State-backed terrorism

[mrswdk]

So, if we state that it is not the fault of the police that this happens

I never said that. If innocent black people are shot more often than innocent people of other ethnicities then the police are clearly at fault. I just said that we cannot assume it happens because the police are trying to terrorize black people. That makes no sense.

There is generally only one target in the shooting of an unarmed person. (This is why your analogy to drone strikes in Pakistan fails.)

There is generally one one target in a drone strike (a training facility, convoy etc.), so my analogy stands.

[mrswdk]

Black people are disproportionately poor. Government exploitation!

Wait, are you suggesting that the reason black people in the US are disproportionately poor has nothing to do with a particular government-sanctioned system of exploitation of black people? It's got nothing to do with that bit about using black people for forced manual labor for a couple hundred years?

I'm talking about the current administration.

[Metsfanmax]

I'm talking about the current administration.

Americans live in a country where what it means to be a black person is still indelibly stained by hundreds of years of slavery and another hundred of not even formally equal guaranteed rights written into federal law. It is meaningless to talk about the current administration apart from this context. Even if you wanted to, the numbers are still there today to demonstrate explicit racism against minorities (e.g. the number of black people in prison). Of course, some part of this is due to these systemic problems -- black neighborhoods are often poorer and more violent precisely because of these past periods of injustice, and contemporary police actions to make those neighborhoods "safer" often lock in this feeling of racism even further. This is why you can't just shrug this off as simply being a correlation. Because even if it is merely a correlation, the thing it's correlated to is itself a part of the same underlying problem. (As an example, suppose the reason this happens is that police simply spend a lot more time interacting with black people than with white people. That would be a very strange thing given that barely 10% of the population is black.)

[mrswdk]

I'm talking about the current administration.

Americans live in a country where what it means to be a black person is still indelibly stained by hundreds of years of slavery and another hundred of not even formally equal guaranteed rights written into federal law. It is meaningless to talk about the current administration apart from this context. Even if you wanted to, the numbers are still there today to demonstrate explicit racism against minorities (e.g. the number of black people in prison). Of course, some part of this is due to these systemic problems -- black neighborhoods are often poorer and more violent precisely because of these past periods of injustice, and contemporary police actions to make those neighborhoods "safer" often lock in this feeling of racism even further. This is why you can't just shrug this off as simply being a correlation. Because even if it is merely a correlation, the thing it's correlated to is itself a part of the same underlying problem. (As an example, suppose the reason this happens is that police simply spend a lot more time interacting with black people than with white people. That would be a very strange thing given that barely 10% of the population is black.)

To clarify: do you think that the current administration and law enforcement are racist?

And either way, do you think they are for any reason deliberately terrorizing the black population of America?

[Metsfanmax]

I'm talking about the current administration.

Americans live in a country where what it means to be a black person is still indelibly stained by hundreds of years of slavery and another hundred of not even formally equal guaranteed rights written into federal law. It is meaningless to talk about the current administration apart from this context. Even if you wanted to, the numbers are still there today to demonstrate explicit racism against minorities (e.g. the number of black people in prison). Of course, some part of this is due to these systemic problems -- black neighborhoods are often poorer and more violent precisely because of these past periods of injustice, and contemporary police actions to make those neighborhoods "safer" often lock in this feeling of racism even further. This is why you can't just shrug this off as simply being a correlation. Because even if it is merely a correlation, the thing it's correlated to is itself a part of the same underlying problem. (As an example, suppose the reason this happens is that police simply spend a lot more time interacting with black people than with white people. That would be a very strange thing given that barely 10% of the population is black.)

To clarify: do you think that the current administration and law enforcement are racist?

Current law enforcement disproportionately harasses, arrests and convicts black people, even for nonviolent crimes, and even in cases where there's no particular reason to believe that black people commit these crimes more frequently than white people. If the definition we're using is a significant discrimination on the basis of race or skin color, then empirically the answer is yes.

And either way, do you think they are for any reason deliberately terrorizing the black population of America?

I will say it like this: they are deliberately acting in a way that does terrorize the black population of America, often without real justification, and there is little sign that this is improving with time. I believe that people should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions if they are known, even if they are "unintended." So to me it does not matter whether the intent is to scare black people, or the intent is some other inane goal that happens to scare black people. The police need to take ownership of their actions either way. If we carry this over to your Pakistani drone strike analogy, we would say that the US doesn't just get to ignore the harm its causing to the lives of innocent Pakistanis. If US officials know that many innocent people are dying in their campaign to kill known terrorists, that matters. We may nevertheless decide not to classify these actions as terrorist activities themselves, since the intent was always to kill the real criminal. No such defense applies to police interactions with black people in America. When Amadou Diallo gets shot for pulling out a wallet, we can't blame it on a terrorist next door.

