Colombian Referendum 2016

[peterl]

I would vote no. Terrorists and drug dealers should not be negotiated with, they should be locked up (or worse).

[Deleted]

Only an idiot or a fanatic would vote no to this.

[Jack]

Not sure why you wouldn't want to end a 52-year conflict.

Or, to put it another way, I'm not sure why you would vote to continue a 52-year conflict.

[finsobruce]

Aug 29, 2016 20:11:56 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 29, 2016 19:21:59 GMT Jack said:

Not sure why you wouldn't want to end a 52-year conflict.

Or, to put it another way, I'm not sure why you would vote to continue a 52-year conflict.

Of course the conflict should be ended but this is absolutely the wrong way to do it. The Sri Lankan government demonstrated in 2009 that its possible to end a terrorist conflict without making a 'peace agreement' where the political will exists to achieve this. Now I could explain in prose why making these kinds of 'peace agreements' with communists is a bad idea but I will illustrate it with a poem. The poem is called 'The Snake' and has recently been popularised by Donald Trump who sometimes reads it at his rallies

On her way to work one morning
Down the path alongside the lake
A tender-hearted woman saw a poor half-frozen snake
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
"Oh well," she cried, "I'll take you in and I'll take care of you"
"Take me in oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the snake

She wrapped him up all cozy in a curvature of silk
And then laid him by the fireside with some honey and some milk
Now she hurried home from work that night as soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she'd taken in had been revived

Now she clutched him to her bosom, "You're so beautiful," she cried
"But if I hadn't brought you in by now you might have died"
Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite

"I saved you," cried that woman
"And you've bit me even, why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die"
"Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

This is basically Aesop's Fable "The Farmer and the Viper".

The song (which Trump might be thinking of) was written by Oscar Brown Jr sometime musician, composer, candidate for elected office and Civil Rights activist. I think the version we'd be most familiar with over here was by a certain Mr Tom Jones..

[finsobruce]

Aug 29, 2016 20:41:15 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 29, 2016 20:33:32 GMT finsobruce said:

This is basically Aesop's Fable "The Farmer and the Viper".

The song (which Trump might be thinking of) was written by Oscar Brown Jr sometime musician, composer, candidate for elected office and Civil Rights activist. I think the version we'd be most familiar with over here was by a certain Mr Tom Jones..

I couldn't find the Tom Jones version but there's this from Al Wilson

And Oscar Brown's other Classic "Signifying Monkey". There's a moral in this one too.... It might well be I just think that there is a Tom Jones version as I can't find it either. Al Wilson's version is the "Northern Soul Classic".

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2016 20:11:56 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 29, 2016 19:21:59 GMT Jack said:

Not sure why you wouldn't want to end a 52-year conflict.

Or, to put it another way, I'm not sure why you would vote to continue a 52-year conflict.

Of course the conflict should be ended but this is absolutely the wrong way to do it. The Sri Lankan government demonstrated in 2009 that its possible to end a terrorist conflict without making a 'peace agreement' where the political will exists to achieve this. Now I could explain in prose why making these kinds of 'peace agreements' with communists is a bad idea but I will illustrate it with a poem. The poem is called 'The Snake' and has recently been popularised by Donald Trump who sometimes reads it at his rallies

Colombia isn't Sri Lanka. For starters Sri Lanka is 65.610 km2 and Colombia is 1.138.910 km. It is quite a lot easier to end a civil war militarily in a small and compact country than in a large one. 

(I know you wont care about the massacres and other human rights violations the Sri Lankan army committed in order to win, but their actions were hardly admirable)

[Devil Wincarnate]

I never thought I'd see Northern Soul used to demonstrate a political point.  Not outside Wigan anyway.

Great record, mind.  But not sure it really works in the context.

[gwynthegriff]

Aug 28, 2016 19:06:19 GMT peterl said:

Terrorists and drug dealers should not be negotiated with, they should be locked up (or worse).

Quite agree.



But I'd still vote yes.

[finsobruce]

Aug 29, 2016 20:51:43 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

I never thought I'd see Northern Soul used to demonstrate a political point.  Not outside Wigan anyway.

