Sure, the rich and connected will get all sorts of rights and protections, but if you are Mr. Nobody (and worse, you were not born and bred in the specific area where you're being accused) then some sort of abuse is almost guaranteed. Look at the news in places like UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Canada: people "spontaneously" die in police custody, are killed in the street while unarmed, spend years in jail for crimes they didn't commit, spend months in custody before even being accused of anything... and these are just the ones we hear about. My father occasionally had to look after kids who had some brush up with the Law, in Italy; long story short, once you enter The System, you can kiss goodbye to any sense of respect, self-worth or personal rights.
Yeah if you're poor and vulnerable you're screwed anywhere in the capitalist world. But in the states you're screwed even if you are middle class (absurd bails) and have a good lawyer, because the government is so over its head that they will jail you with fabricated evidence and then give you no chance of justice.
True, the UK is not much better than the US. But otherwise many countries in Europe are incomparably safer. If not because of more reasonable justice systems, just because people are more laid back and sane here than in the states.
Are they? I distinctly remember the post-riot reactions in London last summer: people got sentenced to years of imprisonment for posting banter on Facebook and Twitter, with full support from mainstream public opinion. Because we're all cool until you touch private property, and then it's HANG THE THIEF! And if you think that's just Brits being Brits, I can show you the electoral results of people like LePen, Wilders, Haider, and the laws this pressure produced...
Do not make the error of confusing historical development with the essence of man: we might look more laid back and "civilised" because of accidents of history that bestowed us a set of marginally saner laws and a bit more perspective (and recent memory), but underneath we're as brutal as anyone else on the planet.
A note on rhetoric: I'm glad you mentioned this because I'd forgotten about those convictions. But please Do give links as justification, because you do your arguments a disservice by loose argumentationm and hyperbole.
I take your point on sourcing.
You mean like how there was no protection against double jeopardy for Amanda Knox?
The US prison-industrial complex can't be legitimately defended. The way it targets black and poor people in order to provide profit to private parties is something one might otherwise think only happened in China.
But this case is abuse of a whole different kind and on a level which is strikes at issues beyond the norm/
Get real.
you could say the same thing about europe, though. especially in the 20th century, but there's time yet for the 21st to catch up!
I'm visiting friends there for the second half of March, and one of the first things you're told by online guides, etc. is "don't ask people to talk about the genocide, or what ethnic group they are from".
There was a horrific series of events with long-term repercussions and damage, no one wants to see anything like that again, and no one wants to discuss such things in idle chitchat with tourists.
Um, yeah, let's judge the entire state of Texas based on one county's prosecutors. Sheesh.
This isn't about Texas, or even Austin. It's about a corrupt police investigation and prosecution.
My objection is when people in USA think USA is as bad as that.
Here's a video of police killing a man. He starts off calmly answering their questions, obeying their stupid instructions. He gets frustrated ar their bullshit. They beat him to the ground and sit on him and yell at him to stop struggling. He can't breathe - of course he's going to struggle. More police turn up. They asume the original officers are in the right and this guy is viole t on drugs, so they sit on him too.
http://www.popehat.com/2014/01/20/kelly-thomas/
It is fucking barbaric.
But maybe because the US is so big it's bound to happen sometimes? I don't know, but USA is certainly not on my want-to-visit list (though it's on a wish-to-visit along with Pakistan).
"What is Heaven like? It has everything at its best: delicious food, classy wines, mild climate, superb views from all sides.
A bit like France, but without the French."
(Jeremy Pascall)
The US is vastly better than many parts of the world and we get a disproportionate amount of attention on our ills because we're an economic powerhouse that does many things. The country is a collection of states that each have their boons and drawbacks.
Texas is near (or at) last in public education. Don't make public threats to kill children in a state that might not understand or care about sarcastic context.
According to what metric? They rank in the the top 25% in US News rankings, 14th in Quality Counts rankings, and have one of the highest high school completion rates in the country.
I would imagine that Austin in particular is probably over average compared to much of the rest of the state due to the number of colleges in the area and significant tech sector.
