Petty Policing Many Communities Want And Another Tragedy

 The recent death at the hands of police in California of a man that appears to pose no threat to the police or public, raises the question of what exactly are too many police trying to enforce? Like it or not, there are millions of people in the United States that are homeless, mentally ill, or that do not fit the norm of what far too many people in far too many communities deem acceptable. Stand out a little in far too many communities, and someone will call 911, even though there is no basis for the 911 call. Police will run like sheep to go after the person that was falsely called upon, after dispatchers, without doing any screening, take the call. 

Or police will see someone that does not fit the norm, and for some petty reason, or on some pretense,  harass someone that should be left alone. People that never should be harassed or arrested get harassed and/or arrested. Usually no one dies, but sometimes someone does, or gets hurt, for arrests that never should have taken place.

It is not enough to blame the police. Communities and their public and police officials set the norm for what they want police to do, and for who should be harassed.

Cops, which includes deputies, must stop being the petty enforcers of pettiness. 

Cops, especially in urban areas, especially in high crime urban areas, need to be assigned beats that they walk. In this way, their interactions with the public will be far different than that of cops driving around in vehicles. Cops assigned walking beats will know the people on their beat. They will serve as role models to children and youth. They cannot afford to be petty, thin skinned or vindictive and expect to be effective as walking beat cops. This is the only real, true community policing that exists, and yet no one fights for it.

Technology does not make for better policing. Technology is only an aid. Cops need to be on the ground. They need to be visible and present. Neighborhood, walking cops are needed. Get rid of the layers of fat, the many unnecessary positions, the unnecessary brass, the paper pushers, the bureaucrats, the clout, political favoritism and cronyism, the legions of people hiding in buildings, and return to the basic mission. Serve and protect through patrol, and make sure the patrol includes officers on foot assigned to neighborhood beats.

No matter the place, no matter the area, communities need to take responsibility for what their police and politicians are doing. If nonconformity deserves police responses, then expect more completely avoidable tragedies. 

True community policing is needed. Not number games policing, not petty policing. There was no excuse for the man in California to have been harassed and then arrested in the beginning. Unfortunately, this happens all the time. Petty policing, number games policing must end. Communities must learn to be more tolerant and stop unleashing police on those considered out of the norm.

If ever there will be true community policing - cops walking beats where they are fully engaged in the neighborhoods they patrol - there will be less disengaged cops that are clueless about the people they encounter.

If ever communities prioritize real community community, and stop using law enforcement to be the petty enforcers of nonconformity, everyone will be better off.

When Will Anyone Get Serious About Police Reform?

 The effort to delegitimize and stigmatize all policing should raise red flags about the motives of those that do this. Instead, it earns them places on public radio and elsewhere in the media.

In cohesive, small communities, police may not be needed. For the tiny minority of people living a tribal existence apart from the modern world, police are not needed. For the rest of the world, if police were not needed, they would have disappeared long ago.. The fact that there has been bad policing, bad cops, and that bad policing still exists, does not negate the fact that other than in a minority of areas, police are needed for public safety. 

Delegitimizing police in order to prove a narrative about racism or something else will not lead to better outcomes. Police reform and creating better policing does not come from biased narratives or from those with self serving agendas. Thanks to much of the media, experts at pandering, sensationalizing, and providing untruthfulness, there no longer is critical thought when it comes to policing or pretty much anything else. Thanks also to the pampered ivory tower world of academia, full of arrogance, laziness, self importance, dogma and political agendas wrapped up as scholarship,  cluelessness about police reform continues. No less important than reforming policing is the need to reform academia, yet they are ones often entrusted the responsibility for leading police reform.

Professionalizing police work, freeing it of cronyism, clout, political favoritism, number games and other shoddy police practices is not even in the discussion. The agenda when it comes to police is unfortunately not about really making policing better. Thus, when the dust clears months, maybe years from now, policing will be unreformed, unimproved, and worse. Unengaged, uninvolved, do as little as possible police work is the trajectory. It benefits police that are lazy and the legions of police and bosses in do nothing jobs, but not the public. Violent crimes and other crimes are not prevented from disengaged, inactive policing. 

