JayJayH

Why do people have to generalize and pretend it is ALL from one group or another.

We DO have a racial problem...still....in America. President Obama has and is addressing that to make it better and it gets twisted into

he makes it worth. NOT addressing it will be status quo, keep floating down the river of de Nile. The memorial was the perfect opportunity.

The quote that Bush said: "Too often,we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions"

was what I posted on my FB page yesterday because it makes so much sense and I loved it.

The OP does not follow this wise motto.

We should not judge groups as a whole, police officers, blacks, whites, Muslims, but come back to the word SOME.

This is Kindergarden material, grown adults should get this. So when you bash BLM bash those who are violent

in the movement and support those who want peaceful equality, don't bash the movement.

Frankly, I think BLM is fair game for the actions of some. Why? Because BlackLivesMatter is a political organization.

I think the GOP party platform is fair game for LGBT groups. Why? Because the GOP party platform is a set of political ideas.

I think religion is fair game. Why? Because a religion is a set of ideas.

Skin color on the other hand is a completely different matter. There is no ideology behind pigmentation.

Judge an organization, an ideology or a set of ideas, none of which should be beyond criticism.

the point is no one goes to a fundraising rally for breast cancer and starts shouting about colon cancer. do you know anyone who has done this? why would you feel the need to tell the breast cancer awareness fund that colon cancer matters?

do you know anyone that has shown up to say, a meeting to educate about kids drowning in in-ground pools and taken over the mic to go on about kids who die in car accidents?

Kind of like the Mizzou vigil for the Orlando shooting.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/15/racial-activists-kick-gay-married-couple-out-of-orlando-vigil-for-being-white-video/

“I was really nervous to get up here because there’s a lot of white people in the crowd,” one woman states. “And that wasn’t a joke.”

“I wish this many people came out to our racial demonstrations and our Black Lives Matter movements,” she says, earning “Amens” and applause from her peers.

Again, I'm not criticizing anyone for protesting when a black person is unjustifiably shot by a police officer. I'm not saying that there is no racial bias in some police jurisdictions. I do however, think that it is fully reasonable to question BLM (and much of the left's) tactics in addressing the problem. They're not divisive because they protest, they're divisive because their narrative is based largely in sensationalism, while ignoring underlying contributing factors.

I wouldn't show up to a breast cancer rally and ask why they "exclude" those who suffer from colon cancer. I would however, question anyone who argued that misogyny is the largest underlying cause of cancer.

And it still has to do with nothing but it is all about race.

Here is the problem:

There was no institutional racism against white people and black people that suffered racism during the civil rights era

are still alive and well and so are their children. Some white people aren't over it yet and are still in the

oppression mindset and blacks are guarded.

Chew on that for a while and perhaps the light bulb will come on of why we have a BLM movement and a 'black community'.

It is not a group that thinks alike but it is a group that not so long ago had to use different bathrooms than whites. Duh !

There is a good reason that we have a BLM given our history a few decades ago though many would have loved for things to

stay oppressive against blacks and that mindset is also alive walking the streets.

# Cause and effect. The remnant of willful oppression and it's stench still floats in the US of A today on Main Street in every town.

If you do not experience it then have a seat and find a cause to write about that does oppress you.

I used to drive an older Cadillac and was frequently pulled over by the LAPD for non-issues, i.e. right brake light was out. When the (mostly white, Hispanic or Asian) officer saw I was a middle-class white kid, they would literally say "never mind" or write me up a fix-it ticket and tell me "just take care of it." I've also been in the car when my black roommate was pulled over for failing to signal a turn was yelled at and interrogated as to what he was doing in "this neighborhood."

As I've said, I have no doubts that certain police jurisdictions have plenty of bad apples and issues when it comes to prejudice. I have not experienced it, but I've witnessed it. Largely, I think it is very well connected to the fact that we still have vast socioeconomic disparities in this country - Which would go a long way to explain why Asian Americans suffer less from police brutality than white Americans, who again suffer less police brutality on the whole than black Americans. As I've also stated, I do believe that black people are owed something in this country.

I do not however, agree that the color of my skin, my experiences, or lack thereof determines whether or not I can have a legitimate opinion on the methods, tactics and narrative spouted by BLM. In fact, the day people find "something else" to care about and BLM is awarded thought monopoly on "black issues" will be a sad day for democracy and I would argue, for the "black community." BLM is part of a relatively new and growing movement on the political left founded in identity politics, pandering to and dividing people up based on race - A concept which I think is an incredibly bad idea if equality is the ultimate goal.

https://sa.www4.irs.gov/irfof-tra/start.do;jsessionid=r8nDglhEpzvbBRcpg7OwMaqt

This. He needs this.

The identity movement, not politics, helps by pointing out that black people get shot even when fully complying.

BLM has not turned it into a strictly racial movement. You got it backwards. BLM is facing a bully and saying no more.

