Well, I will rephase. I think pre-meditated killing of another human being against the targets will outside of immidiet self-defence in times of peace should be illegal. That should disinclude capital punishment and allow for possbility of euthanasia. Cops can still gun down gun nuts, but essentially only when they violently resist arrest.

I was thinking of the word "murder" in a more neutral "pre-meditated act of causing the death of another human being for the sake of it" sense. Over what it is legitemate to declare war I leave to separate consideration but I consider it important they be declared. Capital punishment for war crimes I am less worried about althought I am happy and accepting of my countrys stance that its not a valid legal consequene even for them.

Some people would say that it might be considerable for extremely bad crimes but I disagree. I think for example that Norway had adequate and proper consequence for Breivik. Everyone whoms beliefs I have got even a little traction of that favours for a consequence of death for him has essentially the same flaw in logic that the motive of itself Breivik did, that violences solves something or meaningfully communicates something. Argument via stick is not a persuasive argument.

I just mean that I am part of the group that thinks murder outside of war should be illegal. I not a relativist in the sense that for others its negation should/could hold. I think they are wrong and misguided and their reasons for their belief and their stated reasons are insufficient. I could be deluded that everybody things that murder is wrong. but no there are people that genuinely believe and effectively enact that running a country by a few murders is appropriate.

Stane on hate speech that is encouraging and calling for criminal acts is okay to be punishable but purely communicative speech should be allowed. Having a minority political opinion should not in itself be a basis for punishment (and is not sufficient grounds for "political instability" security arguments).

But even if the speech freeness conditions are not perfect I don't think it gives basis to go invade or mess too much with internal affairs of a state. But it does mean for me that it is more okay to treat the countrys offiical stance to be attirbuted as of their opinion on who are in (de facto) power. There are lines of argument in that if the leadership deviates too much from the will of the people they would bother to revolt to revoke the technically illegimately held power. Thus even power illegimately gained needs to be atleast passively accepted granting it a sort of genuine legitimacy. But here arguments about how cost-effective it is to genuinely influence the political direction are strong. If there is a official position and disagreeing with it gets you murdered it does tell what the legitimate stance would be.

I am suspecting taht the reason is that poors are more liekly to commit crimes and using race as a proxy for social-economical status doesn't add anything significant. That is "high-black area-> high-crime area" is a correlation not a causation.

I guess my main emphasis was that police have more readiness to use force against blacks than against whites. The tendency for media to give attention selectively doesn't totally explain it. There are also additional media effects that play a role. A story is more likely to be a news story if it features a white victim as opposed to a black victim. And for example in the recent gorilla story somehow the father that was not on the scene was found relevant even with his past being somehow relevant. A embarassing reason for it is probably because there were details that resonated with casting that person in a villain role.

Black people are searched more often, their treatment while police direct actions towards them is more hostile. a black person doesn't need to exhibit any actual sign of terror such as wielding weapon or be found near a crime scene or anythign like that. Just being black makes police likely to treat you as a higher threat. This is against the principle of "innocent until proven guilty". One can argue whether using skin color as part of threat assement is legimate or that it doesn't happen. But most of the time it seems its seen as illegimate and it does happen.

Yes, its my own rather limited special group rather than being universal. But I think we don't think we are especially non-murdery but see it as a natural extension on civilization eradicating free-for-all murder. But I guess on other systems the state merely has a monopoly on murder that it can do at its discretion.

While its true that given signficant poltical will it could be changed it migth not be true that majority of the relevant countriers think its okay/neutral to do. The political process involves compromises and this can be an accepted downside. Also inhibiting dispersion of political ideas either by limiting media or removing opposing political stances means the choice is not that cognitive. In a way by doing such things the actors admit that its worthwhile to bother doing it meaning they don't dare face the "fair fight" where the people have all the options available and are informed about all the choices. So when the process is rigged its outcome isn't as strong an argument to show what the people want.

