Baltimore riots

Some of the videos I've seen it looks completely out of control. People trying to stop damage to their business getting set upon and beaten up, having glass/bins/tables being thrown at them (including a disabled woman). These people are scum.

The thing that irritates me most from reading social media is that some blame every thing on a 'anti-black narrative' within the media. Bit of a cop out to me to try and justify disgraceful actions.

Just like the London rights, they'll defend the scum bags within the communities and blame the police/government as usual, which IMO is utter nonsense.

OK Leuth, I'll take your bait.
I'm not saying these kids should get an advanced education, just staying in school long enough to learn to read and write would be a good start, then they could read a tech manual, at least.
My industry is automotive, I came to the US as a car mechanic after serving a 5 year apprenticeship in the UK. I have since educated myself further, and now have my own business photographing and analyzing failed materials, mostly connected to the automotive industry. When I was running a dealership service department I was not looking for people with advanced degrees.
We can't educate them if they don't want to be educated, no matter how much we'd like to, and of course, I don't believe their problems are genetic.
One of the biggest problems is they have little guidance at home, often the girls are having children in their early teens, they are children themselves. It's not unusual for women to have three or four children before they're twenty years old, all by different fathers. It's a "badge of honor" to be a father for some of these kids.
Then they need money for child-support, and can't get a job, and turn to petty crime, then worse. It's a pattern that cannot be denied.
Some of the neighborhoods where they live are mostly abandoned, in a block of 8 or 10 houses there might only be two or three occupied. The reason? As soon as someone moves out, these homes are stripped of the copper piping and plumbing. etc. which is sold for the scrap value, and the house is never again occupied. So the neighborhoods become nasty, and dangerous, and drugs are sold openly on the corners because no one cares. And this is the environment where they grow up.
There are plenty of jobs vacant in this area, where basic skills would suffice, truck drivers can make 60k or more a year, air conditioner technicians, auto mechanics, etc. etc. etc., there are few huge employers like there used to be, but there are jobs for everyone who cares to put in the effort.

…and yet, if they only 'put in the effort', they could all become air conditioner technicians.

Leuth, you know very well that's not what I'm saying.
Baltimore has large populations of new immigrants who manage to make an honest living in spite of having the disadvantage of not speaking English.

All six of the cops involved in the arrest of Freddy Gray have been indicted today, the charges range from simple assault to second degree murder.

JessieAddick said:

ThreadKiller said:

SEFREE said:

alan dugdale said:

An uprising ? Oppressed ? Hardly North Korea is it.

its not far off these days over there

From cbslocal.com

WASHINGTON — In response to Twitter chatter concerning Saturday’s protests in Baltimore, which shut down traffic in some areas of the city and forced some fans to stay inside Oriole Park for their safety even after the baseball game was over, Orioles Executive Vice President John Angelos, son of majority owner Peter Angelos, had this to say on his Twitter account:

(Tweets have been edited together for cohesion)

“Brett, speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society. MLK, Gandhi, Mandela, and all great opposition leaders throughout history have always preached this precept. Further, it is critical that in any democracy investigation must be completed and due process must be honored before any government or police members are judged responsible.

That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

Sorry but this looks more like a poor attempt from Mr Angelos to distract people's attention. The cause of the ongoing problem lies deep within America. It's a domestic problem. To try to blame it on the foreign policy is just oversimplifying a big American social issue. (I'm Chinese.) As we all know, labour in countries like China is way cheaper than that in the US. If you're an owner of a company, chances are you'll consider lowering costs as a more important goal than offering job opportunies to local people. And you can't say the Americans haven't benefitted from those policies like moving factories to the so-called third world. Prices in the US market would have been higher had everything been manufactured domestically. Also, please don't forget the sacrifice China and other countries have made - when the 'first world' was moving manufacturing companies away to developping countries, they were also passing the pollution and environmental destruction on to the latter. That's a problem that takes decades for the developping countries to solve - and part of it insolvable. So Mr Angelos' point is irrelevant to the messy situation in Baltimore. I think limeygent's post above has explained very clearly to us what went wrong with the place.

Personally, I think Mr Angelos is absolutely spot on with his observations. Especially when he says 'That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

I would say that this policy, which has also been followed by the UK and Europe, is one of the main reasons for the increasing gap between the rich and poor in the developed world and has resulted in a major structural change in those societies which will see these types of civil unrest occur more and more frequently.

Can see a lot of plea-bargaining happening, though.

limeygent said:

Can see a lot of racist white policemen avoiding jail plea-bargaining happening, though.

EFA

Sorry lg, that wasn't meant to question you - it's just that over here we we see plea bargaining as a way rich Americans manage to keep out of prison.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/alan-dershowitz-rips-charges-against-baltimore-cops-sad-day-for-justice/

It's very unusual for an indictment to be brought in less than several weeks. To bring six indictments one day after receiving the evidence is very odd.

An update.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/analysis-subtle-differences-after-indictment-in-gray-case-could-be-sign-of-shift-in-thinking/ar-BBk62kS?ocid=HPCDHP