Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.
And thats why they tell you its not the answer. Now to be clear, it isn’t always the answer, but we’ve been calling on deaf ears for as long as I can remember, and as I’ve heard from the Older Guard, its been twice as long as that at least.
Well, and as I’m trying to make clear, being non-violent doesn’t make you not a target. The US government was busy trying to target the most non-violent group that exists in the US as terrorists. Violence is so antithetical to their religion they cannot be drafted into the US military, due to freedom of religion. The real name of their religion isn’t Quakers it’s “The Religious Society of Friends.”
The more non-violent you are, the more likely these freaks are willing to view you as easy to take down and remove from the conversation.
It’s just like… the first Gay Pride demonstration was literally a riot.
Like I said in another thread too, every state (as in nation, not US states), uses violence as an answer all the time. Police violence against criminals or protesters, military violence against other states, death penalties against those deemed too dangerous to live, prisons in general. So what is it about state sanctioned violence that is considered moral by most people who would also decry individual violence as immoral? Even Brian Thompson oversaw an increase in claim denials from ~10% to ~30%. How many people did that kill, or torture, or cause suffering? Obviously a lot of people have already talked about social murder, but again, why is social murder more justified? Just because it’s legal and allowed by the state?
Laws aren’t some inherent measure of morality, and states don’t have some inherent sense of justice that is superior to that of their people. Just look at slavery, it was fully legal and rescuing slaves was a crime. That didn’t make it moral, or the abolitionists who ran the underground railroad immoral. Or look at prohibition, or the current version we have with the war on drugs. What makes someone indulging in a vice like weed, or mushrooms, or honestly even something more addictive like cocaine be guilty of a crime, when someone indulging in alcohol, or cigarettes, or caffeine, or sugar isn’t? And what makes someone doing that on their own, assuming they don’t harm others because of it, worse in the eyes of the law than someone who gambles?
In order to see the imbalance of power and violence, you only need to look at the recourse each party has for violence by the other. Look at what happened when an individual committed violence against UHC by killing the CEO. There was a national manhunt, tens of thousands of dollars offered in rewards for finding them, and once a suspect was arrested they were humiliated by the police, put in jail to be held until trial, and are likely facing life in prison if they are convicted. None of that would happen to any of those responsible for a wrongful death due to an illegally denied claim. In that case, in order to get recourse, the family would need to sue the company, which takes a crazy amount of time, money, and effort. And if by the end of it they win, what punishment would UHC face? The CEO wouldn’t be given jail time for murder or manslaughter. The company wouldn’t be broken up or shut down. At most you’d get some money, and they’d maybe have to pay a fine to the government. During the lawsuit the CEO and board would be free to continue business as normal, killing or hurting who knows how many people while doing so.
So obviously the government, corporations, politicians, and billionaires will denounce this as a “tragedy”, a “horrible act of violence”. Those celebrating in it are “advocating violence” or simply the minority, existing in “dark corners of the internet”. Because admitting that violence is an acceptable strategy means they’d accept it turned upon them, instead of being the sole group allowed to use it as they see fit.
This isn’t necessarily me advocating for violence either, as I think in general neither one should be accepted, no matter if it’s done by an individual or a state. But the legality of that violence is also not what should determine its morality, and there are exceptions to every rule. Personally I consider myself a pacifist. I’m vegan, I would go to jail before being drafted because I would never want to serve in a war, and obviously like most people I would always prefer a non violent answer to a conflict if possible. But things don’t always work out that way, and it’s nonsensical that anyone would consider Brian Thompson, or any other CEO of a major company, better or more morally acceptable than the one who killed him. State approved violence, legal violence, is not and should not be seen as any more acceptable or moral.
The Daniel Penny verdict couldn’t have come at a better time to show all this to be true.
Kill a CEO? You’re a horrific monster!
Kill a homeless person broken by the system we live in? You’re just protecting yourself!
The best part it does not matter how you feel about Penny… media coverage is what really exposes the hypocrisy.
