>At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists
Were subjected to police brutality while largely peacefully picketing. Meanwhile the army was called in to do their jobs...
Apparently there was evidence of "excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers."
According to the independent police complaints commission, anyway.
Note the similarities to current protests in the US and similar attempts to depict police as simply reacting to "violent blacks".
If you want to see the full gamut of vicious state inflicted violence you can either be the wrong race, or you can form a powerful enough union and go on strike.
And why are police never punished, because police unions. Unions in their modern form are granted special privileges by the government and use those privileges to extort society. There is nothing wrong with people joining groups, collective bargaining, etc -- the problem is that they are given special privileges by the state.
I don't even understand what you're arguing. Aren't corporations given special privileges by the state? Are you against that well? Can you clarify what you're arguing here?
If any group is being given special privileges by the state, it's the police...
Normally, a union is formed to balance the power of capitalists with the laborers they employ. In the case of law enforcement, there is no capital, nor is their labor being used to produce something of value. If anything, law enforcement defends the interests of capitalists, rather than being subject to abuse by capitalists.
Police unions have no solidarity with workers. They're groups that exist only to protect themselves, and they're happy to suppress strikes when it serves them. It's facile to consider them as part of labour unions.
Well, they did intend to drop the concrete block on his car, the block wasn't dropped by accident or through their gross negligence (in which case it would be manslaughter).
Murder does require intent, but it does not necessarily require an intent to kill that person; if you intend to "just" assault a person but they die, that's murder; if you intend to kill someone but kill someone else whom you did not intend to kill, that's murder.
"extreme indifference to human life" (again, intentional) is generally considered murder - e.g. if you'd intentionally burn down your neighbour's house without knowing or caring if anyone's inside, then if someone dies, it's considered murder. And UK, where the incident happened, has the concept of felony-murder where any death (even if accidental) that happens in the process of felony can be considered murder, because the felony that endangered people's lives was intentional.
> Subject to three exceptions (see Voluntary Manslaughter below) the crime of murder is committed, where a person:
> Of sound mind and discretion (i.e. sane);
> unlawfully kills (i.e. not self-defence or other justified killing);
> any reasonable creature (human being);
> in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs - Rance v Mid-Downs Health Authority (1991) 1 All ER 801 and AG Ref No 3 of 1994 (1997) 3 All ER 936;
> under the Queen's Peace (not in war-time);
> with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH).
> Well, they did intend to drop the concrete block on his car, the block wasn't dropped by accident or through their gross negligence (in which case it would be manslaughter).
I'm comfortable assuming intent when someone discharges a kinetic weapon at a occupied vehicle. If the car was parked and they assumed it was unoccupied you might have a point.
I wouldn't have any trouble believing there were more attempted murders on the part of the anti-union side, or that this example happened differently than described, but what was described was clearly a (successful) attempt to kill someone.
For sure :). I understand that. I was gently teasing and pointing out that the language you used obscured (as there were no trebuchets, de orbiting asteroids, etc, involved) rather than clarifies.
“Shooting a gun”, or “shooting guns or beanbag rounds, etc”, or whatever is specific and relevant to the topic clarifies thought and improves our thought. The opposite approach occluded and damages our thought.
And since language is how we discuss politics, we need clear language in order to truthfully and honestly discuss politics.
:-)
To quote Orwell from Politics and the English Language:
“ Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”
“ Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subject to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc. etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining).”
>I was gently teasing and pointing out that the language you used obscured
I'd gently suggest it was quite the opposite; used to call attention.
"Understatement often leads to ... rhetorical constructs in which understatement is used to emphasize a point. It is a staple of humour in English-speaking cultures."
“Understatement is a form of speech or disclosure which contains an expression of lesser strength than what would be expected. It is the opposite of an embellishment.”
What’s the “expression of lesser strength” in this case? Confused.
Also, the bit you quoted continues with this as an example of the sort of rhetorical construct used in understatement:
“ For example, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit."”
That’s a quite different style from the “discharged a kinetic energy weapon” phrase which we are analyzing.
If the Army officer in the Monty Python skit had said, “hmm, there seems to have been an incision made through my epidermis, muscle, and bone, resulting in a reduction of my ambulatory capacity”, that might have been funny in other ways but I don’t think it would have been understatement.
Similarly, while I have no idea of the intent of the author of “kinetic energy weapon” phrase, I argue the language in question is not understatement.
>What’s the “expression of lesser strength” in this case? Confused
Well, that particular Wikipedia article is not a complete guide to the English language or the topic of understatement. Taken in isolation, it doesn't prove the existence of the sort of phrase in question.
I guess if this were in court, I'd lose my case because I didn't spend enough time researching.
> pointing out that the language you used obscured (as there were no trebuchets, de orbiting asteroids, etc, involved) rather than clarifies.
And I was pointing that dropping a large rock on someone is a attempt to kill them. I don't particularly care about it happening to be politically motivated.
[EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EF-IT: The other guy was technically correct. And there are lots of edits here. It’s the “Pale Fire” of HN comments.]
[EDIT: All this because I lost the thread that we were talking about when striking miners in the UK dropped a concrete block from a footbridge onto David Wilkies taxi whilst he was driving a strike-breaking miner to work, killing David. Hopefully future HN readers will find some value and pleasure in this thread, however.]
Ah. I didn’t realize a naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals was involved.
:):):)
And with regards to politics, part of Orwell’s point was that our language - how we choose to express things - is political, too. Regardless of our intent.
I wasn’t saying anything about the politics of anyone throwing a rock. And I’m not saying anything about your political beliefs.
I’m saying there’s a political power in how language is used, even if the subject under discussion isn’t expressly “political”.
Finally, to be a complete pedant, although “discharge” is often used as a synonym for “shoot”, I’ve never heard it used as a synonym for “throw” before.
So the correct way to use overly complex language to say “throwing a rock” would be “launching a kinetic energy weapon”. Or “releasing”.
Because unlike a gun, or bow, or whatever, in this case the “weapons system”, if it wouldn’t be a dehumanizing offense to call it such, is a persons arm.
Not a gun or bow or phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range or whatever.
And when we throw things we don’t “discharge” them.
Which is actually a perfect example of Orwell’s point.
To try to call someone throwing something a “discharge” is to dehumanize them, because humans do not discharge things from their arms when they throw them.
We do, however, discharge snot from our noses when we sneeze ;)
We are talking about throwing a rock at a truck, right?
[EDIT EDIT: We are not. We are talking about pushing a concrete block off a bridge onto a car below. Which I suppose, pedantically, is to “discharge” since the stored potential kinetic energy of the block is what makes it a weapon, although “pushing” is still a human thing, but it doesn’t feel as dehumanizing as the “throwing” case for some reason. You were, technically, correct, which is the best kind of correct. Ah well, at least we got a lesson in the relationship between language and politics out of the whole thing.]
I didn’t just write a pedantic magnum opus on the wrong subject because I didn’t realize the other person was still discussing hypothetical asteroids being de-orbited to destroy planets, or hypothetical kinetical bombardment weapons aka “rods from god”, did I?
;)
[EDIT EDIT EDIT: You did not, but what you did is almost as embarrassing.]
Lord, I hope I’m not arguing with a 16-year old on the Internet. It’d be like arguing with my younger self :/
Were subjected to police brutality while largely peacefully picketing. Meanwhile the army was called in to do their jobs...
Apparently there was evidence of "excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers."
According to the independent police complaints commission, anyway.
Note the similarities to current protests in the US and similar attempts to depict police as simply reacting to "violent blacks".
If you want to see the full gamut of vicious state inflicted violence you can either be the wrong race, or you can form a powerful enough union and go on strike.