Great record, mind.  But not sure it really works in the context.

You mean Dana  Valery's "You Don't know where your interest lies" isn't about the fiscal policies of the Federal Reserve?

[Richard Allen]

Aug 29, 2016 20:50:19 GMT @odo said:

Aug 29, 2016 20:11:56 GMT @pjones said:

Of course the conflict should be ended but this is absolutely the wrong way to do it. The Sri Lankan government demonstrated in 2009 that its possible to end a terrorist conflict without making a 'peace agreement' where the political will exists to achieve this. Now I could explain in prose why making these kinds of 'peace agreements' with communists is a bad idea but I will illustrate it with a poem. The poem is called 'The Snake' and has recently been popularised by Donald Trump who sometimes reads it at his rallies

Colombia isn't Sri Lanka. For starters Sri Lanka is 65.610 km2 and Colombia is 1.138.910 km. It is quite a lot easier to end a civil war militarily in a small and compact country than in a large one. 

(I know you wont care about the massacres and other human rights violations the Sri Lankan army committed in order to win, but their actions were hardly admirable)

It is probably fair to say that over the years various Colombian governments went to considerable lengths to try and crush FARC through military means and that while they did have some success a total victory has never looked feasible. The idea put forward by @pjones that things would have been different if only there had been greater "political will" is palpably absurd and demonstrates a woeful lack of knowledge of the political and military situation.

[finsobruce]

Aug 29, 2016 21:12:40 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 29, 2016 20:50:19 GMT @odo said:

Colombia isn't Sri Lanka. For starters Sri Lanka is 65.610 km2 and Colombia is 1.138.910 km. It is quite a lot easier to end a civil war militarily in a small and compact country than in a large one. 

If you want some more examples there was the British victory over the Communist rebellion in Malaya in 1960 and the Brazilian governments victory over a communist rebellion there in 1973. When you contrast how those countries have done in recent decades and contrast it with the disaster that followed terrible failure of the Portuguese to defeat communist rebellions in their African Colonies in the 1960s and 1970s, the misery and tyranny that Angola and Mozambique have been through since then it is clear that the victories in Malaya and Brazil were of great benefit to those countries.

(I know you wont care about the massacres and other human rights violations the Sri Lankan army committed in order to win, but their actions were hardly admirable)

I care about achieving a lasting peace. The best way, in a violent conflict, to achieve a lasting peace is for one side to win and the other side to be totally defeated so that everyone just has to accept it and move on. That is how peace is best achieved.

It made a huge difference in Malaya that the British were not really fighting the Malayan population but the Chinese Communist party and hence had most of the Malays on side combating what was seen as an invasion in pretty much the same way as the Japanese invasion had been.

[Devil Wincarnate]

I wonder if The Donald has anything to say about Dobie Gray?

[finsobruce]

Aug 29, 2016 21:47:52 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

I wonder if The Donald has anything to say about Dobie Gray?

How about R Dean Taylor?

"Indiana Wants me but I might not win there!"

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2016 23:01:25 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 29, 2016 19:15:39 GMT @odo said:

Only an idiot or a fanatic would vote no to this.

The most recent opinion poll shows 'No' on 50%. Do you think half the voters of Colombia are idiots or fanatics? What's your case for voting 'Yes'?

Peace, return of displaced persons (at least part of them), limiting the drug trade, delegitimizing paramilitaries (even further, they have already come a long way on that), improving the country's image and attracting investment (and potentially expanding tourism down the road). Being known as a "civil war country" has a lot of negative side-effects. 

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 10:20:52 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 9:24:33 GMT @odo said:

Peace, return of displaced persons (at least part of them), limiting the drug trade, delegitimizing paramilitaries (even further, they have already come a long way on that), improving the country's image and attracting investment (and potentially expanding tourism down the road). Being known as a "civil war country" has a lot of negative side-effects. 

