Godammed SDN

[evilsoup]

guys in army uniforms with guns
close enough

[zhaktronz]

No dude, when the national guard has main battle tanks, self propelled arty and fucking f-16s it's the same thing as the army.

[Questor]

guys in army uniforms with guns
close enough

Only if you're being deliberately obtuse. Exactly how different is police riot gear from an army uniform? In certain parts of the US, the cops may actually be equipped better than the Army.

The National Guard is why gun control nuts are stupid. It's the "well-regulated militia".

[evilsoup]

ok fine
it's close enough for non-pedants
the use of military force to resolve internal shit is the point, not whether the national guard can actually explode buildings

[Questor]

No dude, when the national guard has main battle tanks, self propelled arty and fucking f-16s it's the same thing as the army.

And that has what to do with riot control? And what to do with the absolutely moronic statement that US cops don't do riot control?

Let's go even further. How often is the national guard called up to do crowd control?

[Questor]

ok fine
it's close enough for non-pedants
the use of military force to resolve internal shit is the point, not whether the national guard can actually explode buildings

They can, pretty darn effectively (at certain points, they've been part of the strategic deterrant), that's not the point at all.

The point is threefold EDIT: Fourfold fivefold.

Point 1: In the US, for a riot control/crowd control function, National Guard is not the same as the Army. Nor is it quite the same as the police.

Point 2: Does it really matter whether the hand swinging the billy club while clearing out the occupy camp is wearing a green or blue glove? (are they both not doing the wrong thing?)

Point 3: Where did he get the idea that the US doesn't have riot cops?

Point 4: I've never seen the local police "hang back and let the national guard handle it." During the LA Riots, the LAPD was fully engaged, and the same has been true in every situation I've seen or read about. The national guard is the backup, not the primary riot control force.

Point 5: The national guard is pretty dang useful in other situations too. Hurricane/Tornado cleanup. Earthquake cleanup. Forest Fire Fire fighting..

[evilsoup]

I actually agree with you. I mean, I think that using military units for police work is a terrible idea, but I'm sure the actual police handle all but the worst riots
I just think you were reading what was written in that thread wrong & seeing motivations that probably weren't there

also the occupy* guys weren't rioting...

but I don't really feel like arguing here

[Questor]

The only motivation I saw was yet another SDNetter being a complete idiot about the US. Given the rather large amount of coverage the crowd control involved in the occupy movement got, the idea that "US Cops don't do crowd control" could only be a joke or the basest form of ignorance.

I had successfully disassociated from that place... and now it's starting to really grate.

[Questor]

I actually agree with you. I mean, I think that using military units for police work is a terrible idea, but I'm sure the actual police handle all but the worst riots

COme to think of it, I actually wouldn't be opposed to a army-lite/national police force specifically trained and equipped for riots. I generally think that most of the time when screwups happen, it's because people are in unfamiliar situations. US Police forces don't usually get a chance to practice dealing with riots or massive crowds/protest movements. When they do, they're using techniques that were developed in the post-game* reviews from the last time there was a big issue/riot.

The problem is that there would not be enough work to keep that kind of group around, and so they'd get given other jobs, too, and that would end up with the same situation we now have, but with an additional chain of command to cause confusion.

* I'm making the term up.

[evilsoup]

he actually put 'riot control'
and you seemed to be implying that he was implying some kind of right-wing agenda or something

but yeah the constant anti-US stuff is a bit much over there

[Questor]

Needing a special riot force might suggest your society has fundamental problems that need addressing

Or you could read what I actually wrote, and realize that I said that there wouldn't be enough work to keep them around, just I think that the argument that bringing in somebody experienced in complex situations has some merit.

Kind of like how, when you need to get checked for a concussion from all that leaping to conclusions, you go see a doctor, because he's got the training to tell if you are actually brain damaged, or are just acting like it?

[Questor]

he actually put 'riot control'
and you seemed to be implying that he was implying some kind of right-wing agenda or something

I was attempting to use hyperbole to point out the stupidity of what he said. The idea that some nebulous foreign state would go to all the effort to set up massive false flag operations to try to make the US government look bad, and then forget to check which agency they should be impersonating left me giggling on the floor.

[Questor]

There would if you needed them
Say
If your society was fundamentally broken

I'm curious, did the doctor say brain damage?

[evilsoup]

well
riots normally aren't an expected thing, you want the riot police readily available, so why not just mandate riot training for police in all big cities? You could even have a centralised training location, or a few of them.

With big multi-day riots, you could ship in police from nearby cities

of course, given the federal nature of your country, mandating this could be a problem. Probably you would have to solve it with the commerce clause lol

also what stark said

[Questor]

well
riots normally aren't an expected thing, you want the riot police readily available, so why not just mandate riot training for police in all big cities? You could even have a centralised training location, or a few of them.

