Zimmerman not guilty.

[HoreTore]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23304198

I guess this is old news already, but no one has made a thread about it yet.

Zimmerman, who shot an unarmed kid, has been found not guilty due to draconian US laws. I can't build up any anger at stuff like this anymore, all I can do is shake my head in disbelief and mumble "when will these barbarians ever learn..."

Insanity. Period. Not the ruling, but the laws which allowed the ruling.

[Papewaio]

Lemurs disease most often strikes patients when the thread is camouflaged:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...tatives/page14

[a completely inoffensive name]

You done goof'd horeTore.

[PanzerJaeger]

My fault. Maybe it is best for the thread title to be changed.

[Fragony]

Your media must be the same as ours Horetore, if you don't watch quality media you can see Zimmermans head bruised in the face and all bloody on the back of his head. Self-defence, yeah

[HoreTore]

Your media must be the same as ours Horetore, if you don't watch quality media you can see Zimmermans head bruised in the face and all bloody on the back of his head. Self-defence, yeah

I don't believe capital punishment is the appropriate response to a bruised head. I don't think you do either, considering you've done the same.

As for Lemur's disease.... If we include thread derails in it, every single thread on this forum suffers from Lemurs disease. I have always assumed that every thread above 10 pages contains every topic known to man.

[Fisherking]

He was not guilty under Florida law.

The FBI investigated charges of a racial motive in the incident and found none.

The early charges of racism were media manufactured and governmentally fostered. It sparked protests in the black community with the intervention of the usual suspects.

It is tragic that a young man lost his life and both could have avoided the outcome.

But the black community and the white liberal media are silent about the shocking number of deaths of young blacks by other blacks.

It was only noticed because it was a “Man bites Dog” kind of story.

The media is still covering the issue and still putting out misleading and false statements. They are suturing the pot hopping it will boil over.

Inventing racial issues or promoting division is what they are guilty of. That is always good for ratings.

[Fragony]

Yeah, it's a tragedy for all involved, no winners here.

[Fisherking]

Yeah, it's a tragedy for all involved, no winners here.

Oh but there are winners!

The Media and Race Baiters are getting a lot of coverage and add revenues. People are excited and outraged that Zimmerman was not drawn and quartered and dragged behind a buss.

Politicians have another chance to write reactionary laws and put people in jail or maybe even execute them.

Nothing good is coming from it but that doesn’t mean there are no winners.

[Fragony]

Heh the quality-media was kinda dissapointed here, they keep pointing out he is half white to the point of it looking desperate.

A cause a cause! My dignity for a cause!

[Fisherking]

Sure, and Obama is half white too. Is that grounds to assume that he is racist?

[Ronin]

don´t think this is necessarily about racism.
it's more about a man on a power trip and a dumb "stand your ground" law that amplified it.

[The Stranger]

Sure, and Obama is half white too. Is that grounds to assume that he is racist?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

he is not white, sir.

(In all seriousness, two halves is almost always one thing, and not two things. Half black half white is black in europe and white in africa, not 2x half anywhere. It is sad, I can know.)

[Fragony]

(In all seriousness, two halves is almost always one thing, and not two things. Half black half white is black in europe and white in africa, not 2x half anywhere. It is sad, I can know.)

Not really true in the Netherlands, if you are of mixed race you are a 'halfbloed' (halfblood). To non-Dutchies, I know that sounds horrible but it isn't meant badly.

[The Stranger]

Not really true in the Netherlands, if you are of mixed race you are a 'halfbloed' (halfblood). To non-Dutchies, I know that sounds horrible but it isn't meant badly.

just as true in the netherlands, regardless of the word they use. But I dont want to derail this thread.

[Fisherking]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

he is not white, sir.

(In all seriousness, two halves is almost always one thing, and not two things. Half black half white is black in europe and white in africa, not 2x half anywhere. It is sad, I can know.)

The same goes for Hispanic too. The half white is just a media hype.