Either way, I find "shut up" to be inhibitive of civil discourse in all but the rarest of situations.
My country has lost its damn mind.
http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/tnb-is-pakistan-safe-fo...
We're a collection of states that each are allowed to do things more or less their own way. Texas is one of the states with serious issues surrounding illegal immigration, income, and education, but has about the same economic power as Canada.
It's not merely anecdotes; there's plenty of hard data. The US locks up more people in absolute numbers than any country in the world, including China, which has 4 times the population and a totalitarian government. Per capita, the only countries with more inmates are a handful of tiny Carribean islands, I believe.
Law enforcement is structurally not being held accountable. Stories about police officers killing or tazering unarmed and even disabled people abound, usually followed up by a story that nobody got charged with any wrongdoing (except maybe the victim).
In talks online, I notice that a lot of Americans are afraid of the police. Tons of websites warn not to say anything to the police. The message that the police cannot be trusted is everywhere.
This is not the image of healthy, democratic, rule of law. It's a police state.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777...
My grandparents were lucky enough to survive the Stalinist regime but many of our family didn't. There's no reliable numbers of how many where imprisoned by Stalin and, even worse, how many died in prison camps. For the latter, even the most conservative estimates are in the millions.
Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain--with a rate among the highest--has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners.""
Obviously rates are more relevant than absolute numbers for policy analysis, here. But yeah, our prison population is absolutely enormous.
>Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height
Oh wow, really? Maybe the USSR never surpassed it because people kept fucking dying in the Gulag.
Most Soviet deaths occurred as a result of (deliberately engineered) famine.
Would you care to do a "contrast and compare" between Soviet gulag conditions and those in a typical contemporary U.S. prison?
I thought not.
Of course, none of these diversions have anything to do with, you know, the topic at hand.
And yet, somehow, the US manages to lock more people in prison than this totalitarian scumbag. That should be food for thought for anyone with half a brain.
You didn't? Stories about attrocious behaviour by US police, and the sorry state of the US prison system, not to mention the fact that the US locks up more people than any other country in the world, have received a lot of attention here and elsewhere.
To me, the worst one was the prison that bribed a judge to convict more children.
By this thinking I hope neither of you drive a car to work every day. You'll really be afraid of the risks with that one.
If it was one story, it wouldn't be so scary. What is scary is the ongoing stream of horrible abuses of power that gets reported.
Especially because so many of them include aftermaths where nobody gets held accountable.
Have you read the post you're responding to? What a single story means or doesn't mean has ceased being relevant ages ago. It's systemic. It's normal. The corruption has become mundane.
And every other US state has a higher incarceration rate than Maine. Many 3 times as high, some 5, one even 10 times as high. The US as a whole has by far the highest incarceration rate of the whole world.
Maybe Maine is the exception as the only sane state in this regard. As a whole, the situation in the US is attrocious.
Then again, you could look at other metrics and reach a different conclusion...
The unavoidable fact is that what happened in Texas happened in the US. If Texas started segregating lunch counters and water fountains again, it would be legitimate to criticize the US for that, too.
edit: To be more specific, why are you blaming Texas for what happened in Travis County, Texas?
Could this have happened in Maine? Sure though it's vastly more likely to happen in Texas or other state with a higher rate of in-prisonment.
edit: I do not agree with the U.S. justice system being third world level; I just don't think the differences in states are relevant here when the average across all of them is so terrible on this particular metric.
And what happened in the US happened in North America. And happened on Earth. And happened in the Universe. How broad should we go here?
[s]I think since the tip came from Canada, we have a pretty good case to blame Canada for this. :)[/s]
Substitute "many European countries" for "Maine".
This probably has more to do with being Human than being American. Someone would probably bring up some analogy about the Olympics and nationalism as a retort. The thing is, though, when the US wins the most gold medals during the Olympics, they conveniently gloss over the fact that it is a first world nation with 300 million people. When something bad occurs, it is precisely because they are 300 million people - "we are so many and so different", "that would never work over here, we are too many and too different"
In truth it is not exactly so, but I personally wouldn't want to live in any of those places. I probably wouldn't be happy living in the mid-west either though.