[mrswdk]

Current law enforcement disproportionately harasses, arrests and convicts black people, even for nonviolent crimes, and even in cases where there's no particular reason to believe that black people commit these crimes more frequently than white people.

And like you have already said yourself, there are reasons other than skin color that could explain this. Maybe the police target areas of high crime and in doing so happen to be targeting areas that are disproportionately black. This would lead to a disproportionately large number of black people coming into contact with police, and also therefore a higher chance of black criminals being arrested than criminals of other ethnicities.

We may nevertheless decide not to classify these actions as terrorist activities themselves, since the intent was always to kill the real criminal. No such defense applies to police interactions with black people in America.

The police are always intending to catch criminals, unless you are contending that the police sometimes go out in the patrol cars with the intent of pulling over and murdering random black people for the hell of it.

You didn't really answer my question: do you think the police in America are deliberately terrorizing the black population?

[Metsfanmax]

And like you have already said yourself, there are reasons other than skin color that could explain this. Maybe the police target areas of high crime and in doing so happen to be targeting areas that are disproportionately black. This would lead to a disproportionately large number of black people coming into contact with police, and also therefore a higher chance of black criminals being arrested than criminals of other ethnicities.

I took the time to point out that the police "target areas of high crime" for reasons that ultimately go back to skin color. It's not a coincidence that high crime areas are disproportionately black.

The police are always intending to catch criminals, unless you are contending that the police sometimes go out in the patrol cars with the intent of pulling over and murdering random black people for the hell of it.

This is unrelated to the point, because the majority of police interactions with citizens are not in the context of the police stopping a violent crime in progress. Citing from the Wikipedia page on the Michael Brown shooting,

Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were walking down the middle of the street when Wilson drove up and ordered them to move to the sidewalk. Brown and Wilson struggled through the window of the police vehicle until Wilson's gun was fired, either intentionally or as a result of the struggle. Brown and Johnson then fled in different directions, with Wilson in pursuit of Brown. Wilson shot Brown six times, killing him.

This is why I was careful to bring up the point about shooting of unarmed people, which is very different from police officers responding to the scene of an ongoing violent crime and then shooting a suspect in the heat of the moment.

You didn't really answer my question: do you think the police in America are deliberately terrorizing the black population?

I didn't answer your question because it's a loaded question. The question you think you are asking is, do police officers have the intent to terrorize or kill black people because they don't like them? But a different way of phrasing that same question is, do police officers deliberately engage in behavior that has the effect of denigrating the quality of life of black people and making them generally scared to interact with police officers? And the answer is most certainly yes, they do. And since "the police" refers to not just individual officers but an entire system of law enforcement, yet another way of phrasing it is: is the system of policing in this country biased towards creating fear in its black residents? I think the answer to that is yes as well.

I did not bring all this up to make the claim that police officers are terrorists. It reinforces my earlier point that using the word "terrorist" is sometimes a way to avoid meaningful discussion rather than to promote it. This is one of those cases. It is much more interesting if we can have an actual open-ended discussion about race relations than if our goal is just the simple binary decision of whether police officers are terrorists towards minorities.

[mrswdk]

And like you have already said yourself, there are reasons other than skin color that could explain this. Maybe the police target areas of high crime and in doing so happen to be targeting areas that are disproportionately black. This would lead to a disproportionately large number of black people coming into contact with police, and also therefore a higher chance of black criminals being arrested than criminals of other ethnicities.

I took the time to point out that the police "target areas of high crime" for reasons that ultimately go back to skin color. It's not a coincidence that high crime areas are disproportionately black.

Arguing that police targeting of these neighborhoods happens on account of the legacy of slavery is a totally bogus attempt to tie this issue to race when race doesn't really have anything to do with it. The question is whether or not police officers today are racially motivated, not whether or not crime statistics are skewed because of historical factors (which they most likely are).

The police are always intending to catch criminals, unless you are contending that the police sometimes go out in the patrol cars with the intent of pulling over and murdering random black people for the hell of it.

This is unrelated to the point, because the majority of police interactions with citizens are not in the context of the police stopping a violent crime in progress.

This is why I was careful to bring up the point about shooting of unarmed people, which is very different from police officers responding to the scene of an ongoing violent crime and then shooting a suspect in the heat of the moment.

What's that got to do with it? I never said the majority of police actions occur in the context of stopping a violent crime in process. I said that the police force's guiding motivation is prevention of crime, rather than wanton slaughter of ethnic minorities.

Rather than be drawn in to one of the strawman arguments you seem intent on creating I will try to take this back to the original point at hand, which was the police shootings/drone killings analogy. The drones are sent out to kill Islamic freedom fighters and sometimes accidentally kill innocent civilians instead, and the police are sent out to prevent crime and sometimes end up killing innocent civilians instead. In both cases, the intent is honest and the deaths of innocent parties are accidental (at least at an institutional level)

You didn't really answer my question: do you think the police in America are deliberately terrorizing the black population?