Yeah. And how is it that corporations, or big businesses in general, have elevated themselves to an almost holy status? Why is it murder when Blackrock kills 17 civilians in Iraq (Nisour Square), but not when an insurance company denies an operation that a doctor who’s at the top of their field says could save your life? And the hospital helpfully tells you it will cost over a million dollars. For all the non-Americans, that’s not an exaggeration.
And even with Blackwater, it was only the individual employees who got convicted. The company just kept going under a different name. And the employees got pardoned later.
Is true.
That is why so soooo many headlines everywhere are preaching how this should have been done through voting & protests or whatever.
Iirc majority of Murikans want public healthcare for at least two decades now, yet nothing has changed (except living generations).
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
But taxes!!!
Said anyone who doesn’t know that minus $600/month that only covers the basics plus $300? in taxes that covers a lot more is a net savings.
Lol, “voting”.
What’s that old JFK quote? Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable?
The state draws its legitimacy from the social contract. When people no longer feel like the social contract is beneficial to them or to society - ie as one might feel with a healthcare system that is 100+ years out of date and has received one (1) bandaid for normal folk in the past 50 years - the state can no longer expect individuals to uphold their end of the social contract (adherence to laws, norms, and peaceable conduct).
This doesn’t mean “the overthrow of the government is coming tomorrow”, but rather means that the social contract is beginning to fray, and a failure of those in power to recognize and accede to that fact (by making major concessions) will result in this sort of incident continually intensifying until… well, until the social contract is gone to a large swathe of people, and then at that point, the overthrow of the government will be imminent, for better or worse.
All interactions between state and citizen are implicitly negotiated. Negotiations require leverage. Violence has always been a form of leverage. But assassinations are far more powerful leverage than riots.
Even if you want a peaceful protest, the state security apparatus will turn into a riot when they need to discredit the protester, ie Floyd Protests is recent example.
Then older people start pearl clutching over “black youth” “looting” a corporate location! The horror!
Liberals will bring some generic race arguments etc
Now we got a proper circle jerk and discussion about police brutality is third order of operation.
its afraid.jpeg because we have not seen such class unity in modern history.
Good.
This last election made me into an anarchist for now. I do not believe there is any way to salvage this system we have in any meaningful way. I’m not a violent person so I can’t see myself doing anything like Luigi, but Democrats aren’t going to save anyone and are just one part of the problem.
I think Donald could be the death blow to our country as more and more of our social contract is upended, especially with talks of killing the ACA and other popular programs.
I don’t think John F Kennedy said that.
Receipts! 🧾
“we can shoot them?”
“yeah apparently you can just shoot them”
This is why peaceful protest is legal, it accomplishes nothing.
Then why do peaceful protestors get arrested and brutalised by cops all the time?
Target practice. Did you see the video where they shot the teenager standing still on a hill doing nothing? The shot him in the head with a rubber bullet, causing concussion and permanent damage. The officer high fives another officer right after.
The kid was literally just standing there doing nothing. A fucking child was used as target practice by adult civil servants.
Okay, that makes sense.
Easy targets.
Funsies.
There isnt a secret group of evil lizard people planning out society. The evil in our society comes from the ways our oppressive systems shape people.
Our culture and systems believe(or at least act like) it is perfectly fine for a police officer/rich person to do murder/social murder.
So many people base their morals on what is legal/what the state penalizes, meaning if a police officer’s or ceo’s actions result in the death of innocent people, it is perfectly okay because they never get in any real trouble. This normalization of violent/oppressive acts done by the state and the rich means that more police (and more rich people) are going to feel okay doing shitty things.
Only liberal protesters get harassed. If you have a gun, they hand you a bottle of water.
Gandhi disagrees
(Unless he’s playing Civ)
FYI, the supposed “Nuclear Gandhi” bug is not a real thing:
One of the funniest programing bugs ever. Gandhi’s code was meant to be the least aggressive AI in the game, but if something made Ghandi become even less aggressive it could overflow backwards and set his aggressiveness to max. This creating a Gandhi that wanted to always be at war.
This is a myth, no such bug ever existed. There’s a whole Wikipedia page about it:
Thats not true. As much as I see the need for violent protest sometimes, peaceful protest can change things. See the fall of the berlin wall.
Yes, but also no. The GDR and the Soviet Union who supported it and supplied it were both almost bankrupt and economically broken. Infrastructure was falling apart because the state couldn’t afford to fix it.
The potests sure helped, but the government of the GDR was also in a state where it would accept the demands as a way out. The protests probably did accelerate the downfall a bit, but it would have happened either way.
Similar protests years before were leading nowhere.
Nonviolent action has accomplished many things, it is just that nowdays the ruling class is mostly desensitized to protest. If you want to change society through nonviolent action, your action needs to convince others to support you. You need to convice the ruling class and all who help them to give in to your demands.
Modern day peaceful protests do nothing because they dont have any credibility. The rich rightfully believe that they can ignore you and nothing else will happen. Nonviolent protests are just one way to send a message, and I think the most important thing that this ceo killing has done for us is that it sent a message.
deleted by creator
I was just recently informed of a podcast called “blowback” the other day on Lemmy and their first season actually goes into Iraq and the lead up to it. It’s a very good podcast for anyone interested in the topic of American intervention in other countries. Very well produced for the subject matter.
Long story short there was nothing that was going to stop us from going after Iraq. “We” wanted that for a long time and it’s not just a simple “cuz oil” thing.
They need to make it easier to find their podcast on their website, instead of dumping everyone into the Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts pipeline…
https://blowback.show/BLOWBACK
There’s a playlist of the episodes near the bottom of this page.
Reminds me of the graphic novel “The Bush Junta.”
Episode Zero with H. Jon Benjamin as Saddam Hussein is pretty gold.
I think their assessment that the history of the Iraq War is important to understand our current place in history is absolutely correct. Especially not prosecuting war criminals and how that lead to not prosecuting Trump.
They’re blaming the USA for making the USSR arm nukes in Cuba and invade the Gulf of Mexico? Fucking tankies, smh.
I mean the US has been consistently aggressive against Cuba, and while I hate the idea of mutually assured destruction, when it was the accepted strategy to get a country to stop fucking with you, it makes sense that Cuba would want the ability to threaten that against the US unless it stopped trying to overthrow their government. Plus the US literally just armed 2 countries near the USSR, so it’s not like it was an unreasonable escalation by the USSR or anything, the US kinda did it first lol.
both sides irresponsibly escalated the conflict in the name of imperialism.
Oh yeah 100%, I don’t place the blame solely on the US or the USSR, it’s on both. I don’t like any state, US and USSR included, and imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist states. The USSR is way too demonized in the US education system though, it gets treated as some ultimate evil of history, only responsible for bad things, when it wasn’t really doing anything the US wasn’t also doing.
Yeah, the US education can be very chauvinist. It definitely was in the part of the US where I grew up.
Listened to the first season a while back, I genuinely had one (1) note/dispute, for a series spanning nearly 11 hours on the Iraq invasion. They brought receipts, sources, archived media snippets, and a lot of context that mainstream media still glosses over with 9/11 remembrance justifications.
Very listenable, add it to your queue if you remotely enjoy geopolitics
And the gun was 3d printed. They will not stop at making 3d printing illegal.
honestly if you can 3d print something you can make something almost as strong out of wood, it just takes more effort
one could also easily make a disposable mold for a low-melting-point metal alloy, those are much stronger than 3d prints and many can be melted on a normal stove
I think the problem is more that information on how to make guns is now easily available, rather than the specific usefulness of 3d printing as a manufacturing technique
Shinzo Abe was assassinated.with a doohickey made out of a wood board and metal conduit pipes wrapped up in electrical tape
deleted by creator
Note that the people who got into these wars are still running the country. They have political support from the older people and their base is boomers, esp more affluent. This is not a left/right issue, war happened because the system as whole willed it.
Owners gotten wealthier since then every critical industry now is operated by an oligopoly protected by the US law and regulatory regimes catered specifically to their needs.
Health insurance industry is merely top of iceberg, this is something every person who works for money has to endure at some point in their lives. If you have not seen it in work, your family did.
Since COVID they improved algos and assaulted us across all sectors via this new found pricing power along with FUD related to COVID.
“largest worldwide non-violent protests in history”? I remember living through that time and don’t remember that. Do you have a source? I myself was opposed the second Iraq war because Saddam had agreed to let in any inspectors the west wanted but we went “too late, we’re coming in anyway” and I knew it was a scam invasion.
We were also just a couple of years into Afghanistan and it made no sense to be starting a second war on a second front when there was no immanent danger. Again, it made to sense.
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
Specific news articles about that day:
From Guinness World Records:
On February 15, 2003, anti-war rallies took place across the globe – the largest occurring in Rome, Italy, where a crowd of 3 million gathered to protest against the USA’s threat to invade Iraq. Police figures report that millions more demonstrated in nearly 600 cities worldwide: on the same day, 1.3 million rallied in Barcelona, Spain, 1 million participated in a peace march through the streets of London, UK, and 500,00 people in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, joined the biggest marches since the Vietnam War peace protests.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100326221254/http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6067
The French political scientist Dominique Reynié has estimated that, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, some 36 million people took part in nearly 3,000 protests around the world against the Iraq war.
(It’s worth noting here that I have been unable to find Dominique Reynié’s paper that estimates this. I have searched and searched for a PDF with no luck. Lots of references to this work, but can’t seem to find the actual document.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190921125652/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2765215.stm
Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in up to 60 countries over the weekend - the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.
A key aspect of what made it so big was because it was happening worldwide, simultaneously, in multiple cities all over the world.
I was a bit skeptical as well, but there’s at least one seemingly reputable academic researcher who says as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests (first citation).
So even if it wasn’t, one could easily be forgiven for the mistake.Goes to show how effective non-violent protest is.
American problems require American solutions
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism that made people support whatever the president wanted to do in the middle east.
It was also preceded by a violent act of terrorism
Its so easy for people to forget the decades of violent acts committed in and around the Saudi Peninsula, and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests. The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles. The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state. The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people. The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century. The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.
9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.
To quote Mark Twain:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Let them cook.
Jesus fucking Christ. Utterly unhinged.
Old underpantsweevil’s hinges are certainly quite wobbly, but in this particular comment they’re simply providing some historical context for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t know how fair it is to describe the NA regime as brutal, relative to Afghanistan’s current and former governments, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.
They’ve stopped short of claiming that the attacks were justified, and the assertions made are broadly true. What in particular do you find objectionable, if I may ask?
and fixate instead on a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.
Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’
The Battle of Mogadeshu, which involved Black Hawk helicopters obliterating Somali mosques with hellfire missiles.
Not even vaguely what fucking happened.
The brutal occupation of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, from 1992 to 2001 as a US-backed narco-state.
Fucking all of this.
The entire Iran-Iraq War, sponsored by US arms dealers and double-dealing diplomats, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Persian young people.
That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.
The occupation of Saudi Arabia by a western-backed military dictatorship going back nearly a century.
Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.
The violent overthrow of democracies from Indonesia to Egypt in pursuit of neoliberal international trade policy.
We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.
9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum any more than the Brian Thompson assassination or the aborted coup in South Korea. These have long historical tails that trace back to a geopolitical policy that’s racked up a staggering death toll.
'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.
Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.
Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’
The language is provocative, but factually accurate.
Not even vaguely what fucking happened.
Yeah, it seemed plausible, but I couldn’t find any evidence at all that this took place. Fair enough.
Fucking all of this.
Yeah, it’s some real tanky-tonk incendiary language. And the timeline’s all wrong. The US-backed regime started in 2001, and lasted until 2021. Seems like they just grabbed the first couple of years from the wikipedia article.
That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.
It does appear that the current historical consensus is that the Carter administration did not give Saddam the proverbial green light for the invasion. However, there are more than enough contemporaneous claims to the contrary to convince anyone who’d rather believe that they did.
Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.
I mean, fuck the house of saud. And the US does share responsibility for all their depredations, just as it shares fucking bibi’s.
We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.
Yeah, the CIA may have helped coordinate the 1952 coup against the Egyptian monarchy, but doesn’t appear to have precipitated the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak. Happily, this gets me out of diving into whether or not Mubarak’s government could plausibly be called a democracy. Plenty of truth there, otherwise; a misstep, as you say.
'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.
Yeah, the French Revolution parallel is a real stretch.
Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.
Oh, of course I do. I just have really low expectations when it comes to the veracity of claims made by lemmy tankies in general, inclusive of underpantsweevil. I don’t disagree with you—I was just mildly surprised to see your response, given the average factual content of any of their posts.
Thank you for taking the time to respond! I hadn’t read about some of this stuff for a while, and wouldn’t have otherwise. Best of luck to you.
Oh yeah because I forgot they totally proved Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were secretly the same person.
Iraq had zero to do with that terror attack but was used as a pretext for war based on the lie that the two were connected somehow.
Very large* act of violent terrorism.
Just want to plug the movie and book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Also the book Rattling the Cages.
I remember huge student protests for weeks on end. Then, over spring break when all the students were off elsewhere - the bombs began to drop.
As someone that was at the protest, at no point did I think it would result in the war stopping. It was still worthwhile, however. In retrospect, the war was so much worse than any of us knew at the time and also based on flimsy and/or no evidence of WMD. Business as usual in America. We’d do it all over again today, I have no doubt.
They knew there weren’t WMDs and used the fear of 9/11 attacks to push the war. They had OpEd pieces published to further push the idea of WMDs.
IIRC, Biden championed that, right?
No, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and a bunch of others in the administration championed it. Biden et al supported it. Subtle.
Congress basically believed what they were told by the warmongers.
Barbara Lee did NOT support it
Huh, I thought he was critical in making the case. I’m no political historian tho.
I would say it laid the ground work for OccupyWallstreet, which laid the ground work for modern progressive movement.
What change was accomplished by OccupyWallstreet?
They were angry about economic inequality – it’s worse today than in 2011.
They wanted an end to corporate personhood – still totally cookin’ in 2024 with no end in sight
More regulation of the financial sector – we are more deregulated than ever today
I had to admire their aims, but as a movement it was profoundly ineffective…
I think it absolutely laid down the base for the modern progressive movement - mistakenly believing protests do anything on their own
Occupy was huge, it was global and persisted for a long time, but it didn’t have any teeth - people just stopped paying attention and eventually police cleared people out
No one (rich) was losing money, no one (rich) felt threatened or inconvenienced in any way. They made their feelings known… But most people had no idea why or what they wanted, and politicians don’t actually care what you want. They didn’t even organize enough to be a voting block or clearly communicate their message
No, not today, but give it a couple of years.
“Two more weeks”
I wish there was a prediction market about this outcome, as I would gladly bet against it. I don’t see America suddenly growing a spine. As long as there is (fast) food available and the electricity and football games are flowing, 99.999% aren’t picking up that pistol.
I called for a massive peaceful protest that, occasionally, takes a shot.
Yeah, the point of a peaceful protest is meant as a neutral option, just to show that a large group exists who has some demand, and if the demand is not met it will escalate, either via disruption to the economy with strikes or disruption to society with violence. It shouldn’t be blamed on protesters if it ends up escalating that way, because the protest was meant as the warning. Most people wouldn’t blame a country that has repeatedly warned a neighbor to stop annexing it’s land for fighting a war with them. If the country never went farther than warnings then they would all be empty threats. Somehow protests are thought of differently though, and if one turns violent it’s blamed on the protesters and not the government for basically completely ignoring every protest movement in recent memory.
There’s two episodes in the podcast Cool People who did Cool Things that talks about basically that in regards to the violent wing of the nonviolent civil rights movement. You need both.
A massive peaceful march from home to home of owner-class individuals. With a little occasional shots, as a treat?
Heavily armed and peaceful
Ftfy
Yes.
Otherwise the unarmed get shot by the police.
