Different Day, Same Shit. Abridged.

The lightweight edition of the DDSS Blog. Same great taste, less fat and fewer calories. macklyons.blogspot.com

[ddssblog]

The Man takes a look at one attempt to spark mob violence against #BlackLivesMatter, as well as the death of Alfred Wright.

[ddssblog]

By the way, don’t use bear mace on cops. It only attracts other cops and dramatically raises your chances of getting attacked and/or killed.

[yearsoflivingdangerously]

This comic was produced in partnership by Years of Living Dangerously and Symbolia Magazine. For more amazing real life comics, get Symbolia on your iPad or via PDF. And for more information on the biggest story of our time - check out YEARS.

[azspot]

[ddssblog]

Today, if you lose your job and you’re an ordinary person, you can’t support yourself. If the government, friends or family don’t give you what you need, you have to beg for it. If you don’t get it, you die. Homesteading laws and laws which allowed people to take unused or underused property and use it to support themselves have been drastically weakened.

Absent a job, or charity, you will probably wind up dead. If you don’t, you will be miserable.

Our forebears in the 19th century understood this. It’s why they called jobs “wage slavery.” You do what you’re told by your boss, where you’re told to do it, when you’re told to do it, how you’re told to do it, and if you don’t, feel free to try and find another job.

Whether you can find another job is often unrelated to your personal attributes and has little to do with anything approaching virtue (those who doubt this are invited to investigate how Wall Street and Fleet Street make their money). How well most people are paid is a market decision in the sense that it has to do with the balance between labor supply and demand, and labor power and the power of capital: For all intents and purposes labor only has pricing power if it is organized and politically powerful or if the labor market is tight.

Those who came out of the Great Depression understood this because they had seen many people, through no fault of their own, reduced to poverty, unable to find any work. Because of this they tightened labor laws, tried to make unions more powerful and taxed the heck out of rich people so they couldn’t use their money to destroy the liberal state.

What they didn’t do was overthrow capitalism; they didn’t see a better, more practical way to organize society. As a result, many men stayed in positions of vast private power and wealth (even if they personally were heavily taxed) and were eventually able to use that money to overthrow the liberal state in England and the US, and from there they have been able to undermine it virtually everywhere, including in most of the European socialist states.

What is on offer, then, is not neo-feudalism, with neo-serfs, but aristocrats and their slaves–slaves towards whom the aristocrats feel less and less an obligation to even feed (see all the cuts to food stamps). In some ways it’s superior to even slavery for the master-class: Surplus labor beyond what is needed to keep wages down is now completely disposable and doesn’t have to be paid for, after all.

[ddssblog]

[ddssblog]

How Black Middle-Class Kids Become Poor Adults

When it comes to financial stability, black Americans are often in much more precarious financial situations than white Americans. Their unemployment rate is higher, and so is the level of poverty within the black community. In 2013, the poverty rate among white Americans was 9.6 percent, among black Americans it was 27.2 percent. “Even black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder,” writes Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.

[ddssblog]

Just a reminder that you can't satisfy everyone all the time. 

[quickhits]

Police Union Head Says 12-Year-Old With Toy Gun Was Threat To Cleveland Cop: 'Absolutely'

(TPM) The head of the Cleveland Police Patrolman Union on Monday got into a tense on-air debate, calling the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice “justified” and arguing the child was “absolutely” a threat to the officer who shot him.

Keep in mind that Ohio is an open carry state. Even if Tamir Rice was an adult with a real gun, as the police apparently believed, he would’ve been committing no crime. I’m of the opinion that people shouldn’t be marching around with loaded weapons, but still; they shot him down, thinking he was doing something that was well within his rights.

At the very least, the cop needs to be prosecuted for that. At the rock-bottom very least.

[ddssblog]

Looks like Russian President and aspiring strongman Vladimir Putin has to take time off from cultivating his rugged, manly image for the benefit of the home team (and sexually conflicted conservatives everywhere) to take care of a little problem. Sanctions set down in light of Putin's foray in annexation have combined with falling oil prices to kneecap the ruble:

As Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the conflict with the West for most of the year, the economic fallout on ordinary Russians has been limited. Suddenly, though, the plunging ruble is reawakening fears of rising prices and the kind of financial crisis Mr. Putin has sought to put behind his country. As the ruble hit a record low, falling as much as 20% against the dollar Tuesday, Moscow residents rushed to buy electronics and other big-ticket items and drained rubles from ATMs to swap them for dollars and euros—signaling a new feeling of vulnerability among Russians and a fresh challenge to their leader.

[ddssblog]

You've got a friend in the corrupt prosecutor. At least as long as you're a white cop.

H/T to @TheAnonNation

[newwavefeminism]

[keithboykin]

I don’t know if this makes you an “asshole,” but I’m pretty sure it makes you a racist. As I’ve said before, the second amendment only protects white people in this country.