I didn't answer your question because it's a loaded question. The question you think you are asking is, do police officers have the intent to terrorize or kill black people because they don't like them? But a different way of phrasing that same question is, do police officers deliberately engage in behavior that has the effect of denigrating the quality of life of black people and making them generally scared to interact with police officers? And the answer is most certainly yes, they do. And since "the police" refers to not just individual officers but an entire system of law enforcement, yet another way of phrasing it is: is the system of policing in this country biased towards creating fear in its black residents? I think the answer to that is yes as well.

I did not bring all this up to make the claim that police officers are terrorists. It reinforces my earlier point that using the word "terrorist" is sometimes a way to avoid meaningful discussion rather than to promote it. This is one of those cases. It is much more interesting if we can have an actual open-ended discussion about race relations than if our goal is just the simple binary decision of whether police officers are terrorists towards minorities.

Re the underlined: Haha. So, you put words in my mouth, change my question to something completely different, answer the new question you have just asked yourself and then make a sweeping generalization about the entire police force based on the actions of a few policemen to boot, and now you can continue to insist that you are correct despite any of the points that I have made. Fantastic!

Re the bolded: The whole reason we started talking about race is because I asked 'Is everyday law enforcement really intended to provoke a state of terror in the general public?' and you replied 'In the US, the answer to that may depend on the color of your skin.'. If you never meant to say that the American police intend to provoke a state of terror in the general public (i.e. intend to act as terrorists) then you should have said 'no' in response to my initial question rather than conflating the issue of 'terrorism' with the issue of 'race relations', which you did do even if you are now attempting to assert you thought were completely separate all along.

[shickingbrits]

Let me try.

Yes the police are deliberately terrorizing black people.

This is done for several reasons, but primarily, the government would like to maintain the social order that exists. They want the middle-class to work their butts off and never question authority, they want the upper class to enjoy their position. Now of course the lower class is not just black. But the likelihood of a black person being able to get a lawyer, good references, not already having a record, etc is much lower than for a white person.

The government has been keeping the middle class in check, the upper class content and the lower class scrambling. Media has been working the black image for a long time. They are happy to cut a deal with a black guy who is threatening, violent, aggressive. When I was growing up, such folks weren't too hard to find.

If you look at the institutionalized records, that is the ongoing policies and their outcomes, then it is quite obvious that black people have been targeted. I don't think it's wholly racist on their part, it's just easier, but it is easier due to racism.

I was part of the busing system in the late 80s to 1990. A lot of my classmates had parents in jail, a lot had pagers (this was an elementary school), there were guns, needles, used condoms on the playground. There were 2 drive-bys on the school in one year (this was an elementary school). Was this the government pulling the drive-bys, dropping the needles, forcing these kids to walk out of class every time their pager went off? Of course.

The government was having their War on Drugs and guaranteeing harsh penalties for minor infractions. They targeted black neighbourhoods. One statistic was that a black man caught with drugs was 48 times more likely to get jail time for it than a white person caught with drugs. Overall, the number of people caught was roughly the same, but actually more white people were using drugs.

All this made drugs very lucrative and there weren't too many options for black people. I'm sure there were just as many white dealers who made a lot more money. Then they paid snitches.

There was a thirteen year old who had killed I think 16 people and was killed in a police shoot-out. This wasn't a school shooter, this was a kid in the course of business that was set-up by the government who had killed 16 people by the age of 13. Meanwhile in the white trash part of town, Kurt Cobain was busy creating grunge music.

[BigBallinStalin]

'Terrorism' depends on the individual's perception of legitimacy and innocence.

Law enforcement--whether it's in a mall or in a city--requires the threat to use force. The potential use of force (by citizens, mall cops, and police) requires credible commitment: potential law-breakers need to believe that force will be used. This can scare them into abiding by the rules.

What is the source of legitimacy? If people view the role of the police as enforcing laws which these people also agree with, then the enforcement of laws by police is legitimate. The use of force becomes legitimate. It's then legitimate to scare people into obeying, so this isn't terrorism.

But, if people disagree with the laws and/or the means of their enforcement (e.g. police), then the use of force by police becomes illegitimate. It can now be labeled as terrorism.

For example,
This is why firebombing cities during WW2 was viewed as legitimate at that time (and even today), thus it does not constitute as terrorism. Now, it's illegit, thus terroristic--according to those who accept Geneva Convention rules (and who conveniently have the resources to rely on more expensive and accurate ways of killing people). But, say a government imposes a mock government in a foreign country. It trains its police officers, writes their constitution, hand-picks the Transitional Government, etc. When the occupied start shooting cops, off-duty military, and military convoys, then the occupying government says, "that's not legit; it's terrorism."

How about when the occupied start blowing up civilians? Well, it's similar to the firebombings during WW2. It reduces government revenue and supposedly reduces their morale to continue supporting their government. Civilians are viewed as 'legitimate' targets.