Calls for police reform must move beyond grandstanding. They must move beyond self serving narratives. They must move beyond simplistic narratives that accomplish nothing. They must move beyond race baiting and narratives meant to divide and line the pockets of the race baiters. 

Policing should be a straightforward profession in which the basic mission is serve and protect through patrol. Cronyism, clout, political favoritism, number games and other shoddy police practices must be eliminated. Layers of bureaucrats, police officials in do nothing jobs and much more of the waste and fat must be cut from police departments. This requires a much lengthier discussion than the simplistic narratives now presented that want to reduce all of policing into one ugly pigeon holed box. Community policing must stop being manipulated and twisted into the convoluted nonsense it has now become. Cops in urban areas and especially in high crime urban areas, need to be on walking beats where they become integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve. This is true community policing. It is a very different job than what cops driving around in squad cars do. One is not meant to replace the other. It is meant to enhance the effectiveness of policing. The role of police is to serve and protect, accomplished by patrol, which is best achieved by having this patrol be by vehicle, by foot, and at times by bicycle.

What policing should be is a different issue than what cops should be. Better policing brings out the best in cops. Shoddy policing, including number games, rewards laziness, bad behavior, and more.

As for individual cops, short tempered cops, cops on power trips, violent cops, ill tempered cops, lazy cops, petty cops, thin skinned cops, ingratiating cops, cowardly cops, selfish cops are not needed. 

Policing needs to be reformed. This is not even being discussed in the charged grandstanding environment in which nothing good will result. Better policing is needed. Better policing will attract better people to the profession. This is not to say good cops do not already exist. They do. But too often, good cops are operating in departments engaged in bad policing that have no understanding of the core mission of policing.

Serious discussions about police reform, not loud grandstanding, is long past due. Otherwise, more decades will pass and nothing will change. Or even worse, policing will be a lazy person's profession where the goal is to do as little as possible so as to not rock boats and never make waves while employed by stagnant police departments.

Corporate Phoniness Regarding Racial Justice

 After the verdict in Minnesota, corporations are jumping on the bandwagon call for racial justice. 

Some of the corporations are vowing to give more to charity, including Black Lives Matter, by which the self professed Marxist co-founder of Black Lives Matter can buy more expensive real estate in white, wealthy neighborhoods. 

People do not need charity. People need jobs. Charities, many of them, have been some of the most unregulated frauds. Not just with where money goes and who gets enriched, but also with charities that are considered above board but run worthless, even harmful programs. 

If corporations are sincere about justice, they can stop paying their executives mega salaries with ridiculous compensation packages, often on the backs of the cheapest labor, fewest environmental and safety regulations they can find. They can also start making fair wages the priority, not themselves and stock prices. They can bring back the jobs they exported overseas.

If everyone inside of the United States turns blue tomorrow, and there are no longer differences in skin pigmentation, there will still be massively underserved communities across the United States. 

When corporations moved manufacturing to China and other places in the world that have the cheapest labor, with the fewest environmental and safety regulations, with the blessings of the politicians and others in their pockets, what did they expect? They turned China into a superpower that flexes its military muscle with its powerful military that U.S. corporations created by sending the manufacturing and industrial wealth and power of the United States to China. 

To Tim Cook of Apple, if he is so concerned about racial justice, then why are Apple products manufactured in China and not in underserved communities in the United States?  People need jobs, not words.

To Zuckerberg of Facebook, one of several social media monopolies with unregulated power to dominate markets, disseminate hate and lies, and now to arbitrarily censor free speech that has nothing to do with hate and violence; racial justice does not come from the suppression of opinions that have nothing to do with hate or violence. Justice is promoted by the free and open exchange of ideas, not their suppression.

Many are the corporate leaders and the politicians in their pockets that have done nothing to ensure Americans of all races and ethnicities are afforded the only real thing that lifts people out of poverty, creates racial justice, and strengthens families and communities:  jobs.

Jobs that pay living wages. Jobs that abide by fair environmental and safety standards. 

Vast communities without significant employment other than the black market narcotics trade is not the recipe for stability, peace, justice and harmony.

Bad Cops, Police Reform, And Wrong Directions

 The time is long past when policing, especially in large urban areas in the U.S., was a white, often Irish mans' profession. Many decades have past of concerted effort to create diversity in the hiring and promotion of police. Cops, especially in large U.S. cities, are more racially, ethnically and gender diverse than ever.

