Viewers to see footage of detainee's death - UK

London - Real-life footage of a black former paratrooper who choked to death while in British police custody six years ago will be shown by the BBC on Wednesday as his family call for a public inquiry into his death.

Christopher Alder, 37, died with his trousers around his ankles at a police station in Hull, northwest England, in April 1998 after being arrested for a minor public order offence.

"We'll be showing an 11-minute film of Christopher dying in the police station," said Simon Ford, executive producer of the BBC documentary "Death on Camera" which will be shown on BBC1 at 9.00pm (2000 GMT).

"The family have been asking for years to have it made public," he added.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1081919701321B216&set_id=1

And you think we can unleash the Patriot Act for these people to do whatever they want?

If it ran opposite of an episode of friends.

Probably not. It's the apathy thing...

Boy, wouldn't I much rather watch a brutal murder than Friends? I must not be American enough. Give me a break.

So, after Friends went off, would you at least call the police or the mayor's office or someone to voice your opposition to the killing of a military vet or a person of color in police custody?

Some social justice activism can be a bit unpleasant, can't it?

I can't be expected to voice opposition to any attrocity. Have you ever heard of an American doing such a thing?

Here's your INTERPRETATION:

I AM AN AMERICAN. I write letters voicing my opposition to things I see and hear all the time. I encourage everyone I meet to register to vote. I repeat things I read and hear all the time to people who may not have time to read and hear them, because maybe they are doing such American things as working everyday to pay the bills and maybe spend their evenings helping their kids with their homework as opposed to intentionally watching horrid attrocities on television. I tell them so they know, they don't have to WATCH it. Neither do I. And if they don't want to hear it. That's their perogative. And they, nor I are any the more stupid, apathetic, ignorant or whatever names you like to call your fellow citizens, (assuming YOU are an American, too) because they don't live and breath the way you do.

I get tired of coming to this board to read the latest news, or hopefully find intelligent interpretations of current events only to read OVER AND OVER AND OVER how stupid we Americans are. If that's the most intelligent response one can come up with with regard to a current event, or attrocity, one should look inside his, or her, own ignorance.

Sounds like a Pollyanna attitude to me, and a defensive one at that. The point isn't watching the murder. The point is freedom of the press.

Iraq, Patriot Act, Lewinsky, Iran-Contra, Voter turnout, Church Hearings, COINTELPRO, Operation Chaos, The Gong Show, Vietnam, King assassination, 1968 in Chicago, infant mortality, Economic military draft, McCarthyism, Japanese Internment, Palmer Raids, Smith Act

Friends on NBC, Thursday at 8:00 P.M.

and here's why:

There are indeed a great many people in this country who are willfully blind and willfully ignorant, people who simply will not see. They are the ones who protectively wrap themselves in the flag and at the same time throw their devotion to a man and not his office; who work for whatever ends that man and his inner circle represents, whether they know the truth of it or not: they are ones who will not question, for they have received their orders from On High, and George W. Is a Christian man. These people always vote Republican, either because "it's the Christian thing to do" (yup, heard it before), or they've "voted Republican all life" or for tax reasons. These are the ones we may never be able to reach.

There are plenty more who feel it is all unimportant, and doesn't affect them in their lowly lives. They do not see the connections between policy decisions made in marble halls and their family's decisions within their four walls because they choose not to know; they close their ears swiftly, lest they discover a terrible truth that they cannot accept: not only does Authority not care about them, it will use them to its own ends, and truth and justice be damned.

And there are masses of people who, as you said, are simply trying to lead their daily lives, and are open to truth and knowledge when they are presented to them. Those are the ones most active, most aware, and most ready to heed a call to action. It must be remembered that more people in the US don't vote than do; of the groups I've mentioned, this last is the only one that does with any regularity.

However, things are beginning to change. The media is slowly coming awake to the idea that perhaps this man and his administration are not the very best things in the world for them: they make money on smut, and the FCC is ramping up a War on Smut. Broadcast programming is racy, but I don't think the American people in the first two groups I talked about will much like losing their most entertaining television category: people that screw and things that go boom.

And so the media is starting to wake up; they see this administration as a threat to them. But it's telling and somewhat sad that it took *'s administration threatening the broadcast media's bottom line before they started fighting back, however small those attacks by the press may be at this time.