Random Politics 2

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Osias
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby Osias » 2021-01-16, 18:01

I was expecting you also mentioned the hang they brought for the vice president.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby md0 » 2021-01-17, 9:21

To change the topic and talk about discussions that are going to be heated but that I can guarantee won't devolve into a coup attempt - the legislative elections in Cyprus are coming up in May.

► Show Spoiler


In all that, a historian I respect quite a lot announced she is forming a single issue party about fighting to protect Varosha, a ghost town that has been after Turkish military control since the war, but which has been finally absorbed and annexed into the Turkish Cypriot administration.
► Show Spoiler
I generally don't like single issue parties, but considering how close to final partition we are and how there's no political platform worth voting for, I wouldn't mind casting a protest vote in favour of her cause. I do want to boost her voice in any case and give her some political leverage.

The thing is, I will be stuck in Germany for the foreseeable future. Cyprus typically hosts polling stations in its embassies abroad, in countries with significant diaspora. The election roll is currently open until end of March and I tried to register as a voter abroad, but I was surprised to find that the only "abroad" recognised is Greece and the UK.

I called the Elections Authority and asked how come, and they told me that's because those where the only two countries with significant turnout rate (over 30 individuals voted) in the last legislative elections 5 years ago. Well, 5 years have passed. Maybe things have changed, how about you let me register my intention to vote and if 30+ of us are in Germany, you can set up a polling station in Berlin. Oh, and I should add that for the European Parliament elections two years ago, we had polling stations in a dozen different countries including Germany - but they only compare same to same.
I also tried to contact the embassy here, but they can't read unicode - and avoid reading screenshots or romanised text since they haven't replied to me since.

I am not saying there's voter suppression, but they certainly don't act like every ballot is valuable.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby Yasna » 2021-01-18, 7:23

linguoboy wrote:Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from US Crisis Monitor, a joint project of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Bridging Divides Initiative.

That's how insidious white supremacy is. When Black people protest in order to have their most fundamental civil rights respected, the police meet them with violence, escalating the conflict until they can call it a "riot", for which they lay all the blame on the protestors. Then uncritical supporters of state violence use this as justification to dismiss their concerns as invalid.

What are you on about? Look at the Pacific Northwest, where much of the police use of force occurred. The ACLED database indicates Portland had 83 "non-peaceful" protests last year and Seattle had 28. Have you seen the racial makeup of the far left in the Pacific Northwest? You know, the ones who made a sport out of antagonizing and assaulting cops. They are mostly white.

Let's look deeper into those statistics. 933 of the 1,101 violent incidents from May 24 to August 29 last summer involved BLM. A stunning 85%. Not to dismiss the real problem of the right-wing bent of the police as an institution, but do you think that statistic might have something to do with why the police show less leniency towards left-wing protesters? And by the way, if cops are behaving inappropriately, the appropriate response isn't to assault officers and damage property. You document what you can, and take your case to the courts and/or media as you see fit.

Then when White people attempt a coup against a lawfully-elected government, they are allowed to basically walk right in to the seat of national legislature (after doing their reconnaissance the day before with the aid of willing dupes or actual traitors) and then--and this is what I simply can't get over--walk right out again, even once reinforcements had been called, as if it were a Sunday outing. And when anyone to the right of Mitt Romney talks about just how alarming this is, those same uncritical supporters are like, "But BLM!" It's the absolute height of whataboutism and false equivalence.

I'm waiting on more information before I draw conclusions, but yes, a lot of what you mention richly deserves a thorough investigation. I'm in no way trying to minimize what happened at the Capitol. My sole point was that if people are going to (rightfully) be deeply concerned about the rule of law when a Trump mob is overrunning the Capitol (even if the mob had virtually zero chance of actually succeeding with their insurrection), where was the deep concern over the breakdown in law and order due to BLM riots which affected millions of people this past summer? Anyone to the left of Mitt Romney seemed to think it barely worth an afterthought (or tut-tutt as you put it). There are thousands more like this woman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDrmkhJG89M

You say you see the difference, but you don't. You're ignoring just about every detail which differentiates these incidents--most notably how they became violent--and then congratulating yourself on the clarity of your moral vision. But you don't even see the blinders you have on, or how you came to wear them.

Your understanding of how BLM protests turned violent appears to be vastly oversimplistic. You can't just wildly extrapolate based off a couple incidents where police were mostly to blame.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby Yasna » 2021-01-19, 16:06

Oh, and it's a myth that the Trump mob was "allowed to basically walk right in" to the Capitol. Failed security preparation and response? Yes. Allowed to just walk in? No.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC1ncOwyaRo

Did police let the Capitol mob into the building?
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-01-20, 13:56

Yasna wrote:if cops are behaving inappropriately

:ohwell:

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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby linguoboy » 2021-01-20, 23:31

Yasna wrote:What are you on about? Look at the Pacific Northwest, where much of the police use of force occurred. The ACLED database indicates Portland had 83 "non-peaceful" protests last year and Seattle had 28. Have you seen the racial makeup of the far left in the Pacific Northwest? You know, the ones who made a sport out of antagonizing and assaulting cops. They are mostly white.

Yes...? White supremacy also pits white people against white people. The racial composition of the protesters isn't as important when it comes to determining the police responses as what they're protesting against.

Yasna wrote:Let's look deeper into those statistics. 933 of the 1,101 violent incidents from May 24 to August 29 last summer involved BLM. A stunning 85%. Not to dismiss the real problem of the right-wing bent of the police as an institution, but do you think that statistic might have something to do with why the police show less leniency towards left-wing protesters?

I feel like you didn't actually read the report because most of it is devoted to explaining why you see this correlation and how it's not tied to the behaviour exhibited by the protesters. You're making the most basic correlation-equals-causation fallacy here.

Yasna wrote:And by the way, if cops are behaving inappropriately, the appropriate response isn't to assault officers and damage property. You document what you can, and take your case to the courts and/or media as you see fit.

Have you ever been at a demonstration that turned violent? Have you ever seen how cops behave in this situation? Have you seen what happens when targets of police violence try to hold them accountable in the courts? I ask because you seem awfully naïve about all of these things.

Several friends of mine were wrongfully arrested as part of the 2003 antiwar march in downtown Chicago due to police misconduct. It took them nearly two years to get the charges dismissed. It took nine years for some of those arrested to get financial compensation for their maltreatment. Meanwhile, how many of the cops do you think lost their jobs for their illegal actions? How many of the higher-ups were disciplined or resigned for costing the city millions? You probably know the answer: Zero.

It's especially rich to hear you say "take your case to the media" given how many attacks on the media itself there were in 2020. (Over 140 documented here: https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country/.) I recently tried following up on some of the more high-profile cases I'd heard about--such as the Australian journalists who were beaten on video. This caused an international incident, so I figured it had a better chance of a satisfactory resolution than most. I found an update from October where a spokesperson described the investigation as "still ongoing", but there have been no charges, no dismissals, no defendants have been named, no one has taken responsibility and resigned.

Not even the media can successfully "take their case to the media".

Yasna wrote:Your understanding of how BLM protests turned violent appears to be vastly oversimplistic. You can't just wildly extrapolate based off a couple incidents where police were mostly to blame.

I'm not. I'm basing it on empirical studies about the use of force by police and its consequences. Not just in the USA in 2020--we have all kinds of data now from protests worldwide going back over twenty years. The excessive militarised response we saw at various BLM protests is not much different to what we saw at the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010. Hell, the pattern of police attacking peaceful protesters and then blaming them for the violence goes back all the way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby linguoboy » 2021-01-20, 23:38

Yasna wrote:Oh, and it's a myth that the Trump mob was "allowed to basically walk right in" to the Capitol. Failed security preparation and response? Yes. Allowed to just walk in? No.

They were allowed to walk right up to it, though. To quote a former security expert with the Capitol police reviewing the accounts, "Once you've allowed the battle to be taken to the doors, you've lost." Capitol police didn't even try to maintain a proper perimeter of the sort they've had at every other large protest in DC going back for years.

