I quoted Natasha Lennard in my socialism thread, but I'm rereading her essay "Riots For Black Life", published last year, and it says everything I want to say, but better:

"Rioting is not senseless destruction; on the contrary, it is often (even without explicit intention) a deeply political challenge to property and white supremacy —two concepts intractably entwined in this former slaveholder republic. Only when rendered in the language of capital are the acts of smashing chain store and cop car windows sufficient to see a protest deemed “violent”; but this is the media lingua franca. ...If the public has more concern for the well-being of people than of property, as I hope they do, consternation about looting should pale in comparison to anger at police violence. Both liberals and conservatives decry looting as opportunistic, but I’m not sure opportunism is always such a bad thing, especially for individuals and communities for whom opportunity rarely comes knocking.

To tell a furious community that their riotous actions are counterproductive patronizes the very groups who know too well that “acceptable channels” of political engagement have failed, again and again, to deliver dignity and justice to black life. Further, it ignores, as Osterweil notes, that major riots (and the threat of more) during the civil rights era helped force JFK’s hand in calling for historic legislation: “To argue that the movement achieved what it did in spite of rather than as a result of the mixture of not-nonviolent and nonviolent action is spurious at best.”

Stepping on necks? That's the metaphor you're going to use here against those who support protests over a man who died by way of having his neck stepped on? Really? Fucking really? Fuck you.

there are 'few other options' for entry level worker because a) they don't have many skills or certifications and b) we're in the year of coronavirus which has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. — BitconnectCarlos

Y'know what? Worth addressing this - the poor in America don't have many skills or certifications - nothing to do with capitalism? Yeah make another joke. A year of COVID in which the ruling class have deemed it more important for service workers to be out there and die than wait a while and keep the shops closed for the sake of 'the economy' - thus ensuring its effects are prolonged and made worse? The most powerful nation of Earth having the worst response to it? - nothing to do with capitalism? Make another joke. Billionaire wealth soared during COVID, and you think the loss of a Target is the issue? Corporations looted more than $500 billion of the public purse while individuals got a $1200 check, and capitalism isn't the issue? Tell me another kneeslapper, comedian.

OK Bootlicker.

It's a wonder that more Targets are not brunt to the ground.

...because many of them are sales associates at a target. have you ever worked as a sales associate in retail? it's an entry level job. — BitconnectCarlos

My God, you really gonna miss the point that badly and make me spell it out for you? No, it's because the society you live in is so absurdly, supremely shit, that the loss of a couple of minimum wage jobs - which contribute to keeping an underclass which is murdered with impunity in place - can result in communal hurt. There are 'few other options' because America is a systemically shit place, and not because some people - angry over the public execution of a black man, one of hundreds, for whom non-violent protest has been entirely ineffective, and of which you apparently have barely anything to say - burned down a fucking Target.

And once more just because I know certain people are slow to clue in: if the loss of a Target is going to have such apparently catastrophic effects, then the loss of that Target isn't - has never been - the problem.

nice to know that i'm talking to a reasonable person here. — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, not an unprincipled git.

It's entry level workers with likely very few other options. — BitconnectCarlos

And you think this is because what? Because people burned down a Target? You think that's why people have 'few other options'?

And there's nothing reasonable about "'there are good people on both sides" centrists. If I could pick either fascists or centrists to be all collectively drowned at sea, I'd go with centrists, because at least then everyone would know who the enemy is - and just how impossibly weak they are without the support of unprincipled "both sides" charlatans.

Yeah, sorry, I 'don't trust' people whose first instinct is to defend Target in the wake of all that's happened. Maybe consider that if a Target being driven out means that everyone in a community is going to be fucked, then maybe your entire social system is hostage to an incredibly shitty arrangement and it doesn't need to be apologized for someone who gives more of a shit about a MNC then systemically murdered black people. Yeah get fucked. All those minimum wage, non-heatlhcare covered jobs Oh NO.