Maybe its the question of what are the relevant crime statistics. Having heard and read about such a black person committing a serious violence is more likely to get death-sentence while a white gets life in prison. Compared to a general population there are disproportionally more black people doing crimes. However if you controlled for socioeconomical status a lto of it could be that blacks are majority in poor areas. But even then its common to hear stories where police are more active in regards to black people. They also tend to use more serious measures against them. A black person doesn't need to be armed for a cop to start fearing for his life and discharging weapons and tasers.

There is even the joke of "Well white people can't use the N word but atleast we can use phrases like 'thanks, for the warning officer'". There is reason to suspect that there are a lot of "false positives" of black people being processed by the legal system where a lighter process could have sufficed. Still it gives an order of magnitude that the prospensity to convict blacks for murder and such is weaker than overall prospensity to charge blacks for crimes.

I started seeing recognizable points being replaced by vomitous streams of consciousness, or article by anecdote. The blah blah blah continues until i stop reading, or gouge my eyes out.

That might be related to the process of news organizations (like newspapers and magazines) going out of business.

They used to make money. Some of that money was used to pay more-or-less professional journalists to write more-or-less competent articles and stories. Large papers maintained their own foreign bureaus, for example, and had their own man-on-the-spot who lived in that country and didn't just fly in for a few hours to do a quickie reportage in front of the issue du jour.

For a fresh example consider a remarkably candid description of how Ben Rhodes, a mid-level White House official, was able to effectively manipulate the media coverage of the Iran nuclear deal. He is quite open about it:

Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

As you have noticed, things changed. There is no money to pay professional journalists (or professional news photographers) any more. They've been replaced by "citizen journalists" and bloggers -- see HuffPo for where the whole thing goes.

Is it horrible and terrible and the end of the world? Well, as usual it depends :-) You gain some, you lose some. From my point of view you lose effortless access to competent summaries of what's happening. You gain somewhat effortful access (you need to do a LOT of filtering) to multiple and very different points of view. I count it as a net loss for issues I care little about and a net gain for issues I care more about. YMMV, of course.

I don't think most people understood Aesops fables to be about a real fox at the time they were written.

Storytelling, in the sense of telling a story that all the participants acknowledge to be false

That's a very weird concept of a "story".

is actually remarkably recent

Like ancient Greece and Rome are "remarkably recent"?

doubt you can find any instance of a large group of people who generally acknowledge they were in the wrong and are responsible for significant unjustified harm to another large group.

Post-WW2 Germany.

To my knowledge slavers didn't win (if there ever was a slaver-side). Winners being right is business as usual but here losers are put forward as being acknowledged as having been right.

One could make a more compelling case for capital punishment. Beheadings in middle-eastern countries are looked down upon, assasinations being involved in Russian politics is often critizied and you can get executed for rather political actions in China. However the face of the western world, US, has a death-row that is disproportionally black. However many european countries disagree enough with the US stance that they embargo the relevant execution drugs to be supplied to US. However being for capital punishment is not seen as an unreasonable stance and states are allowed to legalise it. One doesn't expect an armed conflict over it but its more of a case that angry brutes are going to execute regardless of ethics.

For things that are more universally seen as transgression one might consider the spanish inquisition or witch trials. I do not know anyone that today thinks those were the "right thing to do" while it might be possible that those people exist. But I doubt any of the people organising them faced any consequences for having done so. But the victims of the transagressions don't seem to demand any relief either.

Also while white people came to america first the spread of new diseases was accidental. However at some point it might have become intentional for some people. That is pretty dirty business and I can't see people reallly seriously defend those people. But for what might have been ethnically targeted bioweapon mass-murder it is quite easily not given any attention. And while native american want and do have special rights its usually not seen from the lense of making up for bad things done.

Consider how old and universal story-telling is. Humans felt empathy for fictional characters since forever.

This is a hypothetical. Perhaps I should have said a 100 years in instead of 50, but, for example, practically all Americans acknowledge that slavery was wrong.