Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The algorithm is not free speech. It puts people in contact with misinformation and anger-inducing content. Inciting people to violence is not protected free speech. In England, people were attacked and property was destroyed because people were incensed by what turned out to be false information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbcxKiaBNPU
“The new numbers indicate that the violent crime victimization rate fell slightly in 2023, although the change was not statistically significant. “Findings show that there was an overall decline in the rate of violent victimization over the last three decades, from
1993 to 2023,” BJS Acting Director Kevin M. Scott reports. “While the 2023 rate was higher than those in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from the rate 5 years ago, in 2019.”
That observation is inconvenient for Trump, who wants to blame Harris for rising crime during the Biden administration. Leaving aside the plausibility of assuming that a president, let alone a vice president, has much influence on crime rates, Trump’s thesis relies on the assumption that violent crime is more common now than it was during his administration. But even according to the data source he prefers, the 2023 rate was statistically indistinguishable from the rate in 2019, his second-to-last year in office.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/16/new-survey-data-undermine-trumps-narrative-of-rising-crime/
Something is broken with the justice system if we can’t severely punish people involved in trying to end U.S. democracy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/27/jan-6-cases-legal-challenges-political-threats-00181313
“Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/29/trump-violent-day-policing-crime-00181619
“Asserting that Biden’s bullseye comment had anything to do with political violence is obviously ridiculous. Moreover, Republicans know that it is ridiculous. In fact, they rightly criticized The New York Times and other media outlets for embracing the preposterous idea that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was morally responsible for the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords. The accusation against her was remarkably similar: The media seized on a map, circulated by her political action committee, that placed target crosshairs over Giffords’ district. There is no evidence whatsoever that Giffords’ shooter ever saw the map or that he was influenced by Republican rhetoric or even motivated by conservative ideas at all.
It is absolutely fair to call out the double standard. It’s true mainstream media wholly embraced the idea that Republicans are to blame for political violence because of things like the crosshairs on the map but said nothing critical about Biden’s bullseye comment. But Republicans like Vance aren’t calling out that double standard—they are participating in it. They are doing the same thing from the other side: blaming political violence on Democratic rhetoric.
It’s true that both parties, their activists, and their acolytes in the media could all benefit the country if they turned down the overheated rhetoric. Routine accusations that such-and-such political leader is a fascist, or Hitler, or a communist, or a dictator are not making things better for anyone. But words do not have some hypnotic power to induce others to commit violence. As always, when a deranged person takes up a gun and attacks someone, we should blame that individual—not other people’s words.”
https://reason.com/2024/07/15/stop-blaming-the-attempted-assassination-on-heated-anti-trump-rhetoric/
“Bangladesh’s prime minister resigned and fled the country Monday, after weeks of protests against a quota system for government jobs descended into violence and grew into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule. Thousands of demonstrators stormed her official residence, a day after nearly 100 died in the unrest.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s departure threatens to create even more instability in the nation on India’s border already dealing with a series of crises, from high unemployment and corruption to climate change.”
…
“The protests began peacefully as frustrated students demanded an end to a quota system for government jobs that they said favored those with connections to the prime minister’s Awami League party, but the demonstrations have since morphed into an unprecedented challenge to Hasina and the party.
The 76-year-old — who was the longest-serving female head of government — was elected for a fourth consecutive term in a January vote that was boycotted by her main opponents. Thousands of opposition members were jailed in the lead-up to the polls, and the U.S. and the U.K. denounced the result as not credible, though the government defended it.
Hasina had cultivated ties with powerful countries, including both India and China. But under her, relations with United States and other Western nations have come under strain, as they have expressed concerns over human rights violations and press freedoms in the predominantly Muslim nation of 170 million people.
Her political opponents have previously accused her of growing increasingly autocratic and called her a threat to the country’s democracy, and many now say the unrest is a result of that authoritarian streak.
Hasina arrived Monday in a city in India on the border with Bangladesh in an army helicopter, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to the media. It was not clear where she would go next.
As she fled, people stormed her residence, taking furniture and pulling food from the refrigerators.
Protests have continued even after the Supreme Court last month ruled that the quota system — which set aside up to 30% of government jobs for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan — must be drastically cut. The government attempted to quell the demonstrations with force, leaving nearly 300 people dead since mid-July.”
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” Hasina repeated her pledges to investigate the deaths and punish those responsible for the violence. She said she was ready to sit down whenever the protesters want. Earlier, she had said protesters who engaged in “sabotage” and destruction were no longer students but criminals, and that the people should deal with them with an iron hand.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/05/bangladesh-prime-minister-resigns-flees-country-00172623
“Israeli settlers on Sunday attacked a group of foreign volunteers helping Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank, injuring some who needed hospital treatment, the activists and Israeli army said.
Eight mainly American volunteers were working with the farmers in an olive grove near the Palestinian village of Qusra when settlers came after them, said David Hummel, an American-German in the group.
“We were standing there peacefully, not a threat to anyone, when they started coming towards us and pushing us down the path,” Hummel told AFP.
