The One Percent

[J.A.F.O]

Not sure, I have a reaction to acetone triggering migraines leading to blackout and near complete paralysis for up to 48h... Spend few stressfull times lying on my back barely able to breath staring at the ceiling not even able to move my head. Lucky I had not cats back then or I'm pretty sure I would have been eaten alive... (Hey, that would make for a saw prequel... "Saw -2, hungry pussies"

Being eaten by pussies... hmm it's usually the other way around

[Samurai_Jerk]

Pretty much has failed to sink, when you assumed I was talking about black gangsters when I was clearly referring to ALL blacks.

No, I completely understood what you meant. You're the one who doesn't understand. My point was that not all black people are gangsters whereas all Yakuza are. Therefore having a problem with all black people isn't the same as having a problem with all Yakuza. The Yakuza are by definition a criminal organization. Does that mean that all of them are psychopathic monsters that will kill you for looking at them cross-eyed? No. Does that mean that all of them chose to be gangsters just because they were too lazy to make it in a way that society deems legitimate? No. Does that mean everyone who does bad things is fundamentally a bad person? No. Have a I had some great nights out in my 12 years in Japan because of some of the less than legal services they provide? Yes. Have I had some acquaintances who were Yakuza that were good guys as far as my personal relationship with them went? Yes.

You can put ethnic groups in the same category as black people. Your comparison to ideological groups might be better since those are also choices but it still doesn't pass muster because not all ideologies are equal. Are communists evil? No. Were the Khmer Rougue evil? You're goddam right they were. I bet most of them loved their grandmas and treated their friends well though. There are negative externalities to everything we do. However, choosing to be a member of political party X or religion Y that may have some unintentional negative impact on society is not the same as choosing a life of crime and profiting off human misery.

A good friend of mine once argued that gangsters are more deserving of death than child molesters or serial killers because the latter two groups are sick and don't choose to be the way they are. I had never thought of it that way but once he said it I kind of had to agree. I'm not advocating killing everyone who is a Yakuza. I'm not for the death penalty period. However, if the police came down on them so hard they effectively ceased to exist, it would be a good thing.

[J.A.F.O]

No, I completely understood what you meant. You're the one who doesn't understand. My point was that not all black people are gangsters whereas all Yakuza are. Therefore having a problem with all black people isn't the same as having a problem with all Yakuza.

This goes beyond the scope of the pleadings. The example about black people is interchangeable as stated from the beginning and continuing to make it an issue about black clouds the fact that:

Carte blanche elimination of ANY group of people is bull shit.

I stated from the beginning that I agree with the following:

The Yakuza are by definition a criminal organization. Does that mean that all of them are psychopathic monsters that will kill you for looking at them cross-eyed? No. Does that mean that all of them chose to be gangsters just because they were too lazy to make it in a way that society deems legitimate? No. Does that mean everyone who does bad things is fundamentally a bad person? No. Have a I had some great nights out in my 12 years in Japan because of some of the less than legal services they provide? Yes. Have I had some acquaintances who were Yakuza that were good guys as far as my personal relationship with them went? Yes.

You can put ethnic groups in the same category as black people. Your comparison to ideological groups might be better since those are also choices but it still doesn't pass muster because not all ideologies are equal. Are communists evil? No. Were the Khmer Rougue evil? You're goddam right they were. I bet most of them loved their grandmas and treated their friends well though. There are negative externalities to everything we do. However, choosing to be a member of political party X or religion Y that may have some unintentional negative impact on society is not the same as choosing a life of crime and profiting off human misery.

Who's muster are we trying to pass? Yours? and by who's point of view are the ideologies unequal? Certainly not so by those who espouse them. Party X's ideologies are always going to be more noble than party Y's in party X's point of view. Society? If that's the yardstick by which we are measuring here then the continued presence of the organization is the prima facia evidence that society on the whole has accepted them, maybe not pleasantly, however otherwise they could not exist. The society itself would not allow it. This (not on the surface) ultimately is why police do not come down on Yakuza hard enough for them to cease to exist. If the society on the whole would not tolerate them then they would not tolerate a police force who accommodates them.

But going back to passing muster I'm not trying to pass anyone's muster (that is if we were trying to establish jurisdiction, in which case I claim a special demurrer) As stated before the point of this dialog is that I refuse to tacitly consent by silence to the original plea made by Hijinx and reaffirm:

Carte blanche elimination of ANY group of people is bull shit.

A good friend of mine once argued that gangsters are more deserving of death than child molesters or serial killers because the latter two groups are sick and don't choose to be the way they are. I had never thought of it that way but once he said it I kind of had to agree. I'm not advocating killing everyone who is a Yakuza. I'm not for the death penalty period. However, if the police came down on them so hard they effectively ceased to exist, it would be a good thing.

The above would be a great conversation to be in, one that I will be happy to get back to.

By your leave,
Jafo

[Samurai_Jerk]

JAFO, I'm glad we've established you're an immoral piece of shit. I wouldn't enjoy having that pint with you otherwise.

[J.A.F.O]

I'll make atonement by buying the first round

[Russell]

Major drop in confessions

In recent years, there has been a large decrease in the number of cases in which police are able to track down theft suspects, partly due to growing difficulties in obtaining confessions about similar crimes they had previously committed, according to this year’s National Police Agency white paper.

In 2013, investigators were able to take action against such suspects in about 250,000 cases. They comprised offenses against which the police were able to take action during the initial investigation and those they tracked down after obtaining confessions from suspects about previous related crimes. The figure showed a decline of 190,000 from 2004, according to the police white paper released Friday.

