The Official Bendis Board 2012 Presidential Campaign Thread

[Treacle]

There have been more than a few incidents of Occupy protestors escalating the level of violence, often using far more harmful things than pepper spray.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sec...sco&id=8429988

Seems to mainly be the west coast Occupy. East coast, not as much,

There are still far more incidents in which the police are the perpetrators.

Also, pepper spray has been implicated in the deaths of people.

[Sarcoidosis]

And here I was thinking we might avoid a link fight...

[Jason California]

And here I was thinking we might avoid a link fight...

I think everybody here today has a fast enough internet connection.

[Ray G.]

There are still far more incidents in which the police are the perpetrators.

Also, pepper spray has been implicated in the deaths of people.

Again, arrests are not police brutality on their own, and a site called "Occupyarrests.com" is not going to be an unbiased source on this.

Pepper spray's awful and shouldn't be used except under extreme circumstances, but I'd say overall your survival rates are better than from a stab wound.

[David Aspmo]

Of course not.

Ben wanted to take a random out-of-place joke about Israel. So I felt it was appropriate to point out that the "joke" wasn't actually one at all.

I think you misunderstand the point of the joke - and all you did was make it clear that it wasn't out of place.

[Sarcoidosis]

I think everybody here today has a fast enough internet connection.

It's not that. It's the notion that the plural of anecdote is not data. Grabbing a bunch of incidents on one side or the other doesn't really answer anything. It just escalates the disagreement that won't be resolved.

[Treacle]

Again, arrests are not police brutality on their own, and a site called "Occupyarrests.com" is not going to be an unbiased source on this.

Pepper spray's awful and shouldn't be used except under extreme circumstances, but I'd say overall your survival rates are better than from a stab wound.

You must have missed the right hand column on Occupy Arrests where everything cited is linked to a news story...

Also, there are three more pepper spray incidents on that list.

Also, many of the reports of arrests in the respective articles contain reports of beatings.

I get the feeling you didn't really examine that link in any detail, but there really is a reason why I chose that one as opposed to any other.

[Jason California]

It's not that. It's the notion that the plural of anecdote is not data. Grabbing a bunch of incidents on one side or the other doesn't really answer anything. It just escalates the disagreement that won't be resolved.

OK, I get you. Anybody can use Google to find a handful of stories with little to no effort to support a case, without giving a real picture of it overall.

[Treacle]

OK, I get you. Anybody can use Google to find a handful of stories with little to no effort to support a case, without giving a real picture of it overall.

I think when internationally recognized newspapers of record (The Guardian, The New York Times, etc.) are reporting on violent incidents at the protests, that's an indication of a problem.

[russw]

So hadn't heard about the Sacramento incident and the story I just found said it was a clash between occupy Oakland people and some group called the South Africa Project. According to the story they was protesting black on white violence in South Africa. I briefly looked at their website but didn't really see anything that jump out at me - are they some form of a white supremacy group? and what does this have to do with the occupy movement?