Cause and effect.

It's like the bully is now complaining when he finally has to face the music and is now whining that he is being held accountable.

If you are white and it is not happening to you and you don't worry when your black teenager goes out the door or your

husband drives to work, then keep on skipping down the yellow brick road and sit down and be quiet.

Those that worry have a reason and if you don't get it then you just don't get it and that doesn't make it any less of a reality.

Political identity as you call it or movement worked in the civil rights era and it will work again because it is not finished. Period.

The civil rights era was through and through about race, and only race. Institutional racism wasn't just an undeniable fact, it was the law of the land in the entire southern portion of the country. Segregation in the south had no socioeconomic roots. It had nothing to do with anything other than race.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fresno-shooting-20160721-snap-story.html

"Noble, a 19-year-old “country boy,” was unarmed when he was shot and killed following a traffic stop."

Where is the national outcry?

http://time.com/4404987/police-violence/

"The men in these cases were white, not black, and yet all three were killed by police officers under circumstances that would almost surely have elicited indignant protest nationwide if they were black."

How would you like me to protest this? #All /WhiteEverySingleLifeMatters? Or is it just simply not a problem unless the victim was black?

i don't think it matters if you understand why..black lives matter, sociologists, anthropologists etc.. use the terminology they do. there's a reason why the us has historically taken issue with groups formed to support black empowerment. there's a reason why on one hand you have the call for the black community to join together to 'fix' their ills and on the other hand you reserve the right to admonish those attemtping to do just that. those that are still hung up on not getting their #alllivesmatter hashtag are quite simply uncomfortable with not being in control of the conversation,or at minimum, on consult.

I'm not advocating for anyone to fix "their" ills. I oppose any notion of being people lumped into "groups" based on the color of their skin, period. Frankly, I'm not even sure what good the phrase " community" brings to the table. Are people some sort of homogeneous group of humans who think alike based solely on their skin color? Does "the black community" represent Sheriff David Clarke? Does it represent Ben Carson? Kanye West? Or is it a phrase used to describe the interests of "most" black people?

Nor am I advocating for anyone to actually use the hashtag #alllivesmatter. I get the meaning behind #blacklivesmatter, I really do. I recognize that certain police jurisdictions in the U.S. struggles with racial biases among some officers. Against black Americans particularly in cities with large socioeconomic disparities between black citizens and i.e. Asian or white citizens. Chicago is an example. Honolulu is not. The same could be said for Bakersfield, CA, where Hispanics top the list (not blacks), yet, few Hispanics are shot by police in New Orleans.

My problem is with people ostracizing, ridiculing and publicly shaming anyone for uttering the phrase "all lives matter." Think about it, prior to the Michael Brown case, at what point in history would the phrase "all lives matter" somehow mean you had anything but good intentions? Further, my problem is the popular narrative of black people, and black people only, being murdered in large numbers by an inherently racist police force. This just simply has no basis in reality in a country of over 300 million people. The fact is that while virtually all police shootings in 2016 of unarmed black men receive widespread media attention, similar shootings of unarmed white or even Hispanic teenagers receive little to no attention outside of local news.

For a group that calls for "inclusion", what BLM really has done by its racial undertones and divisively politicizing the multiple issues is to turn a serious problem into an "us vs. them" issue.

So the Harvard study did show blacks were treated differently (accounting fir circumstances) thanother groups? Why would they be treated differently? The law sees all of us as equals.

Well first of all it more than likely has something to do with the fact that black Americans statistically commit more crimes than any other demographic group in America. This is uncomfortable territory for many people - I see a lot of people steering away from it out of fear of being labeled "racist." Steering away from uncomfortable truths is virtue signaling or failure to substantiate an argument at best - Pure willful ignorance at worst. Of course, it is not a race issue per se, but rather a natural consequence of socioeconomic disparities, which again is a natural consequence of historical injustices. I do think black people are owed something in this country, I just personally don't see how BLM or any other race baiting political organization is making anything better - Quite the contrary, I fear they are making things worse.

Second, what the study concluded was the exact opposite of BLM's narrative - It found no racial disparities in police shootings. However, if you go by the popular narrative of "the left" today, we should be seeing pandemic levels of unarmed black men being murdered by police. We really don't, we just hear about them more often than "other" police shootings. I'm not holding this one study as a universal truth - social science research can be murky. What I react to is the narrative by BLM that this is a distinctly racist problem, particularly when it turns out that on the whole, more whites are shot by police than any other demographic group.

I'm not denying that many police jurisdictions have problems with prejudice, but if it was strictly a race issue, is there any reason in particular why Asian Americans would encounter less police brutality than white Americans?