And they absolutely were allowed to walk back out again, which is a security failure of equal if not greater magnitude and something I couldn't have conceived of seeing happen after a violent invasion of a government building anywhere in this country, let alone a Federal building in Washington, DC. They'd summoned hundreds of reinforcements at that point so they can't claim they didn't have enough personnel.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby schnaz » 2021-01-21, 14:02

I feel obliged to respectfully point out that while we citizens of the United Stares debate about which side is the bigger asshole we are permitting "our" government to commit atrocities across the entire world as well as at home. Karma is indeed a bitch.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby linguoboy » 2021-01-21, 16:25

schnaz wrote:I feel obliged to respectfully point out that while we citizens of the United Stares debate about which side is the bigger asshole we are permitting "our" government to commit atrocities across the entire world as well as at home. Karma is indeed a bitch.

That's a pretty oversimplified conception of how "karma" operates.

Viewing everything in terms of "two sides" is a huge part of the problem. I'm on the side of treating everyone justly and equitably. If we can't do that with our own citizens, what chance do we have following those same principles abroad?
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby md0 » 2021-01-21, 19:53

The 21st Century approach to protest management:
https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2021/ ... d-rallies/

* Put all journalists in a 'journalist zone' indicated by the police as to not impede police operations
* Require protest organisers to pre-register the actions with their Tax ID
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby schnaz » 2021-01-22, 14:25

Did Iraqi lives matter?
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-01-22, 15:48

Yes?

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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby linguoboy » 2021-01-22, 18:34

schnaz wrote:Did Iraqi lives matter?

In the posts of mine you came here to criticise, I literally spent multiple paragraphs talking about people participating in street protests against the invasion of Iraq. The march in Chicago was just one among many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War.

So I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make here.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby schnaz » 2021-01-23, 15:36

It causes me to want to puke when i hear people bemoan how their business that they put there lifes' energy into was destroyed by looters and YET we are permitting our government and its allies to loot vast regions of the world. What did we think would happen by such behavior?
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby linguoboy » 2021-01-23, 17:20

So your point is that imperialism is bad? I think pretty much everyone here agrees. I don’t understand how this connects to anything else we were discussing though.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-01-23, 17:42

I think schnaz is just spouting random thoughts and that there isn't any connection between schnaz's posts in this thread tbh.

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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby Yasna » 2021-01-28, 4:35

linguoboy wrote:Yes...? White supremacy also pits white people against white people.

White supremacy apparently also pits insufferable white women against black officers. White supremacy explains everything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2byTLLbfTI

I feel like you didn't actually read the report because most of it is devoted to explaining why you see this correlation and how it's not tied to the behaviour exhibited by the protesters.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. This?
"Kishi cautioned that the process of categorizing demonstrations as peaceful did not take into account whether demonstrators who engaged in violence or property damage were responding to aggressive or violent behavior from the police."

Have you ever been at a demonstration that turned violent?
[...]
Not even the media can successfully "take their case to the media".

It's unfortunate and frustrating how difficult it is to hold police officers accountable, but assaulting officers and destroying property is at best counterproductive. If taking it to the courts and/or media doesn't work, then you can try to increase police accountability through electoral politics. We still have a (semi)functioning democracy.

I'm not. I'm basing it on empirical studies about the use of force by police and its consequences. Not just in the USA in 2020--we have all kinds of data now from protests worldwide going back over twenty years. The excessive militarised response we saw at various BLM protests is not much different to what we saw at the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010. Hell, the pattern of police attacking peaceful protesters and then blaming them for the violence goes back all the way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.

The ACLED dataset I'm looking at does not indicate how a given protest turned violent. What dataset are you looking at? I also notice the ACLED does not indicate if a protest was lawful or not. Was it continuing past a curfew? Were the protesters marching down a highway without permission? Were they ignoring police orders to disperse?