There are bad cops out there. Simplistic narratives about policing and who are the bad cops most often is not about weeding out bad cops as much as it is about validating biased narratives. The idea that police in general are a bunch of racist white men looking to harm nonwhites lives in the minds of many in the media and others that profit from race baiting and creating racial divisiveness. 

In all professions there are bad elements. Bad doctors that ruin lives. Bad dentists that drill into perfectly good teeth out of greed, ensuring that healthy teeth will never be as sound a they were before the dentist did what never should have been done. There are bad teachers, bad priests, bad rabbis, bad ministers, bad in every profession. In police work, bad cops, just like good cops, come in all races, religions, genders and ethnicities. 

There are over a million law enforcement officers in the United States. Armed with guns, there will be bad cops and deputies that gravely harm others. But the alternative, not having police at all because some are rotten is as idiotic as saying there should be no doctors because of the rotten doctors that destroy lives. Cops that properly serve and protect by active patrol reduce crime and violence and thereby save lives, to say nothing of police that save lives by individual acts of heroism. 

Some in the ivory tower of academia, an elitist world full of arrogance and privilege, reach their own biased conclusions under the cover of scholarship about what is the problem with policing. It is not productive that from their ranks the discussion about better policing is often led.

Cops are not children. If they lack moral codes by the time they are in their twenties, the time most people join police departments, no amount of training will make them better human beings. 

Bad cops are not a product of deficient training. Bad cops are a product of whatever made them morally deficient by the time they entered the police training academies. An ethical person without any police training that learns everything while on the job will still be a better cop than a morally, ethically deficient highly trained officer that goes through extensive training in a police academy with many hours of follow up training. 

Bad people in all professions must be screened out. This is no easy matter. It is a discussion that must not be limited to police. The bad apples of many professions cause great harm. 

Simplistic narratives about police reform accomplish nothing. Weeding out bad cops and not hiring them in the first place requires a far lengthier discussion than what a short blog or video can present.

The  notion that bad cops can be determined by the amount of complaints leveled against an officer is untrue. If two cops work in the same city, with one cop doing as little as possible, while the other cop properly patrols and does the job he or she is paid for, the working cop will receive complaints the lazy cop will never receive because the lazy, do nothing cop risked nothing, and never did anything more than take up space. A cop working a high crime area has a greater chance of receiving more complaints than a cop working a low crime area. Good cops that do their jobs conscientiously can still fall prey to fabricated, malicious false allegations. Vindictive supervisors, criminals and others with ill intent are known to make complaints against cops they want to punish. 

The Soviet Union and other communist regimes were known for making false complaints against people. Since when did the number of complaints all of a sudden make a person guilty? Especially because complaints are easily fabricated. It matters when it comes to police under the new expectation that accusations, no matter how false and malicious, are in and of themselves proof of guilt. When it comes to cops, if the number of allegations is the new standard for what determines a good cop from bad, then every officer working a high crime area will do as absolutely little as possible so there is never a complaint made. That kind of policing might protect the officer from vindictive allegations, but it will certainly not protect the public. The public is not only hurt from bad cops, but also from disengaged cops.  

Screening out bad cops will not be accomplished by simplistic interventions reminiscent of the Soviet Union. False allegations multiplied by any number does not all of a sudden become a positive. 

Police departments do not need violent cops, cops that cannot control themselves, thin skinned cops,  timid cops, or lazy cops that harm the public through their inaction. 

The police reform that is needed is still off the radar. Police should not be used by politicians and police brass to generate meaningless numbers. Police work must return to its basic mission of serve and protect through patrol. Patrol, especially in high crime urban areas, must include cops doing the only real community policing that ever existed - cops walking assigned beats where they become integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve. Working cops must stop supporting on their backs legions of  bureaucrats, paper pushers, upper brass and others that believe themselves exempt from policing and work by virtue of their rank.  

The nature of policing needs to be better. This means serve and protect through active patrol as the core mission, which includes patrol by foot in many areas. 

Good cops will thrive in environments that are professional, free of nonsense number games, cronyism, political patronage, and politics. Bad cops thrive in environments that promote cronyism and shoddy police work. 