Ultimately, it boils down to a toxic mixture of prejudices in certain jurisdictions, mixed with a whole lot of socioeconomic factors. For example, if you were a police officer in an MS-13 infested neighborhood, would your attention be on the Hispanic guy with the tattoos, or the Okinawan lady driving a Toyota? If you answered the former, you'll also have to explain why a police officer shouldn't have the same focus. If you answered the latter, you'll have to explain how that is good use of taxpayer money.

Here is my question –

1. Do you think my kids will be US citizen if they born outside of US (In Asia)?
2. How can I get back to USA without his help?
3. Since he is making really good money, I would like to divorce him and got child support. Friend of mine told me I will get 25% of his salary which is lot for us after conversion. Do you think this will work since I am in Asia and he is in USA? My husband is not citizen by born. He is from asia as well but currently US citizen.
4. I have a feeling he will divorce me as he is not talking the way he used to talk with me. So how can I get into US right after my babies are born?

1. Your kids can acquire U.S. citizenship through their U.S. citizen father.

2. If your kids acquire U.S. citizenship through their U.S. citizen father, one of them can sponsor you as soon as they turn 21.

3. I don't know, that's an issue for family court, not an immigration matter.

4. The only way for you to enter the U.S. is either (a) to visit on a tourist visa, or (b) by having him file an I-130 petition for you to immigrate to the U.S. as his wife on a CR-1 visa. Having U.S. citizen children does not grant you any immigration benefit until they can sponsor you. They have to be 21 years or older to sponsor you.

Unless you hold a master's degree in physics, win the green card lottery or have half a million dollars stashed away in your savings account, the only way you'll be moving to the U.S. at this point is through your husband, or through your kids in 2037.

Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group The Southern Poverty Law Center responds to requests to label the movement

"The backlash to BLM, in some ways, reflects a broad sense of unease among white people who worry about the cultural changes in the country and feel they are falling behind in a country that is rapidly growing more diverse in a globalizing world. We consistently see this phenomenon in surveys showing that large numbers of white people believe racial discrimination against them is as pervasive, or more so, than it is against African Americans.

It’s the same dynamic that researchers at Harvard Business School described in a recent study: White people tend to see racism as a zero-sum game, meaning that gains for African Americans come at their expense. Black people see it differently. From their point of view, the rights pie can get bigger for everyone.

Black Lives Matter is not a hate group. But the perception that it is racist illustrates the problem. Our society as a whole still does not accept that racial injustice remains pervasive. And, unfortunately, the fact that white people tend to see race as a zero-sum game may actually impede progress."

I really do not think the problem is increasing rights for minorities as much as it is the anti-white rhetoric fueling some of these groups. The scariest thing to me isn't groups like Black Lives Matter per se - Many of their arguments are completely legitimate, I just wish they would embrace a more inclusive and universal approach rather than a purely racial one - Despite another recent Harvard study suggesting no racial bias in police shootings. "They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police. But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias." http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

The scariest thing to me is how anti-white rhetoric has become common place in many political action groups on the left, including Black Lives Matter. Whether I find them offensive or not (I personally don't) is irrelevant. What scares me is how they help fuel racial rhetoric, both on the left and on the right.

"At first, “white men are our greatest threat” postings tended to be ironic, a way of putting the racist shoe on the other foot. They were meant to show that blaming an entire race for the harmful actions of a few individuals is senseless.Then the tenor changed. What started as irony turned into an actual belief that white people, specifically white men, are more dangerous and immoral than any other people. Loosely backed up by historical inequities and disparities in mass shootings, this position has begun to take a serious foothold."

http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/how-anti-white-rhetoric-is-fueling-white-nationalism

When people say that the Obama administration has been terrible for race relations, I'm skeptical of any narrative that suggests "protesting shootings" per se is bad for race relations. The "us vs. them" rhetoric however has grown substantially on the far left, and sadly, it fuels the opposite on the far right.

"The recurring, tired refrain that we should have a white history month if there is a black history month, or white student unions on campuses, is unintentionally being given new life by the Left. Celebrations or organizations of whiteness do not exist because we don’t need them. White people do not face the same kinds of systemic discrimination that people of color do. But progressives are doing a very good job of convincing white people that they do."

it's also sad that you can't see through the agenda you've subscribed to.

Probably, I'm not sure what agenda I'm allegedly subscribing to.

i honestly feel that the main reason why blm is scapegoated is because the media on the right has made it their agenda to silence them. it's bullying played out on the big screen as a means to dictate the national conversation on our clear problem with police brutality. they don't deviate from the talking point; support for blm equals support for cop killers. this talking point goes hand in hand with the 'obama has brought about the most racially tense years the us has ever seen!' shame and fear. definitely keeps away sympathetic ears.

of course, when steve king goes spouting white supremacy on television, like grand wizard dragon of modern day racism there was nothing. crickets. if i were republican i'd want to put than foul man down and disassociate publicly asap. i haven't really seen that happen.