It generally holds true that these sorts of things can happen in any state now. If you 'threaten' to shoot up a school (no matter how jokingly) you're likely to get reamed for it.
Context no longer matters... There is a zero tolerance policy on certain words and ideas now it appears.
There's definitely an I don't know...afterglow effect? with this stereotype at play in the south today. It certainly used to be highly isolated culture with it's own weird problems ("fanatics, racism, and overreaction").
These days though thanks to television, the internet, decades of immigration etc. it's pretty much the rest of the US...with better weather.
There's this trope that Alabama (and most of the South) is a fucked up, backwards, redneck, inbred place afraid of all things change, and that just isn't true. There are episodes of each of those things - just like in California or New York. It's nice getting off of work and playing basketball out in your driveway, then enjoying a beer with all of your neighbors outside as it turns from dusk to dark. Generally people are nicer here and I try my best to be as well.
I think Alabama's a great state to live in. I also think people give in to regional stereotypes way more than they should.
The charge was assault with a lethal weapon (the car), the case went to trial and he was convicted. It's a circus.
[Edit: Turns out the guy was not a tourist. Here is the story, written right before the sentencing: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002601538]
I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position.
Of course one of the horrible things about Texas is it does this sort of thing to actual Texans, in addition to other people. It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?
This is generally true. However, the United States is a multi ethnic country. So the question is, does this statement apply to all ethnicities, everywhere? The fact is, for a large number of Americans, they are "the foreigner" exactly in that position most of the time.
It wouldn't be hard to find prejudiced ignoramuses who would say the same about the people of any state (or religion, or ethnic group, or occupation).
What would you even be fearing? Burritos and Barbeque?
However he might be thinking of the backwards and corrupt policing of the state. For instance,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-new-mexico-... http://www.elpasotimes.com/latestnews/ci_25024804/new-lawsui...
Granted, the Deep South still has a ways to go.
Well, if you're going to paint with such a broad brush, go ahead and list the other 38. I hear there are bad people in San Francisco, Madison, Boise, Olympia, Reading and Topeka too.
Then you should start listing Canadian provinces, because surely they've got some bad apples. And don't forget Mexico, since they've had issues with murderous drug cartels. At that point you should also mention the bloodthirsty populations of Central America as well as the black-hearted people of Iceland.
Really, I think only the Moon is reasonably safe but the place has gone downhill since 1969.
Vanderbilt Duke UNC Rice Georgia Tech Virginia Tech University of Virginia That's a partial list.
PLACES TO BE FEARED! It's legitimately damaging to the American South to perpetuate stereotypes like this. It makes smart people want to leave, or never go in the first place. I've lived in Memphis Tennessee for my entire life and I can guarantee you that it would be a better place if people didn't spew closed minded horse-shit like this.
The secret is simple: ask locals. That's the best way to be safe wherever you travel.
There are bad apples, of course. But this case is horrible, but it isn't just the police. The District Attorney's office in this case was probably responsible for more of the mess than the police department. It is the DA's office that decides whether to charge the alleged offender, is responsible for working with the police to build a case, etc.
This story is so full of warning signs of an out-of-control prosecutor that it is beyond outrage. Ever wonder why they couldn't get the full words from Facebook? Because Facebook wouldn't give it to them? More likely because a judge wouldn't approve their request based on the evidence they had. The decision to push ahead in that case is entirely the DA's call.
The police in the US are generally speaking pretty good. I don't fault them. You just have to respect the fact that anywhere criminal investigation is about coming up with a good narrative, so it's better for everyone if you don't say too much.
Our problem though is with prosecutors, who, unlike police, can't get sued over crap like this and who keep getting handed more power by things like mandatory sentencing guidelines....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarcer...
Compared to the rest of the world, the US is the outlier event.
So yeah, we put more people in jail. We also have more reason to.