Churchill quotes and the actions of his government with respect to Indian independence aren't hard to find. I've given you the definition of crime against humanity that formed the basis of a lot of convictions during the Nuremberg trials. It's a legal definition. A definition the Allied powers wrote and invoked and had a history already in the 1815 in the Declaration of the Powers, on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, of 8 February 1815. So yeah, plenty of time for Churchill to get with the program.

Recently the Shaw Memorial in Boston was defaced in the BLM protests. The Shaw Memorial was the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of black soldiers during the civil war. They also vandalized a Gandhi statue in Washington. These aren't newly liberated peoples striking back at their former dictators; these are mobs as entitled and certain as they are stupid.

Every time some issue gets popular support, it usually comes as a total surprise for the career activists. Yet the otherwise passive majority can come together and be active and surprise everybody. Unfortunately the extremists always try to snatch the control or the limelight of the movement to themselves and think everybody is on their side. And this typically undermines the consensus of majority and the mass movement dies out.

The professional activists, who don't have to be the extremists at all (I should add) usually are so high on their success that they aren't humble enough and understand that only for a fleeing moment the people can show unity. The improvements, if they happen, can look small and the World doesn't change (huge dissappointment for the activists), but historically the changes can be important.

And to what you said above, people know what vandalism is.

Well it doesn't matter, I'm just an over-privileged white animal with a despicable education at a useless shithole called Oxford, where I was taught, according to Rousseau's theory of truth by consensus, it must all be true. I dont really have anything more constructive to offer than that currently.
— ernestm
Is somebody here saying that to you? — ssu

I dont know, because these days, I dont bother reading anything after the first insult, so there's a couple of dozen posts on me now I haven't read in the last week here. I used to read them all. but it just got so repetitive, 'you are a stupid white animal, kneel before me and acknowledge my superiority while I angrily scold you with the chastisements you deserve, blah blah blah.'

I usually get to the first sentence and have a horrid vision of them peeing on their dog when they were two years old and hearing the same thing from their parents. Therapists charge alot of money to listen to that kind of thing.

Well, the objective is to dominate the issue by stopping the discussion. Here I don't think so.

On a Philosophy forum people read what you write for longer than a sentence before making up their mind just what you had to say. Yeah, not allways :roll: but at least usually they will admit it directly if they do so.

Cuomo likes to pretend it's a "few bad apples" problem by releasing disciplinary records. That will help. :confused:

Let's hope that such scapegoating is recognised for what it is.

The criticism of Trump of many retired generals is actually notable. I think the reason was that the military really didn't want to have Trump ruin the quite positive image of the armed forces among people by following his "Law & Order" whims. Invoking the Insurrection Act and possibly deploying tanks or military vehicles would have been an absolute and utter disaster, hence when Trump started to ask about such measures they obviously got really nervous. Naturally the military cannot say publicly no to the Commander-in-Chief (especially Trump) as that would itself lead to a very precarious situation. Hence a large group of retired generals, including two former from Trump's administration, voiced their concern. I assume that this was a somewhat veiled criticism to the administration about how things were handled by the White House.

Also this kind of notification to the forces from the top echelon of the US armed forces is quite rare. (And note that it has been unclassified too). General Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking general in the armed forces:



Rarely the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has to say that the armed forces upholds the Constitution.

Trump (or someone) did finally get the message. Trump tries to paint things the typical way as he does...

The criticism of Trump of many retired generals is actually notable. — ssu

In my opinion, we were very close to a formal coup, but Trump backed down.

This was certainly not inevitable, in terms of how "crazy" Trump would go as well as the US military reaction.

The US is reaping the dividends of having a history of "okish" democratic legitimacy most of the time (what is new with Trump and contemporary Republicans is that they are clearly fully intent in entrenching minority rule -- through the SCOTUS and their legal corruption and gerrymandering rulings, as well as the senate and presidency -- rather than minority rule being a temporary democratic weakness that plausibly self corrects and is credibly "checked and balances" meanwhile). So this is heartening to see, as there wasn't much way of being certain about military reaction at the start of the crisis.

Obviously Trump's "show of force" in the church was a communication mistake, as well as his "domination remark". Likewise, the general who talked about the "the battle space" was a mistake (either from Trump's perspective or then his own perspective, assuming that's what he wanted too).

Both these things not only helped lose the wider media battle over the political interpretation of looting, but were "hooks" to allow other elements of the military to declare that they do not view the American people as enemies and that's not what America is about. Extremely laudable.

I agree that retired generals primarily carried this message to avoid a formally "rogue" military.

Also this kind of notification to the forces from the top echelon of the US armed forces is quite rare. (And note that it has been unclassified too). General Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking general in the armed forces: — ssu

Possibly unprecedented, would be interesting to know if there are any parallels.

Whatever the case, it was clearly Trump's desire to "dominate the streets" and be able to send in the military to do that, and it's not just retired generals with "vague insinuations", message has been pretty clear even from currently serving generals, so we do have essentially open defiance. This was the big question for me; a few individuals at the top of a command structure can make things go in radically different ways depending on their level of defiance or cooperation, and even enthusiasm.

