all the mainstream media, politicians and big corporations now egging people on to gather in large groups and shout their lungs out are provoking a genocide among vulnerable minorities under the cynical slogans of #blacklivesmatter and #icantbreath. If it's not a deadly pandemic all the (same) media, politicians and big corporations that were coercing people to stay at home and self-isolate for the last three months have terrorized the people (in some cases literally to death i suspect) and ruined the economy without valid reasons under the cynical slogans of #savinglives and #strongtogether.

Both events showed ritualistic cultlike elements, from washing your hands to taking a knee.

Kindly 0_0, you are perhaps too black and white in thinking and have not thought about the concept of risk. This and future potential or future pandemics exists in a state of gray between your two extremes (until of course we hit a truly human extinction event over relatively short time frame pandemic likely occurring with other extreme stressors). The nature of a novel virus with high potential for death and morbidity is that society has to treat it as worse case until the virus is proven not as dangerous or otherwise ebbs. So if mitigations are effective or if we just luck out, the tendency for many will be to perceive or sell the perception that there was an over reaction. The worse case or even very bad cases have low probability but their potential is such that society does not want exposure to such risk (which in fact mitigations may be futile). Think the insurance concept.

The media, MSM anyway. is never on the side of human masses; the media is pandering or grooming and entertainment, not on the side of the individual except filling time.

0_0 » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:06 pm wrote:i probably couldnt't and i suppose you'd be okay with that

I sincerely don't follow your response. It's probably my own fault. But regardless who has attempted to appropriate these slogans, there is no dispute, best I can tell, that both began as part of social movements (all caveats about how complex the whole organism and its constituent actors acknowledged but temporarily set aside.) I can't breathe, in particular, is literally a repetition of a phrase that first uttered by crowds as a repeat of the desperation experienced by a man being murdered. It matters that Nike and Amazon and probably fucking WalMart and Target and whomever else thinks they can just say these things too to appease the masses. But it's simply wrong (not ethical, compassionate or humane) to essentially dismiss the literal millions of people in the street as sheeple. Who knows, maybe (as NIck Land recently tweeted and made me snicker), part of this is about the human race unconsciously choosing herd immunity. But then IIRC, that's what you've advocated all along, no?

PufPuf93 » Sun Jun 07, 2020 5:19 pm wrote: Kindly 0_0, you are perhaps too black and white in thinking and have not thought about the concept of risk. This and future potential or future pandemics exists in a state of gray between your two extremes (until of course we hit a truly human extinction event over relatively short time frame pandemic likely occurring with other extreme stressors). The nature of a novel virus with high potential for death and morbidity is that society has to treat it as worse case until the virus is proven not as dangerous or otherwise ebbs. So if mitigations are effective or if we just luck out, the tendency for many will be to perceive or sell the perception that there was an over reaction. The worse case or even very bad cases have low probability but their potential is such that society does not want exposure to such risk (which in fact mitigations may be futile). Think the insurance concept.

The media, MSM anyway. is never on the side of human masses; the media is pandering or grooming and entertainment, not on the side of the individual except filling time.

I have not thought about the concept of risk, now that's rich. The media together with politicians and big corporations have these last 3 months zoomed in on the possible risk of one aspect of life to the exlusion of literally everything else. Sure this coronavirus might have been a deadly pandemic (hey who knows maybe the moon will fall down) but it turns out it has a death rate of about 0.2 to 0.3% and the average age of deaths is like 82. Meanwhile cancer screenings and surgeries are on hold, idem heart disease, people are losing their jobs and their marbles, domestic violence and child abuse are on the up, and no evaluation of these very real, known risks has been taken into account at all. At all!! And i - an innocent bystander- am the one who hasn't thought about the concept of risk. I mean how do you come up with stuff like this, do you just pull it out of your ass or what? Sorry to be rude.

