Police chiefs at White House to discuss domestic radicalization

[grandpa]

Law enforcement officials from state and local agencies across the United States gathered on Wednesday at the White House to discuss the delicate balance between safeguarding against domestic extremism and maintaining the trust of the residents they serve
Police chiefs at White House to discuss domestic radicalization | Homeland Security News Wire

What are your thoughts on how they "serve" us? Too facts make me skeptical: (1) Virtually anyone can be deemed a "radical" or "terrorist"; (2) The government itself engages in countless acts of "radical" violence, both domestically and abroad.

Your thoughts?

Grandpa h.

[Strawman]

Police work should not be too proactive. Police are there to clean up the mess after it happens, not prevent it before it happens. Some things just can't be predicted in advance. Every time some nut goes on a shooting spree, the media starts screaming about how the authorities missed the 'warning signs.' But, to arrest just one nut who shows all the prime 'signs', who might do something, you will have to arrest thousands of innocent people who probably never would have done anything. This is wrong.

[Dieval]

Police work should not be too proactive. Police are there to clean up the mess after it happens, not prevent it before it happens. Some things just can't be predicted in advance. Every time some nut goes on a shooting spree, the media starts screaming about how the authorities missed the 'warning signs.' But, to arrest just one nut who shows all the prime 'signs', who might do something, you will have to arrest thousands of innocent people who probably never would have done anything. This is wrong.

Why shouldn't they be "proactive"? If they can prevent something, shouldn't they try?

[Angry Citizen]

Because the cost of preventing something may be too high. I could prevent all hunger and homelessness in this world, but it would require enslaving the entirety of humanity and placing them in a state of total economic equality.

[grandpa]

Because the cost of preventing something may be too high.
I could prevent all hunger and homelessness in this world,
but it would require enslaving the entirety of humanity and
placing them in a state of total economic equality.

Funny you should mention that, because the exact opposite appears to be true.
It is because of illegitimate authority that we have so much social and economic inequality.

I'll give you two examples:

1. Watch the documentary and decide which side is promoting inequality and "slavery" more:
"On October 10th 2011, hundreds of people in downtown Oakland occupied Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of city hall. They built a self-organized tent city and began to meet some of the community's most urgent needs. They renamed the plaza Oscar Grant Plaza in honor of a young African-American man who was shot and killed by BART Police in 2009. Although the action was partially inspired by Occupy Wall Street and austerity protests throughout the world, Occupy Oakland's particular character resulted from years of struggle and repression in the Bay Area. This short documentary details the ongoing story of the Oakland Commune..."

The Oakland Commune - YouTube

2. Then consider this:
"In the days of the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage was the journey of slave trading ships from the west coast of Africa to the New World. Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, Dutch and other slave traders maintained outposts along the African coast to transact their business with their local slave raiding partners. Millions of African slaves were sold or traded for manufactured goods or raw materials. In the gruelling journey, the slaves were often shackled and chained to the floor to gain maximum cargo capacity. Many died from disease, starvation, dehydration and suffocation. Many also committed suicide by jumping overboard. Those who resisted their masters were beaten and even killed. Plantation owners treated the slaves like cattle; and those working in the fields were often flogged and beaten. Female slaves were the objects of sexual desire and abuse by their masters. The law required runaway slaves (‘fugitive slaves’) who escaped their bondage to be returned to their masters who punished them severely.

There is a Middle Passage of sorts taking place today from Ethiopia to the Middle East. It is what lawyer Khaled Ali Beydoun and others have described as the Ethiopian ‘Maid Trade’. Today a network of unscrupulous modern-day slave-traffickers (‘human traffickers’) and ‘private labour employment agencies’ operating under license by the ruling regime in Ethiopia ship thousands of young Ethiopian women to various parts of the Middle East to work as domestic servants in what amounts to ‘contract slavery’ with little follow up and monitoring to ensure their well-being and welfare in their host countries.

The plight of Ethiopian women domestic workers in the Middle East has been documented in Bina Fernandez’s survey research (Ch. 7). In 2009, ‘over 74,000 people risked their lives to enter Yemen en route to Saudi Arabia, of which 42,000 were Ethiopians.’ According to official data, 91 per cent of Ethiopian domestic workers in the Middle East were single women, 83 per cent were between the age of 20–30 , 63 per cent had some secondary education, 26 per cent were illiterate, 71 per cent were Muslim and 93 per cent earned US$100–150 per month. Some of these women ‘officially registered with the government as a migrant worker’. Others ‘worked through illegal brokers who are viciously exploitative [and] often take the women’s money and sometimes abandon them in the desert before they even reach Somalia.’"
SCISSION: DON'T TELL THESE WOMEN THE SLAVE TRADE ENDED

What is likely to solve this issue? Pandering to politico-economic interests which could ostensibly benefit from the situation, or starting socially conscious, rebellious organizations?

If people were stealing their power back from crooked politicians and the like, much more progress would have been made over the time spent voting instead, and protesting would be far less necessary.

And, of course, if secularism were the rule of the day, no one would have to say "This is not what Islam teaches," or "This is not what Christianity teaches," because the arguments wouldn't apply to society as a whole, but to individual beliefs. So I think all these issues are going together, and creating various radical movements (with some more deserving of the term "radical" than others). They will not go away, which is really what the authorities dislike.

Grandpa h.

[Dieval]

Because the cost of preventing something may be too high. I could prevent all hunger and homelessness in this world, but it would require enslaving the entirety of humanity and placing them in a state of total economic equality.

I don't think YOU "could prevent all hunger and homelessness in this world", however, this is a completely different and unrelated situation.