Imagine being your first comment here defending Target. Fucking hell. Brainwashed twat.

https://www.betootaadvocate.com/world-news/rioters-ruin-their-chances-of-working-for-6-an-hour-with-no-healthcare-by-destroying-target/

Rioters Ruin Their Chances Of Working For $6 An Hour With No Healthcare By Destroying Target

Minneapolis Gestapo shooting people on their own property.

From Natasha Lennard, whom I will quote until the breath leaves my body:

"A categorical error is made in any media narrative resting on the idea that protests “turn” violent, or counterprotesters instigate violence in these circumstances. The error exists in the tacit suggestion that there was a situation of nonviolence, or peace, from which to turn. Any circumstance in which cops take black life with impunity, any context in which it is still necessary to state that Black Lives Matter, any situation where neo-Nazis march and murder, is a background state of constant violence. Yet the media consistently attributes the act of turning to violence to people who literally cannot turn from it, whose lives and deaths are organized by it. In the book, I cite the late philosopher Bernard Williams who wrote, “To say peace where there is no peace is to say nothing.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/natasha-lennard-fascism-book/

I've come around to what you've said about the charges. It's not a topic I'd given much thought to before, but the more I've looked into it the more absurd 3rd degree seems. The cop had ample time and opportunity to understand what was happening. There was no heat of the moment. There was no 'necessity'. That Wapo reconstruction makes that clear as day. And then there's Beau, who is among the most insightful commentators out there:



I'm not going to talk about Twitter anymore. It's shameful.

Yes, and?

What even is your point?

And? I don't care about physicalism.

Both also dumb ideas that have confused more than they have helped. Little known fact: Schrodinger invoked his cat to try and show how absurd certain intepretations of QM are. He meant it as a pejorative example.

Zombie experiments are dumb and bat experiments are dumb. Faster we get over them the better.

They don't even deserve the name of experiments. It's just certain philosophies attempt to buy into the prestige of scientific association. Thought fantasies is a more appropriate appellation.

The police exist to secure private property. They are agents of capitalism first and foremost. Look again at that distribution of theft types. It is no accident that the police almost excusively go after everything that is not wage theft, despite the latter making up the majority of all theft. There is plenty of literature about how policing entrenches and reinforces racial - and thus class - inequality.

You can look it up yourself. I'm not here to answer every shit objection you pose which you subsequently abandon after being shown wrong. Its bad faith and shit and you should stop being shit.

God forbid people not get murderded in the street regularly. You can go to Applebees another time.

Capitalists will be back because they are worms.

The same people who train them to murder black men on video. Reporters are the least of it.

Trump and his cabal of fuckwit enablers have presided over an enfeebled American population - angry, scared, poor, and ignorant - and encouraged to be so by them. It's about to come bite them all in their pathetic faces.

I don't know about the US, but in the Netherlands you can charge someone with 2nd or 3rd degree in the same writ, where 2nd degree is the primary claim and 3rd degree the secondary. You argue your case trying to prove both, so if the primary claim isn't accepted, you still have your secondary one. — Benkei

That's super interesting. I'm not well versed on these issues, but I wonder if the trade off here is thay prosecutors and can throw everything at the wall just to make sure something sticks. Not that that wouldn't be appropriate in this case.

Still this is all academic. Charging is one thing. Getting his ass thrown to the actual dogs is another. The US has a long and storied history of letting killer cops off the hook at trial. Its hard to imagine that they'd do that here, but - Rodney King.

I should say: one disanalogy with HK is that American protestors here look eminantly capable and willing to actually shoot back at their oppressors. There are already videos of cops getting fucked up circulating out there. HK managed to keep it peaceful for years. Americans, wretched creatures as they are, are baying for blood. They might get it.

