Play Nice Random Chat Thread IV

[Snake_Baker]

The spoiler tag was due to the length of the post and those that didn’t want to read a lengthy post; as if that was the actual reason.

So let me get this right. I am a racist for supposedly ‘siding’ with the police and disagreeing about the scale of racism? Surely you, firstly, realise how nutty that is and, secondly, that my arguments on this subject are a hell of a lot more nuanced than ‘siding with the enemy’. Imagine being called a racist for wanting to defend the police members that aren’t total garbage, whilst still identifying significant policie training and retention issues that lead to unnecessary loss of life.

I hated what happened to Floyd, that poor Australian girl killed by a black cop a few years back, David Dorn, other police deaths and injuries, the murder rates, the despondent suicides, the political extremes wielding their power and all those who suffered during these events. It is called trying to ensure that the basic human rights for every individual, regardless of their background, are at least highlighted and, therefore, being morally consistent in ensuring that every individual life matters.

Why should I waste my time writing a detailed answer to someone who calls me a racist for having the nerve to disagree with your narrow worldview. Not to mention, you have clearly mentioned several times now that you don’t care about my evidence, despite my posts almost always containing a mixed methodological approach.

I am simply just done with you, and anyone else, that agrees with an assessment that has unfairly and completely shitted on my character.

Don’t bother responding, I am done with you and this infernal thread.

If you leave, then "cancel culture" wins again.

Please rethink this K4E.

 

[Val Keating]

If you leave, then "cancel culture" wins again.

Please rethink this K4E.

If we keep talking about military history he won’t be able to resist

 

[Snake_Baker]

If we keep talking about military history he won’t be able to resist

It's hard enough finding people with enough character to speak up against the bullshit in the first place.

 

[Val Keating]

It's hard enough finding people with enough character to speak up against the bullshit in the first place.

Not referring to K4E but to me it feels like there’s more people with a voice then ever.

 

[Royal Flush]

Colonial beer , now coon cheese.

Cancel culture

Push for Coon cheese to be renamed to not offend Aboriginal people

The cheese made by the Warrnambool Cheese and Dairy Company in Victoria is named after its American creator Edward William Coon, who patented the ripening process behind the brand.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[Tas]

"How do you navigate conversations with people when the default assumption is that you’re a racist? What do you do when calmly and sincerely stating that you are not a racist is taken as evidence of your guilt of racism?

‘Anti-racism’ comes directly from the academic scholarship of Critical Race Theory. In Critical Race Theory, ‘racism’ means ‘systemic racism’, which is said to be ‘the ordinary state of affairs’ in the United States. Systemic racism is believed to be the explanation for every disparity in outcomes in which some minority groups, especially blacks, have worse outcomes than whites (or Jews and Asians)."

What anti-racism really means and how to talk about it

Ask people if they can conceive of any better way to address racism than through this definition of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘white fragility’

spectator.us

 

[Royal Flush]

"How do you navigate conversations with people when the default assumption is that you’re a racist? What do you do when calmly and sincerely stating that you are not a racist is taken as evidence of your guilt of racism?

‘Anti-racism’ comes directly from the academic scholarship of Critical Race Theory. In Critical Race Theory, ‘racism’ means ‘systemic racism’, which is said to be ‘the ordinary state of affairs’ in the United States. Systemic racism is believed to be the explanation for every disparity in outcomes in which some minority groups, especially blacks, have worse outcomes than whites (or Jews and Asians)."

What anti-racism really means and how to talk about it

Ask people if they can conceive of any better way to address racism than through this definition of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘white fragility’

spectator.us

I can understand why.
If you invested $ 50k and your time in a Bachelor of arts degree you too would defend what you studied.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[Tarka_Dal]

Surely this is the nadir:

Former Greens MP on why Victoria, Queensland should consider changing names

 

[LuvtheKangas]

Surely this is the nadir:

Former Greens MP on why Victoria, Queensland should consider changing names

You would hope that's the nadir, but I suspect we'll be further disappointed.