[fullpraxisnow]

Man Calls Police to Escort His Girlfriend, Cops Show Up and Shoot Her in the Head | The Anti-Media

A 40-year-old woman and mother of three from Ann Arbor, Michigan was shot and killed Sunday night after allegedly confronting police while holding a knife.

The woman’s boyfriend, Victor Stephens, 54, challenged the police on their handling of the incident, saying that the use of lethal force was excessive and that the situation could have been resolved through non lethal means. Stephens said:

“Me and her, we had an argument. Glass was being broke, so I called the police to escort her out,”

Police were called at approximately 11:45 pm by Stephens to escort his girlfriend from his property. When officers arrived, Stephens was in a separate hallway in the house away from where the incident occurred and she was pronounced dead at the scene. There were 5 other people at the house.

“They said ‘freeze’ and the next thing I know I heard (gunshots),” Stephens said.

Significant questions are being raised regarding the circumstances surrounding the event, the use of lethal force in the encounter by Ann Arbor police and the investigation being launched by Michigan State police into the fatal shooting.

Ann Arbor Police issued this statement and Police Chief John Seto asked Michigan State Police to conduct an investigation into the incident, saying that those involved in the shooting and the community “deserve an objective, unbiased review of the facts surrounding this incident.”

Whether that goal can be achieved remains to be seen, as there are clear conflicts of interest with having the police investigate themselves as well as potential difficulties in ascertaining facts as a result.

This concern over objectivity is what prompted Wisconsin to become the first state to mandate outside reviews in police killings earlier this year as a result of activist movements in the state.

Retired Air Force officer Michael Bell, an advocate for this legislation had filed a wrongful death suit against police, who cleared themselves of any wrongdoing after killing his 21 year old son in an altercation. Bell hired his own investigators and submitted an 1,100 page report to the FBI and US attorneys, which brought important evidence and circumstances to light surrounding the incident and police response, and led to the case being settled after 6 years in court.

In researching, Bell also found that, “In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified.” Demonstrating how difficult it can be for police to be impartial in their own investigations and citing lack of accountability as the culprit. Bell kept organizing and fighting for what ultimately became Wisconsin’s law mandating outside reviews.

In addition to objectivity in the investigation, police use of lethal force continues to be a major concern, with high profile incidents such as the recent Michael Brown shooting elevating the issue into the national consciousness.

Whether the investigation finds the killing justifiable or not, the question will remain of whether the deceased mother of three could have been disarmed and taken into custody without facing lethal force, and to what extent police should be responsible for attempting non-lethal means of resolution.

While some circumstances certainly justify the use of lethal force, it is intended to be the last resort in ending an altercation and only to be used when in extreme danger. If the facts come to show that this was not the case, accountability must be demanded. If nothing else, because the price for society is far too steep: 3 children will now enter adulthood in society with their mother having been taken from them by violence. And regardless of whether this woman was a good mother or not, this is not the kind of practice that engenders building a better society.

(Photo Credit: AmericaWakieWakie)

[raw-r-evolution]

Cops always show up and murder. What’s with this robocop judge dredd style of killing all the time?

[ddssblog]

[teapartycat]

BREAKING: Ferguson grand jury absolves Officer Darren Wilson of murdering Michael Brown on grounds that, well, you know.

(via teapartycat)

[ddssblog]

Moral of the story? A young black child is a far graver threat than any deranged psychopath holding a gun.

And the police will respond accordingly.

[ddssblog]

Just as it says on the tin.

H/T to @viciousbabushka

[christel-thoughts]

When I say ‘I’ve never seen Dirty Dancing, any Aflred Hitchcock movie, any Star Wars film, the Die Hard series, the Terminator movies, that dancing one Kevin Beacon is famous for, Top Gun, a James Bond movie, etc,’ you should see the look on people’s faces. Black people who have immersed themselves in dominant culture kinda give me a ‘really?’ look, but white people are simply flabbergasted. They’re confused, lost, sometimes offended. But then if I ask them ‘well, have you seen Coming To America, Crooklyn, Lean On Me, Raisin In The Sun, Do The Right Thing, School Daze, Harlem Nights, Women of Brewster Place, The Color Purple, etc,’ those same white people seem taken back that they would have been expected to see those films/play. It’s like this entitlement to have your cultural phenomena known and appreciated when you clearly refuse to even acknowledge the contributions of others. Not only do people of color tend to be intimately familiar with the cultural tastes of white people while having our cultural contributions ignored when not being appropriated, we’re expected to…and that’s where I have a problem.

christel-thoughts

This!!!! This…is so important. I am tired of White supremacy being the standard by which what aspects of popular culture are determined to be valuable or not. And truly sick of Black culture being simultaneously hyper-consumed for appropriation, but erased through devaluation.

(via gradientlair)

In short, knowing white American culture like the back of your hand is a pre-requisite, yet expecting whites to know something about black culture outside of "twerking" is seen as an absolute affront.