Why can’t I aim my anger at both?
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Melbourne Protests:Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition
- Thread starter Aristotle Pickett
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Because you don't have a 'Free Palestine' sig, or using the flag as your avatar.
No.
But I do know Australia's own stockpile is being returned and then resold through an intermediary.
Israel are not in the market for smart or sophisticated weapons.
Not really.
It's been like this.
"Hey, I don't think you should be violent towards cops and journalists at an event you are protesting. Some of the stuff thrown at them is obscene."
A certain poster - "Well, you must support kids being murdered overseas then."
"Well, I don't think you're going to muster up much support protesting for 'peace' by being violent."
A certain other poster - "Well, sometimes you have to resort to violence to make people 'uncomfortable' to get your message across."
Guess which ones are pro-Palestine?
Also, I don't believe any of us actually said we supported the expo, just explained why it was here.
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Most of this thread has been one side justifying violence, while the other side has been condemning it...
It's a truly ironic thread.
It hilarious how desperate these people are to fill their egos about doing “something”
Why come masked and ready to attack police? Why try and force yourself into areas that have been purposely blocked off? Why try to block traffic?
How does this help your cause. Why not protest in the park? Is making yourselves look like douches helpful to the cause??
Why come masked and ready to attack police? Why try and force yourself into areas that have been purposely blocked off? Why try to block traffic?
How does this help your cause. Why not protest in the park? Is making yourselves look like douches helpful to the cause??
There is absolutely no need for an expo like this to be open to the public or on the scale of what we are seeing, it's obscene & unnecessary.
There is also absolutely no need for the sort of
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Well said.
There is no excuse for violence while protesting. It's not protesting. It's a bunch of ratbags who feel the need to get violent and take aim at reporters/police that have nothing to do with the conflict. Seems to be a common occurrence to from one side.
What kind of image is that showing? One with half a brain could take a guess.
One of my posts were deleted because it was sidetracking to the war in the middle east. Yet almost every other post, including one in particular posts images of Gaza..Lol, talk about bias and picking sides for people reading in an online forum.
This thread is about what happened yesterday, and it was a terrible look. There is absolute NO excuse for that moronic behaviour. Clearly not educated either.
It’s not open to the public…
Gethelred
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Posted this in the Police Brutality thread, figured it makes sense in here too:
The greatest indication of statehood is the monopolization of violence; ie, the state controls who is allowed to commit an act of violence and or where/when it occurs. Affecting the pretense that violence is not inherent to all states is to be ignorant of the nature of a nation-state's historical origins and the maintenance of its position and role within our society. This is why the Jan-6 violence is considered a coup attempt; had there been enough support in the right places and/or the mob got a hold of the right people - Biden or Pelosi - without the state being able to intervene to stop them in the moment, the state no longer has a claim to effective control of the nation and thus regime change is required to one that does or can. Essentially, that claim to being able to control the peace is itself a threat of violence against anyone who would break that peace.
A police force within the nation state comes courtesy of this, and the necessary side effect is police brutality and heavyhandedness. While some nations - liberal nations - have guidelines and procedures to protect the public from their own violence, all nations which feature the basic model of policing are still working from the assumption that without police there is no maintenance of the peace and thus no control or monopoly on violence. This is - IMO - a genuinely absurd viewpoint; a nation-state has an armed forces for external defense, and can employ those armed forces as they choose (limited by constitution, which is subject to change in most circumstances if difficult). The Feds chose to express that power in the NT intervention - possible without a referendum because of the difference between a federated state and a territory in terms of being subject to commonwealth rule directly instead of having the federal government's powers tightly constrained - but you get the picture: the government was able to send in the military to enforce their will over the people, whether it was needed or not. What this is intended to demonstrate is that decisions concerning violence - ie, which is justified and which is not - are genuinely made for political reasons which are used to paint over violent repression and state control.
Had the government wanted to violently repress the anti-lockdown protests, they could've and would've been well within their purview to do so, and it would've been completely justifiable from their perspective.
To the point of this little journey into theory: when a populace becomes discontented with what their state is doing, there is no recourse for them other than regime change or civil disrest. We have implements of state to institute regime change - electoral cycles - but if an action or policy is bipartisan, there is no means to evince change the populace wants. The populace are, in effect, prisoners of their own nation state who is acting in their names. This is equally true of refugee 'Return the Boats!' policies as it is of forcibly restricting protest rights; if the populace does not agree, there is zero recourse as far as regime change goes because of the nature of the political system shutting some ideas out and enforcing their control over their territories.
The only option then, therefore, is political violence. Attempt to overthrow the nation-state's monopoly over violence, and bring about enough... threat of regime change that the system is compelled to listen to protect itself; or, succeed and become a new regime.
Now, you may not like this. You can choose to shove your fingers in your ears and/or disagree. But this is the problem in a nutshell: if there is no non-violent political recourse to evince change, a populace may choose instead to attempt a violent means of change. If y'all don't want that, perhaps consider listening to other people - even if they're perennial protesters - ahead of just wholesale ignoring them.
After all, the Declaration of Independence does hold the following words, does it not?
The greatest indication of statehood is the monopolization of violence; ie, the state controls who is allowed to commit an act of violence and or where/when it occurs. Affecting the pretense that violence is not inherent to all states is to be ignorant of the nature of a nation-state's historical origins and the maintenance of its position and role within our society. This is why the Jan-6 violence is considered a coup attempt; had there been enough support in the right places and/or the mob got a hold of the right people - Biden or Pelosi - without the state being able to intervene to stop them in the moment, the state no longer has a claim to effective control of the nation and thus regime change is required to one that does or can. Essentially, that claim to being able to control the peace is itself a threat of violence against anyone who would break that peace.
A police force within the nation state comes courtesy of this, and the necessary side effect is police brutality and heavyhandedness. While some nations - liberal nations - have guidelines and procedures to protect the public from their own violence, all nations which feature the basic model of policing are still working from the assumption that without police there is no maintenance of the peace and thus no control or monopoly on violence. This is - IMO - a genuinely absurd viewpoint; a nation-state has an armed forces for external defense, and can employ those armed forces as they choose (limited by constitution, which is subject to change in most circumstances if difficult). The Feds chose to express that power in the NT intervention - possible without a referendum because of the difference between a federated state and a territory in terms of being subject to commonwealth rule directly instead of having the federal government's powers tightly constrained - but you get the picture: the government was able to send in the military to enforce their will over the people, whether it was needed or not. What this is intended to demonstrate is that decisions concerning violence - ie, which is justified and which is not - are genuinely made for political reasons which are used to paint over violent repression and state control.
Had the government wanted to violently repress the anti-lockdown protests, they could've and would've been well within their purview to do so, and it would've been completely justifiable from their perspective.
To the point of this little journey into theory: when a populace becomes discontented with what their state is doing, there is no recourse for them other than regime change or civil disrest. We have implements of state to institute regime change - electoral cycles - but if an action or policy is bipartisan, there is no means to evince change the populace wants. The populace are, in effect, prisoners of their own nation state who is acting in their names. This is equally true of refugee 'Return the Boats!' policies as it is of forcibly restricting protest rights; if the populace does not agree, there is zero recourse as far as regime change goes because of the nature of the political system shutting some ideas out and enforcing their control over their territories.
The only option then, therefore, is political violence. Attempt to overthrow the nation-state's monopoly over violence, and bring about enough... threat of regime change that the system is compelled to listen to protect itself; or, succeed and become a new regime.
Now, you may not like this. You can choose to shove your fingers in your ears and/or disagree. But this is the problem in a nutshell: if there is no non-violent political recourse to evince change, a populace may choose instead to attempt a violent means of change. If y'all don't want that, perhaps consider listening to other people - even if they're perennial protesters - ahead of just wholesale ignoring them.
After all, the Declaration of Independence does hold the following words, does it not?
Ok so violence is fine, as long as it supports whatever cause someone supports.
Got it
That last post definitely explains a lot…
Not sure what the Declaration of Independence has to do with us anyway.
Gethelred
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Our systems of government are founded in no small part on enlightenment ideas, of which the DoI forms a significant component.
People seem to forget that one of the foundational templates to modern democracies is the formation of the American republic. At least, you seem to.
Yeah, that's what I said.Ok so violence is fine, as long as it supports whatever cause someone supports.
Got it
Permaybehaps you could consider reading less between the lines and actually try reading the actual point of that passage:
... or did you not read that far?
Yeah, if you have something to say you'd best say it where appropriate.
This is Australia, we're not beholden to the USA's Declaration of Independence.
The USA didn't invent Democracy.
Yeah, that's what I said.
Permaybehaps you could consider reading less between the lines and actually try reading the actual point of that passage:
... or did you not read that far?
So, what if the majority of people don't agree with the protestors message and don't want to listen to it? Free reign to riot against the government?
Remembering that we live in Australia, not the USA.
What 'stones'? You've just come in here half-cocked and posted a bunch of irrelevant bullshit.
Gethelred
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Tell you what: you can refrain from reading things into my posts I didn't say, and I'll not call you an intellectual coward for refusing to confront my posting on its merits. Does that sound good to you?
... I'm struggling to refrain from rudeness here, so I'll instead be blunt: there are zero examples of a successful purely peaceful protest movement.
I am advocating increased tolerance for protest and/or other opinions within a liberal democracy, otherwise coups and other assorted protest violence is inevitable. That is entirely the point I made in my initial post.
... which is intended to imply I've forgotten that?
I've supplied - in the very post you were too chickenshit to quote - two Australian examples of the state's monopoly over violence. Methinks you could do with actually reading the posts you're quoting.
Yeah, definitely haven't read the post.
Just post tl;dr next time.
Ok tl;dr.
This discussion is about the actions of protesters yesterday, not police brutality. Discuss the DoI, or whatever you want really, over there.
That's great but again, just like your post earlier, irrelevant to this thread.
Gethelred
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"I haven't read it," =/= "irrelevant"
I've discussed the broader ramifications of protest, and why violent protest happens. You're welcome to argue with my argument as you like, but depicting it as irrelevant suggests one of two things about you:
- you genuinely haven't read it, or read all of it. If you had, you'd know it was relevant.
- you've read some of it and you urgently started reaching left and right for a reason to dismiss it.
So, which is it? Or are you actually running away?
We're not discussing the broader ramifications of protest, we're discussing 'protesters' throwing piss, shit and vomit on cops and journos.
That was until you decided to insert yourself.
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