 

[Tas]

I can understand why.
If you invested $ 50k and your time in a Bachelor of arts degree you too would defend what you studied.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

I think it is more that critical thinking isn't promoted in higher education as much as it used to be. I try not to get too emo about people who respond badly to my posts, I think their heart is in the right place but I've run into a few on this thread who see the evidence I presented in terms of data and just flat out refused to accept it. It reminds me of the memes during SpaceX recent launch to put astronauts on the space station making fun at Flat Earthers where they show the curvature of the planet as it reaches higher orbit. The "feeling" is that the government run NASA created fake evidence, but now a corporation flying to the international space station is showing the Earth isn't flat. Flat Earthers still exist, still do not accept the evidence.

It is no different to religion or even having unrealistic faith in your football club's youth. We are all victims of bias, I am a bit Flat Earthy when it came to Kieran Harper, but hell, he can win awards for playing in the Amateur grade, so I have a healthy scepticism of his "road accident" ankle problems.

The danger is when you get caught in a bubble that bounce around bad ideas and nobody questions them, when peer review deteriorates into group think. The humanities is at the forefront of the problem and it has been bleeding into other areas, those who have been speaking against the culture war or culture crisis have had an uphill battle in highlighting the flaws of coming up with a conclusion then building your doctrine around supporting that conclusion.

There is a really good conversation here between Matthew Thornton and Ali Rizvi here https://letter.wiki/conversation/766

It goes to show data isn't everything, a lot depends on how you choose to analyse it and I think it is important to be open to question what it is you believe and how you interpret the data. I think Ali is on point particularly with this quote:

This is a key distinction — and it's at the heart of what systemic racism really means. It's not just about shootings. It's not just about police brutality, either. It's about accountability. It's about justice. It's about those in power getting away with bad things that those without power wouldn't. To paraphrase Stokely Carmichael, “If you want to lynch me, that’s your problem. If you have the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. It’s not a question of attitude. It’s a question of power.”

This is about the fact that the vast majority of police officers who shoot and kill are never convicted. This was true long before the #BlackLivesMatter movement. But most of us gave these officers the benefit of the doubt. We assumed that those who pledge to serve and protect us were doing exactly that.

But something changed with Rodney King: the brutality was recorded on video and broadcast to the world. The very day the cops were acquitted, Tom Bradley, the city's mayor at the time, captured this new reality in his words: "The jury’s verdict will never blind the world to what we saw on the videotape."

I think there is a vastly different attitude here in Australia, it is almost impossible to get police officers indicted in the USA so if the attorney general doesn't want to prosecute, because it can be a career killer if it goes bad, the general public are reluctant to as well even in some horrific cases of police brutality.

I do believe that racial bias exists, both here and the USA, moreso in the USA and Ali articulates it much better than I could late in his response. It is like the stores that put products in their shop behind lock and key which are more likely to get stolen, or hurt them a lot more when they are stolen, in the USA a lot of products that are used more often by black people and are stolen a lot more than other products are put behind locked displays, this racially profiles, and it is out of necessity (to reduce thefts). Police will often profile to gravitate towards concentrations of crime and that does expose people to greater police presence, and more interaction with police.

However profiling isn't always based on logic. Here in Victoria we had Africans between 2006-2009 stopped by police 2.5 times more than white people even though they had lower crime rates, and the chief of police instigated Operation Molto in 2006 that targeted African youths. There are both explicit and implicit bias. I know it was the catalyst for significant change here, I am not sure how effective that change has been. I think it is important that we have healthy relationships with all the cultures. Melbourne is a very diverse city but we have seen how crazy people could get when it came to the "African youth gangs". I think always that open and honest discussion is the only way forward when there is a real intent to unify and bring the community together.

 

[DesertRoo]

while the worlds eyes are on the maddie investigation, it’s worth a look at Kentler Project.