The communication battle over "police brutality is bad sure, but what we really need is to put down these riots" seems to have ended in favour of "police brutality is still the problem, not the rioters". Demonstrating more police brutality against protesters of police brutality, and shooting members of the media, obviously didn't help the argument.

So, it seems to me the situation has returned back to the political sphere. The military nature of the issue has been deescalated, for now.

Of course, we can't exclude some new "chaotic emergency" even greater than the riots happening, but, the political problems being so deep in anycase, I think worthwhile to discuss further what a political solution could look like in the current context. So I will update my analysis in my next post.

In the meanwhile,

It's not the first locale to break up a department, but no cities as populous have ever attempted it. Minneapolis city council members haven't specified what or who will replace it if the department disbands.

Camden, New Jersey, may be the closest thing to a case study they can get.

The city, home to a population about 17% of Minneapolis' size, dissolved its police department in 2012 and replaced it with an entirely new one after corruption rendered the existing agency unfixable.

Before its police reforms, Camden was routinely named one of the most violent cities in the US. Now, seven years after the old department was booted, the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago. Here's how they did it. — CNN

Is an interesting read.

A nice explainer on defunding and abolishing the police from a relatively non-partisan source.

Defund, or just reform? That is the question now at the heart of this moment. Protesters, along with progressive elected officials around the country, are demanding that police departments be defunded, disbanded and replaced by a newly anti-racist system of public safety and justice. In Minneapolis, there are already signs that such a drastic change could soon occur.

Proponents of a more moderate approach support new measures to exert oversight over police departments and regulate the use of force, but not break up the departments. Democratic leaders in the House backed this approach yesterday when they unveiled a sweeping police-overhaul bill amid fanfare on Capitol Hill. The bill would make it easier to prosecute officers accused of wrongdoing and would put new restrictions on the use of force.

Where does all this leave Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president? Just a few weeks ago, he was still adamantly defending his support for the 1994 crime bill — a law that put 100,000 new police officers on the street, and spent nearly $10 billion on prisons.

Biden’s campaign will probably walk a fine line on matters of policing, as he works to shore up support on the left while courting moderate voters. Yesterday, he threw his support firmly behind the more moderate reformers. “No, I don’t support defunding the police,” he told CBS News, in a similar statement to the one that recently got Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis booed out of a rally. “I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness,” Biden said.

It’s clear what sidePresident Trump is on. “There won’t be defunding, there won’t be dismantling of our police, and there is not going to be any disbanding of our police,” he declared on Monday. He spoke alongside law enforcement officials and top members of his administration, including state attorneys general, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and officials from some police departments. “You’ll see some horrible things like we witnessed recently, but 99 — I say 99.9, but let’s go with 99 percent of them — are great, great people,” Trump said of the police.

But polls suggest that Trump’s hard-line stance over the past two weeks has not particularly helped him. In a CNN poll released yesterday, just 38 percent of the country approved of his job performance, his lowest marks since January 2019 — even as the country proceeds with a cautious economic reopening. And only 31 percent said they liked how he was handling race relations — roughly on par with past results to this question, and an indication that even some of Trump’s supporters are uncomfortable with his positions on racial issues. — NY Times

Over the past week, among the countless variations of protest signs carried by demonstrators across the country, one message has gained new traction: “Defund the police.” On Sunday, it was a common theme inLos Angeles, where Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled a proposal to divert $100 million to $150 million from the Police Department’s budget to programs that would benefit communities of color — a response that many said didn’t go nearly far enough, while others said such a move would have been unimaginable just weeks ago.

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, made a similar announcement, though without a specific dollar number attached.

And San Jose’s mayor, Sam Liccardo, rejected calls to defund the city’s Police Department, instead saying he wanted to reform it.

How is this different from reforming police departments?

It is, in some ways, a matter of degree. Activists in Los Angeles have noted that the $150 million cut Mr. Garcetti proposed is just a fraction of the department’s more than $1.8 billion budget. In many places, however, activists aren’t just pushing to divert money away from police departments, they are calling to dismantle them entirely.

That was the case in Minneapolis, where, over the weekend, a veto-proof majority of the City Council pledged to dismantle its Police Department and instead create a new system of public safety from the ground up. The new system could follow various models that have been established in cities around the country. In Eugene, Ore., a team called CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets — deploys a medic and a crisis worker with mental health training to emergency calls.

What are arguments against defunding or dismantling police departments?

Those who don’t support defunding or dismantling police departments have mostly said they’d like to see reforms of existing systems instead. Democrats in Congress unveiled legislation that would make it easier to identify, track and prosecute police misconduct. Mayor Liccardo said in a statement that defunding San Jose’s Police Department would “hurt the very people who have suffered the most from systemic racism.” — New York Times

Some fanicating stats about the effectiveness of US law enforcement. Long story shorts - cops are really bad at their jobs, and defunding will likely help them focus on what they are supposed to be doing. Highlighted takeaways re: crime clearance rates from 2017:

Homicide - 61.6% (probably closer to 50% due to under-reporting)
Rape - 34.5% (probably way way less)
Robbery - 29.7%
Aggravated Assault - 53.3%
Burglary - 13.5%
Larceny Theft - 19.2%
Motor Vehicle Theft - 13.7%

(source or more specifically)

Most of those rates barely scrape a passing mark - if they pass at all. Coupled with the financial oxygen that police departments are soaking up at the expense of the rest of social policy? Those are criminal numbers.

