George Floyd/Black Lives Matter Protests

[Cheese]

1 hour ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Is desecrating graves of racists allowed on the high ground?

 

You come at the king, you best not miss.

 

[Shandon Par]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

Posted this before but the Union President sounds like a character in a James Ellroy novel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kroll_(police_officer)

Shooting a handcuffed black man. Who’d have thought he’d be the guy police chose to represent them?

[BukyOHare]

3 minutes ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

It means that, as far as I can see it, there have been peaceful protests and appeals to authority for the ruling classes to have a greater understanding (in this instance) of the societal racism that plagues the lives of black people in the world. Not that there aren't institutionalised racist attitudes in place against Asians, Indigenous Peoples and all the way down to Scottish people or Sicilians to differing degrees in different areas. In general, however, we have objective evidence that points to black people being on the shitty end of the stick more than other races and peoples throughout the world.

For five hundred years, half a millennium, the societies and laws that we govern ourselves on have directly attributed to the detriment of black people and it's only in our lifetimes that the final few of these laws have been eradicated. Of those laws how many were abolished with just peaceful protest? Did slavery in the US end with a handshake or civil war? Were Jim Crow laws repealed with pleasant gospel singing or mass protest?

Even if you want to bring it closer to home the Brixton Riots kicked off after years of abuse at the hands of police and it ended with the Scarman report that pointed to institutionalised racism in the Met. Protests and riots do not happen in a vacuum. They are what happens when people have ran out of other options from the Storming of the Bastille to a statue getting slung in the Avon. People have been pointing out these injustices for years and their voices are not heard or dismissed out of hand.

Gary Younge, Darcus Howe, Benjamin Zephaniah and Raymond Antrobus (and hundreds more) been writing books and articles, appearing on telly, petitioning parliament, performing across the country and consistently been models of the decorum and lawfulness that you speak of and have been asking that the UK government takes a look at its imperial past, looks to decolonise the laws and the make up of the country and full embrace and endorse the lives of its black population. None of this information has been heeded. When they have asked, as, for instance, Graham Campbell, to look at ways to educate people about the basis of where these statues and street names come from. How they could be used as a weapon to teach us. What additions could be made so as to not remind and ridicule black people about their status in the country and how their lived condition is incongruent with their legal one.

All of that was ignored and has been for decades if not centuries. Toppling one statue of one c**t has done more for their cause than their combined output. The folk throwing ropes around metal racists and dragging from their plinths may be standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before them and educated them for the need to take action but they're still the ones taking action and should be applauded.

If yer more worried about law abiding citizens than what is right then you're one of the fannies Martin Luther King wrote about from a Birmingham Prison.

I just thought calling you a shitehawk was a little less TL;DR

Why did we not witness the recent scenes from down South before George Floyd's death or pre covid lockdown? 

[Gordon EF]

3 minutes ago, BukyOHare said:

Why did we not witness the recent scenes from down South before George Floyd's death or pre covid lockdown? 

George Floyd's death was clearly the straw that broke the camel's back to some extent. But reasons behind these protests have obviously been building for some time.

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, BukyOHare said:

Why did we not witness the recent scenes from down South before George Floyd's death or pre covid lockdown? 

Nothing like live video of a lynching to concentrate the mind.

[Dee Man]

Australian One Nation leader Pauline Hanson being subtle as an axe, as usual:

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6788591/where-is-the-outrage-for-white-people-pauline-hanson-hits-out-at-black-lives-matter-protesters/

[MuckleMoo]

It means that, as far as I can see it, there have been peaceful protests and appeals to authority for the ruling classes to have a greater understanding (in this instance) of the societal racism that plagues the lives of black people in the world. Not that there aren't institutionalised racist attitudes in place against Asians, Indigenous Peoples and all the way down to Scottish people or Sicilians to differing degrees in different areas. In general, however, we have objective evidence that points to black people being on the shitty end of the stick more than other races and peoples throughout the world.

For five hundred years, half a millennium, the societies and laws that we govern ourselves on have directly attributed to the detriment of black people and it's only in our lifetimes that the final few of these laws have been eradicated. Of those laws how many were abolished with just peaceful protest? Did slavery in the US end with a handshake or civil war? Were Jim Crow laws repealed with pleasant gospel singing or mass protest?

Even if you want to bring it closer to home the Brixton Riots kicked off after years of abuse at the hands of police and it ended with the Scarman report that pointed to institutionalised racism in the Met. Protests and riots do not happen in a vacuum. They are what happens when people have ran out of other options from the Storming of the Bastille to a statue getting slung in the Avon. People have been pointing out these injustices for years and their voices are not heard or dismissed out of hand.

Gary Younge, Darcus Howe, Benjamin Zephaniah and Raymond Antrobus (and hundreds more) been writing books and articles, appearing on telly, petitioning parliament, performing across the country and consistently been models of the decorum and lawfulness that you speak of and have been asking that the UK government takes a look at its imperial past, looks to decolonise the laws and the make up of the country and full embrace and endorse the lives of its black population. None of this information has been heeded. When they have asked, as, for instance, Graham Campbell has, to look at ways to educate people about the basis of where these statues and street names come from. How they could be used as a weapon to teach us. What additions could be made so as to not remind and ridicule black people about their status in the country and how their lived condition is incongruent with their legal one. What changes have we made to accommodate these appeals? f**k all.

All of that was ignored and has been for decades if not centuries. Toppling one statue of one c**t has done more for their cause than their combined output. The folk throwing ropes around metal racists and dragging from their plinths may be standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before them and educated them for the need to take action but they're still the ones taking action and should be applauded.