The reduction can be attributed to the increasing difficulties involved in police investigations into theft cases due to societal changes. Such crimes account for more than 70 percent of reported criminal offenses.

The decrease included 140,000 cases involving offenses against which the police tracked down after obtaining confessions from suspects about previous related crimes.

Such previous related crimes, which suspects confessed to during investigations of other charges, constituted 58 percent of all detected crimes in 2004, but the figure fell to 46 percent in 2013.

In cases where suspects being investigated for a crime later confess to additional crimes, there is often less eyewitness information and evidence than in cases where suspects were arrested on the spot or in similar circumstances. As a result, confessions have often been the key to successful investigations in such cases.

According to the white paper, among crimes which were later found in the process of investigations into other cases, 95 percent were found because of confessions of suspects under investigation into other cases.

But recently, there have been an increasing number of cases in which suspects have denied the charges for which they were arrested. There have also been more suspects who have refused to confess to previous related crimes.

Investigations into such suspects have been more difficult, the white paper said.

The number of additional crimes found has fallen partly because investigators have been unable to spend sufficient time questioning suspects, according to the white paper.

Criminal trials in recent years have begun to place greater weight on concrete evidence, which have been more effective in proving crimes than suspects’ confessions, according to the NPA.

Link

Right, instead of hitting a confession out of a suspect, the police more and more have to do the old-fashioned work of gathering evidence.

Readers, please do not turn this discussion into an anti-police rant. They did their job.

[Coligny]

easy fix:

abughraibhood.gif

[matsuki]

The number of additional crimes found has fallen partly because investigators have been unable to spend sufficient time questioning suspects, according to the white paper.

The fuck? 22 days insufficient?

Criminal trials in recent years have begun to place greater weight on concrete evidence, which have been more effective in proving crimes than suspects’ confessions, according to the NPA.

Holy shit, a change for the better? How? Why? Maybe they're being forced to tighten the belt on their budget?

[Mike Oxlong]

Planting false memories fairly easy, psychologists find
New study bolsters notion that memory is fragile and
aggressive police interrogations don’t always serve justice.

...The new study proves for the first time what psychologists have long suspected: that manipulative questioning tactics used by police can induce false memories — and produce false confessions.

Published in January in the journal Psychological Science by Julia Shaw of Britain’s University of Bedfordshire and Stephen Porter, a forensic psychologist who studies the role of memory in the legal system at the University of British Columbia, the study holds striking implications for the justice system.

“The human mind is very vulnerable to certain tactics in interviews,” Porter told the Star in an interview.

Shaw and Porter recruited 70 students at a Canadian university who had never committed a crime, and told them they’d be taking part in a study about how well people could remember their childhoods. They asked students’ past caregivers for details about a vivid event that had taken place in the students’ lives between ages 11 and 14, such as an accident or an emotional first day at school. Caregivers and students agreed not to communicate about the experiment while it was ongoing.

Researchers questioned the students for three sessions of about 40 minutes each. They asked them to recall two events in their past: the true event and an added false one, both of which they said the caregivers had told them about. The false event was described in as general terms as possible — simply “an assault” or “an incident where you were in contact with the police.”

If subjects said they couldn’t remember the false event, questioners reassured them they would be able to retrieve their “lost memories” if they tried hard enough. If they began to “remember,” experimenters asked for more detail. Do you recall any images? How did you feel? Visualize what it might have been like, they said, and the memory will come back to you.

By the end of the third interview, more than 70 per cent of subjects came to believe they had committed a crime just five or so years in the past. They didn’t merely agree they had done what the experimenters suggested — they generated all the details of the crime themselves, recalling vivid sensory memories and often becoming emotional and guilt-ridden.

Some subjects persisted in believing they were guilty after they had been told the “crime” had been invented. “A few people argued with the experimenter and said, ‘Well no, I know this happened,’ ” says Porter.

Think that’s scary? The psychologists did.

“We ended the study prematurely,” says Porter. Once he and Shaw had interviewed 60 of the students and realized the proportion of them generating false memories was high enough to support their hypothesis, they decided to spare the remaining 10 subjects the unnecessary upheaval.

It’s the stuff of disturbing sci-fi fantasies such as Inception and Blade Runner: planting an idea or memory in another’s mind that’s so convincing, they believe it’s their own. Except it isn’t science fiction — it’s science fact. And instead of fanciful technology, all the psychologists needed to implant a false idea was a room, three hours and some innocent-sounding questions.

A few details make this study different from a police interrogation. Subjects may have been less afraid to admit a crime to psychologists than to police. The hippocampus, the part of the brain that forms memory, also isn’t completely developed between the ages of 11 and 14. And subjects were being questioned about an act committed five years in the past — but police investigations often involve questioning about events that are decades old.

And while manipulative, these tactics pale at what police regularly do — interrogating suspects for far longer, being more confrontational and wearing them down emotionally.

The study is only the latest to show that false memories can be induced, adding to a growing consensus that memory is inherently fragile. Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter has shown that memory is always in part a construction — a delicate process of rebuilding...

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/201 ... -find.html

[Russell]

Can't help finding my tongue in my cheek...

[kurogane]

If she would promise to STFU I would happily put my tongue up her cheeks.

[Samurai_Jerk]

If she would promise to STFU I would happily put my tongue up her cheeks.

I don't know. She's Armenian. That's worse than Greek.