So, hopefully, we're starting to see how legitimacy and innocence influence our notions of terrorism.

[shickingbrits]

Great analysis, BBS, for Candyland.

I live here on earth, where the government controls the flow of information.

A good example is Operation Northwoods.

Let's see what that was about.

From Wiki:

"Operation Northwoods was a series of proposals for actions against the Cuban government, that originated within the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals, which called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere, were rejected by the Kennedy administration.[2]

At the time of the proposal, Cuba had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts.[3] To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various US military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington".

The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the US government's anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals."

So Kennedy rejected it.

The many false assumptions that you base most of your statements on become exceedingly apparent when the above info is considered.

1. The public will become aware.

Obviously non of the agreeing parties were concerned with this. Whether Kennedy was concerned with the public becoming aware is speculative but doubtful.

Media is in the hands of very few people, the same few who are behind the MIC. Even though this is now public knowledge, nothing has come of it, most people don't know about it and those who do, and disagree with it, can't take any action.

2. That the government acts in the interest of the people.

What about this is in the interest of the people? Being killed, terrorized, lied to, lead to war which they will need to fund over a contrived threat?

3. Bi-partisanship will prevent such atrocities.

The only person who did anything to prevent it was Kennedy, who was soon after assassinated. While he was in a position to do something about it, he didn't expose or punish the plotters directly.

When trillions of dollars are at stake by having a legitimate threat, it is in the government's interest to ensure a legitimate threat. They justify this because, you know, they right and we the people can't understand that they right so they need to show us.

Knowing that the powers that be would agree to such a plan does nothing. When future activities transpire that are lock-step in line with Operation Northwoods, that earn the MIC trillions, that further each of the proposed agendas of the powers that be and there is no investigation of it, what happens? Nothing. All that had to change was for the President to agree.

First, why did they expect the President to agree? Look, we are going to hijack some planes, blow some shit up, fake some other crap so we can blame the Cubans? And yet they obviously thought the President would not have them all tried for treason, with good reason, since he didn't. And they thought he would ok it. Why did they think he would ok it?

Let's move past Kennedy. Now we have a time of peace. Little is being spent on the MIC in comparison to other periods. This time a similar plan is brought to the President. But this time, they have the assassination of a previous President which they got away with in their pocket. I don't think they needed it for this guy, I think they were more careful to vet the candidates in the primaries. But if they did need it, it's there.

Now they carry through the plan. Who is to hold them to account? Whistleblowers? Shit, they weren't concerned with the President himself being a whistleblower. The same minority that gives a shit about Operation Northwoods? Ha.

Not only do they get away with it, they garner far greater public support than before the act. They get all the money they want, get to pass any law they want, the press steers the people exactly where they need it to.

The individual's perception or expressed perception is based on how they feel that perception will be received. I have trouble believing that most people can know about Northwoods and misunderstand the implications. I have an easy time believing that they would be afraid to express these opinions because they'd be called a: tin-hat conspiracy theorist. People would say, why doesn't the press report if it's true? That's a good question, maybe you should find out.

[BigBallinStalin]

Right, information is limited and is dispersed at different rates and quality to various groups. This affects people's perceptions of 'legitimacy' and 'innocence.' That doesn't destroy my position; it just adds another explanatory variable. Thanks for contributing.

The (1)-(3) assumptions are irrelevant--in that their existence does not invalidate my simple model. You just made them up without explaining how my simple model rests on them. So, let me do your work for you:

(2) Government benevolence: if group X believes that (2) applies to its government, then they're less likely to view their government's terror activities as terrorism. If group Y does not believe (2) applies to its government, then they're more likely to view their government's terror activities as terrorism. The model survives.

(1): perfect information, which I didn't assume; I simply didn't mention any degree of information because I don't feel like making a long post longer. Derr, information plays a role (see first paragraph). The model survives.

(3) political parties: seems irrelevant, but it can be useful if we change it to (3) greater political competition leads to greater tendency toward truth/good outcomes. if group X believes in (3), then they're less likely to view their government's terror activities as terrorism. If group Y does not believe in (3), then they're more likely to view their government's terror activities as terrorism. The model survives.


Maybe you don't understand how abstraction works?

[shickingbrits]

Agent Orange

1. The people will become aware.

So? So we are aware. They made a mistake, thought it didn't hurt people. They dumped shit tons of it, and yet no US soldier was injured by it? If one was, then at that point they should have known. I'm sure it would have made the press. So maybe none were. They dumped shit tons of a disfiguring and deadly concoction over a war zone and didn't harm a single US soldier?

But of course they knew. You don't accidentally make a deadly poison, take it to a war zone and dump it and not know that it was deadly. But so what?

2. The government acts in the interest of the people

Which people? The US soldiers that died there based on a false flag attack? Engaging a country that voted 80% for a communist government? How was it in the interest of the American public to go there? How is it in my interest to be born to a country responsible for using chemical weapons on a third world country who had already been suffering from decades of war?