 

Nonexistent Police Reform

There will never be police reform unless number games policing ceases to exist. Police departments and politicians, including mayors, misuse what policing should be when police are pushed to generate meaningless statistics, whether for arrests, traffic stops, traffic tickets, warnings, or something else. Numbers game policing is not the same as serving and and protecting through patrol. In fact, it detracts from effective patrol. 

Police reform, and ensuring good policing means ending number games. It also means ending clout, cronyism, political favoritism, all of which suck the life out of having professional police departments. Taking cronyism, politics, and number games out of policing is necessary for police reform and better policing. 

 In many urban areas, especially high crime areas, there must be patrol on foot. Cops in vehicles are not enough. There must be officers walking neighborhood beats. Cops on the ground walking assigned beats, where they learn well their neighborhoods and interact with people in ways that are completely impossible when cops drive around in vehicles, regrettably is of no priority. Cops walking beats in neighborhoods requires police that are physically and emotionally up to the challenge, and that are able to communicate well with the public. Cops walking assigned beats is true needed community policing. Because it does not line someone's pocket or provide political patronage, no one is interested.  

Police reform and discussions about policing too often center on the sensational, including by the media, and on self serving agendas. Also follow the money trail, and who profits from what is proposed, whether it is about training as the answer, community policing, or something else. 

If cops and deputies are pushed to generate arrests, write tickets and more, their interactions with the public will continue to be more negative than positive. Cops that actively and properly patrol are busy enough without having to generate meaningless numbers. 

911 calls must be better screened, and people must be held accountable when they misuse the 911 system. Police responding to 911 calls and in their interactions with the public must be professional. Thin skinned cops are no more needed than are timid cops. 

Police belong on the streets. Legions of paper pushers, unnecessary bureaucrats and police brass must end as police return to their basic mission of serve and protect by patrol.

Like it or not, violence and crime are not going away. Effective, good policing requires work and effort. The makeup of who are the police is dramatically different than from decades past, and is now more diverse than ever before. If the discussion about policing cannot move beyond the politics of race, then the only thing that changes is the racial mixture and gender of those who are doing the bad policing.

Police especially that work high crime areas face violent people and violent situations. They cannot be crucified every time they exercise the lawful and necessary use of force. If police fail to respond appropriately to violence and crime, the only ones that suffer are the public. No police, or poor policing, means more murders, more violent crimes, more innocent civilian lives lost. 

It is unfortunate that there is still no serious discussions about police reform, and no serious effort to make policing better. Instead, the conversation is controlled by a few with their own agendas, backed by a media with its own agendas, all to the delight of those police officials, politicians and others that are more than delighted to keep things as they are.

 

Number Games And No Police Reform

 Police work should be a straightforward profession. Serve and protect through patrol. In many urban areas, especially high crime areas, there must be patrol on foot. Vehicular patrol is insufficient in many places. It must be supplemented by officers walking neighborhood beats. True community policing, not the convoluted nonsense sold as community policing, means cops walking beats and becoming integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve. 

Police reform and discussions about policing too often center on the sensational, and on self serving agendas. Also follow the money trail, and who profits from what is proposed, whether it is training as the answer, or something else.

There can never be police reform until numbers game policing ceases to exist. Police departments and politicians, from mayors on down, misuse what policing should be when police and deputies are pushed to generate meaningless statistics, whether for arrests, traffic stops, traffic tickets, warnings, or something else. Generating numbers is not the same as serving and and protecting through patrol. In fact, it detracts from effective patrol. Good policing is not compatible with cops and deputies as mindless cogs generating meaningless statistics.

Serve and protect through patrol must be the bread and butter of any police department. Generating meaningless statistics must stop. It encourages the worst in police conduct. 

Good cops know how to de escalate situations, how to escalate situations that require escalation, and when to know the difference. They want to serve the public and the communities in which they work. Good cops are not on power trips. They are not interested in petty nonsense and making someone's life miserable because the cop or deputy has a fragile ego that is easily bruised. 

Police reform means ridding police departments of clout, cronyism, political favoritism, layers of bureaucracy and unnecessary supervisory and other positions. Cops on all levels belong on the streets as much as possible, not hiding in offices and buildings.