Let me just give you one example, that imo perfectly illustrates this global madness, and i pointed to it before: every lifesaving organisation across the globe these last few weeks has updated their instructions on reanimation to say that when someone in front of you is dying and you suspect them to maybe have coronavirus to not give chest compression or mouth to mouth, and if you have no reason to suspect they have coronavirus still not give mouth to mouth but maybe do chest compressions using gloves. Google it for examples. Now let's analyze the risk here. A person is lying on the ground in front of you and you can save him or her by giving mouth to mouth. The chances this dying person is infected with coronavirus would be around 0.25% currently in the UK, assuming infected people go out as much as non-infected people, so it's probably even smaller than that. So even if it happens to be one of the 0.25% of the population that's infected you'd still have at most 50% chance of getting infected by giving mouth to mouth (this is a personal guestimate, if someone has data on this let me know). The chance you - the person giving mouth to mouth- will die from that is between 0.2 and 0.3% although probably a lot closer to 0 still if you're under 80 and not in a carehome. So the advice is to not try to save someone from dying (almost a sure thing without mouth to mouth) on the offchance (0.25x0.5x0.2 if i do the math right here) that you yourself might die of coronavirus. This by way of example. And they sell this madness as: you can't be careful enough!! Talking about insurance concept, i wish these kinds of measures were left to insurance companies, you'd have none of these excessive disproportionate measures, of that i am sure.

You then proceed to say: "the nature of a novel virus with high potential for death and morbidity is that society has to treat it as worse case until the virus is proven not as dangerous or otherwise ebbs". Although i personally would dispute that the virus displayed a high potential for death and morbidity, other than for a very select group, and you'd still have to weigh that against all other factors that have very real risks as well, let's assume for a moment that you're right. Then why are the same people who told everyone to stay home and save lives now telling everyone to go out and protest. See how you missed my entire point there? And yes, the media are never on the side of the individual, let's end with something we can agree on.

liminalOyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 6:17 pm wrote: I sincerely don't follow your response. It's probably my own fault. But regardless who has attempted to appropriate these slogans, there is no dispute, best I can tell, that both began as part of social movements (all caveats about how complex the whole organism and its constituent actors acknowledged but temporarily set aside.) I can't breathe, in particular, is literally a repetition of a phrase that first uttered by crowds as a repeat of the desperation experienced by a man being murdered. It matters that Nike and Amazon and probably fucking WalMart and Target and whomever else thinks they can just say these things too to appease the masses. But it's simply wrong (not ethical, compassionate or humane) to essentially dismiss the literal millions of people in the street as sheeple. Who knows, maybe (as NIck Land recently tweeted and made me snicker), part of this is about the human race unconsciously choosing herd immunity. But then IIRC, that's what you've advocated all along, no?

I called those slogans cynical when used by the same media, politicians and big corporations that until a week ago were all urging us to stay home and save lives, and who don't care either way. Nowhere did i dismiss "the literal millions of people in the street as sheeple". Are there really millions? And yes, natural immunity is what i have advocated all along for everyone but the very frail and/or very elderly. If nothing else i hope these protests will finally and to everyone's satisfaction prove that the dangers of coronavirus were hugely exaggerated, although i'm not hopeful.

0_0 » Sun Jun 07, 2020 1:37 pm wrote:If it's a deadly pandemic all the mainstream media, politicians and big corporations now egging people on to gather in large groups and shout their lungs out

Almost everyone involved in these institutions are doing their utmost to coopt, narcotize, shame, cajole, threaten or literally order the beatings of people so that they stay home. This has got to be the most imperviously false statement one could manage. Long as you're just making up shit that is diametrically opposite to perceivable reality, why not throw in the cops? (It's true in a way. When they crack heads and shoot the gas, they foment more protests.)

Intercepted en route. Hmmm.

Cops have now released the masks, but—

Law Enforcement Seized Masks Meant To Protect Anti-Racist Protesters From COVID-19

WASHINGTON ― Law enforcement agents have seized hundreds of cloth masks that read “Stop killing Black people” and “Defund police” that a Black Lives Matter-affiliated organization sent to cities around the country to protect demonstrators against the spread of COVID-19, a disease that has had a disparate impact on Black communities.

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) spent tens of thousands of dollars on the masks they had planned to send all over the country. The first four boxes, each containing 500 masks, were mailed from Oakland, California, and were destined for Washington, St. Louis, New York City and Minneapolis...

But the items never left the state. The U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers for the packages indicate they were “Seized by Law Enforcement” and urge the mailer to “contact the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for further information.”

... [Post office] guys know that I ship apparel,” Quinonez said. “There was nothing out of the ordinary.”

Now he’s wondering if the government is watching him or watching the Black Lives Matter movement. “I just don’t understand it. It’s just really blowing my mind,” he said.

...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-li ... yMPHUwHhiw