I am classed as Native American though most of my ancestry is European and I have a German last name. That makes me a halfbreed or injun to whites and a white man to Indians. Want to talk about it?

[The Stranger]

The same goes for Hispanic too. The half white is just a media hype.

I am classed as Native American though most of my ancestry is European and I have a German last name. That makes me a halfbreed or injun to whites and a white man to Indians. Want to talk about it?

Not neccesarily, and not here. I just thought I should add a serious note to the joke about the one drop rule. because imo, its nothing but a joke.

[Ronin]

I think what happened is that the jury realized they couldn´t give him the death penalty.
so they gave it to him anyway by putting him back on the streets....it's kinda brilliant.

[HoreTore]

The same goes for Hispanic too. The half white is just a media hype.

I am classed as Native American though most of my ancestry is European and I have a German last name. That makes me a halfbreed or injun to whites and a white man to Indians. Want to talk about it?

Move to France, where it's illegal to classify citizens according to ethnicity

(and religion too I think, but I'm not sure about that)

[Fisherking]

I think what happened is that the jury realized they couldn´t give him the death penalty.
so they gave it to him anyway by putting him back on the streets....it's kinda brilliant.

I think Zimmerman was a want-a-be hero doing his neighborhood watch captain thing. He didn’t disregard the dispatchers instructions. He went back to his truck, which is where it should have ended. However Martin chose to double back and confront him.

Did Martin look suspicious? If he was walking through people’s lawns at night with a hood over his head, he did. He was a stranger on other peoples property. Sufficient to be arrested for trespassing.

Some where in that confrontation Zimmerman ended up on the ground with a broken nose and his head being pounded into the sidewalk. Was he seriously hurt? No. Did he have reason to believe he might be? Yes. Is that justification for the use of deadly force? Under Florida law, it is.

Was there a racial motive to the shooting? Not according to an FBI investigation into the matter.

Most of this is inflammatory and concocted from the media. There was a similar case recently also in Florida where the shooter was black and the dead one was white. The shooter went home.

Was it tragic that a young man lost his life that day? It was indeed. And it was also tragic that approximately 20 other young black men lost their lives that day and every other day since. But unlike Martin they didn’t make it into the news because their killers were also black.

It is not a gun problem. It is a violence problem and a culture problem and it was brought about, at least to a large degree by Government Policy.

But that brings no media outcry or rush to change. No calls of injustice or racism. And that is the larger tragedy.

[Greyblades]

If I may, what are you referring to when you say it is due to the government policy?

[Fisherking]

If I may, what are you referring to when you say it is due to the government policy?

The war on poverty. Welfare as practiced in the US.

Google destruction of the black family or the travesty of black education. I am sure you will find enough to understand what I mean.

In part, at least, it was well meant but ill considered. Other parts were far more cynically implemented for political gain. Even when you take away any political bias it is pretty damning. But neither side has rushed to fix it.

[Lemur]

Pretty strong correlation between War on Drugs, mass incarceration of black men, and the national breakdown of the black family.

That's one angle. There's also a correlation between welfare and the breakdown of the black family (as Fisherking mentions—less direct evidence for this hypothesis, but it's not without merit, and it's a favorite trope of Libertarians and the Far Right).

So from the Law & Order crowd you have drug laws that imprison a disproportionate number of black men, with every negative side-effect that entails, and from the Care Bears you have a welfare system that creates disincentives for marriage and family bonding. Quite the fecal taco.

Best/easiest/cheapest thing we could do, as a nation, would be to wind down the expensive and counter-productive War on Drugs. Welfare has already been heavily modified (without corresponding upticks in black employment and family outcomes, which implies welfare was not the central disruption that Libertarians hypothesize).

One thing I find troubling in this discussion:

Do the media sensationalize and attempt to portray the simplest possible conflict to sell airtime/ads? Yes.

Do black and liberal politicians attempt to sell racial conflict, regardless of merit? Yes.