On the other hand, sir, the police have been doing far better than they used to, in fact, probably too well.

According to the Dept of Justice Statistics Division, the number of known crimes fell from >4.5 million in 1990 to <3 million last year.

That means, over the last decade, there are well over 10 million frustrated would-be criminals, because if anything, the desire to be criminal, and public support of criminals, has risen substantially, as evidenced by a series of riots and the public response since the 2012 riots, for which Los Angeles last year awarded art prizes to those making faceless depictions of the vigilante heroes killed by the police, while stores were being robbed under their armed protection.

Also, frequently criticized is the number of people in prison in the USA, which is higher than any country for the last century, including the USSR. People frequently criticize that too, without mentioning that the crime rate has fallen in direct inverse ratio. As the crime rate did fall in direct inverse ratio, reducing arrests will logically increase crime.

That means, over the last decade, there are well over 10 million frustrated would-be criminals — ernestm

Wow, this is so bad. Do you know how many knights there were in Europe around 1100? About 600k or so. Do you know how many knighted individuals exist today? Probably a couple of hundred. Do you think there are now 599k frustrated would-be knights?

You went to Oxford? Fucking bullshit. Like, on a day trip?

Crime rate also correlates with atmospheric lead, which has been decreasing steadily since the 1970s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis



Oh look the peak of the delayed reaction was in 1990...

Ah, but you clearly don't know about the most important correlation of all: pirates and climate change:

You went to Oxford? Fucking bullshit. — StreetlightX

I have not used any ad hominem attacks on you. I have presented facts as they are for the last two decades and made reasoned deductions. You are welcome to provide your own estimate of how many would-be criminals police actions have stopped. As I also pointed out, the murder rate in Baltimore tripled to >300/year for the two years for which statistics are so far available after the Freddie Gray riots caused the police not to respond to crimes unless directly asked by a victim. This all substantiates what I have to say, and all you are doing is calling it bullshit and now insulting my education. That does not speak very well for your position either.

No ernest, I responded to your rise in crime rate point quite adequately, which you ignored, much like you ignored my post in your bleeding-heart thread and pretty much every other time I've actually tried to take you seriously. I'm rather coming round to the consensus that you're a bullshit artist. And no, treating non-existent crime as the absence of 'would-be-criminals' is not a 'fact', it's a bloody insult to faculty of inference.

No I didnt, and now you are showintg the level of your own intellect. I produced numbers showing the total crime has fallen 50% in the last 20 years, and as it needs to be spelled out for you, that means your percentages deliberately distort facts. For example homicides, which do have reliable R-squared confidence levels on trends. The total number of total homicides have fallen, but the percentage of unsolved homicides has not fallen as much, so it is a larger percentage.

Ah, yes, my numbers, which are of a single year, deliberately distort facts about change in crime over multiple years. Yes, very deliberate - I can see how they conspired to do that. Spooky.

These are my projections for all crimes involving firearms, which extrapolates using least-squares approximation crime and assault rates to 2025 from all current available raw CDC and FBI data, indicated by color keys. I also have the FBI data on unsolved crimes, but given your attitude and insults, I am not inclined to draw a graph for you. You can do it yourself.

the FBI only provides spreadsheets for each year, so to provide equivalent evidence, you would have to find the right spreadsheet on 18 different FBI web pages, one for each year.

No it's really fine, your basic confusion of correlation with causation doesn't need so much as a laugh to respond with.

That also shows your inferior intellect. According to the philosophy of science, you would need to produce a statistical analysis that challenges mine to substantiate your thesis. I already undermined the numbers you stated as proof, and if thats all you can say, then I can make exactly the same flimsy attack on your numbers.

Percentages of police unsolved crimes is not a symptom of poor police performance because I say so.

Thats what you said to me.

OK buddy you do you.

I was originally going to be end my post with exactly that joke and a comment about correlation and causation, but then I thought it would undermine my main point: that there actually is a plausible causal correlation between atmospheric lead and crime which explains the exact time frame of crime decrease @ernestm was talking about.

Violent crime worldwide has been dropping since about 1990 because childhood blood lead concentration has been dropping because atmospheric lead has been dropping because leaded gasoline has been phased out since the early 70s. There’s a 20-year delay because those lead-poisoned kids have to grow up first before they can be counted in crime statistics.

SCIENCE.

thats a good version of the melting asphalt causing malaria. Of course you know the method to demonstrate how that correlation is not causation too

Maybe if you actually read the linked article you would see plenty of people far more talented than me have already pretty rigorously established causation there, and that was precisely the reason why leaded gasoline’s was banned.

Yes, but crime rate has not fallen in OTHER PLACES. Just as, asphalt melts where there are no mosquitoes. They did the same thing. They had no control study for comparison. You know I get very fed up with that ridiculously obvious flaw in many of the so-called statistical studies I see these days.