3. Bi-partisanship will prevent such atrocities

Nope. Didn't. Not only didn't it, but it made it more likely that it will happen again. But eventually we brought our boys back home, democracy prevailed. No, what happened is they learn to manipulate the public better so that they can have perpetually high defense budgets.

Ask yourself, where did I get these assumptions? Do they hold true? In which situations have they been continually proven false?

But maybe you don't understand how practice works.

[BigBallinStalin]

You're having problems separating (what people believe) from (what you believe), so you've been only criticizing one group within the model--but not the model itself. You keep thinking you're attacking the model, but you keep missing the point about methodology (especially abstraction). You're also having trouble understanding how the model works, so maybe this will help:

It can help explain why someone like you believes that X is terrorism while someone else believes that X is not terrorism. I'm not sure how you keep missing this basic point. This can be applied "in practice" (i.e. through analytical narrative/case studies--where assumptions are tested and estimates of Group Sabotage and of Group Non-sabotage could be obtained.).

(Nothing you've said about Operation Northwoods, self-interested politicians, uninformed voters, and special interest groups is new to me. Maybe this tidbit will nudge you into a different level of criticism).

[shickingbrits]

Are chemical weapons a legitimate tool of war?

Ask crowd A and B

They say no.

The government says Saddam has been using chemical weapons and has WMDs. Should we attack?

Crowd A says yes. They provided legitimacy to the use of force therefore it isn't terrorism and crowd B has tacitly provided consent by saying use of chemical weapons is terrorism.

But, crowd B says, the US gave and persuaded Saddam to use those weapons. Crowd B protests. The media prints the protest but obscures the reason.

Crowd B demands Rumsfeld be held accountable for his act of terrorism which both crowds agree is an act of terrorism. But they are ignored. They take their case to who? To no one. Rumsfeld is not a terrorist not because of public legitimacy of his actions, but because the public has no power to enforce against him, mostly because he has the ability to obscure his actions through the media.

Since legitimate force can only be enacted by the government, the government's actions are legitimate regardless of how they are perceived, because people don't have any legitimate method of enforcement outside the government, and to seek it would make them terrorists.

The people can think what they want about the US using Agent Orange, but the people are unable to treat the US like terrorists and therefore they aren't terrorists.

[Metsfanmax]

Arguing that police targeting of these neighborhoods happens on account of the legacy of slavery is a totally bogus attempt to tie this issue to race when race doesn't really have anything to do with it. The question is whether or not police officers today are racially motivated, not whether or not crime statistics are skewed because of historical factors (which they most likely are).

But there is basically zero question that police officers today are racially motivated. It is easy to find examples that prove this even in situations where the confounders don't exist. For example, if you appear to be of MIddle Eastern descent you are much more likely to get searched at an airplane security checkpoint, even though the thing they're actually trying to stop is Islamists. Given that these pure examples exist, then, it is hard to argue that the other examples (like black people arrested for marijuana possession) are somehow independent of racial motivation. Furthermore, even the obvious confounders may not really be what you think. For example, if you argue that black people are arrested more because they preferentially live in high crime areas, this doesn't square with the fact that there are often fewer police in these high crime areas. This may be changing, though, with the advent of better crime statistics available to law enforcement.

What's that got to do with it? I never said the majority of police actions occur in the context of stopping a violent crime in process. I said that the police force's guiding motivation is prevention of crime, rather than wanton slaughter of ethnic minorities.

Way to miss the point. The fact is that if police are stopping unarmed black people randomly on the street who aren't being dangerous, and then shooting them, then it actually kind of does sound like the situation you described. If you think that telling someone to move onto a sidewalk, and then engaging in gunfire with that person when you don't like their response, is an example of "prevention of crime," then it is easy to see why the deck is stacked against black people. It is basically impossible to imagine the same fate befalling a white person on an American street. That is what outrages people. I think you can get a reasonable US liberal to admit that black people are just involved in more crimes, if you go at it for a while. And there's probably a legitimate discussion to be had about why this is. But the real problem is that this is used as a justification for police officers changing their entire behavior towards a black person, even one who is clearly acting nonviolently at the time of the interaction.

Rather than be drawn in to one of the strawman arguments you seem intent on creating I will try to take this back to the original point at hand, which was the police shootings/drone killings analogy. The drones are sent out to kill Islamic freedom fighters and sometimes accidentally kill innocent civilians instead, and the police are sent out to prevent crime and sometimes end up killing innocent civilians instead. In both cases, the intent is honest and the deaths of innocent parties are accidental (at least at an institutional level)

The intent is honest? Are you really sure about that? How can we say that the intent is honest when 25 times as many innocent people are killed as "freedom fighters?" The administration is not being honest when they say that these drone strikes are precisely executed to minimize civilian casualties. US citizens wouldn't accept it if a wedding was bombed to kill an at-large murder suspect in Cincinnati.