But ... but. We do have a history of racial injustice in this country, and I get wary when I hear people implying that the only form of racism is black-on-white, and that the only injustice is the White Man's Burden as he deals with the Troublesome Negro. Some posts in this thread have tiptoed dangerously close to that border.

I would not want to be a young black man in the American South for a large number of reasons. It's a crappy starting position. Yes, the only way to fix things is to fix them yourself, but to ignore the institutional disadvantages placed on black Americans is a bit much. You don't have to be a gutmensch pinko drum-circler to recognize that there are structures in place that disproportionately impact black men and women.

[Fragony]

Well I don't mind being dangerously close to that. I won't cross that line but this doesn't seem to be what some some people want it to be (not here on the org)

[Fisherking]

Thanks for bringing up the other topics Lemur.

The law and order crowd has much to answer for too.

No one should escape all blame. Left, Right, or Center, politicians black and white and to an extent activist groups likewise.

The Unions of the 1960s were also a part of the problem but now 50 years gone by the level of unrest can still be brought to a fever pitch without people bothering to find out the facts.

A thousand men can be swayed by their prejudices faster and easier than one man can be persuaded by reason.
Friedrich Hayek

I like most others I assumed Zimmerman guilty from media reports, until I started looking into the matter and that was most of the way through the trial.

Crime is not a matter of black or white, it is most often a matter of poverty and lack of opportunity.

Most people today do not see everything in racial tones. Most have long ago given up such stereotypes.

There were no clear racial overtones to this case until they were manufactured by the press. Rather than back down from them, they seem to be perpetuating them.

The case should be over and needs to be over. People upset at the death of one person and its injustice need to be aware of a much larger problem. If that got real national attention perhaps something more could be done.

[Vuk]

I don't believe capital punishment is the appropriate response to a bruised head. I don't think you do either, considering you've done the same.

It had nothing to do with punishment. It sounds like Zimmerman shot Trayvon to stop Trayvon from killing him. Zimmerman was pleading with him to stop, Trayvon had 'won' the fight and could have walked away. Zimmerman was probably so dazed after getting his head beated into the pavement that he could not have pursued. What he was doing was not self-defense, it was beating a man to death out of anger. If Zimmerman had not shot him, Zimmerman probably would have ended up dead.
If there was a racial motive to the violence, it appears to be Trayvon who was the racist "creepy ass cracka", etc. He thought Zimmerman was white, and according to the witness, Racheal, it sounds like he assumed he was gay too.

[HoreTore]

Zimmerman was an armed volounteer neighborhood guard.

That's a recipe for murder. As we have seen.

[Vuk]

Zimmerman was an armed volounteer neighborhood guard.

That's a recipe for murder. As we have seen.

Except what happened wasn't murder. What led to the death was Zimmerman disobeying his instructions (which is nowhere near murder) and a drugged up Trayvon trying to kill him. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, and is guilty of only stupidity, not murder. Trayvon was most likely an attempted murderer however.
There is nothing wrong with a volunteer neighborhood watch, and 99% of the time it is a big help and does not cause problems. Hell, trained police forces probably cause more problems than local neighborhood watches.
And BTW, following someone is not a crime punishable by being beat to death. And from recent revelations, it sounds like Trayvon thought he was gay and was disgusted by that fact, and possibly tried to kill him for racial and homophobic reasons.

[Lemur]

For what it's worth, statistically you're in a much better position to invoke self-defense if you are not black. Breakdown below, broken out by "stand your ground" and non-syg states, black-on-black versus black-on-white and white-on-black.



Source.

[Vuk]

For what it's worth, statistically you're in a much better position to invoke self-defense if you are not black. Breakdown below, broken out by "stand your ground" and non-syg states, black-on-black versus black-on-white and white-on-black.



Source.

So what? We gotta judge Zimmerman by the facts of the case, not some statistic. That would be like posting a statistic showing that black people are much more likely to rape white women than white men black women on a thread dealing with a black guy being found innocent of raping a white woman.

I feel to see how it is relevant.