4 ms·

A protection racket implies the "threat" is fake or choreographed. Are you implying China isn't hacking America, or pushing out it's maritime borders, or threat

by seppin 6y ago

A protection racket implies the "threat" is fake or choreographed. Are you implying China isn't hacking America, or pushing out it's maritime borders, or threatening US allies? These are all engineered threats somehow?

colonelanguz 6y ago
> A protection racket implies the "threat" is fake or choreographed. Actually it doesn't
- seppin 6y ago
  You're right: "Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket It implies that the protector has the absolute ability to control if an attack occurs or not. So if the CIA had a little more budget, they would have stopped 9/11. Because they had the ability to, they just didn't. Is that what you are saying?
  - krageon 6y ago
    Part of a protection racket is staging attacks when you think you're not going to get paid (or you're not getting paid yet). You could just as easily make a case along those lines, but both cases would be disingenuous because real life is complicated. Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that it needs to at all times 100% conform to a sentence that you found on wikipedia. As in a real life protection racket, there will always be events that occur in spite of the protection offered. The core of a racket is to respond with disproportionate violence. For example, sending your army to harass the entire country that some of your attackers were part of. Drone strikes on schools that are known to be full of children. There are more salient examples to be found, but I think we don't need them.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > Part of a protection racket is staging attacks when you think you're not going to get paid Are you implying this has happened or does happen? Please cite your source if so. > Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that it needs to at all times 100% conform to a sentence that you found on wikipedia. No but going off an existing definition is better than throwing around a concept with any real connection to reality. > The core of a racket is to respond with disproportionate violence. For example, sending your army to harass the entire country that some of your attackers were part of. What does that have to do with CIA? > Drone strikes on schools that are known to be full of children. So a drone strike on country B is payback for them not ponying up protection money to the intel agency of country A. Did I get that right? That is nonsensical.
  - colonelanguz 6y ago
    Can't tell if you're trolling/deliberately obtuse or what Here's what I meant: Your wrong conception of how a protection racket works undermines your argument that the person who said "That's like supporting a protection racket" is wrong. No idea what you're talking about with "implies that the protector has the absolute ability to control if an attack occurs or not." Have you ever seen a gangster film? Anyways every time you invoke a new concept you're getting it wrong so maybe take a step back and think about what people are talking about instead of just randomly generating provocative hypos because you disagree with someone
    - seppin 6y ago
      > Have you ever seen a gangster film? I'm sorry i'm not basing my arguments on movies i've seen. Combine that with you arrogance in implying i'm getting concepts wrong (i'm citing them, you are not), I think this conversation has run its course. Your entire response amounts to "you are wrong but i'm not going to say how".
      - colonelanguz 6y ago
        You cited a source which proves you were wrong in exactly the way I pointed out. Your entire original comment hinged on a bizarre metaphor you created out of your false premise that in protection rackets, the "threat" is fake or choreographed. It isn't, so your comment isn't an intelligible critique of the comment it was intended to respond to. Yes, that's my point: your critique is wrong. I told you how: it is based on a false premise. > (i'm citing them, you are not) You cited Wikipedia, and you haven't cited a single source for any proposition other than the one you were specifically wrong about. > I'm sorry i'm not basing my arguments on movies i've seen. Deliberate obtuseness. The obvious implication of the reference to gangster films is that anyone who has even a passing familiarity with protection rackets knows that harm from the racketeer is not the only threatened harm. The third sentence of the Wikipedia entry you mentioned confirms this: "Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients." That means that the analogy between the CIA and a protection racket is perfectly tenable—in the parlance of your Wikipedia entry, a "broader protection racket" rather than a "pure extortion racket." Not sure how to spell it out any clearer than that. I'm not implying you're getting concepts wrong. You got them both wrong.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I can't help thinking China hacking America is part of the NSA profile, and I don't think the CIA is needed to tell anyone that China is pushing out it's maritime borders or threatening U.S allies that's more like what reading the news is for. I suppose there could be a need for analysis of these events, but the analysis doesn't really seem to be part of the reason why people sometimes think the CIA should be abolished.
- seppin 6y ago
  My point was a simple one, spying will always occur. If people are arguing it should be the exclusive purview of autocrats, and that would somehow improve the state of the world, I would disagree.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    The arguments for closing the CIA that I am familiar with all revolve around a narrative that it is a non-democratic organization, and that from its predecessors the OSS to the modern day it has been structured so as to help fascistic, autocratic governments gain and hold power. I've never encountered an argument that it should be closed because spying isn't nice.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > it has been structured so as to help fascistic, autocratic governments gain and hold power. Perhaps during the cold war, but "countering communism" (whatever that means) was the mission of every branch of the US Government then. So not sure what your point is.
3131s 6y ago
A whole lot of these threats are manufactured. You know that members of the Bush administration helped orchestrate the 9/11 attacks, right?
- meowface 6y ago
  No, they didn't.
  - 3131s 6y ago
    They did, together with their buddy Bandar bin Sultan. Why exactly do you think they didn't bother going after the person who funded the hijackers directly, and actively hid this information in the 9/11 "28 pages" for years and years?
    - kortilla 6y ago
      But that’s lame even for a conspiracy. Step 1 if it was a conspiracy would have been certainly to go after the funders because they were loose ends.
      - 3131s 6y ago
        You don't know who you're talking about. Prince Bandar is not going to become a "loose end", they'd sooner off Bush himself. If you or I had transferred $130,000 into the accounts of two of the hijackers just before the attack, do you think we'd be roaming around freely today? This is a billionaire arms trafficker, not some pleb.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