The 'Kentler Project' in West Berlin routinely placed homeless children with pedophile men, assuming they'd make ideal foster parents. A study has found the practice went on for decades.
Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued.
A study conducted by the university of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance.
Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless.
Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind eye or even approved of the placements.

Several years ago two of the victims came forward and told their story, since then the researchers at Hildesheim University have plowed through files and conducted interviews.

What they found was a "network across educational institutions," the state youth welfare office and the Berlin Senate, in which pedophilia was "accepted, supported, defended."

Kentler himself was in regular contact with the children and their foster fathers. He was never prosecuted: By the time his victims came forward, the statute of limitations for his actions had expired. This has also thus far prevented the victims from getting any compensation.

The researchers found that several of the foster fathers were high-profile academics. They speak of a network that included high-ranking members of the Max Planck Institute, Berlin's Free University, and the notorious Odenwald School in Hesse, West Germany, which was at the center of a major pedophilia scandal several years ago. It has since been closed down.

Berlin's senator for youth and children, Sandra Scheeres called the findings "shocking and horrifying."

A first report on the "Kentler experiment" was published in 2016 by the University of Göttingen. The researchers then stated that the Berlin Senate seemed to lack interest in finding out the truth.

Now Berlin authorities have vowed to shed light on the matter.

Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles – DW – 06/15/2020

The 'Kentler Project' in West Berlin routinely placed homeless children with pedophile men, assuming they'd make ideal foster parents. A study has found the practice went on for decades.

m.dw.com

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

If we keep talking about military history he won’t be able to resist

If you leave, then "cancel culture" wins again.

Please rethink this K4E.

You are right, but I am still seething about it all.

 

[The acurate one]

Next up you guys should talk all things religion

 

[goalieboy82]

Surely this is the nadir:

Former Greens MP on why Victoria, Queensland should consider changing names

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

I think it is more that critical thinking isn't promoted in higher education as much as it used to be. I try not to get too emo about people who respond badly to my posts, I think their heart is in the right place but I've run into a few on this thread who see the evidence I presented in terms of data and just flat out refused to accept it. It reminds me of the memes during SpaceX recent launch to put astronauts on the space station making fun at Flat Earthers where they show the curvature of the planet as it reaches higher orbit. The "feeling" is that the government run NASA created fake evidence, but now a corporation flying to the international space station is showing the Earth isn't flat. Flat Earthers still exist, still do not accept the evidence.

It is no different to religion or even having unrealistic faith in your football club's youth. We are all victims of bias, I am a bit Flat Earthy when it came to Kieran Harper, but hell, he can win awards for playing in the Amateur grade, so I have a healthy scepticism of his "road accident" ankle problems.

The danger is when you get caught in a bubble that bounce around bad ideas and nobody questions them, when peer review deteriorates into group think. The humanities is at the forefront of the problem and it has been bleeding into other areas, those who have been speaking against the culture war or culture crisis have had an uphill battle in highlighting the flaws of coming up with a conclusion then building your doctrine around supporting that conclusion.

There is a really good conversation here between Matthew Thornton and Ali Rizvi here https://letter.wiki/conversation/766

It goes to show data isn't everything, a lot depends on how you choose to analyse it and I think it is important to be open to question what it is you believe and how you interpret the data. I think Ali is on point particularly with this quote:



I think there is a vastly different attitude here in Australia, it is almost impossible to get police officers indicted in the USA so if the attorney general doesn't want to prosecute, because it can be a career killer if it goes bad, the general public are reluctant to as well even in some horrific cases of police brutality.

I do believe that racial bias exists, both here and the USA, moreso in the USA and Ali articulates it much better than I could late in his response. It is like the stores that put products in their shop behind lock and key which are more likely to get stolen, or hurt them a lot more when they are stolen, in the USA a lot of products that are used more often by black people and are stolen a lot more than other products are put behind locked displays, this racially profiles, and it is out of necessity (to reduce thefts). Police will often profile to gravitate towards concentrations of crime and that does expose people to greater police presence, and more interaction with police.

However profiling isn't always based on logic. Here in Victoria we had Africans between 2006-2009 stopped by police 2.5 times more than white people even though they had lower crime rates, and the chief of police instigated Operation Molto in 2006 that targeted African youths. There are both explicit and implicit bias. I know it was the catalyst for significant change here, I am not sure how effective that change has been. I think it is important that we have healthy relationships with all the cultures. Melbourne is a very diverse city but we have seen how crazy people could get when it came to the "African youth gangs". I think always that open and honest discussion is the only way forward when there is a real intent to unify and bring the community together.

Love that letter wiki conversation. Proper discourse.

I agree that data isn't everything and different evidence can be interpreted very differently when combined with alternative evidence.

I would like to briefly touch on Ali's argument about the judicial system, enforcement, and punishment:
"This is about the fact that the vast majority of police officers who shoot and kill are never convicted. This was true long before the #blacklivesmatter movement. But most of us gave these officers the benefit of the doubt. We assumed that those who pledge to serve and protect us were doing exactly that."

He also focuses on data discrepancies between police records and the Washington Post, roughly a range of 74% for the Washington Post to 99% (FBI/Police) of justifiable shootings. Debates about statistic veracity aside for a moment, the evidence shows that the vast majority are never convicted because they are deemed justified by the relevant authorities, i.e. Criminal shot first and relatively clear-cut cases.

Onto the statistical variance, his questioning of police entering data is reliant on the unprovable assumption that most of them lack the integrity to enter the correct data due to police system generating purely racist outcomes. Whilst I agree with Ali that 99% from the FBI/Police sources is a bit high; the 74% that Ali relies on is also far too low. Ali argues that the 74% was in situations in which the criminals shot first and does not account for the variance of people reaching for their weapons or pointing a weapon at police officers before firing. This is where the conjecture over race and intent comes into, and it is vitally important to establish intent and gather all evidence to establish the facts. The statistics are not complete for either side of this argument, so again, conjecture is a problem.

For the court system, this is a commonly cited argument and I agree 100% on the difficulties involved in conviction. The standard of proof is where a lot of cases against police brutality falls down. Some call it racism, and sometimes it is malicious cops hiding evidence, but it often has to do with a lack of witnesses (situations are often late at night)(common factor), the closing of police ranks (more to do with police solidarity than the institutional racial outcomes that Ali argues) (debatable commonality), and the lack of bodycam footage. Bodycams are still not fully implemented throughout the police force, which is stupid. Live streaming bodycams to an independent vendor under control of the civilian government is the way to go. The court system has been in need for reform for years, but we could spend days on that issue.

I like your point about logical profiling and it often gets conflated with racial profiling. And I again agree that, sometimes, there is no logical basis for police over attention. I believe the statistic is 0.1% of the Australian population are of East African origins, but they commit 1.0% of crime. Whilst this overrepresentation explains some of the extra attention, the majority of it is extenuated by some in the media and politics stocking divisions through focusing on generating angry emotions about a government not being tough on crime. This subsequently results in an overreaction in attention and heavy-handed policing. I have read that reforms have been put in place in Victoria to help rectify the issues and I agree that racial profiling remains a problem at some levels.

Ali and Thornton are on another level to me on this subject though, so I am more than happy to keep reading their discourse.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Next up you guys should talk all things religion

One of the few topics we all largely agree upon, with varied perspectives of course.

 

[Sopwiths North]

The reality is, even if we had every police officer be indigenous, everyone in command be indigenous, every politician be indigenous people like you would claim there was still systemic racism in the police force because you are ideologically conditioned to accept it, regardless of the reality. No amount of data will make a spit of difference.