Police reform should be discussed in great length. Instead, the narrative continues to focus on the sensational and on self serving interests. Numbers game policing should have ended long ago. 

Fashion Kills; Ruined Lives, Lands And Waters

 Corporations must be held responsible for their subcontractors. When it comes to clothes and textiles, all kinds of dyes and chemicals are used to color, soften and treat materials. Many of the subcontractors of large, international clothing and fashion corporations discharge their carcinogenic dyes, chemicals, and heavy metals directly into rivers and other bodies of water. Workers at many of these plants are exposed to these harmful chemicals and dyes without proper safety equipment. 

The discharge from clothing and other textile subcontractors have already poisoned rivers, drinking water sources, agricultural lands and more in countries that include Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and more. Millions of people, including children, have cancer and a host of other diseases, or will develop cancer and a host of other diseases, from the industrial poisons that clothing and textiles companies discharge into rivers and other waters. Fashion must stop killing. 

Clothing and textiles are major employers of millions of people. The few companies that properly treat their waste and do not poison the environment so that others will suffer are penalized by the higher costs incurred from doing the right thing and not discharging their industrial waste into rivers and other waters. 

It is up to the major international clothing companies that buy these products to ensure that their subcontractors do the right thing. It is not enough to expect developing countries already beset by poverty and corruption to finally stop the poisoning of their own lands. The international clothing corporations that have already made fortunes from cheap textiles and clothing materials must recognize that what might be cheap for them, and for some consumers, comes at an enormous price in terms of destroyed lands, waters and ruined health and broken bodies.

Every major clothing corporation in the world must be responsible for hiring their own staff to inspect and certify each subcontractor to ensure they properly dispose of their industrial waste, and that workers are properly protected when working with harmful materials.  

The processing of leathers, synthetic materials, cotton and much more cannot continue to be hidden industries destroying the lives of millions and the lands and waters on which they depend. Just so a few get enriched, and a lot of others can walk around feeling good about the clothes they wear. Fashion must become environmentally responsible. Corporations must be held responsible for what their subcontractors do. This must apply for all industries, not just textiles and clothes.

Multi national corporations must be held responsible for what their subcontractors do, and stop being shielded from responsibility by feigning ignorance. This applies to electronics, computers, clothes, cell phones, and much more.

 

American Privilege And The Unprivileged

The way covid has shut down many economies, especially in poorer nations, has driven millions of poor people into complete poverty. Malnutrition, starvation and all the ills that go along with extreme poverty, including the stress of not knowing where the next meal will come from, homelessness, the complete lack of medical and dental care, drinking, cooking and bathing in polluted, contaminated waters, dirty air, filthy, overcrowded conditions, all exacerbated by the covid shutdowns and loss of jobs and income - is killing far more people than covid. There is no end in sight to the misery. Covid vaccinations are barely existent in many developing countries. There is no end in sight for them to the pandemic, unlike in richer, more privileged nations. 

For those whose agenda is to make the United States out to be nothing but a rotten racist nation have not lived the downtrodden life of the poor in a developing nation. Places where safety nets are nonexistent. If there is no food, then you starve. If you are very sick, if you are wounded, if you have no money, then you die. You can wait outside the entrance to a hospital, and there will be no one to let you in. There are no government programs to ensure even a minimal amount of food. Without money, no one cares if you live or die. The poor of the world have been failed by their governments, by their religious institutions, by the world at large.

Millions of people in the Philippines alone have lost their jobs. Millions of people face malnutrition. Across developing nations in Africa, in Asia, and elsewhere, millions of people barely survived pre pandemic. The economic hardship caused by the pandemic have driven millions more people into extreme poverty. 

There are those in the United States that could care less about what happens to people outside of the United States. There are others that indulge themselves in exaggerated narratives about how terrible is the United States, which is their excuse to ignore far worse poverty and misery in the rest of the world.  There is religious freedom, including the freedom to reject and criticize religion. There are other freedoms that gets a person killed in many other countries. 

Hyper focusing on everything that is wrong in the United States has its own motives, not all of which are altruistic.