I agree that they are scapegoated to an extent. Saying the murders of the cops in Dallas for example is at the "hands of BLM" is a little like saying Donald Trump is to blame if a Trump supporter were to commit a crime against an illegal immigrant. One thing I don't really understand is how it is that "the media on the right has made it their agenda to silence" BLM. Initially, BLM enjoyed fairly widespread support, even among many conservative groups who saw combating police brutality as a legitimate common goal. If they have been silenced on the right, it's due to shattered credibility.

BLM's loss of support didn't happen until combating police brutality became a distinctly black cause. People were ridiculed, some even forced to resign from positions, for using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, often with nothing but good intentions. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were asked in a presidential debate whether "black lives matter, or all lives matter." I understand that focusing on black lives following police shootings of unarmed black teenagers isn't necessarily racist, but as far as racial tension goes, no side has been more divisive than the political left in recent years. What I miss is a unifying campaign from BLM.

Rather than trying to appeal to Americans from all backgrounds who are concerned with police brutality, BLM politicized and became part of the larger social justice crowd where words like "privilege", "whiteness" and "institutional racism" are held to be universal truths, not to be questioned. I understand that black Americans have historically faced injustices that help explain socioeconomic disparities still in existence today. What I don't understand is how identity politics are supposed to help.

So while BLM has never gone out and publicly asked supporters to kill cops, I'm still in awe at how easily their racial undertones are dismissed and even embraced. Honestly, BLM would have likely gotten a whole lot more support if they had embraced the #AllLivesMatter hashtag and capitalized on it, rather than turn the movement strictly into a racial one.

It really is sad to see the way BLM has gone from a group protesting police brutality, gaining traction also among the libertarian wing of the GOP, to now being one of the most divisive political organizations in this country.

"What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"

Of course, ensuring their security was the NYPD.

TL;DR.

Honestly do you belong to the Henry James school of writing-lol. Why use one word when you can use a hundred?

The common theme in your prose is that you are a reformed liberal. Just like a reformed alchoholic, expounding the evils of alchohol, you appear to be on a mission to destroy any liberal thought you might have.

You might get more willing readers on such a board if you edited and edited and edited.... Good luck!

Eta. Less polemics;)

No one forces you to read anything

- Still a classic liberal, saddened to see 'liberalism' being on its way over an authoritarian cliff.

Only common prose in my posts tends to be that organized religions are crazy, particularly Islam, and that groups like BLM are making things worse.

Is there anything inherently illiberal about either statement?

I don't discount that there are Islamic Jihadis, nor do I discount that the US suffers a tremendous amount of deaths by gun violence. But you can go all the way back to the 911 attacks in 2001 and still be nowhere near the death toll since January 1st of this year.

Although the Right Wing Echo Chamber got fired up with joy, the only way to describe the high fiving in the early portion of this thread, it remains to be seen what the driver of this truck was motivated by. I'm noticing that there is no mention that he wasn't a newly minted refugee from Syria.

I am sure you understand that there are over a billion Muslim believers world wide. So let's give you a million Jihadis (a number you likely got from Jihadist propaganda or said Echo Chamber) and throw in two million alleged sympathizers. Using your own bogus numbers that makes a fairly tiny fraction of Muslims involved in Jihadist activities. Not saying that they are not a problem needing to be dealt with, but even your own bogus numbers should be a clue as to how foolish you sound? I'm going with not.

I'm not disputing that more people are killed in the U.S. by "everyday" gun violence than jihadists. I don't think anyone does. What I'm getting at is that they're very different crimes that have very different solutions. Domestic disputes and gang violence can both end in a gun death, but we don't deal with them the same way. You don't assign domestic disputes to the gang squad. If 100,000 people die every year from cancer, we don't say "but look at all the people who died from all these other diseases!"

I've been a liberal most of my life, I favor certain restrictions on gun ownership. But all too often I hear of "guns" being addressed as a cause of violence. They are not. They are a tool to commit violence. Ultimately, when a person is shot, the only person responsible is the one who decided that one life was worth more than another - The person pulling the trigger. Not the GOP. Not the NRA. Not the DNC.

Compare jihadism to gang violence, sure. Compare it to DUIs, sure. Compare it to domestic violence, sure. Compare it to mentally ill people killing for no apparent reason sure. Comparing to "gun violence" as a cover-all however makes little sense, unless the goal is to "stick it" to conservatives.

When the person pulling the trigger (or hitting the gas pedal) has one goal in mind - To kill as many infidels as possible in order to restore the caliphate - This is a very different crime from that of an MS-13 gang member driving by an 18th Street Gang house. When the network behind the person pulling the trigger is supported by tens of millions of people worldwide, is well funded and global, it's on a very different scale.

