Anarchist, autistic, engineer, and Certified Professional Life-Regretter. If you got a brick of text, don't be alarmed; that's normal.
A.A., a 35-year-old Palestinian father detained from Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital for 19 months, described extreme torture, including being raped by a trained dog at Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp.
“One of the dogs raped me – the dog did it deliberately, knowing exactly what it was doing,” he told PCHR.
What the absolute fuck
You're arguing against a strawman. See the final chapter of Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams for more details on possible alternatives, including historical examples. And the whole book makes a compelling, intricately cited argument for police abolition.
The fact is, the police do provide an important community service—offering protection against crime. They do not do this job well, or fairly, and it is not their chief function, but they do it, and it brings them legitimacy.[1584] Even people who dislike and fear them often feel that they need the cops. Maybe we can do without omnipresent surveillance, racial profiling, and institutionalized violence, but most people have been willing to accept these features of policing, if somewhat grudgingly, because they have been packaged together with things we cannot do without—crime control, security, and public safety. It is not enough, then, to relate to police power only in terms of repression; we must also remember the promise of protection, since this legitimates the institution.
Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety—away from the state and toward the community.
It should be noted that Williams is working under a tweaked definition of "crime" in this context, a phenomenon that anarchists do not deny exists.
The point here is that the standards I want to appeal to in invoking the idea of crime are not the state’s standards, but the community’s—and, specifically, the community’s standards as they relate to justice, rights, personal safety, and perhaps especially the question of violence.
All emphases mine.
Can he illegally try? Can he approximate police abolition or set New York on a path towards it? Can he attempt to approximate that? Can he even attempt to approximate not being a pro-cop Zionist?
does not have to be FOSS
I'm basically not interested in software anymore if it's not FLOSS. I don't even mess with non-free source-available software or proprietary freeware anymore.
He doesn't really have another option right now.
How about nobody? How about abolish the police? ACAB even when they're controlled by social democrats.
Social Democrat betrays the working class. In equally novel news, the Sun rose this morning.
Are you trying to say it's not anarchists' business to understand stuff like this?
Not that it's not our business, but that it's simply uncommon to know. (E.g. I think that it should be anarchists' business to understand how complex dynamical systems work, e.g. to generate and distribute clean power for everyone, to optimize the factories, to make breakthroughs in medicine, etc., but I'm not expecting most of us to have dynamical systems textbooks lying around.) Thank you for the resource.
That doesn't it even get into the nuts and bolts of anything - but it suffices to demonstrate that an intelligence asset is worth far, far more than somebody performing hit-or-miss (but ultimately very temporary) stunts for the media cycle.
Yeah I'm 1000% with you there. I want to stress again that Bushnell's suicide was not an ideal protest, but that I thank him for at least trying in his own way to fix what he broke.
Okay... maybe I'm not anarchistically "pure" enough to get this - but wtf would be "selfish" about this? What mental process is going on here?
(Mods/admins: what follows is not a cry for help; I am not suicidal now.)
It's less about being "anarchistically pure" and more about having dealt with suicidal thoughts and major depression for most of my adult life. From an anarchist perspective, I believe we have a right to life as well as our right to end it when we choose as a function of our right to dignity. I.e. I'm saying this as someone who is probably going to kill myself when my body becomes a prison. When it happens, I don't want people who don't understand my situation to make it harder or impossible for me to end my life because they want me to stay around for whatever bullshit reasons they have. I'm saying that I don't know what Bushnell was going through, but I trust him enough to respect his decision. From my perspective, it would selfish of me to beg him to stay because him staying alive would benefit me (i.e. as an effective activist, as a comrade, etc.) even if for him, being alive might have been agony.
Like I gotta be real with you, maybe I'm just not as sensitive about suicide because that's how I'd like to go. I'm coming from a position where I'm not even telling people to do something that I don't plan on eventually doing to myself. Frankly, I'm more irritated that IDF veterans get to go out on their own terms in the privacy and comfort of their own homes while the Palestinians they torture just get murdered whenever the IDF chooses to kill them. Like for me, suicide is a Good Ending depending on the context, so maybe I gotta work on that.
Perhaps then, you won't use it in a way that actually helps the imperialists.
I'm confused? How am I helping imperialists here?
The people in question here aren't around to refuse anything, are they?
Yeah but they were. They had a chance to use their remaining time productively.
What did they understand that you don't?
Simple: they had these people as prisoners. Really, the key was that they were temporarily no longer dangerous. IDF conscripts are still dangerous. IMO, they're more like conscripts during the actual fighting — i.e. enemies you defend yourselves and your comrades from, possibly by killing them.
Maybe you can tell me - if you were to use IDF suicide rates as a propaganda device to help drive a wedge, no matter how small, between IDF conscripts and the IDF officer class - do you think the discourse on this sub would be a hindrance or a help?
I'm not a propaganda expert, but somewhere between help and neutral. If a conscript identifies with the IDF, as opposed to merely a slave to it, then IMO they're not radicalizable yet. This is a clumsy parallel, but when people say "Death to Amerikkka" I don't get defensive even though I'm from Amerikkka because I completely and utterly disown the Amerikkkan entity. I 1000% expect the same disownment from IDF conscripts and Amerikkkan soldiers, at a bare minimum. I.e., being able to read rhetoric like this and understanding that it doesn't apply to former soldiers who actually do fix their wrongs is a necessary part of radicalization. I.e., like I said in the beginning (although I might have said it elsewhere): veterans and conscripts who are trying to fix what they broke are not the target audience of people saying their colleagues should kill themselves.
