I heard on TV your muppet VP say something about “300 thousand Americans dead from drugs a year” to justify this shit and one word immediately came to my mind:
The actions of this American Administration have nothing at all to do with protecting the potential victims of drugs.
Yeah, that’s the sketch that always comes to my mind when it comes to people in positions of authority and computers.
“Computer says” is enough confirmation for most people.
Fair enough: as per one of its dictionary definitions “Evidence” is “The means by which an allegation may be proven, such as oral testimony, documents, or physical objects” so that photo can be said to be “evidence”, just like the woman’s words can be said to be “evidence”, just like anything at all no matter how flimsy which any side claims or implies that “may prove the allegation”.
My bad, “evidence” is not “proof” (which was how I read it) and you never claimed it was “proof”, so my mistake.
So strictly speaking your statement was correct, even whilst not actually countering the point of the poster you were responding to: they claimed that there was no “credible evidence” whilst you pointed out (correctly as you just showed me) that there was “evidence”, which is not the same as “credible evidence”.
I’ll try henceforth to keep in mind that saying that “there is evidence” means absolutelly nothing at all about a case beyond somebody having claimed that something they provided may prove an allegation on that case (in other words, claiming something is “evidence” is an allegation about an allegation, so that by itself doesn’t prove or disprove anything further than the initial allegation by itself).
I would say that our discussing here shows that at the original point to which you replied to still stands: the US Administration has shown no credible evidence. They’ve provided what they claim is “evidence”, but then again a Trump recording saying “it’s true” could also be claimed to be “evidence” per the dictionary definition of the word.
They’re your fucking elected representatives, not the fucking king - they’re supposed to work for you not “act in their own best interests” and you sure as hell have a fucking D U T Y to blame them for breaking their legal, ethical and moral duty to use the power entrusted to them by Americans in the interest of Americans, not for themselves.
God damn, fucking American bootlicking brainwashed muppets looking up to “their betters” even harder than the equivalent sort on this side of the Atlantic. At least we Europeans have a fucking good excuse for all those “looking up to your betters” muppets, having had Monarchies for most of the last 2 thousand years which only ended in the late 19th and early 20th century, whilst Americans have had a supposedly “of the people for the people” democracy since the 18th century.
No wonder the US is even more fucked up than Europe with all the instinctive pulling down of their pants and shouting “give it to me more, big daddy” (and not even in a good, kinky way) whenever some POLITICAL CELEBRITY who is supposed to be an elected representative does whatever is in their own best interest.
No, no, no.
The “evidence” for the “crimes” committed by those on the boat having been either incinerated or blown into a million tiny pieces and sunken to the bottom of the ocean is just an “unfortunate” side-effect.
Well, as some pointed out, U.S. provided a picture of the boat, which was not a fishing boat, but an expensive speedboat. So there is some evidence against the wife’s claim. On the other hand, a speedboat shouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the U.S. So both stories seem suspicious.
The part of your post I emphasized is literally false. Not half-truth as you’re now implying by calling it “weak evidence”, literally it is a false statement.
A falsehood is not a counter-argument to whatever you were arguing against, even if it’s not done maliciously but simply because you yourself were decieved by one side using more showmanship for their claims and likely your own subconscious bias favoring the statements of “authorities” over those of “random poor-looking south american person”
When the US Administration says that the specific “expensive speedboat” in the photo they showed was the boat in that event, they are verbally making a claim with no backing proof whatsoever and without any proof linking it to the actual event that photo has no evidenciary characteristics AT ALL - it’s literally a random picture of an “expensive speedboat” plus somebody’s “trust me this was the boat involved”, no stronger or weaker than the wife’s “trust me my husband was out fishing” unless you have a bias that predisposes you to trust the US Administration more than a colombian woman.
“He says” is not “some evidence against” a “she says” claim.
The US provided a picture claiming to be of the boat in this specific event.
The standard of evidence for whatever imagery the US Administration provides to the Press is well, well, below what a Court would consider admissable as “evidence”, so there is no evidence against the wife’s claim - that could be any speedboat at any time: no trail of evidence links that picture of a speedboat to this specific event.