What is it that perpetuates extreme poverty? What is it that keeps it alive? Will anything be done to reverse the severe environmental damage that has impoverished millions? The collapse of fisheries, healthy marine environments, rain forests, and much more. People drinking and bathing in waters poisoned by industrial discharges. Environmental degradation adds to impoverishment. Covid adds to the desperation. When covid is brought under control, will anything change structurally to improve the lives and environment for hundreds of millions of people? Or will it be business as usual for governments, for politicians, for religious institutions and leaders, for business and nonprofit interests?  

Jamie Dimon. Income Inequality - Underpaid Workers And Overpaid Executives

 Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, commenting on the harm caused by income inequality, is like the leader of a drug cartel complaining about drug abuse. Executive compensation is long out of control. The wealth of many corporations and their overpaid executives have come from the backs of underpaid workers. Underpaid workers and overpaid executives, and its significant contribution to income inequality, is not about to disappear. Let Jamie Dimon lead by example. Responsible corporations, fewer and fewer in number, have executives that pay themselves reasonable salaries and compensation that are not completely out of proportion to what workers of the corporations earn.

The two tiered system of underpaid workers and overpaid executives must end if income inequality is to be addressed. Putting this in place, not by words that mean nothing, but by actual deeds and actions, is what Jamie Dimon can do if he is truly concerned about income inequality.  

Labor has long been devalued in the United States. Rather than pay fair wages with responsible labor and environmental regulations, corporations have sent millions of jobs to China. This has strengthened China and weakened the American working and middle class. The fewer decent paying jobs available, the greater there is economic inequality, racial inequality, economic hardship, and a host of other ills. Service industries, including banks and fast food restaurants, rely greatly on domestic labor. Many of these corporations are notorious for having underpaid workers and overpaid executives. Income inequality cannot be addressed if the people on top keep taking all, and the workers keep getting crumbs instead of living wages.

Humanists, Not Leftists Or Rightists, Are Needed

 The world does not benefit from leftists, quick to condemn injustice and war as long as it comes from the sides they despise, including the United States, Israel and the west, and not from the oligarchs, murderers and tyrants they embrace. 

Putin imprisons a powerless political opponent that he already poisoned, and RT and its phony leftists  show again their hypocrisy and slavish loyalty to Russia's corrupt billionaire ruler for life. 

Hamas poisons the minds of children in Gaza, brainwashing a new generation to think suicide bombings and bloodshed are what God demands. Other nations and organizations do the same; brainwashing children into embracing ideologies of supremacy, hate and violence, thereby ensuring a future of war and terror. 

Murder and atrocities are ignored as long as it is black killing black. The mass killings now taking place in Mozambique, where innocent people are being cut into pieces by machetes and knives are completely ignored. 

In far too many places, organized criminals, gangs and corrupt government officials thrive in environments where the rule of law is absent or near absent, and ordinary people live in terror. People are sadistically tortured and murdered, with little or no outcry from religious and other institutions. Too much of the world is under the thumb of sadists and thugs. 

The world needs humanists - not rightists, not leftists- that are passionate about justice, freedom, ending corruption, about protecting the environment so that mankind has a future. Humanists, unlike leftists, unlike rightists, that are not hypocrites selective about what injustice they oppose. They oppose it all, regardless of where it comes from. 

Why Jihadi Wars Do Not End And Religious Freedom

When there was war against Nazis, it was a war also against the entire ideology of the Nazis. The United States and allies did not go to war with the understanding that Nazi rights would be protected, and that the ideology of hate, violence, supremacy and intolerance that led to the war would be allowed to flourish. All the jihadist groups that are drenching the world in blood are funded by regimes rich in oil wealth far removed from the terror and bloodshed they support and help create. 

Everyone should be free to choose and practice the religion of their choice, or to reject religion. One person's religion is often superstition to another. The right to believe what one wants to believe does not include the right to act violently against those that believe differently, or the right to act violently against those that challenge or refute the ideas and beliefs of those that do believe. There must be freedom of religion for all, which includes the right to reject, criticize, change religion or leave religion.

As long as there is the acceptance of religious ideologies that promote hate, violence and intolerance, religious wars and violence will never stop.  

Mozambique joins the list of nations in which the blood of innocent people are being spilled by violent jihadists. Those who fund the jihadists groups, those who support them, want the blood to flow, even when it is Muslims that suffer the most. From Mindanao to Gaza, from Mozambique to Nigeria, from Afghanistan to Yemen and thousands of other places, jihadis make sure the blood flows. If there is never an accounting for those that support them, of those that fund them, of the ideologies and beliefs that drive them, then no matter how much they are opposed in war, there will be no end to the bloodshed and misery.