What encourages violence is losing. This 'peace agreement' gives the FARC more than they had when then war started in 1964 and it gives it to them at the expense of the Colombian government. That would make the FARC the winner of the war and the loser Colombian government. Losing in this way simply invites further aggression. New FARC politicians are likely to see invitation into the Congress as a way of pushing further and further demands.

You see in other Latin American countries where former Marxist terrorists excuse and glorify their own past actions whilst demanding punishment for their former enemies. This could well result in demoralising the police and armed forces and emboldening criminals (including unemployable former terrorists). To see an example of this effect look at the sharp increase in murder rates in the US over the last year and a half or so following the rise to prominence if the 'Black Lives matter' group.

That in addition to other never ending demands that the these new politicians would make. The best way to achieve a lasting, prosperous and just peace is for the Colombian government to aim for peace by winning (i.e. the total physical elimination of the FARC in the same way the Tamil Tigers were totally physically eliminated in 2009). Former President Uribe was making great progress through following this strategy in his time in office and its a tragedy that his successor has given up on this policy and ensured more misery for Colombia.

Could you take me through the logic of the highlighted bit? If I read this correctly, you're saying that (i) BLM is an example of a former terrorist group; (ii) that it has been appeased; (iii) that it has been emboldened and the police demoralised; (iv) that the homicide rate in the US has risen; and (v) that this is directly connected to BLM. 

I can't find evidence for any of those things.

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 10:47:23 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 10:30:32 GMT definitelyacybernat said:

Could you take me through the logic of the highlighted bit? If I read this correctly, you're saying that (i) BLM is an example of a former terrorist group; (ii) that it has been appeased; (iii) that it has been emboldened and the police demoralised; (iv) that the homicide rate in the US has risen; and (v) that this is directly connected to BLM. 

I can't find evidence for any of those things.

No the BLM example is not an example of point (i). It is however and example of (ii)-(v) and so it show the effect of this kind of thing. What is the effect?

The problem is so bad that even the New York Times is taking notice. There is, in fact, a sudden, sharp rise in murders in major American cities. The chart below is sobering:




That’s a total of 330 additional murders, year-to-date, in just ten cities — with the three biggest percentage increases taking place in cities rocked by recent policing scandals.

What’s different about this year? Why — after years of declining or stagnant crime rates — are more men dying in the streets? According to the Times, the “experts” have some rather unconvincing ideas.

In Chicago, the police superintendent predictably says it’s the “abundance of guns.” In New Orleans, the superintendent blames a “culture of violence.” In St. Louis, a homicide commander blames the fact that “more young people are settling their disputes, including one started on Facebook, with guns.” But with each excuse, the Times fails to provide any evidence of either a flood of new guns into the city or a dramatic culture change in just one year’s time.


To be sure, some of the murder increases are so modest that they could represent mere statistical noise, and might even reverse themselves by the end of the year.



But when it comes to Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Baltimore, the increases are astonishing. Milwaukee is on pace for its highest number of murders in 14 years. St. Louis is on a similar pace, set to exceed the murder spike it saw from 2007–2009 and record its bloodiest year in more than a decade. In Baltimore, it’s much the same story. Ironically enough, Milwaukee’s police chief, Ed Flynn, was profiled in NPR’s popular podcast, This American Life, as a leading reformer — someone who was working to change the antagonistic relationship between the police and members of high-crime communities.




What do they have in common? They’ve all been at the center of the radical critique mounted by #BlackLivesMatter. In St. Louis, arrests are down and murder is up. In Baltimore, arrests are down and murder is up. In Milwaukee, still dealing with the death of Dontre Hamilton, Chief Flynn has spoken openly of how — time after time — aggressive policing met with media and activist pushback, until the department retreated into initiatives focused on “building empathy.” In Heather Mac Donald’s words, law-enforcement officials are “disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity,” and the result has been more violent crime.

Radical critics of aggressive policing rarely speak honestly about the criminal underclass in America’s major cities. They are not the oppressed; they are the oppressors. They are not fighting historic racism and injustice; they’re trying to make money, dominate “turf,” and terrify people into submission. The criminal underclass welcomes passive policing not as a chance to live free but rather as an opportunity to exploit.