Interesting! I'd never actually read the paper before, and appreciate you linking it. It's interesting what Foot does: she doesn't use the thought experiment to draw any particular ethical conclusion, but rather, to help bring out what might be called ethically salient distinctions. And moreover, the tram - fair call about the 'gemony - is one amongst a whole slew meant to bring it out. She doesn't, then, engage in what the article - and me - are railing against: using a thought-experiment as a kind of litmus test that ought to then be generalized in some manner.

It's definitely an interesting use of a thought-experiment. I withdraw some of my animus towards the darn thing, but will still note how circumscribed it's use was in the paper - as part of an effort to draw a new distinction.

Looks exactly like Hong Kong. — Benkei

That was my first thought as well. For all the American wringing about "Chynah", their police state is no less effective.

It's clearly 2nd degree if someone says "I can't breathe" and is clearly in distress and you continue to sit on him like that for 4 minutes, which gives more than enough time to reconsider, then we're talking intent. — Benkei

I agree but I suspect 3rd is the pragmatic choice. There's a chance he might be able to weasel his way out of 2nd, but 3rd is more likely to stick, even if any human being with a pulse would probably call it 2nd. They gotta play the justice system, not the crime.

More American fascism.

Yeah, and I mean, the lavish social and cultural attention given to larceny in total disproportion to real life - that's class warfare. You can't get more class warfare than that.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/29/21274947/trump-hong-kong-special-trade-status-announcement

President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration would begin the process of revoking Hong Kong’s special trade status, a day after China approved a national security law that threatens Hong Kong’s autonomy.

“China has replaced its promised formula of one country, two systems, with one country, one system,” Trump announced Friday from the White House Rose Garden. “Therefore, I am directing my administration to begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.”

Giving the devil his due - good.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/underpayment-as-business-model-what-is-wage-theft-20190509-p51lko.html

As they put it here, wage theft in Australia is a business model, not an accidental bit of economic fallout. This no doubt applies across the ocean too. And this is to say nothing of the social distribution of who this affects in the main - usually the poorest and most precariously perched workers. Fuck.

I don't know where I can find comparative figures outside of the States, but I don't imagine this is confined to it. In Australia, our major retail and restaurant chains are regularly pinged for wage theft. This is madness.

Those figures are just mind-boggling to me. I mean, culturally, burglary an larceny are seen as paradigmatic of crime in general - but this... wage theft counting as around 2/3s of theft? What in the actual fuck??

Suddenly I do not give a flying hoot about most burglary or "looting".

widdle snowflake is sAd

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/minneapolis-police-officer-who-knelt-on-george-floyd-arrested-20200530-p54xwj.html

Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who is seen in mobile phone footage kneeling on George Floyd's neck before he died on Monday, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman said on Friday afternoon (Saturday morning AEST).

May this fucker burn in hell, and all his cop buddies along with him.

Given that our comrades over at Fox News Communist Headquarters themselves have acknowledged that mail ballots tends to help republicans more than democrats, I actually suspect the whole debacle is even more stupid than I ever imagined - that Trump said a stupid thing without thought (spurred by his masculine fragility over COVID), and when called out on it, because he's a fucking man-baby, doubled down and and can't bring himself to let it go. If it disenfranchises a bunch of voters, so be it. Like... this had it's genesis in the intersection of Trump's stupidity and his egoism.

Trump doesn't play 11D chess. He wouldn't know how to play 3D chess. He's literally just a stupid person doing stupid things, unable to unstupid things without going full retard. This makes a lot more sense.

I have to admit, the very fact that anyone is talking about any of this in terms of voter fraud is itself already a concession to Trump.

It's about democratic disenfranchisement.

That's the story, not voter fraud.

Even pointing out that voter fraud is barely a thing is to distract from the only point that matters: Trump is trying to disenfranchise an entire swathe of his population. Engaging in the voter fraud angle - even if to marshal facts and so on to deny it - is already to lose the thread. Don't let it be a distraction.

Ah, first fact checking was a violation of human rights.

Now it's a slur.

I wonder what's next :chin: