Is America burning? (Black Lives Matter protests, civil unrest and riots 2020)

[DotCommunist]

Remember when we tried to add up the number of people killed by capitalism and just had to stop counting after a bit?

The megadeaths of Liberalism

People are very fond of bandying around the millions that were killed by the famines in Maoist China or Stalins Ukraine, but liberalism usually gets let off the hook. A quick tally of how many millions killed by liberal regimes in the last 100 years or so would include the 5 million, iirc...

www.urban75.net

 

[8ball]

The megadeaths of Liberalism

People are very fond of bandying around the millions that were killed by the famines in Maoist China or Stalins Ukraine, but liberalism usually gets let off the hook. A quick tally of how many millions killed by liberal regimes in the last 100 years or so would include the 5 million, iirc...

www.urban75.net

I don't think it was that one. We've probably had a few goes at it over the years.

 

[TomUS]

What's the solution to oppression, inherently racist institutions and inequality, then, Tom?

Leafleting campaigns?

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war. Elections have had positive results. FDR was elected and did a lot of good. Johnson was elected and (except for Vietnam) did a lot of good. What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people. You seriously think smashing thing up, looting and arson are some sort of solution? I think these tactics backfire and only give talking points to the right. I'm going to wander around downtown Portland in a couple days and survey the damage up close again. I'm sure you'll be anxious to hear my impressions.

 

[VfromtheG]

I think the system responsible for the highest mass murder body count is communism.

TomUs... do you realise that the US has been brutally dominating the face of the planet since world war 2 ?
This has included amongst other things ... destabilising any rising democratic state which shows it up by being more democratic than it , funding brutal tyrants , privatizing the water that falls from the sky, keeping slavery and eugenics alive , putting kids in cages, using weaponised propaganda to swing elections, moving us all towards nuclear/environmental catastrophe... any of this... ? Are you aware of any of this ?

 

[hitmouse]

And attacking a federal courthouse will help stop a pipeline?

My short answer to that question would be yes.
My longer answer to that question would be that if I was on an EPA planning permission committee, or whatever body is in charge of issuing permits for infrastructure projects, I reckon I would do some sort of cost-benefit analysis to decide whether the disadvantages of a given project would outweigh the advantages of giving permission. And if I knew that "a bunch of people will riot and attack a courthouse" seemed like a likely consequence of a specific project, I think I would put that in the "negatives" column, rather than under "positives" or "neutral". So yes, then.

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war.

Ah yes, the famous pacifist tactics of the Viet Cong, true role models for nonviolence.

 

[VfromtheG]

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war. Elections have had positive results. FDR was elected and did a lot of good. Johnson was elected and (except for Vietnam) did a lot of good. What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people. You seriously think smashing thing up, looting and arson are some sort of solution? I think these tactics backfire and only give talking points to the right. I'm going to wander around downtown Portland in a couple days and survey the damage up close again. I'm sure you'll be anxious to hear my impressions.

Was the Apple store ok ? ! ?

 

[Pickman's model]

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war. Elections have had positive results. FDR was elected and did a lot of good. Johnson was elected and (except for Vietnam) did a lot of good. What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people. You seriously think smashing thing up, looting and arson are some sort of solution? I think these tactics backfire and only give talking points to the right. I'm going to wander around downtown Portland in a couple days and survey the damage up close again. I'm sure you'll be anxious to hear my impressions.

I have never seen a fart written down before. It's like the Vietnamese didn't have any part to play in the defeat of the United States. You love mindless violence when it's done by the state, violence to which even the most assiduous looter or arsonist can only aspire in vain. What's shooting kids in the back but mindless violence or beating women to death in cells? The only impression of yours I care to read about would be the dents you made in the front of a speeding cop car

 

[TomUS]

TomUs... do you realise that the US has been brutally dominating the face of the planet since world war 2 ?
This has included amongst other things ... destabilising any rising democratic state which shows it up by being more democratic than it , funding brutal tyrants , privatizing the water that falls from the sky, keeping slavery and eugenics alive , putting kids in cages, using weaponised propaganda to swing elections, moving us all towards nuclear/environmental catastrophe... any of this... ? Are you aware of any of this ?

