Posted on 08/29/2016 7:41:17 AM PDT by Boomer
Looking at it that way is about as accurate as your method of looking at the facts behind this Brazilian police robbery.
You can either offer facts in support of your assertions, or you can consider your claims to have been demonstrated to be false.
I am open minded. If you show me I have a fact wrong, I will take it into account, and may change my opinion if the fact is significant. I asked you to tell me where "Lochte" lied in his initial report, and you have provided me with nothing in the way of an example. You just assert that you are above that, and that you don't have to provide any proof for your claims.
Have you thought about the same effect and action by Rio authorities in this? Who’s the winner here?
The Rio police have asserted a claim that is contradicted by the known facts. They have been caught lying, about a significant and pertinent fact, and therefore they are in the wrong. That they "win" is because people have accepted their claims without verifying that they are backed up by evidence.
The accurate truth is the victim here.
Sounds to me like you nailed it. The outright hatred for Lochte in some quarters, and the holier than thou severity of harsh judgement from others, hardly seems to fit the crime. He was publicly accused of trashing a bathroom he never entered. He had the entire Brazilian government lying about him. He lost all his endorsements.
And the reaction is, GOOD! He deserved it!
There’s no proportionality. It’s just, condemn Lochte—and if you don’t, you’re naive or stupid.
I read the autobiography of a British Olympic class athlete. He could have drunk Lochte under the table three or four times. Shockingly [s/] he and his mates pulled a few pranks in their (drinking) days. But nothing ever came of it. They were never even shaken down for money.
I guess we need to make exaggeration a felony, and somehow make the penalty retroactive. If we can just land Lochte’s sorry rear end in prison, perhaps the hatred will subside.
The pertinent aspect of this issue is not so much the behavior of a corrupt authority in a third world foreign cesspool so much as it is the willingness of people from our country to believe and spread the lies of a corrupt authority in a third world foreign cesspool.
Why are *WE* spreading these lies instead of pointing out that they are in fact lies?
Why are *WE* going along with the false narrative rather than admitting what the extant facts have now revealed to be the truth?
Why are some of us siding with the Lying Media and the Lying corrupt socialists?
I am more ashamed of *US* than I am of the Brazilians who acted about the way I expect for that culture.
Come on DiogenesLamp, I didn’t say that, I hope you can see that and are just being rhetorical.
I am just saying that it IS a fact of life. Our State Department likely DOES issue advisories like that, but I doubt anyone ever reads them. When we leave our country, we DO so at our own risk, always. If you keep your nose clean (Geez, I hear my father/ranking enlisteds/officers voices in my head when I said that) you will be okay. If you do anything at all suspect, even things that you don’t know would be suspect, there is no guarantee.
Our country is a great place, and there is nothing like traveling outside it to bring the idiocy of other countries into the light.
The idiocy and the danger. Dang, we sure do take that for granted.
Did you by any chance notice that I posted to you in #70?
Personally, I don’t hate the guy. (I don’t respect him either, it sounds like the behavior of a 17 year old on a school trip for the first time)
The issue isn’t proportionality...heck, nearly everyone would agree it is stupidly out of proportion. There is no proportionality.
And we certainly aren’t sticking up for “cops” who may just be people known by someone important who have the privilege of being able to stick a gun in someone’s face demanding cash.
The issue isn’t that for most people I see on this issue. It is that he put himself into that situation.
Just my two-cents.
And what lie did he tell in his original testimony? I've been asking this question for several days to people who claim he lied, and I have yet to hear a sensible response from anyone who has made this claim.
I say again, what pertinent lie did Lochte assert in his original testimony?
They vandalized some else’s property, gun point or not, and I don’t know how Brazil handles pety crime, he was responsible for what he did (and the others are responsible for what they did)
The Brazilian Police claimed that the Americans broke a mirror and a soap dish. They also assert that Lochte ripped down that advertisement, which so far is the only thing they have said which can be established as "true."
A couple of investigative reporters from USA Today have demonstrated that neither Lochte or the others did any damage to the bathroom in question. These reporters have put forth facts that clearly contradict the claims made by the Brazilian police department.
Ergo, the Brazilian police department has been caught in a deliberate and serious lie about what happened.
An American in Singapore got canned 60 times for vandalizing a car. If he did that here, he probably would have just got probation.
If someone can demonstrate that pointing a gun at someone and taking $400.00 from them is the normal way of handling minor damage to an advertising poster in Brazil, then you will have a strong basis for which to put forth your "differences in culture" argument.
But somehow I don't think this is normal and usual way of handling this sort of incident in Brazil.
Here’s a screaming front page headline for you:
Athlete Removes Cheap Poster He Claims was Already Damaged!!!
Iow, Crime of the Century!!!
Follow up headline:
Brazil Refuses to Identity Men Who Demanded Hundreds of Dollars from Americans at Gunpoint.
I agree 100% w/ your post. I was about to write the same thing. Also some seem to think that because it was a free sign that makes it okay. Free or costing $500.00 it was not his to destroy. He is a 32 year old man who decided to act like a 16 year old punk.
Get a job at McDonald’s you brat.
Excellent! I was a navy brat. My father was a CPO. I’m not even sure how many different schools I attended. :)
You say this but provide no example of a "Lie"?
Again, you've already provided utterly pathetic examples of what you claim to be a "lie" and what I assert are simply fuzzy recollections about trivial details unrelated to the larger point.
So Lochte thought he had been "sideswipped" or "pulled over" by Brazilian police. He was sitting in the car and the guy bangs on it and hustles him out of the car.