by seppin 6y ago

colonelanguz 6y ago

> A protection racket implies the "threat" is fake or choreographed. Actually it doesn't

seppin 6y ago
You're right: "Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket It implies that the protector has the absolute ability to control if an attack occurs or not. So if the CIA had a little more budget, they would have stopped 9/11. Because they had the ability to, they just didn't. Is that what you are saying?
- krageon 6y ago
  Part of a protection racket is staging attacks when you think you're not going to get paid (or you're not getting paid yet). You could just as easily make a case along those lines, but both cases would be disingenuous because real life is complicated. Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that it needs to at all times 100% conform to a sentence that you found on wikipedia. As in a real life protection racket, there will always be events that occur in spite of the protection offered. The core of a racket is to respond with disproportionate violence. For example, sending your army to harass the entire country that some of your attackers were part of. Drone strikes on schools that are known to be full of children. There are more salient examples to be found, but I think we don't need them.
  - seppin 6y ago
    > Part of a protection racket is staging attacks when you think you're not going to get paid Are you implying this has happened or does happen? Please cite your source if so. > Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that it needs to at all times 100% conform to a sentence that you found on wikipedia. No but going off an existing definition is better than throwing around a concept with any real connection to reality. > The core of a racket is to respond with disproportionate violence. For example, sending your army to harass the entire country that some of your attackers were part of. What does that have to do with CIA? > Drone strikes on schools that are known to be full of children. So a drone strike on country B is payback for them not ponying up protection money to the intel agency of country A. Did I get that right? That is nonsensical.
- colonelanguz 6y ago
  Can't tell if you're trolling/deliberately obtuse or what Here's what I meant: Your wrong conception of how a protection racket works undermines your argument that the person who said "That's like supporting a protection racket" is wrong. No idea what you're talking about with "implies that the protector has the absolute ability to control if an attack occurs or not." Have you ever seen a gangster film? Anyways every time you invoke a new concept you're getting it wrong so maybe take a step back and think about what people are talking about instead of just randomly generating provocative hypos because you disagree with someone
  - seppin 6y ago
    > Have you ever seen a gangster film? I'm sorry i'm not basing my arguments on movies i've seen. Combine that with you arrogance in implying i'm getting concepts wrong (i'm citing them, you are not), I think this conversation has run its course. Your entire response amounts to "you are wrong but i'm not going to say how".
    - colonelanguz 6y ago
      You cited a source which proves you were wrong in exactly the way I pointed out. Your entire original comment hinged on a bizarre metaphor you created out of your false premise that in protection rackets, the "threat" is fake or choreographed. It isn't, so your comment isn't an intelligible critique of the comment it was intended to respond to. Yes, that's my point: your critique is wrong. I told you how: it is based on a false premise. > (i'm citing them, you are not) You cited Wikipedia, and you haven't cited a single source for any proposition other than the one you were specifically wrong about. > I'm sorry i'm not basing my arguments on movies i've seen. Deliberate obtuseness. The obvious implication of the reference to gangster films is that anyone who has even a passing familiarity with protection rackets knows that harm from the racketeer is not the only threatened harm. The third sentence of the Wikipedia entry you mentioned confirms this: "Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients." That means that the analogy between the CIA and a protection racket is perfectly tenable—in the parlance of your Wikipedia entry, a "broader protection racket" rather than a "pure extortion racket." Not sure how to spell it out any clearer than that. I'm not implying you're getting concepts wrong. You got them both wrong.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I can't help thinking China hacking America is part of the NSA profile, and I don't think the CIA is needed to tell anyone that China is pushing out it's maritime borders or threatening U.S allies that's more like what reading the news is for. I suppose there could be a need for analysis of these events, but the analysis doesn't really seem to be part of the reason why people sometimes think the CIA should be abolished.

seppin 6y ago
My point was a simple one, spying will always occur. If people are arguing it should be the exclusive purview of autocrats, and that would somehow improve the state of the world, I would disagree.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  The arguments for closing the CIA that I am familiar with all revolve around a narrative that it is a non-democratic organization, and that from its predecessors the OSS to the modern day it has been structured so as to help fascistic, autocratic governments gain and hold power. I've never encountered an argument that it should be closed because spying isn't nice.
  - seppin 6y ago
    > it has been structured so as to help fascistic, autocratic governments gain and hold power. Perhaps during the cold war, but "countering communism" (whatever that means) was the mission of every branch of the US Government then. So not sure what your point is.

3131s 6y ago

A whole lot of these threats are manufactured. You know that members of the Bush administration helped orchestrate the 9/11 attacks, right?

meowface 6y ago
No, they didn't.
- 3131s 6y ago
  They did, together with their buddy Bandar bin Sultan. Why exactly do you think they didn't bother going after the person who funded the hijackers directly, and actively hid this information in the 9/11 "28 pages" for years and years?
  - kortilla 6y ago
    But that’s lame even for a conspiracy. Step 1 if it was a conspiracy would have been certainly to go after the funders because they were loose ends.
    - 3131s 6y ago
      You don't know who you're talking about. Prince Bandar is not going to become a "loose end", they'd sooner off Bush himself. If you or I had transferred $130,000 into the accounts of two of the hijackers just before the attack, do you think we'd be roaming around freely today? This is a billionaire arms trafficker, not some pleb.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]