There is also no evidence for the wife’s claim - she said stuff, which can just as easilly be true as it can false.
The unbiased take on this is that two sides are making claims which are not backed by anything that qualifies as evidence: she could easilly be lying, whilst the picture of a boat provided by the US Administration can have been taken anywhere and at any time and be totally unrelated to their murder of this guy (“murder” because this was a purposeful killing which was not a Lawful Execution following a Court Judgement nor was it done in self defense, so it fits the legal definition).
And this is without even going into the detail that it’s the side which has murdered somebody who has at least the moral duty (this being the US, the Rule Of Law for purposeful extra-judicial extra-territorial killings is literally non-existent) of backing it up with actual evidence (real, proper stuff, not “picture of random speedboat with no evidenciary trail linking it to the actual event”)
This makes absolute sense: Trump always goes for options he can walk back on and which have direct effects he can boast about.
Sending Tomahawks would be far more effective, but can’t be fully walked back (you can’t just “unexplode” whatever they were used to explode) and their effects are indirect so Trump can’t just gloat that “I did this”.
Trump is a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person looks like, driven by nothing more complex than wanting to look like he’s winning, and if you try and find any more complex motivations for him than “what will make me look good today” it will be an impossible task because he’s far more shallow than the average person: he doesn’t play 5D chess, he plays 1D chess.
They would start giving Ukraine Tomahawk Missiles if they genuinelly wanted to pressure Putin.
Well, can’t have the sewage rats going all hyper or something.
Oh man, this really warms my hearth.
I lived in Britain as an immigrant for over a decade and eventually became a Green Party member (this was back even before Corbyn becoming Labour leader), but ended up leaving the party when I left Britain following the Brexit vote.
Having continental Europe political standards (both Northern and Southern Europe), I always thought the only trully national left-of-center party in Britain were the Greens.
Anyways, really nice people (I actually got to campaign with them in a Council by-election), though me being quite jaded after having worked years in the Finance Industry (which is pretty much Sociopath Central, IMHO) thought they were quite naive.
Good to see the Greens rising and I hope New Labour - which is getting ever more Fascist - burns badly.
It’s the core element of Israel’s strategy of Holocausting the Palestinians by Starvation.
You see, Manmade Starvation is cheaper than purposefully building gas chambers and buying Zyklon-B plus there’s just enough (if only a tiny sliver of) “plausible” deniability that the Western politicians they bought our control via blackmail material (no doubt lots of it involving child diddling) can support Israel whilst they execute what they themselves call “the final solution for the Palestinian problem”.
My point is that the police definitelly “can be arsed to enforce certain laws in full” if the right people tell sufficiently highly placed people in the right police force to enforce them strictly.
This is called “selective enforcement” and is definitelly the kind of shit you see in countries were Rule Of Law is weak, like Latin American dictatorships.
The system is designed with overbroad laws with lax enforcement exactly so that even though the actual law as written is draconian, common people don’t normally get hit by it so they don’t feel it is draconian, yet at the same time when the “right” people desire it they can make enforcement go from lax to strict against specific people or groups of people who thus get hit by the draconian elements of the law.
What you wrote is a great example of how those laws are de facto fine for most people most of the time because in their own life they never see the law applied to its full extent and thus many will even form a positive opinion of those laws because as long as the enforcement of those laws is lax and doesn’t include the most draconian provisions, those laws work fine (or don’t even get used, so they’re not seen as a problem)
Meanwhile the laws can be applied in a strict way and to their full extent, so people in positions of power can arbitarilly (and I emphasise “arbitrarilly” because it’s the very opposite of how Justice should be applied) order it to be used with full force against specific targets, which is exactly what Starmer is doing now with some of the crazier anti-Terror legislation in the books.
Selective enforcement turns Law Enforcement into a weapon which can be pointed at the enemies of people with sufficient power.
Proper Justice Systems try very hard to avoid selective enforcement situations because that’s are the very antithesis of “Everybody is treated the same in the eyes of the Law” (i.e.“The Law is blind”) core principle in Justice - everybody is not treated the same in the eyes of the Law when a political figure can tell the Met Commissioner and the CPS to “throw the book at these specific demonstrators” and those demonstrators are then arrested and charged using elements of certain laws which nobody else ever has applied against them.