South China Sea, Fish And The Future, China And The Philippines

 China appears to be a forward thinking nation capable of long term planning. When it comes to environmental concerns, and how to feed its enormous population, forward thinking goes out the window. The more China makes claims to the coral reef islands of the South China Sea, the more China destroys the islands and coral reefs of the South China Sea, militarizing islands, dredging and developing islands, the less there is food. It is a simple equation, destroy coral reefs and islands, the less there are fish and other marine life. 

The Philippines must not abandon their territorial claims in the South China Sea. They must not be quiet while the South China Sea continues to be destroyed, ensuring less fish and food for the growing Philippine population and also for the growing Chinese population and of all the other nations that depend on the South China Sea. 

There are times China acts aggressively in its self interests. This is not one of them. Destroying the coral reefs and islands that provide life to countless fish and invertebrates reduces the ability of nations to meet their insatiable demands for fish. People want fish, but destroying what fish want and need to survive means no fish and hunger. 

Racial Bullying In A Junior High: Toxicity Of Bullying And Acceptance Of Violence

In the late 1960's, there was an integrated junior high school in which some of the black students used some of the white students as daily punching bags.  The white students that were the victims of the bullies; their daily punching bags, were the kids that were quiet; the not cool kids that never bothered anyone and that were not sufficiently strong to be able to properly defend themselves. The kids that were the bullies were far stronger than the kids they bullied. 

Regularly the kids that were the bullies would take money and food from their victims in the school cafeteria. Everyday, before, during and after classes, in the hallways, in the classrooms, in the bathrooms, in the gym locker room and elsewhere they punched, kicked and tormented their victims. 

Certain girls were felt up and fondled by some of the bullies, including one of the black girls that was a quiet, reserved girl. They would feel their breasts, and sometimes put their hands under their skirts. The sexual abuse of vulnerable girls, the physical and verbal abuse of vulnerable white students were entirely ignored by the school staff , including its mostly white teachers, black principal, black assistant principal, and all of the other black and white adults. 

Why was nothing done to stop the bullying? Some of the teachers pandered to black bullies. Some of the teachers were afraid of the bullies. Teachers and staff, even a non uniformed black cop in a suit that was regularly present in the school would see the beatings, the punches, the abuse, and completely turn a blind eye. 

One white teacher used to hold rap sessions with black students during class in a corner of the room to show how cool and progressive he was, but did not hesitate to regularly slap and hit one of the quiet white kids that was already getting beaten up by black student bullies. 

Gym teachers knew kids were getting beaten up in the locker room, but completely ignored what was going on or completely stay out of the locker rooms so they could pretend that they were unaware of the bullying.

Some kids spent ages 11, 12 and 13 as punching bags. For some other kids, the bullying continued on into the high school years. Teachers and staff at the junior high pretended bullying was not happening even as they saw it with their own eyes. 

Bullying comes in all forms. Some of it is along racial lines, some of it is for other reasons where there are differences between people. Often it has to with kids that are vulnerable, for whatever reason, and are easy prey for bullies when there are no responsible adults that intervene or that are willing to intervene. 

Some people defend or ignore bullying and violence when committed by one race or another based on a myriad of reasons, including past harm and injustices that were done. But two wrongs never made a right. One wrong does not justify another. Unfortunately, people no longer seem to abide by this principle. No bullying is acceptable from anyone. There are those that excuse, justify and get angry if the abuses and violence pointed out do not suit their racial, political or religious narratives and agendas. It is harmful when people considered victims are not held accountable for their actions if they become victimizers.

No bullying is acceptable from anyone, no matter the form it takes, no matter who are the bullies. Cowards are those in positions to stop bullying in any of its forms and yet do nothing. Grown adults that fail to intervene and act responsibly when the bullies are children bullying other children have much to be ashamed about.

Ignoring or excusing violence, bullying and the acceptance of lowered standards for one race, religion or ethnicity, no matter the race, religion or ethnicity, regardless of the motive - pandering, racism or something else - is toxic.