News of the day

Is it April 1st again already..?

Blacksword wrote: Hundreds of Ukrainian troops flee to Russia for sanctuary.. Ukarine troops deserting..

Blacksword wrote: ^^^ An invasion is highly unlikely in my opinion. Conflicts these days are fought via proxy not face to face. If the seperatists find themselves overwhelmed by Kiev, Putin will drop them like a hot turd.

A couple-of-days-old news now, but things are getting more and more interesting.

They are also arresting reporters and people for horrible crimes like filming them. The cops, who look and act more like soldiers in war, continue to behave as if we lived in a literal police state. 

Apparently, King Crimson has a new 12,000 CD Starless and Bible Black box set coming out soon. Will probably only cost approximately the GDP of a small third world country. Should be exciting.   

Caught this from Marc Maron on Twitter. This is something new to me: there are podcasts, and there's a company that wants money from podcasters, and there's Adam Carolla who wants a patent invalidated. What else do I have to know?

I am once again torn in regards to what to believe in a shooting death. I can once again see both sides of the story being the truth.  I am naive enough to respect police officers and believe that they are doing their job for the general good of the public.  I tend to err on the side of the law and believe that the police officer did shoot Michael Brown in self-defense as he claims.  As more news comes out, that the man had a felony record; that he had just robbed a liquor/party store; that he had marijuana in his system (although story is that is supposed to make you more mellow instead of violent); it leads me to believe that the officer's side of the story is the truth.  That being said, I am also left to wonder if the officer overreacted and if he let his ego lead him to be a bully authority that caused the situation to escalate out of control the way that it did.  Was Michael Brown really charging him when he shot him, or was he just pissed off because Michael Brown had sassed him, disrespected him, and possibly punched him in the face before fleeing?  As the original news broke of the shooting, it didn't really make sense to me that a police officer would shoot and kill an unarmed man who offered to surrender.  As more items come to light, the officer's story does seem more credible to me, however, I suspect that he may have made some poor split second decisions during the altercation.  It seems as though a more nonlethal approach should have been taken.  A shot to the leg to the leg maybe?  I believe that officers are trained to shoot for the center area though as it would be a more stationary target than moving legs.  I will be curious to see how this unfolds.  It is a shame that two lives will be forever ruined as a result of the apparent bad decisions made by Michael Brown.  He certainly didn't deserve to die for the crimes that he allegedly committed but if he did attack the officer and was charging the officer than he certainly isn't blameless in his death.

If it was indeed a senseless act or somehow borne out of racism or just general ill-will from the officer, then I agree he should be punished and should certainly not be exempt from punishment. However, if there were justification for the shooting, and there may well have been, he should not be punished simply to "bring down the madness out there". We should never allow our justice system to become a means of placating people who choose to riot. The justice system has just as much duty to exonerate the officer if he did nothing wrong as it does to see him locked away if he did do something wrong. As a last comment, I think the use of the term "unarmed" may be inappropriate in this case. This dude was massive and IF he was charging at the police officer when the officer shot, this kid was using his body as a weapon (a potentially lethal one at that). Of course, that is only if he was charging the officer. If he was not, or in any other way assaulting the officer, then yes, he was unarmed.

akamaisondufromage wrote:   Apparently, Police in St Louis have shot another 23 yr old black guy.  He had a knife so obviously the only way out was to shoot him dead.   Don't they just need to arrest the officer and then have an enquiry and then if there is evidence he goes to court. Simples.

That's something I was also curious about, something I see as a gap in the legal system. How do they decide on whether the officer should be charged or not given the circumstances you've described? Either way, the guy should have been at least charged, and he wasn't. There is such a thing as acquittal of charges that can be used later on.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - August 19 2014 at 16:18