Aggressive policing has its undeniable costs — including of course larger prison populations and incidents of abuse as contact between the police and the civilian population increases. Radical activists, however, seem to take lower crime rates entirely for granted and focus exclusively on police abuse, somehow believing that crime will remain in check even as aggressive policing recedes. But any set of policies that depends on the virtue of the violent is doomed to fail.

www.nationalreview.com/article/423453/blacklivesmatter-costs-black-lives-david-french

Well, no, not really. I'll take your figures and correlations at face value for the sake of the argument.  All that proves is that bad harsh policing should not be replaced with bad hands-off policing. 

Of course, we could question the correlations. What other factors are at play? I don't know, and on that basis cannot reach clear conclusions. You don't know either, but are willing to reach the most radical conclusion possible. Or, to be more precise, to use the data to justify the radical conclusion you'd have reached regardless.

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 11:21:23 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 11:09:43 GMT definitelyacybernat said:

Well, no, not really. I'll take your figures and correlations at face value for the sake of the argument.  All that proves is that bad harsh policing should not be replaced with bad hands-off policing. 

Other than its 'harshness' what reason do you have for thinking that policing in these areas was othersise 'bad'.

Many, but that is sufficient.

Yes it could all be a massive co-incidence due to other factors that just happen to coincide. Occam's razor however would suggest that we shouldn't simply assume that this is likely to be the case.

The point is that things are generally a lot more complex than 'BLM caused homicides'. As I said, I don't know. You don't either, but you rush to reach conclusions based on superficial analysis.


On a related note, have you ever spent any time in the US, or do you just rely on right wing websites for indoctrination? Do you realise what a cesspit of deprivation and inequality much of that country is? Do you think that harsh policing is the solution? Clearly, shifting from one bad model to another bad model is not the solution, but it doesn't follow that you stick with the current bad model.

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 11:48:16 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 11:32:41 GMT definitelyacybernat said:

Many, but that is sufficient.

You said "bad harsh policing should not be replaced with bad hands-off policing" implying that there was something bad about the policing beyond just its harshness. Curious to know what you think that is?

The point is that things are generally a lot more complex than 'BLM caused homicides'. As I said, I don't know. You don't either, but you rush to reach conclusions based on superficial analysis.

Oh I'm sure there was a whole host of factors behind each and every individual homicide. When you see the same huge jump in three cities that have had the same huge factor influencing their policing its not unreasonable to suppose that the obvious explanation is the actual explanation.

FFS, no - there is no logical reason to argue that BLM caused homicides. Bad policing may have enabled an environment in which that was possible. BLM may have influenced decisions. But it's decision-makers who decide, not fracking BLM. 

As for bad harsh policing, how about racial profiling? How about aggression towards and belittling of the people they're supposed to serve? Do you realise how much 'bad harsh' encompasses?

And, again, what actual knowledge do you have of the US? Have you spent any amount of time there? If so, where? Or are you just relying on right-wing websites? Could you answer these questions?

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 13:18:01 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 12:05:29 GMT definitelyacybernat said:

FFS, no - there is no logical reason to argue that BLM caused homicides. Bad policing may have enabled an environment in which that was possible. BLM may have influenced decisions. But it's decision-makers who decide, not fracking BLM. 

Well that's true but of course the liberal establishment in America, has taken the side of BLM in this case. That's unsurprising since BLM is pushing the same left wing liberal agenda that the establishment wants. BLM play an important role in the whole scheme though.

As for bad harsh policing, how about racial profiling?

Ah yes that old chestnut

The new turnpike study, commissioned by the New Jersey attorney general, solves one of the most vexing problems in racial profiling analysis: establishing a violator benchmark. To show that the police are stopping “too many” members of a group, you need to know, at a minimum, the rate of lawbreaking among that group—the so-called violator benchmark. Only if the rate of stops or arrests greatly exceeds the rate of criminal behavior should our suspicions be raised (see “The Myth of Racial Profiling,” Spring 2001). But most of the studies that the ACLU and defense attorneys have proffered to show biased behavior by the police only used crude population measures as the benchmark for comparing police activity—arguing, say, that if 24 percent of speeding stops on a particular stretch of highway were of black drivers, in a city or state where blacks make up 19 percent of the population, the police are over-stopping blacks.