"Although the Right Wing Echo Chamber got fired up with joy, the only way to describe the high fiving in the early portion of this thread, it remains to be seen what the driver of this truck was motivated by. I'm noticing that there is no mention that he wasn't a newly minted refugee from Syria." While I'm usually weary of jumping to early conclusions, the attack in Nice had every single hallmark of an Islamist-inspired attack:

1. Person with Middle Eastern immigrant background.

2. Criminal record.

3. Used nontraditional weapon.

4. Aimed to kill as many civilians as possible.

5. Described by neighbors as "calm, nice, quiet."

6. (Nothing to do with Islam.)

I don't think anyone actually believes that the majority of Syrian refugees are ISIS sympathizers. It's mostly a cover for arguing that taking in large amounts of unskilled workers from the Middle East has never been a success, anywhere in the west, at any point in recent history. Really, I can't think of a single western country that has succeeded in integrating large numbers of unskilled Muslim migrants - Unless spread thin. I find it equally troubling that there has never been any mention, from anyone on the left, that most homegrown jihadists are second generation. "Second generation" has generally, instead, been used as "evidence" that taking in large amounts of Middle Eastern refugees is not a problem, because it's the second generation that radicalizes, not the refugees themselves. Sounds like climate denial logic to me.

As far as my "bogus" numbers, ISIS alone is a quarter million man army, though luckily, many of these have been granted their wish and have now met their maker instead of pestering us mortals. That of course does not include support for groups like the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Jemaah (nothing to do with)Islamiyyah, Abu Sayyaf, Ansar al-(nothing to do with)Islam, Jabath al-Nusra, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida in the (nothing to do with)Islamic Maghreb, Al Qaida in Iraq, Al Shabaab, Ansar al-(nothing to do with)Shariah, Khorasan, Fatah al-(nothing to do with)Islam, Tawhid al-(nothing to do with)Jihad and so forth and so forth. I could also mention that according to Pew Research, 34% of Palestinian Muslims expressed support for Osama bin Laden in 2011, along with 26% of Indonesians, 22% of Egyptians, 13% of Jordanians, while 18% of Pakistanis viewed Al Qaida favorably, alongside 49% of Nigerian Muslims.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-largely-discredited-among-muslim-publics-in-recent-years/

There is this notion that only a tiny, tiny minority of Muslims support jihadism. This just simply isn't true. While 82% of Pakistani Muslims thankfully do not express support for Al Qaida, 18% still equates to roughly 40 million people. In Pakistan alone.

This of course doesn't include the numbers of people who express support for chopping the heads off blasphemers, atheists, adulterers, homosexuals, apostates, witches, sorcerers etc. (they number in the hundreds of millions http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/07/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/)

Again, I am in no way suggesting "all Muslims." I'm suggesting that there is a crisis within Islam, where many on "the left" today, under the guise of "tolerance", would rather throw reformers under the bus than ever admit that Islam has one big foot still stuck in the 7th century.

You really believe that nonsense, don't you? And again, we have more killers here than they have over there. The body count shows that rather impressively. Nobody can compete with this country on dead bodies. Nobody.

If you're counting by sheer numbers, I would agree. Of course, you have to adjust for the fact that the U.S. has a population 5x bigger than France.

But I think you're getting a few things mixed up. I would argue that there is a significant difference when a person is killed by a religiously/ideologically inspired terrorist whose main objective is to impose havoc on a civilian population, and a death following i.e. a domestic dispute - Just as there is a difference between a death following a drug deal gone bad and a DUI.

I know, a death is a death is a death, and one death is one too many.

However, different crimes have different roots and different solutions.

Gang violence in the U.S. for example can be brought down by bringing people out of poverty and ensuring young people in inner cities have a future.

Lone wolf attacks in the U.S. can be brought down by ensuring that people with a history of serious mental illness cannot purchase firearms.

Traffic deaths can be brought down by i.e. aggressive policing of drunk drivers.

Deaths caused by radical Islamists can be limited by preventing radicalization.

Why doesn't the U.S. have the radicalization problem that most of western Europe deals with every day? Because we've never had large scale influxes of low skilled immigrants from the Middle East. Funny too that those same countries (i.e. Sweden, France, Belgium) have ran the "inclusion", "multiculturalism" and "it's their culture" policies for three decades.

The U.S has nearly 30x the population of Sweden, yet, we have the same number of ISIS recruits as Sweden. Why? Because we've "spread them thin", we haven't worried about "racist" labels, and we've never allowed for the formation of "Muslim ghettos."

4 is not true

5 repeat

I'm just the messenger, conveying the common narrative.

Not real muslims, though.

Where is the real one?

Sunnis keep telling me shias are not real. Shias keep telling me Ahmadiyas are not real. Ahmadiyas keep telling me Sufis are not real. Sufis keep telling me Sunnis are not real.

Either 1.6 billion Muslims are not real Muslims, or there is no such thing as a "real Muslim" and thus "nothing to do with Islam" is redundant and moot.

For a moment I thought you had posted a pic of the Aurora CO movie theater. Then I remembered that for you only one type of violence matters, the overwhelming cacophony of senseless gun violence in the US is something that you barely notice.

False.

But please show me the million man strong, global network of Batman-dressed movie theater shooters dead set on imposing schizophrenic law onto the West. There is none.

The difference between a "lone wolf" lunatic and a jihadist is the organization behind it.

There's quite a significant difference between a lone conman scamming you, and a global organization with millions of sympathizers scamming you.

The two are dealt with differently, because on the whole, they are different problems.

When a lone gunman opens fire on civilians, there is usually a mental illness involved. They don't typically have a global or even national network behind them. Maybe a cousin or two at most.

If you want to convince me that the millions of people who have joined ISIS, Al Qaida, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyyah, Abu Sayyaf, Ansar al-Islam, Hezbollah, Jabath al-Nusra, Al Shabaab etc. etc. etc. are all mentally ill, then you'll also have to explain to me why it is that Muslims have a much higher rate of mental illness than adherents of any other religion.

Mass shootings in the U.S. are no different than Islamist and jihadist-inspired attacks? I know where you're getting at - Crazies exist everywhere, and we shouldn't single out any particular group. I'm sure the intention is good. I'll quote the great Muslim reformist Maajid Nawaz when I say that "there is a crisis within Islam" and trying to write it off as mental illness or comparing it to crazy lone wolves helps no one but the Islamists. You can either argue that Islam is perfect as it is today, or you could argue that it badly needs a reformation. I think most of us, deep down, would argue for the latter, rather than the former.

It doesn't appear you think any black man ever arrested, was arrested for a reason.

Just as it appears that you think all black people that die from police violence are guilty automatically. Why is that?

This is where we are in America today.

Thanks to social media echo chambers and polarizing cable news, any position in between is rather lonely.

Wow thank you, thats so crazy. I will definitely have to look into it. But thanks for the story/link of that guy.

That's what VJ is for. Best of luck.

1099 means he is self employed as a contractor for your brother.

Normally line 22 of the 1040 is used.

This ^

If he has a 1099 he is not employed by your brother, he is a contractor meaning he is self-employed. If he had a W-2 he would be considered employed by your brother.

Once you get your Austrian passport and apply for ESTA you still need to answer 'yes' to the question have you ever been denied a visa. This will most likely make the ESTA denied too so you will still need a B2 visa to visit the USA, that won't change.

Unfortunately with 2 denials doesnt look like you will be visiting the US any time soon. After you get married are you planning to join him or is he joining you?

Hey good evening,

hmm, you're right regarding ESTA. @az2014

Our plan is to stay here in Austria. Once he's done studying (2 or 3 years) he will come over.

@JFH we thought about that too, but the problem is that he's studying and working. He can't really take off from school and work at the same time. Thats why I wanted to visit him.

And as you've said, I'm definitely not paying them any more money to get denied.

@Shiobhan, Exactly! Especially cause there are so many forms and tricky questions. I did stick to the truth through all conversations and forms. Cause you never know.

But thank you all for your replies, feeling pretty naive that I actually thought it would work out.

This is likely but not necessarily true.

When a B2 visa is denied under section 214(b) of the INA, which yours was, it was denied because in the moment you applied for that visa, the consular officer was not satisfied that you would not use that visa to try to immigrate to the U.S. Since you cannot use a non-immigrant visa to immigrate, your visa was denied. The peculiar thing about section 214(b) of the INA is that is one of very few areas of U.S. law where you are presumed guilty until proven innocent, as opposed to the other way around. What that means however, is that the perceived immigrant intent does not carry on to the next time you apply for a visa. If your situation has changed and you apply again, the consular officer will (on paper) look at your application again, and make a subjective opinion based solely on the set of circumstances before him/her.

Becoming naturalized in an EU country is the epitome of a "changed circumstance" as you are now a citizen with unrestricted rights of work and movement in the entire European Union. This makes it less likely that you would attempt "something funny" - At least for economic reasons. You could very well have your ESTA approved. This guy was in a similar situation:

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/361102-what-are-my-chances-of-being-denied-entry-after-b2-denial/

"Back on feb 2010 i got a visa denial, due to lack of ties (very unfairly by the way) with my argentinian passport. 1 month later, i got my italian citizenship and i went to get the passport to be able to use the VWP, so after almost 2 months of my visa denial i applied for ESTA, i declared the visa denial, and it came back approved."

That being said, there is certainly no guarantee ESTA will be approved. And even so, there is no guarantee CBP will let you through. But. This is not a clear cut denial case. I visited my ex wife 3x on ESTA while my visa was being processed. Never any problems.

Additionally. What breaks my heart about the Dallas shooter is the fact that he was a war veteran, who serviced this country heroically and likely returned to a perceived reality where blacks are indiscriminately being slaughtered by white police officers. As police chief Brown in Dallas stated, the guy held a hatred towards white people, and white police officers in particular.

I don't blame people for protesting unjustified police shootings. I do blame people for (1) blindly protesting shootings without actually knowing the facts, and (2) universally turning police brutality solely into a race issue.

The topic of race is toxic unless you support it with clear cut, factual evidence. Why? Because if you leave any leeway, you end up excluding a ton of people who would otherwise agree with you. And they're excluded solely based on skin color.

I've spent a lot of time in the "current events" section of this forum debating the prevalence of religious orthodoxy in Islam. I think the same could be said for police brutality. If you argue that in certain ares, blacks are more likely to be targets of unjust police brutality, you have a good point. If you argue that there is a pandemic of white officers singling out and killing unarmed black people without hard evidence/statistics, you end up in the "war between all Muslims and the West" type of argument.

I agree with what you have said and what you are saying. I believe that the dialogue cannot even get started until all the pitchers of koolaid are taken away and locked safely away in the liquor cabinet and all involved parties have been through detox to get the koolaid of their system.

There is a system in place to address police brutality and excessive force and I believe that system, across the country, has broken down. Some incidents of use of force in this very exhaustive list seem to be legitimate, but many do not, and the ones that do not (Minnesota incident appears to be an open and shut example of that) should not be swept under and hidden behind the blue line and the officers involved in such incidents should be dealt with harshly. Too many times officers that are clearly at fault and in the wrong are let off the hook and it is destroying the relationship between good honest officers and the community.

From living overseas for quite awhile and travelling a good bit I have seen some serious poverty. What I do not find is a connection between violent crime and poverty so while there seems to be a correlation in the US that correlation is not reflected in other parts of the world. There is something else, something missing, and I am not sure what it is but I believe it stems from a different application of law to rich and poor in the US which is not sustainable and needs to be addressed immediately.

Appreciate all of your comments.

Thanks.

I agree with what you are saying. While I do believe police officers deserve a higher burden of proof when standing trial - By default, seeing as their job is more likely than any other profession to include legitimate use of force - I do believe that too many officers are let off the hook, and that this creates a sense of mistrust between communities and the jurisdictions that police them. Likewise, I am skeptical of anyone protesting a grand jury's decision without having any evidence to back up their claims with.

I have not seen any statistics from non-western countries regarding correlations between poverty and crime, so I can't really comment on that, but in the U.S. and most of the west, that correlation is pretty clear.

You only see in one color Marvin LOL

July 4: a 34-year-old white man armed with a gun, was shot on July 4, 2016, in a house in North Charleston, S.C. Patterson shot at North Charleston police officers from an upstairs window of his home and struck one officer before exiting the home and continuing to fire at officers.

[...]

There are 220 others. This year alone. Overall 24% of police shootings in 2016 involve black suspects. 31% of overall crimes involve black suspects.

A black suspect is statistically MORE, likely to survive contact with the police. Here is a list of every single one. It will be difficult to keep up your delusion if you study the database so like the police dispatch tape from Baton Rouge if you want to deal with facts and statistics and not BLM rhetoric I suggest you don't click this link.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/

What I don't think a lot of people understand is that very few people, whether black, white, Hispanic or Asian, disagree with BLM's message in terms of ending unnecessary police brutality. I, and apparently others, react when it is turned into solely a race issue without any attention to areas of the country where the same race issue might not apply. Same holds true for most leftist identity politics - Try convincing unemployed West Virginians that they have this magical straight, cis, white male privelege that flows from their very existence.

What remains consistent in the media, social media and through BLM's message is this narrative of pandemic levels of blacks being shot by white officers, while whites just get a slap on the wrist. I say this knowing full well that my black roommate when I lived in California was treated far differently by (an Asian) police officer than I've ever been by police.

What stays consistent throughout the country however is the socioeconomic factor. If you come from a poor neighborhood, you are more likely to be targeted by police, or even killed by police. That holds true whether you're black in Louisiana or Chicago, Hispanic in California or New Mexico, or a poor white in West Virginia. I don't want or expect media to stop reporting instances of black people being treated unfairly by the police. What I do want to see is more objective reporting.

Twist it around. When every robbery of a liquor store is reported as "suspect is a black male", you quickly forget that plenty of liquor stores are also robbed on the daily by white and Hispanic males (and likely also females). If statistically, more liquor stores are robbed by black males, does that make it solely a "black on crime issue"?

No. What is far more likely is that blacks in that particular area are statistically more socioeconomically disadvantaged. Which is why, when a liquor store is robbed in Honolulu or San Antonio, the assailant is far less likely to be a "black male" than if a liquor store was robbed on the south side of Chicago.

The day it stops being about race is the day this #### stops.

Do we have police jurisdictions where black people are more likely to be targeted by police? Yes.

Do we have police jurisdictions where white people are more likely to be targeted by police? Yes.

Do we have police jurisdictions where Hispanic people are more likely to be targeted by police? Yes.

