Tag: police brutality

The Rabbit Hole

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It appears our police tried a George Floyd. After embracing the Yanks and rejecting Huawei we’ve gone all out and taken the knee. Unfortunately that’s no joke as it involved another man’s neck. To add further insult said man was black. I have experienced the British police, not on a regular basis, but I have, and certainly in no way people from poorer communities, be those black or white, have. They’ve been both friendly and truncheon friendly. I won’t defend them. Having been in foreign lands I’ve also experienced foreign police from numerous cultures and I will hold my hands up, the Brits are not the worst. They are not the best, whatever that is, but there are worse out there.

I’m not sure what I make of this kneeing incident. With everything going on this must be possibly the worst moment to do something like that. I wonder what he was thinking, was he conscious of the action or not. The man was handcuffed and restrained, only the policeman will really know whether he felt scared enough to feel it was warranted. And how often do police officers in this country feel it is a necessary action. I genuinely don’t know. How often do security guards or bouncers outside pubs do similar. What I don’t like about this, apart from the obvious, is how we now go about responding to it as a society.

Protests and riots in America were necessary after George Floyd. There was an outpouring of anger and grief. It was the only way anyone in power would listen and anything would happen. Long term let’s see if it all just get’s forgotten about but in the short it shook society to the core. I imagine there will be protests here, how big I don’t know. He didn’t die thankfully otherwise it would have kicked off already. Maybe it has. The police have already chosen their approach by seemingly condemning the act with the Deputy Met Police commissioner describing it as ‘disturbing’ while reiterating of course that it’s not standard police practice or part of training. There are a lot of things they do that aren’t trained, that doesn’t mean they don’t do them regularly.

But then there was a quote on the BBC by a witness; “I was worried he was going to get executed. That’s just how George Floyd got killed”. If the media could come up with a better quote it would win awards. He wasn’t being executed. Words like that are serious, people get executed by police every day around the world. This was not that and to throw something like that out is not only irresponsible, it’s sensationalist and stupid. It’s also how we appear to react to anything in this day and age of outrage. That’s not one spectrum or another, it’s seemingly everyone. I just hope this is debated seriously and we can have conversations which actually lead to something other than a carpet and a brush. I don’t trust the media not to go wild and sex it up for ratings but I just hope we can ignore that long enough to not use it as some kind of societal endorphin hit. I don’t know how much faith I have in this. We appear too far down the rabbit hole already.

State Sanctioned Distraction

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It is kicking off, reality television just got political. I saw something yesterday about Twitter fact checking Trump which was amusing and about time but didn’t check the news again until tonight. It is all going off. The real story must be about another killing by the police but it has become part of something else as Trump takes on Twitter. Originally he was accused of inciting violence, his post was moderated and he got a cyber slap on the wrist. Ultimately that is it. Trump then acts like a spoilt child being told off and is now getting some petty revenge. He’s getting payback. For better or for worse he is a fascinating man. Maybe more this is a fascinating situation playing out but someone like him just isn’t supposed to be that person.

There is the other side of this and that while he is going to war with Twitter and trying to repeal Section230 or 240, I can’t remember and I don’t even really know what it is. I think it’s something to do with regulating social media and whatever it is that allows the social media companies to get away with things. Anyway, he’s just proving he’s the master of distraction, there’s some sleight of hand stuff going on – as there always is with politics and power – but it does allow for a handy distraction from the riots and police violence. It’ll play out with nothing really happening and everything forgotten about after the bluster. The other side of the story which involves police killings and riots then is forgotten about too. For those not having to live it everyday that is. And I accept I am not one of them, and I will forget it because I am not living it everyday.

A rather crass leap to something else right now then, cats walking over loads of spread out objects and not knocking them over. It is quite impressive how they manage to just walk through them without any falling but what impresses me more than anything is that their back feet step in all the right places too. They’re not looking where they stand, they can’t see because they’re looking forward but they’re so aware they always step in the right spot. It is simply incredible. It also makes me realise the importance of cat videos online. State sanctioned what? I’ve forgotten what you’re talking about. Remarkable creatures.

Mental Self-Preservation In The Internet Age

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The internet is quite simply the single biggest game changer since the printing press. This is not the first time this opinion has been presented on here and it probably won’t be the last. The internet has allowed us access to such a vast resource of information, one only dreamt of by intellectuals, students and conspiracy theorists fifty years ago, that we have no excuse for being ignorant of anything if we so desire. It is a shame our experiences have been coopted by click-bait, social media and kitten videos, who would have predicted such access to information would have in fact dumbed down society instead of enlightening it. Have our masters and overloads played their cards right when required or have we somehow done this to ourselves? It’s actually not clear, probably as ever a little bit of both. It is undeniable that we have access to information on social media which should bring down governments, and judging by my Facebook wall, the vast majority of people out there believe in the downfall of this corrupt system we live in. It is unfortunate of course that my Facebook wall is probably not representative of society on the whole.

I was reading an article about police in Australia beating up a man with mental health issues on his front lawn. They had been called to his address by his psychiatrist who was worried he might hurt himself. The golden rule in these situations is that the police will end up hurting him far more than he will himself, in America he will likely be shot. Again that may be true or it may not be but it does appear to be pretty commonplace if what I find on social media is anything to go by. Upon finishing the article I realised I was exhausted.

For nearly twenty years now I have been getting worked up about injustice in one form or another. I am instinctively drawn to it and appalled at what I find. For sure judging by what others post I’m barely excitable comparatively but that is probably something that has calmed in recent years from the heady revolutionary days of my youth. Perhaps it is just that after all these years you start to see how getting worked up serves no purpose beyond being emotively exhausting. Saying that there are examples of people making changes but they are not your average outraged person. There gets to a point that unless you’re actually going to do something then there’s no benefit to sitting behind a screen and getting angry, sad and / or excitable. Yet we still do, we keep on coming back to whatever fix it gives us. The buzz at seeing injustice, the feeling of being morally superior to some scumbag in uniform, the adrenal rush as you start fantasising about system change before going back to Netflix and watching Bojack Horseman or Peaky Blinders.

It just can’t be healthy getting worked up and mentally exhausted over things which will exist whether you read that article or not. This isn’t defeatist or fatalist, or at least I hope it isn’t and I’m aware I’ve just created a stick to be bashed with, but it is more a recognition of a certain type of pragmatism which leads hopefully to a little mental self-preservation and also the time and energy for more productive development of both the self and the environment around us. The world needs people to stand up and fight, and the reality is they will regardless, they will go out and make the changes. What it has and what it doesn’t need are people getting themselves outraged by events which have no effect upon them, can do nothing about and / or will happen regardless of what they do, which will most likely be little more than feel anger followed by moral outrage and superiority for the five minutes before they’re distracted by a kitten. Isn’t it wonderful that feeling of superiority, moral or not.