Such an analysis is clearly specious, since it fails to say what percentage of speeders are black, but the data required to rebut it were not available. Matthew Zingraff, a criminologist at North Carolina State University, explains why: “Everybody was terrified. Good statisticians were throwing up their hands and saying, ‘This is one battle you’ll never win. I don’t want to be called a racist.’ ” Even to suggest studying the driving behavior of different racial groups was to demonstrate one’s bigotry, as Zingraff himself discovered when he proposed such research in North Carolina and promptly came under attack. Such investigations violate the reigning fiction in anti–racial profiling rhetoric: that all groups commit crime and other infractions at equal rates. It follows from this central fiction that any differences in the rate at which the police interact with certain citizens result only from police bias, not from differences in citizen behavior.



Faced with constant calumny for their stop rates, the New Jersey troopers asked the attorney general to do the unthinkable: study speeding behavior on the turnpike. If it turned out that all groups drive the same, as the reigning racial profiling myths hold, then the troopers would accept the consequences.

Well, we now know that the troopers were neither dumb nor racist; they were merely doing their jobs. According to the study commissioned by the New Jersey attorney general and leaked first to the New York Times and then to the Web, blacks make up 16 percent of the drivers on the turnpike, and 25 percent of the speeders in the 65-mile-per-hour zones, where profiling complaints are most common. (The study counted only those going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit as speeders.) Black drivers speed twice as much as white drivers, and speed at reckless levels even more. Blacks are actually stopped less than their speeding behavior would predict—they are 23 percent of those stopped.


This is not a politically acceptable result. And the researchers who conducted the study knew it. Anticipating a huge backlash should they go public with their findings, they checked and rechecked their data. But the results always came out the same.

Being scientists, not politicians, they prepared to publish their study this past January, come what may. Not so fast! commanded the now-Bush Justice Department. We have a few questions for you. And the Bush DOJ, manned by the same attorneys who had so eagerly snapped up the laughable New Jersey racial profiling report in 1999, proceeded to pelt the speeding researchers with a series of increasingly desperate objections.

link

That's an article from 2002 but there's no evidence that the reality described has changed.

And, again, what actual knowledge do you have of the US? Have you spent any amount of time there? If so, where? Or are you just relying on right-wing websites? Could you answer these questions?

My personal life history is absolutely none of your concern and I'm not going to be answering questions about it from you or anyone else on this board.

Well you have answered that you're not American previously. I take this to mean that, no, you haven't spent any meaningful amount of time there.

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2016 13:32:16 GMT @pjones said:

Aug 30, 2016 13:22:14 GMT definitelyacybernat said:

Well you have answered that you're not American previously. I take this to mean that, no, you haven't spent any meaningful amount of time there.

You take it to mean whatever you like. Are you going to answer my point about the fiction of so-called 'racial profiling', either in the US or the UK?

Why the hell not? Google Scholar is your friend. Use it...

An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias

Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Fagan & Alex Kiss

Page 813-823 | Published online: 01 Jan 2012



Download citation dx.doi.org/10.1198/016214506000001040



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Abstract

Recent studies by police departments and researchers confirm that police stop persons of racial and ethnic minority groups more often than whites relative to their proportions in the population. However, it has been argued that stop rates more accurately reflect rates of crimes committed by each ethnic group, or that stop rates reflect elevated rates in specific social areas, such as neighborhoods or precincts. Most of the research on stop rates and police–citizen interactions has focused on traffic stops, and analyses of pedestrian stops are rare. In this article we analyze data from 125,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department over a 15-month period. We disaggregate stops by police precinct and compare stop rates by racial and ethnic group, controlling for previous race-specific arrest rates. We use hierarchical multilevel models to adjust for precinct-level variability, thus directly addressing the question of geographic heterogeneity that arises in the analysis of pedestrian stops. We find that persons of African and Hispanic descent were stopped more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation.