Terrorist attacks are more multifaceted.

First, they are an opportunity to generate work for the defense industry.

Second, they are usually for a reason. Often some angst over our own actions in foreign countries. For example, the news says AQ is a bunch of crazies that hate freedom, however AQs demands prior to 9/11 were to get our military out of the holyland. While that's not an offense that deserves blowing up buildings, it is definitely not the same as some banal excuse like hating freedom.

Thirdly, they are often perpetrated by some persons/groups that we had a hand in creating. We install the mujahedin in Afghanistan, knowing full well what they'll do to women, and then use their treatment of women as one excuse to later invade. Saddam worked for us, was egged on to fight Iran, was egged on to suppress insurgents (the 'own people he gassed'), and we later used his actions as one excuse to invade.

At the time, the mujaheddin was useful for fighting Russia as a proxy. At the time, Saddam was useful for perpetuating a war where we sold arms to both sides. Afterwards, they were useful for scaremongering so we could perpetuate war when otherwise things got too quiet and folks would ask about why we're spending big $$$ on defense.. (In the mean time hand-waving the much more direct 9/11 Saudi connection).

... Plus if on the off chance things do 'settle down' in areas we invade, that creates new markets for US companies to peddle their wares. You can reopen the Khyber pass for western land trade with Asia, you can build an oil pipeline, and you can prevent a euro based oil exchange from opening in the middle east. All things that benefit our industry.

So in practice, as far as big industry is concerned, there's a utility in 'fighting terrorism' (and perpetuating terrorism) that just doesn't exist with internal shootings. As such, unless another 'evil empire' shows up, the terrorism cow is gonna get milked for the foreseeable future.

Sure, there's a rhetoric about preventing terrorism, but our actions do nothing to that effect. It's just a statement that's useful in manufacturing consent.

There's a particular irony, though. That is, that while such behavior is 'not very nice' (to put it mildly), it does however provide for our security by keeping our armed forces exercised, prepared, and up to date - such that if a real threat were to emerge, our military would be ready at that time. While that seems unlikely, when you look back in history at previous major conflicts, most were precipitated rather quickly, on the order of months (it takes many years to design and build equipment for a military, and the first ~half a year of any major war has been fought with what was on hand). So in a round-about, rather evolutionary way, perpetuating threats actually does make us safer as a whole.

To clarify the word 'evolutionary' : Take 10 microbes. All 10 have no militant nature. None are made for combat. It only takes 1 to mutate and become belligerent in order to erase all the others from existence. If some others also mutate to be combative, they will survive. The non combative are lost, their reproductive lines cut off. As there's always a chance to mutate to anything at any time, eventually, there is a combative mutation. So, all life on earth has a militant nature at some layer of abstraction - those that exist are those that successfully resisted some force (or parried the force to its benefit. Like plants that use a plant eater's dung to fertilize the seeds of the eaten fruit).

The relationship holds true at a biological level, interpersonal, societal, national, and international level. Societies that allow the kind of educational and military development that leads to victory, are those that have dominated the planet socially and economically. For example, Europe's centuries of infighting made it resistant to invasions from the Mongols, Caliphates, etc, and ultimately led to the age of colonialism. For the strengths built with infighting, are later leveraged for expansion. As such, the use of "terrorism" to perpetuate conflict, is ultimately an exercise in developing strength that can later be leveraged.

Our national policy is largely developed in think tanks, and those organizations are planning lifetimes ahead. So these kinds of considerations are very relevant.

TL/DR : Yes, agreed, the terrorism thing is B.S. on many levels.

-scheherazade

@lantern53
*Here's a back-up for when you delete my comment cause it makes you uncomfortably aware of reality.


But to answer your questions..

1.) Why would I want to charm a openly belligerent jingoist racist asshat? I wouldn't.

One who "takes every opportunity" to mock, disparage and shame black people & culture..

..Completely denying that rule-class privilege, ethnicity & heritage have ANY bearing on those unequal, unfair, unjust outcomes..

With nearly EVERY COMMENT YOU POST!

2.) Do you call me names? Yes.

Every time you talk shit about how young black males are all "criminals, savages & thugs" and they "deserved what they got because only bad people get stopped by police".

You're a fuckin' bully. You bully black people with nearly EVERY comment you post here.

I'm just here to remind you of what that feels like Lantern.

Doesn't it suck when someone relentlessly insults and mocks you? Constantly,. on the same topic.. ..every chance they get..

Don't you hate it when someone judges you & all other cops "shitty" based on the actions & statements of a few ACTUALLY shitty cops?


Nope? You don't care or understand or "get it". It figures.

Back into your bubble, old fool.
Back into your bubble.

@JustSaying

I'm gonna be nice cause I don't have any experience with you or your opinions yet. And, to an extent, I agree..

Hopefully you can contribute something meaningful to videosift, considering all the great voices who've disappeared from this place.

It's just extremely frustrating that these two goofballs are haven't left yet.

And in fact, your premise is a topic that I definitely have been meaning to discuss.

There's a Prager "University" video that addresses that exact premise of sugarcoated vs blatant belligerent racist.

The video itself is flagrantly patronizing.

That being said we have all three types of racist on videosift currently:

Bobknight is your classic Neo-Con Racist.
- He hates blacks, gays, jews & liberals and makes no qualms about expressing how subhuman those groups are.

Trancecoach is your more politically-correct racist.
- Seems pretty open-minded and accepting, until you reach the middle or end of his comment.
Then it's all like "isn't it sad that all black people have no fathers and live in the ghetto."

Lantern is a special case.
- He'll be toned-down yet flagrant at times. Openly belligerent at others.
But it's always under the guise of "I can't be racist cause I don't FEEL like i'm racist"

He even used the classic "Well I CAN'T be racist cause my DAUGHTER married a BLACK/BIRACIAL guy! See, not racist"

Then will immediately say some heinously racist shit like he has in this thread. i.e.

"Of course I didn't bother reading the article for context or facts.
I'm a cop, I know how the 'Criminal Element' thinks.
Clearly those kids were dangerous.
If we had just heard the audio, we would have seen how those punks are no better than those looting rioting savages in Baltimore"

So no, JustSaiyan.. I would NOT prefer to have some idiot saying idiot things whenever I come back to check out the site.

At least Bill O'Reilly is smart enough to have a somewhat substantive discussion.

Lantern just says racist shit, then cowers behind the "i'm a good person because my job & family FORCE me into being around lesbians & colored people.. and I put up with that pretty well. so.. yeah.."

But yeah, I just hate people like Lantern cause he's too chicken shit to just say he thinks black people are inferior whenever I press him on it.

At least Bobknight will straight tell you gays are immoral sinful perverts or whatever. The old-fashion, honest, terrifying-murder-clown bigot he is.

Then again, Bobknight can't admit he's racist either.
So.. maybe that's just a core Conservative talking point now.

Except that's it's not my assessment, it's the Mexican government's assessment.
EDIT: When the Federall'es (SP? Mexican police) say your cops are out of control, it's time to take another look.

It seemed to me that the guy was a belligerent drunk, who at one moment complies (standing with his hands on head), then turns to argue, tugs on his shirt collar (in a failed attempt to show he's unarmed, or telling the cop to shoot him there?) and shuffles slowly towards the cop. If he was trying to suicide by cop, he did it in a way that made it look totally unthreatening to me. No quick movements, hands on head, no weapon, no threats, no fists...where's the threat in a slow moving unarmed suspect?

I agree, once he was in arms reach and still advancing, he's a threat...but you must completely ignore the cop's ability to move away to make the killing in any way justified. The cop had every opportunity to keep safe distance by simply moving away slowly...why didn't he? Stand Your Ground?
EDIT:Or, the cop had the opportunity to close his car door and lock it, making him 100% safe against the unarmed drunk until backup arrived 20 seconds later.

I didn't see it that way, I (and others, including the officials in the Mexican government) saw a drunk, acting inappropriately, being belligerent when he sees the gun pointed at him and asking the officer "You gonna kill me?", to which the officer replies "no, I'm not going to kill you", then reports on the radio "He's saying 'kill me'". He did not say "Kill me.", he said "Are you GOING to kill me?" as I heard it.
I never saw him reach UNDER his shirt, only tug at the collar of his shirt, and at one point turn around and put his hands behind his back touching his shirt (but NEVER under his shirt). I don't know where that idea came from (except maybe from the cop's statement), please watch again.
I think if an unarmed man slowly advancing on you with hands on his head is a 'deadly threat to the officer's safety', we have HUGE problems, because that theory makes it legal to shoot anyone that comes near them....they don't know if they're armed and attacking, or just passing by, right?
Cops are supposed to de-escalate problems, not exacerbate them.

As for the 'murder' designation...if a citizen shot this man in the exact same circumstances, he should face murder charges. I don't give people a pass on homicide based on their job.

And that's the issue right there. I think you and I are arguing about completely different things. In terms of the person who stole the photos and posted them, yes there is no middle ground--that person 100% committed a crime and needs to be punished.

However, in terms of responsibility of people for putting themselves in the position to be victimized, there is a huge range of possibilities--but often this range of possibilities isn't examined for fear of someone shouting "Blaming the victim!" The link I posted above goes to great lengths to point out that the criminal who commits the crime is 100% responsible for the criminal act (by virtue of having made the choice to commit it) but that the victim can in fact also have contributed to the crime in a continuum of ways starting with not at all (100% innocent, as in a child who is abused) to fully responsible (as in the case of a rapist who is killed by a potential victim in self-defense during the rape attempt--in this case the rapist becomes the "victim" of a shooting that he brought completely upon himself). There is lots of middle ground between these extremes.

Let's examine a simple case:

I am walking down the street in LA during the early evening in a neighborhood that normally has very little crime. A homeless man shambling past me suddenly pulls a knife, rams it into my chest, and steals my wallet which happened to contain several hundred dollars. I think we can agree in this situation I've no responsibility for this incident occurring. I could not have predicted it would happen and there is little I could have done to anticipate or prevent it. I am 100% an innocent victim in this scenario.

Now let's change the situation. I go down to Skid Row in the early evening and start showing all the homeless people there wads of $100 bills and telling them how worthless they are and how if they only got off their asses and worked hard like me they could have money too. Again, I get shanked in the chest and my money is stolen. Am I 100% an innocent victim in this case? It seems a bit absurd to say yes, doesn't it? My actions (choosing to go to an area that is not often policed, at night, alone, and flash money while belligerently accosting random people who don't have a lot left to lose) are directly linked to the stabbing.

Note that in both cases the person committing the crime is still 100% responsible for their own actions--they chose to stab me and steal my money. But in one case I clearly could not have foreseen or prevented the attack coming whereas in the other it was reasonably foreseeable that my actions were going to lead to problems (not necessarily a stabbing but at the very least some sort of altercation, unless the most patient and forgiving homeless people on Earth happened to be gathered on Skid Row that day). Does that mean the stabber in the second case should get a lighter sentence? No. But it does mean I have some responsibility for what went down and can be justly criticized for my actions. I can't hide behind the "don't blame the victim" catchphrase. I still deserve justice, though, despite being an offensive idiot.

Back to the case at hand.

You are correct, the woman did nothing "wrong" in the moral or legal sense, and the person who violated her privacy is 100% responsible for making the photos public. But I dislike the idea that because she's a victim of a crime, her actions can't be criticized. She might not have done anything "wrong" but she did indeed make a huge error of judgement when she decided to snap naked pics of herself and post them to a social network which is known for dodgy privacy practices. Given the state of technology today, one should be able to infer that there is a pretty high risk that racy photos are going to get leaked at some point, particularly if posted online. If you are okay with that risk, go ahead and post them. And if they are leaked, by all means prosecute the offenders. But don't expect people not to criticize you for gambling that nothing is going to happen, especially when there is plenty of evidence to believe the contrary.

Oh yes, I fully agree with you there, no need to escalate the situation as far as they let it go, and indeed impossible to tell what started the whole debacle in the first place.

My guess is bit of unjustified holier than thou attitude, which seems to be the curse of the current day and age, from the unimpaired audience. There's no justification for belligerent drunken behaviour, but neither is there for not doing anything about it until it is too late when there seems to be time and chance to de-escalate the situation by more peaceful means.

But, alas, it's all just guesses with the information available.

The witnesses? The only witness that vaguely supports this that I've seen is an anonymous witness cited in the Daily Caller. Not credible journalism even by USA standards. The known witnesses are Dorian Johnson (altercation at the car, shooting as he ran away, he got hit, turned around put his hands up and stumbled forwards before the shooting began again), James McKnight (more or less the same as Johnson), Michael Brady (altercation at car, shooting, then as Brown was halfway towards falling to the ground more shots), Piaget Crenshaw (shots fired as he ran away with hands up, turned with hands up, more firing). Those accounts aren't too far from the Police account really. Is it reasonable to conclude deadly force is required in the timeframe of the shooting? What does police protocol say? One step? Two? When can you be sure it's not charging but belligerence, drunkenness, or injury? I'm sure America are the experts in these cases by now and have explicit and clear guidelines for semi-autonomous itinerant armed police officers and when they can and cannot open fire. Surely it isn't just 'if you harbour any fear, kill or otherwise incapacitate the citizen you are trying to apprehend'?

There is also TheePharoah who tweeted it from the scene and said ' JUST SAW SOMEONE DIE OMFG....no reason! He was running!', but you know, its not clear he can provide further useful information assuming he was interviewed.

no matter how you spin it, the death was unnecessary. Again, this WOULD have been a great time to use a taser.

They keep using the wrong weapons at the wrong time.

Even if he was belligerent. He simply did not have to die. Cops, and wannabe cops, seem to have a real problem with appropriate levels of force.

I think the real criminals are the press though, they are going to stoke this fire for all they can. There was absolutely no reason for them to publish that autopsy diagram showing where the bullet impacts were. No matter what happens, they're going present the case as being completely 50/50 and could go either way.

@Januari

Yea, I think you are right. I went back and watched it again. I thought that she was originally partially walking while he half carried her out of the elevator. But on further review she was completely out cold and didn't wake up until he propped her up and she was sitting.

My mistake, definitely not being belligerent.

@visionep

Funny i must have missed the part where she was belligerent. Careful your bias is showing.

I didn't see anything in that video that looked like abuse. It looked like he was helping a drunk belligerent girlfriend and she decided she was done moving.

There is supposedly another video where both of them are hitting each other, so maybe with that video the outrage by Olbermann is justified, but this just sounds like hes pissed off so people will watch him be pissed of.

I don't know enough about the situation in Palestine, or what kinds of laws are imposed from outside there, but just hypothetically, I wonder: what if they renounced all initiation of violence altogether, and just dropped the push to set up their own state? What if, instead they declared their territories to be "state-free" and "tax free havens?" Maybe they could open some casinos a la Native Americans; and provide some tax-free banking; let tech giants set up tax-free research centers there without all of the immigration restrictions that seem to impose so many unnecessary challenges.. And what if, instead of waging war or attacking Israel, they simply used any military capabilities they had to set up private security firms, and secure their banking system, maybe provide some safe gold depositories? In a generation or two, the Israelis would see that they are the ones living in a prison/tax farm, not the Palestinians. I wonder if they could get away with it...


It's interesting to me how some folks tend to (more or less) "take sides" in defense of states (or would-be states) in conflicts like this one. As if states somehow had "rights" or as if states somehow represented "the people" within each state. That is simply, prima facie, false: For one thing, I think armed conflict on any sort of large scale inflicts violence against innocent parties on both sides; who, in their own rights, have reason to see the other side's violent acts as aggression (or at least as material threats to their human rights).

So I certainly agree that Israelis have a right not to have rockets coming at them, but it also seems to me that individual Palestinians have a right not to be collateral damage in Israel's bombings. Surely the hundreds who've lost family in Gaza have reason to be angry at Hamas, but you could see why they too would want to defend themselves.

The logic of war often leads to a situation where if you can defend one side fighting, you have to see why the other side would fight as well. And so we can condemn both sides, or sympathize with the innocent victims of both sides, but I don't see any simple formulation that shows why people who happen to live on one side of an arbitrary line have more of a "right" to respond violently to attacks that threaten their lives than the other side has.

The United States commits many forms of aggression quite frequently. In revenge, terrorists murdered innocent Americans on 9/11. Those Americans had a right not to be attacked and as Americans, we have a right to defend ourselves. But if tactics our government employs hurt third parties, doesn't it seem that the logic of collective self defense could easily be used to justify perpetual war?

None of what I say relies on any assumption that Hamas is any less criminal than the Israeli state. Even if it's much more criminal than the Israeli state, it seems to me that collective defense = perpetual war, because of the innocents on both sides who seem to have no way of striking against belligerents without violence that itself puts innocent people in harm's way.