With big multi-day riots, you could ship in police from nearby cities

That's what we do (minus the mandate), and the really big cities serve as the centralized training location. We just don't have enough really big riots for it to matter, nobody has enough experience. The last big, multi-day riot I remember is Cincinnati in 2001, and before that LA in 1992. We could probably send our cops over to the UK for training...

of course, given the federal nature of your country, mandating this could be a problem. Probably you would have to solve it with the commerce clause lol

We'll punish the cities for not doing it with a penalty! TAXING CLAUSE FTW!

also what stark said

[evilsoup]

if the 'problem' is not enough riots
I don't see how having a single, centralised corps of semi-military police would really help

[Questor]

if the 'problem' is not enough riots
I don't see how having a single, centralised corps of semi-military police would really help

I'd just really like there to be less abuses, and if you accept the "We aren't trained for this shit" excuse, then creating a group that IS trained for it would solve the problem.

A better solution would be for people in general to stop being fuckheads and deciding that burning down their neighbor's house is some sort of protest against their position in society, or failing that, for people in general to default to "smart" when stressed rather than "stupid", but I'll just reference that whole bulldog/drooling comment about Ryan Thunder.

[evilsoup]

the best solution would be to try and solve the underlying issues that cause rioting (social inequality, discrimination & racial profiling by police), rather than hope for human nature to change

[Questor]

I'm actually cynical enough to believe that's not possible, and while I'd love to solve all the issues, I do think some of the solutions that have been tried end up counterproductive - particularly reporting requirements for issues that are not relevant to a locality. What follows is QUESTOR'S OPINION! (cue booming music):

Except in a perfectly collectivist/communist state, where everything is the same, there will still be competition. Even if all needs were met you'd still have problems. Maybe between the pretty people and the ugly people, maybe between the left handed people and the right handed people.

Everything breaks, so you have to build a sufficiently robust system to deal with the breaking.

[Losonti Tokash]

literally everything that is within reach of rioters will only hurt the 99% since the wealth of the richest in society is completely insulated from any kind of harm that could be inflicted by the poor

[Questor]

Ghetto edit: It's not a reason not to try to fix the problems, but let's make sure the problem actually exists in the area. This is where you sometimes get stupid government spending headlines. If a local area has a low rate of drink driving, then perhaps targeting the MADD/DARE/PD full court press there is not the best place to do it, even if that area happens to be where all the civic-minded individuals who are worried about drink-driving happen to live.

In other, similar, news, California is building a high speed rail line from one part of the central valley to the other. Nobody is going to use it until it actually connects the bay area to SoCal, but they're going to build the middle part without funding for the rest, in order to get a small amount of federal funding. Cost to transport the five people who will use it with the current end-points? Probably going to be in the millions of dollars a trip. Cost if it were completed? Airlines go out of business cheap.

[evilsoup]

well yes obviously, a competent government helps
and some issues are systemic to capitalism
but some countries have more violent crime than others, and a large & reliable indicator is the level of economic inequality

[xon]

I'm sorry, I really don't get the nerd love for android. Is it because it claims to be open source?

Speaking of opensource, phpbb is such a a pile of shit it's amazing. Reading the dev forums is an great way to crush someone's hopes for humanity.

mysql_real_escape_string

Holy fuck, who ever thought the idea of only supporting explicit escaping and not parameterized queries was a good idea?

I'm tempted to switch this forum to using postgres (which I have installed for other apps) rather than mysql so I can get rid of mysql completely.

[Pieman]

The whaling thread is weird.

I actually agree with you. I mean, I think that using military units for police work is a terrible idea, but I'm sure the actual police handle all but the worst riots

COme to think of it, I actually wouldn't be opposed to a army-lite/national police force specifically trained and equipped for riots.

A bunch of continental European countries have them. They're called Gendarmes.

Needing a special riot force might suggest your society has fundamental problems that need addressing

Yes. I know France does. And Italy. And Spain. And, um, Switzerland?

Thing is, whenever times are troubled there's always someone willing to riot over something. If the left doesn't feel riotous, the right does. If the anarchists don't want to riot, the totalitarian wannabes will. Or, hell, you may just have the local police botch something and suddenly angry unemployed people are breaking shit, and it's not even political really.

Sure, it probably means you need to reform some policies, but let's not go full retard-pacifist here. If people are throwing molotov cocktails and looting stores right now, you need someone who can go in and make them stop unless you want big chunks of your cities burned to the ground. And it doesn't really matter what kind of politics or policies your society has, unless you can come up with some bizarre utopia where nothing ever goes wrong.

if the 'problem' is not enough riots
I don't see how having a single, centralised corps of semi-military police would really help

The same gendarme units you use for riots can double for other purposes. Most of them could theoretically be done by other organizations (security at government facilities, search and rescue, whatever), but it's not really harmful to have them done by a small force of paramilitaries who also double as riot police.

literally everything that is within reach of rioters will only hurt the 99% since the wealth of the richest in society is completely insulated from any kind of harm that could be inflicted by the poor

Barring really organized actions, yes.

[RyanThunder]

on the other hand, ryan just going "lol yer dumb *farts*" is annoying as hell and i'm glad stofsk is willing to fuck his shit up for that

I can't believe that thread has dragged on as long as it has. The whole thing is just hongi and a couple other guys stupidly going "lol there is no morality everything is relative" over and over. That is not a useful discussion. That's totally counterproductive, even, or I'd put up with it. What I said is about all the effort that should've gone into responding to him, because its all the effort that was going to go into finding a functional morality that doesn't amount to "fuck it, just do whatever you want".