And they absolutely were allowed to walk back out again, which is a security failure of equal if not greater magnitude and something I couldn't have conceived of seeing happen after a violent invasion of a government building anywhere in this country, let alone a Federal building in Washington, DC. They'd summoned hundreds of reinforcements at that point so they can't claim they didn't have enough personnel.

Agreed.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby schnaz » 2021-02-04, 20:55

我发现这很有趣,也许你也会。
Ich fand das sehr interessant, vielleicht wirst du es auch.
Jeg fandt det meget interessant, måske vil du også.
I found this interesting maybe you will as well:

https://greenwald.substack.com/
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby Yasna » 2021-02-11, 4:41

Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America

A second unspeakable truth: “Structural racism” isn’t an explanation, it’s an empty category

The invocation of “structural racism” in political argument is both a bluff and a bludgeon. It is a bluff in the sense that it offers an “explanation” that is not an explanation at all and, in effect, dares the listener to come back. So, for example, if someone says, “There are too many blacks in prison in the US and that’s due to structural racism,” what you’re being dared to say is, “No. Blacks are so many among criminals, and that’s why there are so many in prison. It’s their fault, not the system’s fault.” And it is a bludgeon in the sense that use of the phrase is mainly a rhetorical move. Users don’t even pretend to offer evidence-based arguments beyond citing the fact of the racial disparity itself. The “structural racism” argument seldom goes into cause and effect. Rather, it asserts shadowy causes that are never fully specified, let alone demonstrated. We are all just supposed to know that it’s the fault of something called “structural racism,” abetted by an environment of “white privilege,” furthered by an ideology of “white supremacy” that purportedly characterizes our society. It explains everything. Confronted with any racial disparity, the cause is, “structural racism.”

History, I would argue, is rather more complicated than such “just so” stories would suggest. These racial disparities have multiple interwoven and interacting causes, from culture to politics to economics, to historical accident to environmental influence and, yes, also to the nefarious doings of particular actors who may or may not be “racists,” as well as systems of law and policy that disadvantage some groups without having been so intended. I want to know what they are talking about when they say “structural racism.” In effect, use of the term expresses a disposition. It calls me to solidarity. It asks for my fealty, for my affirmation of a system of belief. It’s a very mischievous way of talking, especially in a university, although I can certainly understand why it might work well on Twitter.

[...]

On the unspeakable infantilization of “black fragility”

I would add that there is an assumption of “black fragility,” or at least of black lack of resilience lurking behind these anti-racism arguments. Blacks are being treated like infants whom one dares not to touch. One dares not say the wrong word in front of us; to ask any question that might offend us; to demand anything from us, for fear that we will be so adversely impacted by that. The presumption is that black people cannot be disagreed with, criticized, called to account, or asked for anything[...]

When you take agency away from people, you remove the possibility of holding them to account and the capacity to maintain judgment and standards so that you can evaluate what they do. If a youngster who happens to be black has no choice about whether or not to join a gang, pick up a gun, and become a criminal, since society has failed him by not providing adequate housing, healthcare, income support, job opportunities, etc., then it becomes impossible to effectively discriminate between the black youngsters who do and do not pick up guns and become members of a gang in those conditions, and to maintain within African American society a judgment of our fellows’ behavior, and to affirm expectations of right-living. Since, don’t you know, we are all the victims of anti-black racism. The end result of all of this is that we are leveled down morally by a presumed lack of control over our lives and lack of accountability for what we do.

What is more, there is a deep irony in first declaring white America to be systemically racist, but then mounting a campaign to demand that whites recognize their own racism and deliver blacks from its consequences. I want to say to such advocates: “If, indeed, you are right that your oppressors are racists, why would you expect them to respond to your moral appeal? You are, in effect, putting yourself on the mercy of the court, while simultaneously decrying that the court is unrelentingly biased.” The logic of such advocacy escapes me.
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Re: Random Politics 2

Postby schnaz » 2021-02-11, 5:48

What I should have figured out for myself:
Lo que debería haber descubierto por mí mismo:
Ce que j'aurais dû comprendre par moi-même:
Co sam powinienem był zrozumieć:

https://youtu.be/t21UZxRYYA4
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