You refuse to watch the videos, but you're still defending the regime. Why?
I question the moral integrity of anyone who would defend this administration without all the available info.
I'm glad you're being flagged, because I've been disappointed with how folks here have been surprisingly flaccid when it comes to condemning this regime. The day that I come here and find posts like yours in the majority will be the last day I visit.
Can you please explain to me how it violates HN guidelines in any way? Or how any of it is untrue? For example, do you disagree that 8 U.S. Code § 1357, as cited, empowers ICE to arrest US citizens without a warrant in specific circumstances, specifically relating to obstructing them from doing their original job? Do you disagree that ICE are, contra the public claims of Walz and Frey, LEO? Did you see my submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596055, and can you articulate a problem with it?
Including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46749406 , in which I explicitly acknowledged that I do not think this particular shooting was justified?
I already explained repeatedly: I responded hastily based on priors, and then responded poorly to someone who insulted me.
When I initially said:
> All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
Do you think any of that is incorrect? Which part specifically, and why?
And, to be clear, you were okay with me being called a "nazi sympathizer" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754655)?
I just vouched for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748563 , which was flagged and killed. Do you think it violates HN guidelines? How exactly? Because I legitimately don't understand.
Tell me the legal rationale for ICE abducting an employee from a Target beating him up and dropping him off bruised and covered in blood at Walmart at miles away.
ICE has been turned into a paramilitary political mafia to harass and harm the administrations political opponents and racial outgroups.
They've repeatedly been found in federal court to have violated the constitutional rights of citizens and non-citizens alike but Congress has shown no spine to reign in the executive which has willfully spurned these rulings.
Turn the blind eye to this at your own peril. History has shown that fascism does not stop acting only against people that you disagree with
The appropriate reaction to being admittedly ignorant about a topic is looking it up or requesting a source. When you a priori decide who was right before knowing the facts, you reveal yourself to be a shill.
What you quoted implies a request for a source. It is not unreasonable to state my priors. That is not "a priori deciding". Your insult is uncalled for and contrary to HN guidelines.
But yeah, it's just not happening, you couldn't possibly just be unaware
Edit: you literally said "i will not watch the videos" - you are admittedly willfully ignorant on the subject, your posts are therefore irrelevant
Interesting the conflicting orders she received were not "lawful".
Her vehicle was across a single lane, prior to the shooting incident vehicles were freely passing, so traffic was not blocked by a common occurrence of a vehicle across a single lane of an icy road.
She was not stopping ICE or DHS from apprehending an immigrant, and the Federal Immigration agents had no authority to deal with traffic matters in MN.
> the conflicting orders she received were not "lawful".
They do not become "not lawful" at your say-so. And she was not "given conflicting orders". That is a propaganda narrative ignorant of basic law. Good was repeatedly told to move (in the initial encounter with Ross, before he begins circling the car, repeatedly refused, then significant time passed. Then she was told to get out of the car, presumably because she was under arrest for refusing to move.
It is the same as how an ordinary local police officer who tells you to leave a property because you're trespassing, is entitled to arrest you (which entails you not leaving) if you repeatedly refuse to leave.
> Her vehicle was across a single lane
It was perpendicular to the road, and parked. That's obstruction. The fact that cars could get around does not mean they "were freely passing". And as you point out, the road was icy; that makes this situation more dangerous, and the blocked lane a more serious obstruction.
> She was not stopping ICE or DHS from apprehending an immigrant
She was significantly impeding them, in a manner that can very easily be argued to meet the necessary standards in the relevant legal code.
> and the Federal Immigration agents had no authority to deal with traffic matters in MN.
8 USC 1357 makes it clear that they can make arrests for federal crimes committed in their presence. This includes obstructing them, which is by definition done in their presence and is a federal crime by virtue of the fact that they are federal officers. And as LEO they can generally issue lawful orders. The fact that she's in a car doesn't somehow deny them jurisdiction. They aren't "dealing with traffic matters"; they're dealing with obstruction of justice.
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/miramar-martinez-shooting-...
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/miramar-martinez-shooting-...
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/miramar-martinez-shooting-...
Edit: thanks for showing you were literally unaware!
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/evidence-contradicts-trump-...
It doesn't agree with reality.
> The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it.
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.
> But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice. All of this is extremely clear in law.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau
When the pepper spray is pointed at your face and they are screaming "BACK UP" what do you do? Scream back "dat's illegal! muh muh rights!!1" What do you do when the flash-bangs and tear-gas canisters explode? Cover your nostrils with your extra-thick copy of the Bill of Rights?
I mean, law enforcement was speaking to the press today, saying they're not interested in "herding you to safety" or protecting people who are actively interfering. They would much rather if you weren't there at all. The job would be done expediently. But if people choose to impede stuff, and defend and protect child molesters, drug smugglers, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sex offenders, gun runners, then you get a war zone. This is how you get war zones. By defending and protecting the indefensibly guilty.
This is some peak "sovereign citizen" stuff right here. All you lefties screaming about "warrants" and "rights" and "kidnapping" and "jackboots" are SovCit in disguise. You have written your own constitution and you're carrying it out in the streets. Good luck, SovCits.
Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. That seems an obvious assumption. Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
> This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that.
> It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
I don't really agree with the flags but this casual dismissal of "you just don't like it" is not helping you to understand the actual reasons others may have to flag (and downvote, which I do agree with). For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling regardless of said someone's self-perception of their commentary. You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
> Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity.
In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest?
> Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes.
> For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling
I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines.
"The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault.
(For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.)
And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too.
And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452.
It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith.
But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them).
I did research this story.
And I already previously reported back (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force).
I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human.
Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito.
> You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
This is effectively intimidation.
Do you think it is not worth considering?
> This is effectively intimidation.
I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases.
> I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word).
I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all.
The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
I think it's unfortunate you call it suppression instead of rejection but I am otherwise more than okay with these thoughtless opinions (thanks for admitting this is your opinion instead of trying to hide behind things you call factual analyses) being rejected by the community. Though, not rejected so much that the opinions can't be addressed (hence not flagging them) because others should have a chance to weigh in. Ironically, I've been foiled by comments being flagged when posting comments; the result was actually my speech being prevented from responding to someone else's.
Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric. Especially calling it a threat of "community action"; it's not like I'm speaking for anyone but myself. Nobody's out to get you personally, they just don't like America's gestapo being normalized and excused, which your posts happen to do regardless of being within the guidelines.
> You speak of more "thoughtful" posting
Think about the effects of posting something which seems to normalize or excuse the actions being taken by ICE, especially their needless escalations which have twice resulted in something that is reasonably called murder. I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged and downvoted; that is still not intimidation to suppress opinions but an obvious conclusion based on simple observation. One might consider, with an open mind, whether a community-rejected post is legitimately in bad taste. That is what I mean.
> but I can find no charitable way to interpret this
Your reading comprehension was, and appears to still be, lacking. Being unable to find the meaning is not evidence that the meaning doesn't exist. It's possible you just gave up too soon when searching for it. Such is the nature of learning.
> Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric.
is blatantly misrepresentative. I said the word "flag" over and over and over again and did not talk about downvotes; and I referred to the effects of flagging (a comment in my history that is [flagged] in the view presented to me cannot be seen even with a direct link in a private browsing tab; a comment that is downvoted, even to -4 but without flags, can be).
You scold me for lack of reading comprehension, and then condescend to me about the "learning" process, but you overlook a central point that I made abundantly clear and attack a strawman.
And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation.
> I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged
Again setting aside downvotes because I did not complain about downvotes:
That is unfair treatment. It does not violate HN commenting guidelines to express that conclusion. My conclusion is justified by extensive research and by prior general awareness of how LEO operates and what happens at protests. It is not at all "thoughtless" to say so; I put considerable thought into this, and have brought forward large amounts of evidence and reasoning. It is frankly offensive to tell me otherwise.
I am simply not "thinking" about the specific matter of whether other people will have a strong emotional reaction to being told that the thing they consider murder might in fact be legally justified. Because I care about truth; and because HN (in principle, to my understanding) only tolerates these submissions because of the potential for actual discussion, which involves people disagreeing about things.
You've made it abundantly clear, by this, that no matter how I actually went about it, you would consider it inappropriate to make comments that suppose that ICE agents (citizens with due process rights, BTW) might not have committed murder, and would consider that it's inappropriate that comments making any argument of that form are permitted to remain publicly visible (again: flagging, not downvoting); only concurrence is okay.
And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.
This isn't ambiguous: yes, any behavior which normalizes and/or excuses these actions is not appropriate, no matter how said normalization and/or excuse is delivered. That is surely not against this site's ethics because...
> And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.
When one side of the divide is driven almost exclusively by their hatred of others, it is of course reasonable to reject them as hateful. At this point, calling something "fascist" is primarily intended as a description; it's not an insult except to the fascists who aren't brave enough to wear it on their sleeve. It's rather thoughtless to disregard that simple observation.
Sure, maybe you don't see that ICE are murdering citizens who are doing nothing wrong but that doesn't mean your opinion is unequivocally right or even needs to be given any consideration by others. Sure, maybe you can say you observe things differently but that doesn't mean others' observations are invalid, nor that people need be respectful to your behavior which has the effect of normalizing and excusing what they observe to be terrible things.
That is the thoughtfulness I am suggesting; the thought you might consider is that others are rejecting your comments because said comments ignore these observable facts of community. These comments which have people chanting "fascist" can objectively meet all of the site guidelines and they will be rejected simply for being in extremely bad taste. For an example, consider that Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal meets this site's guidelines. Of course a post genuinely suggesting that we eat poor children is going to be rejected, regardless of the sugar coating with which it's delivered.
> And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation.
Something you have also missed is that you completely disregard everything others show you about how the protesters have been treated unfairly by ICE in their situations (your complaint is that your opinion is disregarded, yet you disregard others' opinions); I am entitled to my opinion as you are yours and my opinion is that your supposed unfair treatment is something that can be disregarded as such. To say otherwise would be to deny others their opinions to reject your thoughtless commentary as such. In other words, your perception of such rejection as unfair treatment is a personal problem which has no place affecting the opinions others choose to express (say, by flagging your comment).
People are telling you to stop carrying water for fascists; complaining about how they do that (flagging your comments), rather than considering why they do it is, indeed, thoughtless.
I see why your post was flagged. You argued that the Good shooting was justified by referencing a video in which "laywer" (who has links to paypal and patreon, I guess his law career is going great) among other things called her in his words "motorist who was blocking traffic" (ignoring that some other SUV easily drove past Good's car in the same video a few seconds before) and where he said the officer was "trying to get from in front of the car" while the officer clearly was trying to block the car's path while approaching the car. If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires. It's clear he wanted to kill the driver. And that's not a justification
> Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification.
Don't forget ANY video you see on social media has incentives for something or something else.
Your objection to this boils down to a simple disagreement with the findings, and unjustified ad hominem. (There is no good reason to doubt that Nate the Lawyer is in fact a lawyer: he asserts so and makes appropriate disclaimers on his channel, he clearly shows reasoned legal arguments, he's been interviewed by others who accept the claim, he is accepted by all the other well-known lawyers on Youtube, etc.) I could have posted different analyses by other lawyers; most of what I've seen has been rather more strident and more at risk of offending those who think the shooting unjustified. In fact, as far as I can tell, LegalEagle is the only prominent lawyer on Youtube who disagrees that the Good shooting was justified, repeating a common pattern. Whereas many other Youtube lawyers concur that the Pretti shooting is at least problematic.
I hope you'll pardon me for not hiring a lawyer and paying just to get an opinion and copy-paste it to HN.
Flags cause posts to be hidden from logged-out public view. They warrant, therefore, that a comment violates guidelines and needs to be censored rather than simply being disputed.
Consequently, "you argued [something I disagree with]" doesn't become a reason to flag a post in itself.
----
As for the substance of your disagreement: I'm not going to get into my disagreements on things I've already repeatedly rehashed, but this argument is new to me:
> If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires.
First off, no, the point is that he was responding to a reasonably perceived threat of death or serious injury. It has nothing to do with either of those things.
Second, now that she has blocked the road and repeatedly refused to leave (including the interaction with Ross before the other officers arrive), she is being detained, and probably under arrest. That is a response to the obstruction, which is a federal crime (because they are LEO being obstructed) committed in the federal officers' presence, giving them the right (as LEO) to perform an arrest under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357 (a)(5). That's what was going on before she initiated the 2-point turn. The agents' presumed desire to have a clear road does not obligate them to take actions that would lead to a clear road; and it especially does not obligate them to let someone go free after committing a crime.
Third, it would have been quite impossible from his vantage point as the car starts moving forward, because the hood of the car would be in the way. He could only possibly shoot at the tires once he is will clear of the vehicle to its side; even then, he was struck and knocked off balance which would have made it quite difficult to aim with that intent.
Fourth, the law admits the possibility (which I agree with Nate is likely to hold up in court) of justifying shooting at Good specifically because of a self-defense argument. That argument could not apply if Ross managed to get out of the way and then started firing after that point. (It does cover shooting multiple times, including from the side, because human reflexes and police training to fire multiple shots come into play; the shots can easily be argued, with abundant precedent, to represent a single decision to fire the weapon.) And it certainly could not apply to shooting the tires of the vehicle. In general, LEO don't shoot at tires, for many good reasons that are easily looked up (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=can+officers+shoot+tires).