I'm aware of all of it. And of course the British and other European countries dominated the planet before that and did quite a bit of damage to those they colonized. In fact, it was the British empire that gave birth to the American empire.

 

[VfromtheG]

So what do you recommend people can do to change this ?

Or do you think this is all just fine and dandy ?

 

[NoXion]

The Black Book blames the deaths of the Nazis invading Russia during WWII on "Communism". It's a propaganda piece that not even bourgeois historians take seriously.

 

[TomUS]

My short answer to that question would be yes.
My longer answer to that question would be that if I was on an EPA planning permission committee, or whatever body is in charge of issuing permits for infrastructure projects, I reckon I would do some sort of cost-benefit analysis to decide whether the disadvantages of a given project would outweigh the advantages of giving permission. And if I knew that "a bunch of people will riot and attack a courthouse" seemed like a likely consequence of a specific project, I think I would put that in the "negatives" column, rather than under "positives" or "neutral". So yes, then.

Ah yes, the famous pacifist tactics of the Viet Cong, true role models for nonviolence.

Well yes, the Vietnamese defeat of America had quite a lot to do with ending the Vietnam war. But I wouldn't discount the protests.

 

[krtek a houby]

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war. Elections have had positive results. FDR was elected and did a lot of good. Johnson was elected and (except for Vietnam) did a lot of good. What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people. You seriously think smashing thing up, looting and arson are some sort of solution? I think these tactics backfire and only give talking points to the right. I'm going to wander around downtown Portland in a couple days and survey the damage up close again. I'm sure you'll be anxious to hear my impressions.

Already anxious reading your impressions.

 

[Pickman's model]

Already anxious reading your impressions.

Yes, with the constant thought in one's mind 'will this stream of diarrhoea never cease?'

 

[TomUS]

So what do you recommend people can do to change this ?

Or do you think this is all just fine and dandy ?

I think I've already answered that question. And, no I don't think it's fine and dandy.

 

[VfromtheG]

You did not awnser the question .

 

[hitmouse]

Well yes, the Vietnamese defeat of America had quite a lot to do with ending the Vietnam war. But I wouldn't discount the protests.

No, I wouldn't either, but I think it's historical revisionism to pretend that anti-Vietnam protests all fit into a nice pacifist/non-violent framework either. Leaving aside the actions of GIs in Vietnam, the Columbia Eagle and so on, I think that if we were on this board having this same conversation during Vietnam, you'd be complaining about how terrible the DNC protests in Chicago were and how they were discrediting the movement, the same way that everyone can agree the civil rights movement was grand in retrospect, but if they'd been around at the time a lot of people would be complaining about how terrible Watts, Newark, Detroit, etc, were.

 

[VfromtheG]

Stating that bullshit makes you a #!$% TomUS.

 

[Pickman's model]

No, I wouldn't either, but I think it's historical revisionism to pretend that anti-Vietnam protests all fit into a nice pacifist/non-violent framework either. Leaving aside the actions of GIs in Vietnam, the Columbia Eagle and so on, I think that if we were on this board having this same conversation during Vietnam, you'd be complaining about how terrible the DNC protests in Chicago were and how they were discrediting the movement, the same way that everyone can agree the civil rights movement was grand in retrospect, but if they'd been around at the time a lot of people would be complaining about how terrible Watts, Newark, Detroit, etc, were.

He'd be urging Johnson and later Nixon to sic the army on hippies

 

[TomUS]

My short answer to that question would be yes.
My longer answer to that question would be that if I was on an EPA planning permission committee, or whatever body is in charge of issuing permits for infrastructure projects, I reckon I would do some sort of cost-benefit analysis to decide whether the disadvantages of a given project would outweigh the advantages of giving permission. And if I knew that "a bunch of people will riot and attack a courthouse" seemed like a likely consequence of a specific project, I think I would put that in the "negatives" column, rather than under "positives" or "neutral". So yes, then.

Ah yes, the famous pacifist tactics of the Viet Cong, true role models for nonviolence.

I really doubt those planning pipelines care much about potrntial attacks on courthouses by anarchists.

 

[hitmouse]

I really doubt those planning pipelines care much about potrntial attacks on courthouses by anarchists.

