Another horrific event from the States.
Two black men killed by the police and revenge shooting killing police officers.
Police in Europe are armed but in America they seem to be on a different wavelength.
Different society I suppose when you can buy a assault rifle without questions.
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Can killing a police officer in the United States give that killer the death penalty.
For me it works both ways.
The police officer killing a black person , does that mean the police officer can get the death penalty as well.
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It will never work both ways fluffy.Police are law enforcement and depending on circumstances they are allowed to kill or maybe overkill.
Hence the backlash which is going on in Dallas.
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An unholy mess whichever way you look at it.
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I have a distant (literally) relative that lives in USA, can't remember where. Friends on Facebook but have never actually met her.
She is so stereotypically the NRA supporting, Trump lover American. Some of the stuff she posts you just scratch your head at.
So the Florida mass murder in the nightclub, if the club allowed people to take their guns in, then it wouldnt have happened.....
So my 17 year old nephew points out does she really believe that a nightclub, a dark noisy nightclub filled with drunk people would be safer if they had guns? Oh yes she says!
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>> Oh yes she says!
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Eventually she would be correct, eventually.
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It's hard to comprehend Americans. On the face of it they ought to be like us, common European heritage and all that, but in fact they are full of impenetrable contradictions.
It's a bit like the Romans - apparently civilised people, organised, good engineers, artistic, literary, sort of democracy and rule of law, yet they enjoyed torturing people and animals in front of baying crowds. So really, it's hard to acknowledge any cultural connection.
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>> It's hard to comprehend Americans. On the face of it they ought to be like us, common European heritage and all that, but in fact they are full of impenetrable contradictions.
They are a frontier people CP. Look at any hero of the Old West and you will see a psychopathic yokel.
Must have been a nightmare for most people (but they were used to it so it seemed normal).
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The frontier thing is true - or at least widely believed over there. So much of the country was forged through the use and ownership of guns that the feeling that they're essential equipment will take a long time to erase.
For an apparently advanced society, there's still a lot of the primitive about America. Not just guns and God, but things like their cars, appliances and electrical fittings, which seem crude - and beige - compared with the European or Japanese alternatives.
Makes the pockets of liberalism you do find - and they're not just on the east and west coasts - all the more refreshing.
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America is a wonderful social, racial and cultural palimpsest.
Very welcoming too and courteous to courteous outsiders. Hillbillies and Berkeley academics, impeccable manners everywhere. Any rudeness was pure provocation, not to be taken too much to heart.
I loved the place coast to coast. Off course I kept moving, didn't stop anywhere long enough to get into trouble. But no one wanted to make trouble, even the cowboys in the Amarillo truckstop who gazed coldly upon them hippies from under their funnel-brim stetsons... they were pussycats really in big-city terms, but I managed somehow to refrain from telling them so.
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I picked up a T shirt in AZ with a photo on the front of a Native American Indian raiding party.
Underneath the words 'Dept of Homeland Security'
Always made me smile & I need to replace it
I gave it to a Peruvian girl ....don't ask.
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The American gun culture has a lot to answer for. Not that there are not firearms available to our criminals.
These clips show how vulnerable American cops can be and indicate why the can appear to be somewhat 'stand offish'.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K2-NEo3NVU
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The Guardian and its slanted statistics to one side, what an endless list of tragedy! Many of these wouldn't happen if guns weren't so freely available.
And the police are by no means guilty in all of these, or indeed innocent for that matter.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 11 Jul 16 at 02:24
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America seems inherently to be trigger happy:
www.veteransforpeace.org/files/3513/3227/0400/a_century_of_MILITARY_INTERVENTIONS.pdf
This 120 or so "partial" list manages to include the 600,000 Filipinos killed in the Spanish American War. Heaven knows what the full list would look like. I fancy there was some shelling on Columbia to protect t US business interests and there are all the incidents post-2001 to add. Nice to see the Special Relationship hasn't stopped them from invading a British territory (Grenada 1893-4).
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Oops! I was reading a print version which stops at 2001 but this online version carries it on. The shelling I mentioned was not the incident listed in it.
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You have to be carefull in the States no comparison with the UK.
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