“They started attacking and beating us all with sticks and metal pipes and they were throwing rocks as well at us,” he said.
“I was attacked on my legs, on my arms and here on my jaw as well and it was … very violent,” added the volunteer, showing bruising to his face.
Attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have increased since the Gaza war erupted on October 7. Tensions have been further fuelled by an International Court of Justice ruling on Friday that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 was illegal.
The volunteers are from the International Solidarity Movement, a group that says it deploys people to form a “protective presence” for Palestinians at risk of facing violence in the West Bank.
Two women were among four activists treated at Rafidia hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, according to Qusra’s mayor Hani Odeh. An AFP journalist saw at least three being treated in the hospital.
Israeli troops arrived and fired warning shots in the air to chase away the volunteers and farmers, according to the mayor.
The army said in a statement that “a number of masked Israeli civilians assaulted a group of foreign citizens while they were planting trees in the area of Qusra” and that “several” needed treatment.
“Soldiers were dispatched to the scene and fired warning shots into the air, causing the Israeli civilians to flee the area,” they added, condemning any “acts of violence”.
The volunteers from the ISM, which says it was set up “to resist the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land”, have been in Qusra for about a month, according to the mayor.
The farmers wanted to “clear the land after settlers burned it some time ago”, said Odeh.
About 10 people from the nearby Esh Kodesh Israeli settlement arrived to confront the farmers and foreign activists, he added.
Hummel said the group of settlers who attacked them included six women.
Several ISM volunteers have been injured in the West Bank and Gaza since it started work. Some have also been arrested.
Since October 7, at least 579 Palestinians have been killed in violence with settlers or Israeli troops, according to the Palestinian authorities.
At least 16 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in attacks involving Palestinians, according to official Israeli figures.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-settlers-beat-foreign-volunteers-155821974.html
“Roughly two hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) blamed President Joe Biden.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance, the odds-on favorite to be Trump’s vice president, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Vance was not alone. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) wrote that “Joe Biden sent the orders.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote that “Democrats wanted this to happen.” Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said something similar. So did Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
All of this happened Saturday night, before we knew a single thing about the shooter’s identity or motive. Since then, the Secret Service has identified him as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, and we still don’t know much about his motive.
Federal data shows he gave $15 to a progressive PAC in 2021, but more recent Pennsylvania voter records list him as a registered Republican. A classmate told local news that he was a bullied loner who frequently wore “hunting” outfits to school. None of these crumbs establish why he might have targeted the former president, and so far no one has found any online accounts under Crooks’s name that could help make sense of his actions.
So we can be confident that none of this speculation was even remotely connected to the facts at the time it happened. Prominent Republicans were conjuring up a Democratic boogeyman, all but openly telling their supporters that Biden and his allies were behind the attack on Trump’s life.
That’s dangerous. Very, very dangerous. And it should cause us to reflect more broadly on how our political leaders should respond to political violence in our country.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/360557/trump-assassination-attempt-republican-response-political-violence-irresponsible
“”Our key finding was that Black Americans preferred to maintain (or increase) police patrol and spending, and that this preference was not conditional on the described crime rates or policing reforms,” write Linda Balcarová and Justin Pickett of the University at Albany, SUNY; Amanda Graham and Sean Patrick Roche of Texas State University; and Francis T. Cullen of the University of Cincinnati. “Most Black Americans reported that even if crime rates fell and even if there were no new policing reforms, they still wanted to maintain or increase police patrol and spending.””
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“It is well-established that black people are disproportionately afraid of cops, particularly in comparison to their white counterparts. Black Americans are reportedly more than five times as likely than white people to fear excessive force from police. What’s more, a study by three of the same researchers—Pickett, Graham, and Cullen—found that 42 percent of black respondents were “very afraid” police would kill them sometime within the next five years. Only 11 percent of white respondents feared the same thing.
But in their more recent study, they found that such fear coexists, however counterintuitively, with that strong desire to keep or increase police presence and funding. According to their data, 81 percent of black Americans who say they are afraid or very afraid of cops want to maintain or increase police spending”
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“Just as the data make clear that black Americans are more likely to fear police, it is also plainly true that black people are disproportionately the victims of violence. It follows, then, that the people most impacted by crime are going to have strong feelings about abating it however possible. And while police are not always adept at solving crime—in 2022, for example, police cleared about 37 percent of violent offenses reported to them—their presence does have a deterrent effect on criminal activity, which also comports with basic common sense.”
https://reason.com/2024/05/14/black-people-overwhelmingly-want-to-maintain-or-increase-police-presence-they-also-want-better-police/
“the actual report concludes exactly the opposite: “The more rural the county, the lower the county rate of sending insurrectionists” to the January 6 Capitol riot. Moreover, when a peer-reviewed article in the journal Political Behavior compared rural and non-rural beliefs on whether politically motivated violence is a valid means for pursuing political change, it revealed that rural Americans are actually less supportive of political violence.”
https://reason.com/2024/03/07/the-truth-about-rural-rage/