But anyway your analogy fails and you know that it breaks down in many cases. We're not talking about innocent black people just getting caught in the crossfire between the police and criminals. (Though that probably happens too.) We are talking about the police deliberate harassing, arresting and shooting black people who don't appear to be dangerous criminals, at a far greater rate than they do white people. The numbers are there to back it up. If you're a black person, then, does it comfort you to know that the reason is that black people just commit more crimes when you see a police officer walk down the street?

You didn't really answer my question: do you think the police in America are deliberately terrorizing the black population?

I didn't answer your question because it's a loaded question. The question you think you are asking is, do police officers have the intent to terrorize or kill black people because they don't like them? But a different way of phrasing that same question is, do police officers deliberately engage in behavior that has the effect of denigrating the quality of life of black people and making them generally scared to interact with police officers? And the answer is most certainly yes, they do. And since "the police" refers to not just individual officers but an entire system of law enforcement, yet another way of phrasing it is: is the system of policing in this country biased towards creating fear in its black residents? I think the answer to that is yes as well.

I did not bring all this up to make the claim that police officers are terrorists. It reinforces my earlier point that using the word "terrorist" is sometimes a way to avoid meaningful discussion rather than to promote it. This is one of those cases. It is much more interesting if we can have an actual open-ended discussion about race relations than if our goal is just the simple binary decision of whether police officers are terrorists towards minorities.

Re the underlined: Haha. So, you put words in my mouth, change my question to something completely different, answer the new question you have just asked yourself and then make a sweeping generalization about the entire police force based on the actions of a few policemen to boot, and now you can continue to insist that you are correct despite any of the points that I have made. Fantastic!

No, the point is that your question has multiple possible meanings, so I cannot give you a straight answer like "yes" without being worried about falling into some semantical word game. Your goal here should be to find a way to ask your question without using the word "terrorize." If you can do that, then I will answer your question.

Re the bolded: The whole reason we started talking about race is because I asked 'Is everyday law enforcement really intended to provoke a state of terror in the general public?' and you replied 'In the US, the answer to that may depend on the color of your skin.'. If you never meant to say that the American police intend to provoke a state of terror in the general public (i.e. intend to act as terrorists) then you should have said 'no' in response to my initial question rather than conflating the issue of 'terrorism' with the issue of 'race relations', which you did do even if you are now attempting to assert you thought were completely separate all along.

I did mean to say that American police intend to provoke a state of terror among certain members of the general public. That was the point of my statement.

[mrswdk]

What's that got to do with it? I never said the majority of police actions occur in the context of stopping a violent crime in process. I said that the police force's guiding motivation is prevention of crime, rather than wanton slaughter of ethnic minorities.

Way to miss the point. The fact is that if police are stopping unarmed black people randomly on the street who aren't being dangerous, and then shooting them, then it actually kind of does sound like the situation you described.

Do you think the driving motivation behind the existence of the police and the activities of the police is the prevention of crime or the violent suppression of ethnic minorities?

The drones are sent out to kill Islamic freedom fighters and sometimes accidentally kill innocent civilians instead, and the police are sent out to prevent crime and sometimes end up killing innocent civilians instead. In both cases, the intent is honest and the deaths of innocent parties are accidental (at least at an institutional level)

The intent is honest? Are you really sure about that? How can we say that the intent is honest when 25 times as many innocent people are killed as "freedom fighters?" The administration is not being honest when they say that these drone strikes are precisely executed to minimize civilian casualties. US citizens wouldn't accept it if a wedding was bombed to kill an at-large murder suspect in Cincinnati.

But anyway your analogy fails and you know that it breaks down in many cases. We're not talking about innocent black people just getting caught in the crossfire between the police and criminals. (Though that probably happens too.) We are talking about the police deliberate harassing, arresting and shooting black people who don't appear to be dangerous criminals, at a far greater rate than they do white people. The numbers are there to back it up. If you're a black person, then, does it comfort you to know that the reason is that black people just commit more crimes when you see a police officer walk down the street?

That the US military needs better intelligence and more target practice does not mean that they intend to kill those innocent people. You are confusing outcomes with intent.

Likewise, the presence a few jittery patrolmen and possibly a couple of ex-KKK Grand Wizards who slipped through vetting in state patrol cars does not mean that the police force as a whole is motivated by the deliberate execution of innocent black people.

the point is that your question has multiple possible meanings, so I cannot give you a straight answer like "yes" without being worried about falling into some semantical word game. Your goal here should be to find a way to ask your question without using the word "terrorize." If you can do that, then I will answer your question.

In the context of this thread it has one very clear meaning: do you think the police deliberately intend to create a sense of terror in the black community? Never mind, you already answered my question:

I did mean to say that American police intend to provoke a state of terror among certain members of the general public. That was the point of my statement.

That's totally dumb and the only 'evidence' you have is the disproportionate involvement of ethnic minorities in arrests, police shootings and so on, which in absolutely no way proves that a deliberate campaign is being waged against the black population of America in order to 'keep them scared'.

[Metsfanmax]

Do you think the driving motivation behind the existence of the police and the activities of the police is the prevention of crime or the violent suppression of ethnic minorities?

Yes.

That the US military needs better intelligence and more target practice does not mean that they intend to kill those innocent people. You are confusing outcomes with intent.

If it is known that the process constantly results in "unintended outcomes," and the process is not fixed and continues unabated, then the outcomes become intended. How many more murdered civilians do you need to see before you'll believe that the US government just doesn't care about collateral damage?

That's totally dumb and the only 'evidence' you have is the disproportionate involvement of ethnic minorities in arrests, police shootings and so on, which in absolutely no way proves that a deliberate campaign is being waged against the black population of America in order to 'keep them scared'.

Suppose you came from an ancestry of people who had been systematically oppressed by the government of your country, for some arbitrary reason. Even after the main institutionalized forms of oppression ended, members of the government continued to harass, arrest, stop and frisk, or shoot members of your cultural group. Nearly 1/3 of the members of your cultural group are either in jail or are in some sort of state probation/parole program. Police officers who shoot the members of your cultural group can avoid even going to trial for those shootings. I know that China has no such examples of oppressed cultural groups, so it might be hard for you to understand. However, try to put yourself in their position and ask yourself whether you should feel safe when an armed member of the government strolled by you.

[mrswdk]

Do you think the driving motivation behind the existence of the police and the activities of the police is the prevention of crime or the violent suppression of ethnic minorities?

Yes.

Yes what? I asked you an either/or question.

If it is known that the process constantly results in "unintended outcomes," and the process is not fixed and continues unabated, then the outcomes become intended. How many more murdered civilians do you need to see before you'll believe that the US government just doesn't care about collateral damage?

Wrong. Those outcomes become known side-effect of the process that no one can be bothered to fix.

That's totally dumb and the only 'evidence' you have is the disproportionate involvement of ethnic minorities in arrests, police shootings and so on, which in absolutely no way proves that a deliberate campaign is being waged against the black population of America in order to 'keep them scared'.

Suppose you came from an ancestry of people who had been systematically oppressed by the government of your country, for some arbitrary reason. Even after the main institutionalized forms of oppression ended, members of the government continued to harass, arrest, stop and frisk, or shoot members of your cultural group. Nearly 1/3 of the members of your cultural group are either in jail or are in some sort of state probation/parole program. Police officers who shoot the members of your cultural group can avoid even going to trial for those shootings. I know that China has no such examples of oppressed cultural groups, so it might be hard for you to understand. However, try to put yourself in their position and ask yourself whether you should feel safe when an armed member of the government strolled by you.

I believe that many black people in America (especially in poor areas) are probably wary of the police and have valid reasons for being wary, but that doesn't mean the police are deliberately waging a terror campaign against black people nor does it mean the reason for the police force's existence is to scare black people.

[Metsfanmax]

Yes what? I asked you an either/or question.

Yes, both of those are reasons for the existence of the police. It is not an either/or situation, so it doesn't warrant an either/or question.

If it is known that the process constantly results in "unintended outcomes," and the process is not fixed and continues unabated, then the outcomes become intended. How many more murdered civilians do you need to see before you'll believe that the US government just doesn't care about collateral damage?

Wrong. Those outcomes become known side-effect of the process that no one can be bothered to fix.

If we stop focusing on the words and start thinking about the actual ethics, it is clear that moral responsibility entails responsibility for side effects that are known about in advance. Otherwise your stance leads to absurd outcomes. It would justify nuking a large city because a known terrorist was stopping by. Everyone else was just a side effect, yes?

(If 25 times as many civilians are killed as terrorists in US drone strikes, then "these outcomes" aren't merely a "side effect." Arguably they're the main effect.)

That's totally dumb and the only 'evidence' you have is the disproportionate involvement of ethnic minorities in arrests, police shootings and so on, which in absolutely no way proves that a deliberate campaign is being waged against the black population of America in order to 'keep them scared'.

Suppose you came from an ancestry of people who had been systematically oppressed by the government of your country, for some arbitrary reason. Even after the main institutionalized forms of oppression ended, members of the government continued to harass, arrest, stop and frisk, or shoot members of your cultural group. Nearly 1/3 of the members of your cultural group are either in jail or are in some sort of state probation/parole program. Police officers who shoot the members of your cultural group can avoid even going to trial for those shootings. I know that China has no such examples of oppressed cultural groups, so it might be hard for you to understand. However, try to put yourself in their position and ask yourself whether you should feel safe when an armed member of the government strolled by you.

I believe that many black people in America (especially in poor areas) are probably wary of the police and have valid reasons for being wary, but that doesn't mean the police are deliberately waging a terror campaign against black people nor does it mean the reason for the police force's existence is to scare black people.

Your use of categorical terms is preventing us from having a genuine discussion. (See the first part.) I don't have to maintain that the "reason for the police force's existence" is to "scare black people." That is an obvious straw man of my position, because scaring black people is one of many things a police force does. I can instead maintain that police forces do intentionally scare black people, along with many other actions they take and behaviors they promote, and still have a valid argument. That is indeed what I am arguing.

[Metsfanmax]

Also interesting: a post from a blogger I respect that suggests that my main argument is probably wrong. (This is what happens when I don't follow my own advice about only talking about things I'm sufficiently familiar with.)

[mrswdk]

If it is known that the process constantly results in "unintended outcomes," and the process is not fixed and continues unabated, then the outcomes become intended. How many more murdered civilians do you need to see before you'll believe that the US government just doesn't care about collateral damage?

Wrong. Those outcomes become known side-effect of the process that no one can be bothered to fix.

If we stop focusing on the words and start thinking about the actual ethics, it is clear that moral responsibility entails responsibility for side effects that are known about in advance. Otherwise your stance leads to absurd outcomes. It would justify nuking a large city because a known terrorist was stopping by. Everyone else was just a side effect, yes?

(If 25 times as many civilians are killed as terrorists in US drone strikes, then "these outcomes" aren't merely a "side effect." Arguably they're the main effect.)

lol, yeah k. Let's forget about silly things like words and their meanings.

If the army nukes a city in order to kill a terrorist then their reason for nuking the city was to kill the terrorist. Invoking 'morals lolol' doesn't change that. You can argue (with someone else) about whether or not that is the best way to kill the terrorist, but you can't suddenly shift the goalposts and start claiming that the army's objective was the destruction of the city, because it wasn't. The objective was killing the terrorist.

I believe that many black people in America (especially in poor areas) are probably wary of the police and have valid reasons for being wary, but that doesn't mean the police are deliberately waging a terror campaign against black people nor does it mean the reason for the police force's existence is to scare black people.

Your use of categorical terms is preventing us from having a genuine discussion. (See the first part.) I don't have to maintain that the "reason for the police force's existence" is to "scare black people." That is an obvious straw man of my position, because scaring black people is one of many things a police force does. I can instead maintain that police forces do intentionally scare black people, along with many other actions they take and behaviors they promote, and still have a valid argument. That is indeed what I am arguing.

No creating of straw men is necessary. You explicitly said just that:

mrswdk: Do you think the driving motivation behind the existence of the police and the activities of the police is the prevention of crime or the violent suppression of ethnic minorities?
Metsfanmax: Yes, both of those are reasons for the existence of the police.

As for your claim that the police intend to scare black people, you still have not produced one single piece of evidence to support that ludicrous claim, just relied on repeating the ridiculous fallacy that knowingly causing something equals intent.

[Lootifer]

New Zealand has the best mother fucking terrorists in the world.


How is this a debate anyway? Isn't terrorism just one side saying the other sides war tactics are dirty through propaganda? Just say what aspects of war you are ok with (eg. killing soldiers of a country you have declared war against - and them you - a la Geneva shit) and what you are not ok (lopping off civvies heads purely to cause a reaction) with and be done with it imo.

[BigBallinStalin]

New Zealand has the best mother fucking terrorists in the world.


How is this a debate anyway? Isn't terrorism just one side saying the other sides war tactics are dirty through propaganda? Just say what aspects of war you are ok with (eg. killing soldiers of a country you have declared war against - and them you - a la Geneva shit) and what you are not ok (lopping off civvies heads purely to cause a reaction) with and be done with it imo.

Nah. You and your NZ terrorists are both terrorists.

The debate is over.

[Metsfanmax]

If the army nukes a city in order to kill a terrorist then their reason for nuking the city was to kill the terrorist. Invoking 'morals lolol' doesn't change that. You can argue (with someone else) about whether or not that is the best way to kill the terrorist, but you can't suddenly shift the goalposts and start claiming that the army's objective was the destruction of the city, because it wasn't. The objective was killing the terrorist.

You seem to have forgotten the actual topic we were discussing. Remember: the topic is whether things that we will know will happen should be considered intended outcomes of the action. Since we know that nuking a city tends to destroy the city, claiming that mass murder of civilians is therefore an unintended outcome of the action is quite simply a terrible argument. Similarly, firing a missile at a church hosting a wedding tends to kill people attending the wedding. You can argue (with someone else) whether or not that was the objective of the mission, but you can't suddenly shift the goalposts and start claiming that the army isn't intending to kill the other people in the church, because it was.

It is starting to sound like your argument is that as long as we suitably define our objective, and the objective is a laudable one, we can commit whatever atrocity we want to achieve it.