I don't think the oil companies care much about anything, no - Enbridge have shown they don't care much about the safety and reliability of their own pipelines, so expecting them to care about anything else is a bit of a stretch. But I think the state, as the body with the power to approve or deny permission for such projects, does have a number of priorities to balance, and preserving public order/preventing disorder is one of those priorities. You can't really have it both ways here - either the rowdiness and destruction in Portland is significant, in which case it's reasonable to suggest that the state might care about it and take it into account when making such decisions, or else it isn't, in which case bringing it up on this thread was a bit of a waste of time in the first place.

 

[existentialist]

Was the Apple store ok ? ! ?

#jesuismagasindupomme

(that's French, TomUS, or as you might know it, "cheese-eating surrender monkey speak")

 

[hitmouse]

I find myself thinking about this, for some reason: Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]

 

[redsquirrel]

What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people.

As opposed to the (attempted) military coup you supported - I guess that was mindful violence.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

According to The Black Book Of Communism, 94 million since the Bolshevik revolution. Have any opinion on this book?

The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I've heard the numbers in that book have been inflated (wether that's true or not I don't know for sure) and I'm not saying that state 'communism' wasn't very repressive and that it didn't kill many people. However . . .

Every year 8 million people die globally from a lack of clean water, 7.6 million die from hunger, 3 million die from curable diseases and 5 million die of malaria.

That's over 20 million people each year that die, not because their deaths are not preventable (they are), but because keeping these people alive is not 'profitable' under capitalism.

So capitalism kills atleast 20 million people per year globally. That's atleast 100 million deaths in just 5 years! So you can see how capitalism has killed way more people than authoritarian communism (which is infact a type of state capitalist dictatorship in practice).

Also in 2016, 15.6 million children under the age of five died, thats 15,000 a day (76.5% of them in Africa).

3.1 million children die from under-nutrition per year (hunger and under-nutrition contribute to half of all child deaths globally). Under-nutrition causes children to be more vulnerable from illness and can exacerbate diseases.

66 million primary school age children attend classes hungry around the developing world (23 million of whom are in Africa). Going to school hungry obviously affects their ability to learn.



These figures are from a number of organisations such as UNICEF, the WHO, The World Food Programme, Poverty.com and UN Water.

Mmm, I wonder why some people such as anarchists are pissed off at capitalism? (and I haven't even mentioned the global environmental harm caused by this evil system and it's demand for ever more year-on-year profit making)

 

[VfromtheG]

I really doubt those planning pipelines care much about potrntial attacks on courthouses by anarchists.

You may doubt it but they really do, and you would be very surprised, I am sure, to know the amount of resources they spend infiltrating and destroying anarchist organisations .

 

[8ball]

As opposed to the (attempted) military coup you supported - I guess that was mindful violence.

Bloody buddhists! I knew it was them!

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Mass mostly peaceful protests helped end the Vietnam war.

So it had nothing to do with mass mutinities and anti-officer sabotage and rebellions by American GI's? Somehow I think you might be wrong.

GI resistance in the Vietnam war

History of the widespread mutiny of US troops in Vietnam that brought the world's most powerful military machine to its knees. The GI anti-war movement within the army was one of the decisive factors in ending the war.

libcom.org

 

[krtek a houby]

I'm aware of all of it. And of course the British and other European countries dominated the planet before that and did quite a bit of damage to those they colonized. In fact, it was the British empire that gave birth to the American empire.

And what advice would you have given to the brutalized back then?

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm aware of all of it. And of course the British and other European countries dominated the planet before that and did quite a bit of damage to those they colonized. In fact, it was the British empire that gave birth to the American empire.

Nothing to do with the louisiana purchase, the war with Mexico for Texas and New Mexico, the war with Spain in 1898, the purchase of Alaska etc. Take responsibility you sorry sack of shit

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Johnson was elected and (except for Vietnam) did a lot of good.

...

What I object to is mindless violence that helps nobody and harms ordinary people.

You object to mindless violence (such as Vietnam) but the perpetrators (such as Johnson) get a free pass, as long as they do "a lot of good".

So you can forgive a bit of Apple Store shithousery as long as the perpetrators do "a lot of good". Such as shining a light on systemic racism & inequality, right?