[ck2]

I didn't mean to imply it was as bad as the Ukraine, but for such a "free country" they don't let people even protest anymore so it never can escalate. There are probably better examples like New Orleans that escape me right now.

Also, no-one is allowed near the conventions anymore. So much for freedom of speech unless you want to protest a poor woman going into a health center for an abortion, then be as close as you want.

Oh here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Republican_National_Conven...

Note the pre-emptive arrests a week before the convention. I think we were criticizing China for that behavior.

[davidw]

> I didn't mean to imply it was as bad as the Ukraine

Then why did you write this, implying that it's worse in the US:

>If this happened in the USA, every single protester (and innocent bystander) would be in jail or dead by now.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit hyperbole that makes political discussions on sites like this such a waste of time.

[ck2]

You are confusing two points of mine, or I didn't explain properly.

In the US if it got to that level, everyone would be in jail or dead.

In the US they would never let it get to that level. Police would not just stand by a peaceful protest without permits. They sure as hell would never let people occupy a government building, even peacefully. They would insert people to make it violent and then start arresting people, at the first sign of weapons, you'd start seeing some massive escalation. If fires were being set on that level the national guard would come in fully armed.

So we are fortunate in that it has not escalated like the Ukraine. But if it did, make no mistake, the US would be giving other countries lessons in brutality.

Our police are completely militarized. They even have tanks now decommissioned from overseas wars. People just do not realize this, or they do not care. But what is really scary is you do not sit on that kind of weapons and not use them, it would be like giving a police officer a taser or gallons of pepper spray and being surprised when they constantly use it.

[davidw]

I don't quite have it, but I think there's an Internet Law in here somewhere.

For every political discussion, there is always a guy who A) drags the US into it, and B) tries to draw the conclusion that the US is actually worse than whatever is being discussed.

[ck2]

There are millions of guns in the US. Consider it a power keg if any of this events you see overseas ever happened here.

Hence the police know they better be even better armed than the civilians and shoot to kill first. This is why we have police officers that kill kids holding phones or game console controllers.

I cannot say the US is worse than elsewhere as is, I am saying it could be worse than elsewhere if the events you see elsewhere happened here. It would be a wasteland. We kind of got a mini-preview of that after New Orleans flooded, there was some seriously criminal police behavior.

[happyscrappy]

>Then why did you write this

Because he knew it would be massively up voted. The maturity level on this site, at least with political stuff, is very low.

[llllllllllll]

My friends were eating at Mickey's Diner (in downtown St. Paul, MN) when the protests were broken up by police.

They heard the calls to disperse but wanted to finish eating, so they stayed a few minutes extra figuring that they weren't a part of the protests anyway so they'd be fine. A few minutes later they exited the restaurant and got the full treatment: tear-gassed, tackled, handcuffed, and taken to jail. They saw someone who was running away get hit in the head with a tear gas canister.

[goldenkey]

To protect and serve [them and their political masters.]