While we still have crimes, particularly crimes to the extent that occur currently in indigenous communities, there is going to be a significant interaction between the police and the community. This isn't just about people cruising around to abuse the indigenous, they are usually calling the police asking for help. For every criminal there are numerous more victims of criminals and in the indigenous community that means there are a lot of people who are victims who do not want to be and want help to prevent them from being killed or abused. We need to have a functional police force that can help them.

Most of our police forces have both Aboriginal Community Liaison Officers and Police Aboriginal Liaison Officers that are used to build solid foundations between the police and the communities. We go out of our way to keep Aboriginal youths out of jail, avoid criminal records, we have many programs between Police and Aboriginal Youths, like the boxing program in Redfern which is about repairing relationships between the community and Police.

I think here in Australia there is a genuine desire to have healthy and happy Indigenous communities and every instance of abuse is investigated, significantly more resources go towards it which highlights why incidents of abuse are much lower now than they for non-indigenous.

I just don't think you can transfer USA or Canadian guilt and dump it on Australia. Sure, we still have incidents of abuse, we still have poorer treatment in regional areas where they lack the resources but there is a genuine desire and action here to improve things. There is far less being done in terms of Aboriginal on Aboriginal care and progress than is made between Police and the public. There is way too much Indigenous on Indigenous crime and that is causing the Police to be involved. It is probability and statistics, every interaction is another percentile chance of an encounter going wrong, no matter how cautious you are, even if the incident rates are much lower than they between Police and non-indigenous, people only need one bad case to wheel out the systemic racism trope. It is systemic if the data say it is. It is a value, a fact, not a feeling.



That person should never have been shot at, the whole incident is disgusting. There are so many bad cases in the USA where police do not treat people as human beings. They should approached this guy looking to help him, it wouldn't have killed them to have one officer take his keys, drive him home with the other following in the car, have a chat to him about drinking, try and get him into an AA program. Instead he is dead, tragic waste of life, the police there aren't trained to help the community, they are just there to enforce laws, with a heavy hand.



I thought Ferball said he wasn't indigenous. Apologies if I confused him for someone else.



I am curious, where is this "system racism"? Is it in the politicians that appoint the police? The chief of police? The chain of command? Rank and File?

There has to be some kind of level of authority that promotes it, condones it, protects it. Rather than just use a bogeyman term, quantify it, pick any police force, even in Minneapolis. There has to be something tangible behind the claims. People must be doing something to promote this system of oppression. Who are these people? Look at the cases in question, what has been the response to them, what are the reactions and why. It has to be more than a bogeyman, it is not like we have KKK running around running the show.

I just want people to peel back the rhetoric and look at the people involved, at the end of the day it has to be something tangible and not just a feeling. There are reasons why things break down or don't work as we would like. I just require there to be evidence and the greater the claim, the more evidence is required. If I said Aliens were responsible and mind controlling us you wouldn't accept my feelings, you would want some pretty hard evidence it was happening. I have a hard time believing democratic states, left enough to consider defunding police, with black representation on the council, black chief of police and many black police officers are pushing some narrative of being racist within the police force. It doesn't make sense, who are these bad actors making this happen.

You claimed that I have the opinion that there is no systemic racism, that isn't my opinion. Nobody has shown there is systemic racism. As terrible as the deaths and abuse of black people have been in the USA, they kill and abuse everyone regardless of race or gender. If there is a conspiracy to abuse a particular race more than others as a system of hate, surely we would know about it, people infiltrated KKK, neo-nazi groups. Where is this source of hatred coming from?

It's culturally entrenched Tas. There's plenty of data and studies available via Google if that's the kind of thing that you're looking for. But the fact is, white masculine energy holds the power in many parts of the world. We still have the vast bulk of decision-making for Black and Indigenous peoples being made by white people. We still have Black and Indigenous kids being taught a white version of their own history by white teachers. We recently experienced pockets of outrage because protesters tore down a bunch of statues of old white guys from the white version of history. People were up in arms about their "history" disappearing, being lost forever. Statues are monuments of heroization, and there was nothing heroic about those old white captains of colonialism. Keep your statues white folks, sure. Put them in a museum, and then tell the history. But tell the whole history, not just the white version. No more one-sided stories. Those one-sided stories make up the culture that both enables, and is as a result blind to, systemic racism.

I did want to ask you about one thing you mentioned in one of your replies though, where you wrote:

"Most of our police forces have both Aboriginal Community Liaison Officers and Police Aboriginal Liaison Officers that are used to build solid foundations between the police and the communities."

Just out of curiosity, are those officers actually Aboriginal, or are they white, and that wording is just their title? It's an honest question, I'm not having a go at you. If they are actually Aboriginal, then I think that's great. I have a very close friend whose brother was First Nations, and an addict. Whenever he ran into serious trouble with respect to his addiction, he never wanted to speak to a white social worker. He always asked if there was anyone Indigenous who could help him. Of course, he very rarely got that, but it was important to him.

Anyways Tas, it doesn't really matter who of us believes what when it comes to systemic racism. Like I said, the time for discussing whether or not the problem exists is over. Change is coming. Things can't stay the same, and they won't.

(Edit: Kangaroos4eva, I wrote this post before I saw your post of the picture of Bismarck. My comments about the statues are just my general thoughts. They were not written with you in mind, nor are they aimed at you or your above post. It just takes me a long time to read Tas's posts is all.)

 

[Snake_Baker]

"How do you navigate conversations with people when the default assumption is that you’re a racist? What do you do when calmly and sincerely stating that you are not a racist is taken as evidence of your guilt of racism?

‘Anti-racism’ comes directly from the academic scholarship of Critical Race Theory. In Critical Race Theory, ‘racism’ means ‘systemic racism’, which is said to be ‘the ordinary state of affairs’ in the United States. Systemic racism is believed to be the explanation for every disparity in outcomes in which some minority groups, especially blacks, have worse outcomes than whites (or Jews and Asians)."

What anti-racism really means and how to talk about it

Ask people if they can conceive of any better way to address racism than through this definition of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘white fragility’

spectator.us

Correctamundo.

 

[Snake_Baker]

I can understand why.
If you invested $ 50k and your time in a Bachelor of arts degree you too would defend what you studied.

Then set yourself up with a cushy job...........at the taxpayers expense............naturally.

 

[Snake_Baker]

You are right, but I am still seething about it all.

That is the entire idea.

It's purely a bullying tactic designed to shame you in to complete agreement or silence............and it usually works!

 

[GarnerSmash]

An excellent podcast discussing the current climate in the states as it relates to racism, cancel culture, the inability to have a proper conversation, the idiocy of defunding police, the lack of police training, the statistics behind police violence, the correlation between poverty and racism and separating real systemic racism from the lagging effects of slavery in the US system.

 

[Snake_Baker]

It's culturally entrenched Tas.

The extent to which is set according to your frame of mind.

This doesn't make it truth!

You're on the other side of the ****ing planet for starters! How does your reality equate to our reality?

 

[Val Keating]

I’m about half way through listening to Jocko Wilink on Rogan, man does he cut through the bullshit. Anyone else hear him? He’d absolutely crush it if he ran as an independent in the coming US election. He reckons it would have to get worse then it is now to run, but I reckon there’s a hint there that he might in the future.

 

[B4Bear]

Colonial beer , now coon cheese.

Cancel culture

Push for Coon cheese to be renamed to not offend Aboriginal people

The cheese made by the Warrnambool Cheese and Dairy Company in Victoria is named after its American creator Edward William Coon, who patented the ripening process behind the brand.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

This has been doing the rounds for decades. Pops up every ten years or so, but as Mr Coon was the cheesemakers name, nothing will come of it.

 

[Val Keating]

This has been doing the rounds for decades. Pops up every ten years or so, but as Mr Coon was the cheesemakers name, nothing will come of it.

I remember it at school in the 90’s.