... Are you a veteran? If so, none of what I have said so far is directed at you, i.e. if you're a veteran and you've come here, I'm assuming you're trying to right your wrongs. I.e., until I have competing information, I assume that being in an anarchist community and not having been immediately yeeted into the stratosphere filters out veterans who still pledge allegiance to the army they served in.
Yeah, definitely exciting news even if the empirical result was incrementally better, because it demonstrates that the new framework recovers SOTA performance. Sounds like this framework might be helpful for analyzing and controlling dynamical systems, e.g. wrapping a system with a NL network that continuously improves as the system evolves. But I'm a dynamical systems guy so I'm gonna be a bit biased 😆
Sounds like a promising framework, but does the table at the bottom suggest that the HOPE architecture they came up with to demonstrate the framework is only incrementally better than the others?
You are free to peruse my comment history here on Lemmy, Youtube and Reddit for evidence of this accusation of yours if you so wish - otherwise, I'll just be ignoring it, okay?
Yeah I might have been speaking a little too strong because I've seen you posting around here and I know you're no fan of the IDF. I'm not saying you have a pattern of defending the IDF, but I think you're doing so in this case by mistake.
You'd think the intel on these systems would be valuable to those that are targeted by US imperialism.
Fair point. If he still had access to critical US intel, then leaking it would have been more productive.
I guess modern-day anarchists just don't understand how the intelligence business works (which would actually explain a lot - including why Bushnell didn't even see himself as becoming an intelligence asset to them)
Why on earth would the average person (including anarchists) understand how the intelligence business works? If you have any resources on that, I'd love to read them, because this would be very niche information that would be nice for the community to have.
I have to wonder why he felt the need to act so unilaterally? Do tell... what would you have advised him to do? To go ahead with it and set himself on fire for the cameras? You know... considering that this is the only way he could "atone" for his sins in your book - for whatever that is worth?
No I cannot stress enough that suicide is not the only way to atone for what veterans have done, or even a good way without extra information (i.e. making it a protest, taking soldiers with you, etc.). If I knew Aaron Bushnell, I would have selfishly told him to stay around and organize protests and direct actions, and see if he could use his cybersecurity expertise to secure anarchist communications and sabotage imperialist systems. I cannot stress enough that I do not believe that Aaron Bushnell's suicide was "ideal", and I selfishly would have loved to see him do more. But at least he tried, even the teeniest tiniest amount, in an imperfect and brash way, to fix what he broke. The people we're talking about aren't even trying to fix what they've broken; they're just trying to escape it.
Yes... he won the approval of all the armchair revolutionaries by setting himself on fire. But before that, he was just another "baby killer" to them, right?
Correct. He was just another baby killer until he took action to fix what he broke. However, as I mentioned, he could have done lots of other stuff that didn't require him to set himself on fire.
That's quite a high bar to pass... I guess it's no surprise that there is such a gigantic schism between the modern left (emphasis on the "modern" part) and military veterans.
Again I want to see veterans do actual productive activism, but if (and only if) they refuse to do that then I'll happily watch their suicides 🍿
Bushnell was a cybersecurity spook for the US military - he could have done a lot more than just fragging his peers.
Could he have? I'm not a cybersecurity expert, but my understanding is that these systems are designed to be robust to attacks by former personnel. But even if he could have done more...at least he did something. At least he tried. These IDF soldiers are doing absolutely nothing. They're not even trying.
Reading through these comments I can pretty much see a pattern of first-world, liberal views being projected onto a society the commentors absolutely do not understand - and it's annoying.
Okay but Pissrael is a first-world country that claims to hold liberal views. So even if I made such a projection of first-world, liberal values onto my analysis of IDF soldiers... I haven't actually lost anything in the projection, because they are first-world liberals.
figuratively pissing on the graves is hollow edginess and nothing else.
Yeah which is why it's surprising you're figuratively pissing on Bushnell's grave as a way of standing up for IDF soldiers...
Aaron Bushnell didn't just kill himself. He transformed his death into a protest. He didn't just go quietly in the comfort of his own home. He picked one of the worst ways to go, in public, and made it known without a shadow of a doubt what he died for.
So yeah, Bushnell didn't frag his peers, but he did at least do something positive with his suicide... unlike IDF soldiers. How many IDF soldiers have made their suicides a protest? Nah, when IDF soldiers kill themselves, it's because killing Palestinians is "icky" and they can't deal with it, not because they consider Palestinians worthy of being mourned.
Even those who refuse and are lucky to get an exemption pay a heavy price, with their job prospects shot to hell and their standing in society reduced to traitor. Not even the left wing in Israel supports them.
Unironically yes, taking the L and tanking the consequences is the only moral thing to do in that situation holy shit. If it's serve in the IDF or {insert consequence here}, you take {insert consequence here}. It's literally that simple 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦
Fail opinion, get a better one
Do you not?!?
Kill kill kill I love murder I love suicides I love dehumanizing I love proletariat blood flowing if they happen to be on the bad side.
Yeah that's why I feel just horrible whenever working class Nazis get killed because working class people can do no wrong /s
People who get non-combat jobs are unlikely to kill themselves over their service.
following orders even when your conscience says it's wrong to do so.
Not an excuse.
So yeah, i stand by my statement that IDF Soldiers who kill themselves because they can't live with what they've witnessed are victims of the same machinery that kills children in the strip.
Oh my God no, choosing to take your own life out of guilt from the actions of the army you served in is not morally equivalent to a child being obliterated by said army. Please I'm trying to be patient here
And those committing suicide are those who see their / their sides wrongdoings
these people are victims just as the people in the Gaza Strip.
Aw hell the fuck no! IDF soldiers are not fucking victims of their own actions. For fuck's sake please tell me I misread that 🤮
The power of Bogatin compels you!