If yer more worried about law abiding citizens than what is right then you're one of the fannies Martin Luther King wrote about from a Birmingham Prison.

I just thought calling you a shitehawk was a little less TL;DR

That's a fucking telt!

[DA Baracus]

2 hours ago, tongue_tied_danny said:

Here's some "football lads" protecting the Lady Godiva statue in Coventry. 

I'm not sure what she had to do with the slave trade but I'm sure these fellahs mean well.

Folk should 'tip off' these absolute goons that protesters will be targeting statues of cartoon characters and the like.

Seeing a bunch of scumbag morons acting like they're hard (and, worse, thinking that that's actually important) hanging flags on Frank Sidebottom and chanting pish would be amusing and would keep them away from causing any real trouble.

[BukyOHare]

6 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

Folk should 'tip off' these absolute goons that protesters will be targeting statues of cartoon characters and the like.

Seeing a bunch of scumbag morons acting like they're hard (and, worse, thinking that that's actually important) hanging flags on Frank Sidebottom and chanting pish would be amusing and would keep them away from causing any real trouble.

They will also have a right to have their views heard as well. Peacefully of course.

[Lofarl]

So...  Any statues of Prince Phillip kicking about?

[Highland Capital]

1 hour ago, Dee Man said:

Australian One Nation leader Pauline Hanson being subtle as an axe, as usual:

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6788591/where-is-the-outrage-for-white-people-pauline-hanson-hits-out-at-black-lives-matter-protesters/

Pauline Hanson is of course the woman who declared that there were too many immigrants in Australia...so declared she was moving to London!

[Dan Steele]

Must have been difficult for those human traffickers when the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into law. All those philanthropic acts must have cost a bob or two. Then the upkeep of all those stately homes full of nice stuff to distance themselves from the slavery connections as they took themselves into polite society.

Just as well the UK government agreed to pay £20 million (about 1.5 billion in today's money) compensation to slave owning families in the Caribbean, Africa and absentee slave owners in UK, then. Compensation ffs.

[Sergeant Wilson]

48 minutes ago, Highland Capital said:

Pauline Hanson is of course the woman who declared that there were too many immigrants in Australia...so declared she was moving to London!

She seems nice.

[Detournement]

The League of Gentleman and The Mighty Boosh have been cancelled so racism is one step closer to being solved. 

You can still obviously watch a million shows or movies where an American kills foreigners by the dozen though. 

[Detournement]

46 minutes ago, The Skelpit Lug said:

Must have been difficult for those human traffickers when the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into law. All those philanthropic acts must have cost a bob or two. Then the upkeep of all those stately homes full of nice stuff to distance themselves from the slavery connections as they took themselves into polite society.

Just as well the UK government agreed to pay £20 million (about 1.5 billion in today's money) compensation to slave owning families in the Caribbean, Africa and absentee slave owners in UK, then. Compensation ffs.

The slaves became 'apprentices' and had to work without pay for years then the planters set up a harsh penal system to provide them with loads of free prison labour. 

[NotThePars]

3 hours ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

You come at the king, you best not miss.

 

I still don't get the first highlight. Surely "the only thing that requires explanation is the good side of slavery" is literally "why should I have to explain why slavery is bad when it is self-evident"? Then again, it's not like braindead gammon to read things deliberately in bad faith to point score!

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, Highland Capital said:

Pauline Hanson is of course the woman who declared that there were too many immigrants in Australia...so declared she was moving to London!

As well as wearing a burka to parliament...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2017/aug/17/george-brandis-attacks-pauline-hansons-appalling-burqa-stunt-video

[Cheese]

29 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

I still don't get the first highlight. Surely "the only thing that requires explanation is the good side of slavery" is literally "why should I have to explain why slavery is bad when it is self-evident"? Then again, it's not like braindead gammon to read things deliberately in bad faith to point score!

I mean it's Marx ffs. You don't have to have read his stuff to understand he was probably not keen on the idea of people being forced to work for free.

 

"Labour in the white skin can never free itself as long as labour in the black skin is branded"

[welshbairn]

4 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Is desecrating graves of racists allowed on the high ground?

 

Misguided of Marx to traduce Proudhon's idea that freeing the white proletariat would be meaningless without freeing the slaves as well. A man before his time.

Quote

“If Mr. Lincoln teaches his compatriots to overcome their revulsion, grants the blacks their civil rights and also declares a war on [what creates] the proletariat, the union will be saved.” (230)

“In a federal republic, the proletariat and slavery both seem unacceptable; the tendency must be to abolish them both… Instead of rejecting and humiliating those people [ex-slaves], must not all Anglo-Saxons, both northern and southern, receive them in harmony and hail them as fellow citizens and equals? However, the consequence of that measure would be to grant equal political rights to both the emancipated blacks and those kept in servitude until now.” 

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/proudhon-federalism-slavery

[The_Kincardine]

3 hours ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

It means that, as far as I can see it, there have been peaceful protests and appeals to authority for the ruling classes to have a greater understanding (in this instance) of the societal racism that plagues the lives of black people in the world. Not that there aren't institutionalised racist attitudes in place against Asians, Indigenous Peoples and all the way down to Scottish people or Sicilians to differing degrees in different areas. In general, however, we have objective evidence that points to black people being on the shitty end of the stick more than other races and peoples throughout the world.

I've lived (largely but not exclusively) away from Scotland since 1981 so have missed this.

When were the Scotch, the most slavey people in Europe, subject to societal racism?