Maybe, I lived in the UK when that stuff was changed but it’s been a while and I’m probably a bit off on the details.
At the time there was some outrage because it suspended rights which were widely believed to be fundamental over there.
I lived for over a decade in the UK and hence am quite familiar with the British system.
However the standard I compare Britain against is The Netherlands, not the United States.
In European terms the UK is de facto more authoritarian than most, though not in a goose-stepping jackboot way but more in a “laws designed for very broad interpretation” + “they’ll throw the book at you if you’re foreigner, or critical of the system itself (for example, member of a leftwing party, an ecologist or participate in demonstrations against the government)” + “massive but quiet surveillance to detect dissent early”.
Maybe the posh, velvet glove wrapping a steel fist, way of exercising power in the UK is a fucking paradise next to the “gun in your face” way of the US, but it’s not at all a free and fair system compared with most of Europe, especially Northern Europe.
The system will fuck you for being a dissenter, but they’ll do it by taking your shit, your options and possibly your freedom, not by taking your life. Then again, nowhere in Europe they’ll take your life like that - that specific form of abusive/reckless use of force in policing is very rare in Europe and an outright scandal just about everywhere in it when it happens.
What you’re describing is the way that law should be applied, not how it can be applied: it’s down to the discretion of the police officers who stopped you and the Crown Prosecution Service, whether they detain you and prosecute you or not if, for example, you have a small pocket knife when you get stopped and frisked (which in the UK, like in the US, is statistically more likely if you’re black and look poor or if you look middle eastern).
Just like this specific Anti-Terrorism Law which is now being used in a way other than how the politicians claimed it was going to be used, so the anti-knife legislation is written so that it can be abused - all of it relies on humans in positions of power being fair rather than on the laws being written as fair and I can tell you from personal experience (and even more the experience of friends of mine) that the Justice System’s “fairness” (especially at the lower levels) is a lot different if you’re a White British than if you’re a foreigner, Black, Indian or Middle-eastern looking.
Your argument boils down to “Trust the coppers and trust the Courts” which the very post we’re commenting under shows as total bollocks.
PS: That said I totally agree Britain is not at all a Police State, at least not yet. It already is a Surveillance State at about the level of Eastern Germany, and judging by things going on right now as described in the post we’re commenting under it’s going towards becoming a Police State far faster than most of Europe, but even now the abusing of the overbroad legislation put in place in the last decade or two and of policing powers is still localized - though getting broader and broader - rather than generalized.
Exactly.
The laws making carrying a knive a crime have been on the books for at least a decade and as for firearms the UK has long been like most of Europe in that it’s pretty hard to get a license for anything but a single hunting weapon.
I was an immigrant there and left the UK just before Brexit came into effect and never went back (even though I have friends over there) because I was very aware already back then of the Authoritarian shit already in place (for example, already a decade ago there was no right to have a lawyer present when detained and interrogated at an airport, and the crazy overboard anti-Terrorism legislation now being used was already on the books back then).
The tools now being used very overtly by Starmer have been in place for quite a while, alongside a lot of shit that in the old days one would only find in Authoritarian nations, used for surveillance of the civil society and suppression of free-speech and demonstrations.
That crap that has been added in the last couple of years is but a fraction of the insanely anti-democratic shit already in the books back then, since most of that shit was added in two big waves, one after 9/11 and another after the Snowden Revelations (when the government retroactivelly made legal all the unlawful civil society surveillance that had been doing) and in between and since slowly expanded in scope and layered with ever more oppressive shit, mainly targetting demonstrations and civil society groups.
That said, the Authoritarian mindset of the British elites long predates this latest wave: for example back in the 80s Ecological organisations were under surveillance and even being infiltrated by undercover police officers, and don’t get me started about Britain’ long running Press-Censorship system: D-Notices.
Except in the domain of armed police violence, Britain wasn’t better than the US, it was just much more subtle, which makes sense since at least England is very obcessed with managing impressions, especially the upper classes.
The floor is the natural environment for babies, hence why they learn to craw before they learn to walk /s