Again, a very very drunk man might well believe he had been sideswiped and pulled over. If that's how he remembers it, it isn't a lie, it's just a minor mistake in his recollection of what happened.
Your other example; that he misstated the time he got to the Hotel. Firstly, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the incident of his getting robbed, and secondly it is once again, easily explainable that a Drunk should get confused about what time it was.
Do you have some other example of a "lie" told by Lochte that is significant and relevant to the issue? If you do, trot it out. I've only been asking you to provide an example for the greater part of the last week.
Out with it man!
We had a plant in tijuana and our large corporation was rumored to have paid protection for our border crossing cars. They were prominently marked with the company logo on three sides. Plus we were warned that there were lots of fakers, anybody could have a badge and a uniform and we were advised that they could be bought off for $20.
Coming back through San Ysidro or Otay mesa you could see the federales staking out roads leading to the checkpoints about three miles out. Our local laisons told us they were setting up for shaking down tourists returning from Rosarito and Ensenada.
As a sailor stationed in San Diego many years ago a small group of us went to visit a well known tourist bar called Hussong’s in Ensinada, MX. The local young men our age decided they wanted to fight with us and outnumbered us 4 to 1. The local cops got wind of it and arrested us. It was probably more for our protection than anything else but we still had to give them all the money we had then slide out of town quietly. Lesson learned. Mexican cops are corrupt.
...
And then the cops gave the locals some of the money for picking the fight. That’s how the cops knew about it.
No, didn’t see your post. I admit to knowing nothing about it, so I don’t know how it turned out. I presume you don’t think I am sticking up for the Brazilian government, because I am not, if you have read my posts.
I am castigating the swimmer for putting himself in that situation. And just to be clear, I don’t enjoy his misfortune.
This short anecdote illustrates (for me) the gulf of understanding we as Americans have for the danger and corruption of many foreign countries...I know this is a little on the lighter side, but it does show the point:
My wife and I went to Disney World back in the Nineties, and we only had one day to do it, so we showed up before the lot opened, and were nearly the last people out when it closed. In the parking lot, as we approached our car, we saw three late teenage girls huddled together. It was clear something was wrong, so we walked over and saw they were nearly in tears. They had been left behind by their bus. We asked where they were staying, and offered to give them a ride to the motel, which wasn’t that far from us.
As we exited the parking lot, we encountered sawhorses with signs detouring traffic out of the lot...there were so many of them, it felt like we were being fed into a labyrinth.
I made a joking comment about how some carjackers had probably put them up to funnel all the cars to a location where the cars could be easily taken, and when I said it, I heard a gasp, and saw one of the girl in the rearview mirror cross herself and begin praying.
She was an exchange student from Columbia, and she was nearly hysterical (literally). I calmed her down and assured her I was only trying to make a joke, and after some conversation, she said people claiming to be police did that in Columbia all the time, and people were kidnapped, tortured, and killed at these “detours”. I felt awful, I hadn’t even thought of that, even though in conversation leading up to it, she mentioned she was from Columbia.
The point of this story is, the people she referred to in Columbia might have been thieves, but they might have been police. Once you leave and go to those places, how would you know? You have to conduct yourselves at all times to keep from having to make that distinction.
Here’s an idea. Let’s do away with small claims courts. If anyone is accused of vandalism—no matter how minor—let’s have roaming bands of unidentified armed men point guns at their heads and demand thousands (the dollar goes further in Brazil than in the US ; mere hundreds won’t cut it here). Who ends up with the thousands is irrelevant. All that matters is tgat, once they’ve paid up, the perps get a job at MacDonald’s.
Sound good?
Do we even know that the four off duty Rio police officers who were guarding a gas station in the middle of the night even knew about the sign?
Do we know security didn't give any money he obtained to the property owner (especially after the owner learned there was money involved)?
I have little doubt that if they didn't, they will say they did. I also believe the owner will tell anyone that asks that they did. It might even be true, but I wouldn't necessarily believe it just because they say so.
Do you doubt the anger of local gods (and their prosecutor and judge) was fully justified when Lochte falsely charged its law enforcement arm with corruption and embarrassed them before the world on this international stage?
One would think that if ripping down the sign was adequate provocation for four off duty Rio police officers who were guarding a gas station in the middle of the night to point a gun in his face and demand $400.00 from him, then why would a high ranking Brazilian police officer make up the story about a broken soap dish and broken mirror in a "vandalized" bathroom than none of them used?
You do know that the Rio Police have been caught in a lie about this?
LOL, I counted mine, it was twelve!
But you probably know what I mean...you probably got a variation of that speech regarding civilian laws versus military base control. Don’t get in trouble OFF the base!
Exactly! But the point is, if the US government or the US Military tried to interject themselves in the process, it would be utterly and completely futile.
They would probably (not probably, certainly) laugh at us for even pointing out the corruption.
Why do you know about Lochte tearing a cheap, possibly already damaged, poster down, but you don’t know whether a member of the official Olympic staff lived or died after being shot in the head? Is Lochte’s act of petty vandalism more serious than a human being’s life?
And *THIS* I believe clarifies the real incident. I believe the Brazilians felt the Americans were not respecting their Machismo, and so had to be taught a lesson as to who was the man and who was the punk.
When it blew up in their faces by becoming an international embarrassment, once again the Machismo demanded that they had to make the behavior of their "short man syndrome" corrupt police look reasonable in the eyes of the world.
Again, it has been established that the four individuals holding the Americans were off duty Rio police guarding a gas station in the middle of the night, and I think one or more of them must have had a high ranking relative in the Rio Police department who intervened to keep them out of trouble.
In other words, the whole thing was a Machismo "pissing contest" that went bad.
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