Do we have people who will jump on the race bandwagon at every opportunity? Yes.

that's one of the narratives, but it isn't the narrative. it also isnt a new narrative or one that recently sprouted with the obama administration. police violence is a long standing issue thats being exposed via social media. the mass media, i dont know if youve noticed, are having a hard time crafting their 'breaking news' when folks have already been live streaming for an hour. it's interesting to read commentary of people who were there and all the conflicting scenarios of multiple shooters and chaos that wraps up all nice into one blown up suspect in just a matter of hours.

This is the problem of living in a post-empirical world. "Facts" are subjective now, and your perception of facts depends entirely on what news outlets you consider to be credible enough to follow on Facebook.

This is how we got to a point where the far right now is okay with banning people from even entering the U.S. as tourists solely based on religion, while the far left is okay with de facto segregation and making up opinions based solely on race and identity.

Which is worse? Seeing as neither is objective, it depends who you follow on Facebook.

I´m freaking out!! In the e-mail I received from the embassy it says: "All Immigrant Visa applicants residing in Sweden have to register their Swedish address on our website and choose their visa pick-up location, before coming to the Embassy. Please visit: http://cdn.ustraveldocs.com/se/se-iv-documentdelivery.asp for information. "

When I tried to do this I got an error notice and had to contact the embassy. They fixed the problem and gave me a password to use. I signed in and filled out all the information needed. When I clicked continue I got ANOTHER error notice that the personal details match a profile that already exists in their database and it also said what username that was. It was really similar to my e-mail adress but it wasn´t mine and I´ve never been on that site before. Sent another e-mail to the embassy but still no answer. My interview is in 11 days and I have to register online before my inteview.... I don´t know what to do. What if this will delay everything even more and I´ve already got it expedited because of my husbands medical issues...

Well this is new..

I'm not saying it hasn't happened. I'm saying if it has happened or something similar, why haven't there been video or news coverage? If some white guy was shot in a car by the police in front of his GF and child, we'd have police reform in one day. Hell, back to back within 24 hours? I couldn't imagine how that would look...

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-video-shooting-dylan-noble-20160707-snap-story.html

You don't hear about it. I thought this narrative of a "liberal mainstream media" was mostly a foil hat conspiracy theory until about a year or two ago. Until the far left, and much of the media, went off a proverbial cliff, and stopped examining statistics and actual policy (this is what I did my master's in).

Really, I sympathize with the people who are protesting police brutality, and I have absolutely no problem understanding that in certain communities, black people are unfairly targeted as compared to white people. In Ferguson for example, you had a majority black city policed by a police department that was 96% white. Doesn't mean the white police officers were necessarily unfit to police a black community, but I agree, it certainly raises questions. If you had a 96% black police force in a majority white neighborhood, I'd think it was statistically odd and significant enough to take a closer look at.

We've been sold this meme on social media and among major news outlets that the problem is white officers killing unarmed black teenagers. While this might be true in cities like Ferguson, or areas of Louisiana or on the south side of Chicago, it certainly isn't true where you and I live, in Honolulu. It isn't true in cities like Baltimore where the majority of the police force and the police chief is black. It isn't true in areas of L.A. where a plurality of officers are Hispanic, or in the city with the highest per capita police shootings - Bakersfield, CA where a majority of those shot by police are white or Hispanic. It wasn't true in Fresno last week when an unarmed white teenager was shot by police.

Where's the outrage? Where are the people protesting police killing an unarmed teenager? I haven't seen any. In fact, the major stories only arise nowadays when it's a black person shot by police. I'm not saying their deaths are less newsworthy. I'm just saying they're not more newsworthy either. They just simply don't fit the current narrative.

I'm by no means saying that black people aren't treated differently by police in many areas. In fact, I think it's a major problem, and agree that many police departments need overhaul. Ferguson was one. My problem begins when groups like Black Lives Matter completely ignore whites shot by cops, and focus solely on blacks shot by cops, even though statistics show that a socioeconomically disadvantaged white or Hispanic person has a much higher likelihood of being shot by police than a black teenager from a wealthy background. If BLM focused less on race, and more on the issue of unjust police brutality, I could bet you money that they'd have large swathes of the more libertarian-minded Republican Party rallying behind their cause. If the far left focused less on race, and more on socioeconomic disparities, I'd still call myself a liberal today.

I've been a lifelong liberal, a lot of it because while I've been an adult, the Republican Party has mainly been about preventing gays from getting married and pushing creationism in school textbooks. But the far left today really is to social science what the religious right is to natural science. Science is no longer a tool to objectively look at facts and statistics, but rather a tool to cherry pick in order to fit a certain narrative.

For certain Christian groups, that narrative is a 6,000 year old Earth. For certain far left groups, that narrative is a reality in which white cops are going around indiscriminately killing unarmed black teenagers at pandemic levels.