Putin calls for invasion of Ukraine; UN security council meets

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@bwv812

My position has been that the police don’t use lethal force against US protestors and that people who protest in the US don’t expect violence to be used against them. It is not US policy to do so. And since it is not policy to act this way, if something does happen there are ways to get redress.

And, that position is false. The levels of force used by police start at level one and go to level six to force compliance. The policy is the same for all situations. For instance, when police clear a park of protesters it is under the assumption that the occupation of the park is illegal. Force will be used to get compliance. It is as simple as that. The [levels of force][1]. That is the policy. Just because in our recent history level 6 has not been reached before the parks have been cleared(our protesters tend to lay there and take it or leave) does not indicate that US police will not shoot protesters. It is policy to do so if level one does not work move up the levels to level six,lethal force.

[1]: http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/9728-six-levels-of-force[quote=“bwv812, post:254, topic:24467”]
Now, if this seems like shifting goalposts, these goalposts have shifted in response to the new goal posts you have introduced. I say something about how the US doesn’t use lethal force, and decries such force when deployed by any government against protestors. The “rebuttal” to this is to introduce incidents that happened 100 years ago, individual police shootings unrelated to protests, or individual non-lethal incidents of rogue officers pepper spraying students (who later received compensation, got an apology and an investigation, as well as the officer fired). If I address to these new arguments, apparently I am the one shifting goal posts. OK.
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Yes. You make claims. The claims are refuted. You lower the bar(move the goal posts).

@bwv812

So the protests immediately stopped happening as soon as shots were fired?

Nope. The police were retreating as they fired. The police left.

@bwv812

You’re right. It’s a strange world where Americans would expect lethal force if they protested with violence but Ukrainians would not, but that is the situation you’ve described.

The Ukraine police were not armed for several months and during the early attempts to roust out the protesters, so no, I don’t suppose the Ukraine protesters assumed they could be shot by unarmed(firearms) police. In contrast, the police that rousted the OWS protesters were armed at minute one. Don’t let the little details get in the way.

@bwv812

Or maybe the fact that they’re protesting the pro-Russian Yanukovich government actually means something, and tells us something about the conditions there. But those would be real Ukrainians trying to tell Yanukovich, Russia, and the world something with their actions and their willingness to risk death. But it seems actual Ukrainians aren’t going to change your mind about how conditions there might differ from conditions in the West. You should tell them they’re wrong and that they’re better off under Yanukovich.

Um, as big as the protests were, I think you may be projecting the views of the protesters onto the entire country. The fact is, the active protesters were really a small percentage of the population. It was decided and agreed to that there would be an early election, in December, so that if a majority of people were truly against Yanukovich, he could have been removed. As it is, I don’t see a few protesters as representing the views of an entire country. But hey, you’ve picked your side. To hell with what everyone else thinks, eh? The loud people in the park are right because they are,willing to be violent.