Featured What's with the riots and looting?

“Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
— Malcolm X

“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
— “Prospects for Freedom in 1965,” speech, Jan. 7 1965, New York City (published in Malcolm X Speaks, ch. 12, 1965).

“There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.”
— “Message to the Grass Roots,” speech, Nov. 1963, Detroit (published in Malcolm X Speaks, ch. 1, 1965).

“Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”
— “The Ballot or the Bullet,” speech, April 3 1964, Cleveland, Ohio (published in Malcolm X Speaks, ch. 3, 1965).

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
— Speech, Nov. 1963, New York City.

 

“Stolen oranges also have Vitamin C. Likewise, a stolen salmon, too, has omega-3 fatty acids.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

 

“Oppressive violence and hatred may, ultimately, turn [the] sheep into wolves.”
― T.F. Hodge

 

“At a street corner meeting in Watts when the riots were over, an unemployed youth of about twenty said to me, "We won." I asked him: "How have you won? Homes have been destroyed, Negroes are lying dead in the streets, the stores from which you buy food and clothes are destroyed, and people are bringing you relief." His reply was significant: "We won because we made the whole world pay attention to us. The police chief never came here before; the mayor always stayed uptown. We made them come." Clearly it was no accident that the riots proceeded along an almost direct path to City Hall.... This is hardly a description of a Negro community that has run amok. The largest number of arrests were for looting—not for arson or shooting. Most of the people involved were not habitual thieves; they were members of a deprived group who seized a chance to possess things that all the dinning affluence of Los Angeles had never given them.”
― Bayard Rustin, Down The Line

 

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.

Ayn Rand

 

Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.

P. J. O'Rourke

 

Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state's monopoly of armed violence.

Guy Debord

 

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.

Ayn Rand

 

Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.

Ron Paul

 

In 1968, essayist, novelist and activist James Baldwin spoke with Esquire about racism in America, Dr. Martin Luther King, poverty and police brutality. In our current era of high profile police violence in communities like Ferguson, Missouri, and protests in Baltimore, Maryland, Baldwin’s words sound as prescient and, unfortunately, fresh as they did forty-seven years ago, proving the slow pace of progress in America, and how much hard work we have left to do. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

Q. How would you define somebody who smashes in the window of a television store and takes what he wants?

BALDWIN: Before I get to that, how would you define somebody who puts a cat where he is and takes all the money out of the ghetto where he makes it? Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set? He doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you. It’s just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn’t want it. He wants to let you know he’s there. The question I’m trying to raise is a very serious question. The mass media-television and all the major news agencies-endlessly use that word “looter”. On television you always see black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us, And no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.

 

Because they are idiots.

 

First people complained about Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. Don't protest like that, they said.

Then they complained when NBA players wore patches on their jerseys. Don't protest like that, they said.

Then they complained when black actors and actresses gave speeches at award ceremonies. Don't protest like that.

Then they complained when black singers gave speeches at awards ceremonies. Don't protest like that.

Then people complained when NBA players would mention black issues at after game press conferences. Don't protest like that, people said.

Then they complained when NBA players wore tee shirts with messages on them during pre-game warm-ups. Don't protest like that.

Then they complained when protesters blocked freeways with protest marches. Don't protest like that, people said.

Then they complained when people held up Black Lives Matter signs. Don't protest like that, people said.

People don't want to be bothered with peaceful protests. The protesters don't get any attention, don't see any changes.

Yeah, it's hard to figure out why people loot and riot.

 

There’s a major fallacy in all of that. People complained about the peaceful protests precisely because they did notice.

The rioting and looting accomplish something that peaceful protests don’t: they prove to those who complained that the protests and the protesters are illegitimate after all.

 

I still say when the lootin starts the shootin should start. BLM is not about advancing black lives. It is about advancing Communism. I dont go to sporting events to see Communism promoted.

 

My sentiments exactly! The police should be armed to the teeth, warn the "protesters" that the first act of violence/looting/anything of danger will be IMMEDIATELY met with FORCE, be it billy stick, taser, pepper spray, 12 ga, 9mm, or whatever!
I dare say that after a few such encounters these paid (IMHO) "demonstrators" will decide that the pay does not match the risk, and those just letting their testosterone rule in the anonymity of the group will suddenly become very meek!!

 

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EN - Clashes and Riots

 

Didn’t read the article, but saw the nation in the caption--a dictatorship with actual peaceful protesters. China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian governments crack down on peaceful protesters and bystanders using very brutal methods. They often do this to goad them into defending themselves, then claim they legitimately attacked the protesters.