Slashdot Mirror
Tech Wars In Meat Space
Starfish writes: "Police and protesters are asking if new technologies used by both sides will turn street protests into bloodless, but also meaningless rituals. Real protest robots, phaser-like weapons, and other cool gadgets are discussed in this Village Voice article. Good heads up about the Ruckus Society's tech action camp in October."
You didn't get first post. How about slowing the slashdot database to a crawl instead? Sound good?
Remember, we are discussing non-lethal weapons. I suppose that to stop a riot one has to use some weapon, or do you suppose to do it telepathically?
Also, if you are aproached by muggers who want to kill you, will you not try to kill them first, if you can? All depends on context, soldiers shooting civilians is OK when they do it as self-defence.
Your lucky, last "big" protest I saw, people were rock tossing and burning tires. Then they looted.
a great protest is one where everyone marches, nobody gets hurt and the other side listens.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I'm not going to look up the statistics but I'm guessing that protest-related deaths in First World countries are incredibly rare. Giuliani was certainly the first known fatality of the recent anti-capitalist/anti-globalization protests, though there have been a number of serious injuries.
What the hell are cops doing protecting the corporations against the point of view of protestors?
The police and government would counter that they are maintaining public order, not protecting corporations exclusively. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine when "public order" started justifying attacking peaceful protestors and passive resisters with pepper spray. Here in Canada we have had incredibly shameful incidents in which people locked to posts etc. have been sprayed right in the face despite being completely nonviolent.
Corporations should hire their own security.
They do. However, their rent-a-cops have no authority off their property - if they try to herd or grab you in the street you have every right to defend yourself by beating the stuffing out of them if neccessary. Companies would LIKE to be able to field troops against hostile demonstrators in public spaces, but thank Ford they don't have that ability yet.
Who's protecting the protestors?
This is the crux of the issue. Police are supposed to defend nonviolent, law-abiding citizens from violent criminal thugs. However, the issue is getting turned around so that anybody assembling to criticize the government is defined as a criminal by the police, and law enforcement then acts accordingly. A lot of people are arrested at protests, but few end up with criminal records. Why? Because they were doing nothing illegal! Their arrests are simply a scare tactic to try and reduce the number of people who protest the next time.
Freedom: "I won't!"
...Crowd control techniques...are conspicuously absent...
Yeah, just like support for the cause, huh?
All users with ID's with a 5 or a 9 were destroyed at 1:38am. All such users please step into the Casualty-Booth for processing.
That is all.
You are again deviating from the course of the discussion. I am merely pointing at the fact that if a crowd attacks armed soldiers, it should not expect that the soldiers won't protect themselves. So when protestors at Berkley attacked the NG, four of them were killed since they attacked the soldiers, and not since, say, they had had corrupted Communist beliefs. Clear and present danger to a soldier translates into a clear and present danger to the rioters. No gizmo may change that.
You're of course only highlighting the inherent contradiction in a democratic society - free speech that threatens free speech.
Well, in any case you live in a corporate republic where the flow of information is controlled by increasingly narrow interests, so you have to wonder what we're preserving in any case.
Palestinians are protesting against the illegal state of Israel.
But, if the police are violent towards peaceful protesters, they'll be just as glad to air that. And once the public sees that the police are rioting, and not the protesters, they're going to start to wonder what it is that the protesters are saying that the police don't want us to know about. Then the news media start showing interviews with the protesters where they discuss what's being protested.
Of course if the non-peaceful "protesters" show up and fulfill the police's most pessimistic expectations, that makes for the kind of video that a calm explanation of the issues can't compete with in the contest for air time as it is presently conducted.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Aren't you worried that this will escalate any conflicts where the protesters will have a bigger arsenal?
Do you want to see the police resort to SWAT teams and tanks, as well as tear gas? Police in the US are supposedly supposed to use minimal force, it's like the protestors are giving no other choice but to "take out" the threat to safety. If the protestors start firing on the police, the police will have no choice but to shoot back, you can't blame them for that.
I feel that we'll see another WACO where we'll have a worse standoff thanks to the enemy having as much technology as the police.
There was a show on the discovery channel showing their new equipment to deal with situations outside.
i might agree if it werent for a man who runs a company with the shittiest and most annoying banner ads ever. You are insanely stupid, dont ruin it for the rest of us.
________________________________________________
I was in Gothenburg to demonstrate, and most locals I met had nothing against the legitimate protests and some were actually quite upset that national/international media didn't really mention the large demonstrations that took place, just how there were several hundred "violent anarchists" throwing rocks at the police.
Or how about the police surrounding Hvitfeldtska? I was there and saw how the police started hitting (peaceful,sitting) protesters when some of the people inside the school managed to get out (they got out far from where the crowd was. This was never reported by any other media than local Gothenburg papers and left-wing papers.
And during the friday night "reclaim the streets" event, there were a lot more cops than people participating in the event (I didn't see how the situation around the police officer who fired at the demonstrators was, there were to many cops around for me to be able to see...)
Oh yeah, even though most left-wing people are against the kind of violence that heppened there, and although they said so, the right-wing politicians and media were still screaming about how all people left of center were evil because they didn't say that they were against the violence...
/Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
"It is the exploitation of perceived civil liberties which extends into violence...
My civil rights are merely perceived?!
Colonel, I see you're working at a college. Do us all a favor and go audit the freshman civics courses again. You are an embarrassment to the cause you have sworn to defend.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I am a veteran of a couple large-ish Anti-Capitalist protests (Windsor, Quebec). Let me assure you, there are certainly agent-provacateurs amoungst the crowds. The police badly need to justify their overwhelmning threats of violence. While I was marching with the Windsor-Detroit Communists (we had grown to about 800-1000 on the streets in Quebec) we were joined at the front by someone who was as obvious as could be. He reputed to be a local Communist (though our known-local-contact didnt know him) he was dressed in 'casual wear' like it was haloween and asked *alot* of odd questions with regard to our direction and intent. It was almost laughable. We later made a film and this person features prominently in it.
Now, it is also a known fact that radical movements, like the present anit-capitalist one, will become paranoid and dillusional. Those involved will cease to trust 'outsiders'. The solution to this I fear is absolute honesty, why keep secrets at all? If you are completely honest about your intent there is no need to keep secrets.
What to help ruin the present Plutocratic Picnic? Join the FIGHT! See protest.net.
That's the point. Angry rioters being brutalized, rightly or wrongly, makes for good imagery for the reporter to talk over; if the reporter does not have a good video to talk over, the item gets less play time. So if the police can put down the demonstration without obvious brutality, there is no reason for it to be covered with anything more than brief blub.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
Rodney King?
Robocops beating up other robots?
Heysel Stadium (England vs Italy 35-3)?
Robots aimlessly killing other robots...
yes, this story was terrible.
useless bullshit.
this is why slashdot is a bunch of fascist cocksuckers.
<Krabappel> "The only books we have are ones that were banned by other schools."
<Skinner> "Well, the kids have to learn about TekWar sometime."
you know what really sucks..
/seriously/ come up with that, and NOT call it a ray?.
these new technologies that do fucked up stuff, like a beam that causes burning sensations, or a beam that causes seizures. They're calling them "Beams"!!
wtf is that?
they would all be much cooler, and we'd all benifit, if they were called Rays!
Whose decision was it to call them beams?
Was it to make them sound LESS Sci-Fi?
I think that should never be the goal of anything.
Everyone grew up knowing the basic rule: Beams are tools, Rays are weapons.
We should stick by this rule to the end.
Until then, I refuse to take any of this seriously. Go ahead and hit me with your stupid "Incapacitation Beam" and I dont care.
Everyone knows that Rays are where its at.
This was all prompted by the pure and utter obscurity of some of these so-called "beams".
A Groginess beam? Come on!
How could anyone
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I don't understand, are you saying the protestors will be able to successfully fight the police as well as damage the corporation?
If there are some sophisticated stuff that enables the protestors to hold off the police, then the SWAT team and more heavy artillery will come in.
That's why I fear this, it may make the police desprate enough to roll out Tanks down main street USA.
Read the last line again. The protesters need to give this a human face, or it is in no way effective. Robots battling against robots has no public relations meaning beyond spectacle. Risking your life and limb for the cause is the only thing that's effective.
"Kid sacrifices life to protest WTO" is an effective headline indeed.
"Police and protest robots battle; street filled with used robot parts" is going to make people laugh, but won't create any kind of public relations victory.
I think you can see the real reason non-leathal weapons scare these protesters; if you can't say you were injured by a savage police force, but were instead temporarily immobilized to prevent you from looting, all sympathy for you vanishes.
D
ah, yes, but you see this is far more interesting....
I watched the news coverage on the Genoa riots. What I don't get is how a moron with a cloth covering his face and bashing in bank windows with a 10 feet iron bar is protesting against the police?!
Read this disclaimer from the website of one of the sources for this article
The only reason we include the following disclaimer is because our legal department says we must. DISCLAIMER: All of the officers and support personnel mentioned below are innocent of any criminal, civil, procedural, or administrative wrongdoing until proven guilty or liable in a court of law or other properly constituted tribunal. These parties are encouraged to submit rebuttals to these charges. All of the following material consists solely of the personal opinions of the author, Al Shemonia, and such opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Copwatch.com or its board, associates, affiliates, or members. This material is not currently presented as fact.
So I guess for copwatch, that whole "innocent until proven guilty" is only for them and not for the cops. Goodness forbid that they practice what they preach.
Hypocracy at its finest.
Brian EllenbergerAnd so the brain drain begins...
Panderus,
Of course, many protests these days don't actually protest anything. ;)
Have them protest this then.
if everyone posts who reads this posts two links like this to highly moderated threads, then pretty soon every slashdot reader will have seen the news. Just two links. Do it now. just include:/ 2337255&cid=101>this</a>" in any two posts (but remove any spaces from the URL). Thanks a lot. Fight the power!
<a href=http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/08/03
You tend to end up against large violent crowds when you brutally occupy someone else's land.
If protesters were to use non-lethal force against the authorities, would the authorities be permitted to step up to lethal force to "protect" themselves? I see a probability that the police might use non-lethal force as nothing but an antagonistic agent in order to cause some good old fashioned patriotic carnage...
You all whine piss and moan about police/govt abuse, and then line up and fall all over yourselves trying to give your basic rights like gun ownership back to the government.
Like the government is in some way the natural holder of your rights.
People like you with your insane notions of democracy, the rights of man, etc sicken me.
Read your damn history!
Fight to KEEP your natural rights!
Read the Constitution.
Understand that the crap you were fed in school is just that...crap.
The US is a republic, not a democracy. (well it is supposed to be but you are messing that up as fast as you can also (democracies suck worse then this as soon as the huddled masses realize that they don't HAVE to work and vote themselves 364 holidays a year and liberal social programs to support them(then you have europe, but that's another story)))
The government does not assign you rights like social security cards.
Your rights are natural, the constitution only defends them from the govt.
The government is all for taking rights away from you and if you do not secure some means of keeping your rights secure you will soon find that the press is not a big enough shield in this era of mega-mergers. (How many Media companies really need influenced to keep a story of 100 protesters getting their heads cracked under cover? How long did they manage not to mention the Levy/Condit bit? What do you think they'd do if they were offered free radio spectrum in exchange for silence?)
You also tend to end up mugged if you walk around very well-dressed, alone, and flashing lots of high-denomination bills around certain parts of various cities. That doesn't mean that the mugging is right, either; attack soldiers, and the soldiers have every right to fire back -- and the fight doesn't have to be "fair". Continue to attack, and it would seem proper for the military to even preemptively attack folks with a history of plotting, committing and inciting violence...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The press media and Bush insinuated that the protestors were criminals anyhow, so that's just plain FUD. If they take away the right for protest, either by public opinion or by making protesting physically dangerous, people will find another way to express their minds. This won't necesarry have to be peaceful actions. Look at the "animal liberation front" who blow up meat-companies, these people are against animal abuse, but no-one listened, they got fed up with the situation and started to do some bad things.
Bush has identified Iraq and Libia as the enemy states, but the terrorism he wants to fight doesn't necesarry have to come from abroad, I fear more Oklahoma's if the politicians won't listen.
Bizar technology?
I just read the comments above, and the general tone surprised me. Once upon a time, slashdot readers would have talked about the tech, not talk about how dumb protesters are.
In the past twenty years, I've watched the change as police have become more and more likely to clamp down on protests. The black bloc is a response to police violence, not the cause of it. As an original black bloc-er circa 1989, I know why we started fighting back. It was due to police being more and more likely to use force to put down democratic protests. We were defending ourselves. In Genoa, there were some pretty serious allegations that the 'black bloc' doing property damage to small businesses etc. were provocateurs. That tells me that they are getting worried about the effectiveness of the black bloc, and want to discredit the movement.
Freedom is not easy folks. You have to be willing to fight for it.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
please help spread this, through posting anonymously much as I am now.
nice try
I would like to 1) say thanks to the fag from korea who owned my win2k box. Try it again, really! and 2) announce that JEFFK WAS RIGHT
In addition, calling somebody who's trying to smash up an OCCUPIED police vehicle -- so he can beat or kill the police inside -- a "protester" is, frankly, about as inane as the current media habit of calling members of the military wing of Hamas "activists", when the latter are more properly referred to as terrorists.
Protest involves sending a message -- through signs, through letters, phone calls, that sort of thing. It doesn't excuse violence, any more than violating an oath is protected by "free speech" laws; the latter is speech, but it's *also* perjury, just like attacking cops is, at a minimum, assault if not attempted murder -- and whether or not it's for a message is irrelevant.
"Thugs", "juvenile delinquents", "punks", "rioters", and so forth are more proper terms for those who employ random violence for a cause.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Not at all. What I think this means is that the ritual protest (circa 1760 or so); workers against the ruling class; will/has become ineffective. Corporations have moved beyond national and even some global boundaries and are less and less concerned about what protests really go on. Most recent protests have been fairly small historically, but have been involving modern technology. This only means that future protests will have to be more cunning and clever than past ones; a situation that has always been the same. After any mass movemnet the stakes are raised. Look into the labor struggle of the industrial age.
Do you think you're witty? I almost wish the cause were against your home IP, (of course, it would have to be running slashcode, heh), just to serve you right for being so stupid. Skript Kiddies: Unite!
yeah, yeah, yeah. do something about it.
cover this.
Cameras are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow protesters to get their message to a greater audience; OTOH, they attract the "rent-a-riot" types who don't seem to care what the protest is about so long as it's an excuse to indulge in mindless violence and vandalism. The latter does nothing to help the cause of the protest. From watching the media coverage of recent "anti-globalisation" protests, the general public wouldn't have had a clue about what the protest was about - all they saw was a bunch of "anarchists" trashing the place.
Ghandi is frequently quoted in these parts as saying: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." To keep this in context, it should also be noted that he also said: "Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is the last article of my faith."
"With increased cost and increased number of lawsuits, I don't see why any riot-control force would use them."
To protect my land. I could care less if you protest. don't destroy my store, car, home.... so far most big protest have lead up to looting or damages.
Wait until you protest around someones store that has his shotgun, looting starts he will end up killing 3 or 4 people. He was protecting his property and with an overwelming amount of looters coming at him, courts will look at him as a hero, "protecting his livelyhood".
if you see me, smile and say hello.
You haven't been watching the news a lot lately, have you? Protestors are there to protest, yes, but along with the "peaceful" ones just holding the signs and chanting catchy slogans, you have rock throwers, vandals, violent protestors overturning cars, etc. Look at the recent G8 fiasco for one.
If anything, protests have been getting more violent lately, not less violent. And frankly, I would rather that the police have the option of non-lethal weaponry then firing live rounds into the crowd.
But here's the catch... if it's non-lethal, how are you going to keep it out of the hands of public? We currently allow any citizen with the cash to buy enough poisons in the forms of cleaning products to kill an entire banquet hall full of Shriners and it all fits in one shopping cart. And, AFAIK, there are no permits needed for mace or tasers.
You could make it really high priced, but then the cops can't afford it, and if the past is any indication, cheap knock-offs will show up anyway and be available to anyone who can afford them.
There is no solution to this without (unneeded) legislation restricting these items. And try getting the courts to agree to that. If we have the right to bear arms (well, in the U.S.A. at least) why shouldn't we be able to own something that won't kill someone?
BTW, no, I don't own a gun, but nothing stops me from walking into a Wal-Mart, buying a chainsaw and pretending I'm in a bad slasher movie. Restricting guns won't stop violence either. It'll just set some (not all) of us back to the blunt instrument and power tool stage of violence.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I have to disagree here. Many intelligent protesters I have known have tried the respectable routes first -- letters to politicians, etc.. They only protest as a last resort, and never violently. But then they're lumped in with the yahoos out there for a kick. Protests aren't the problem. The original problem was the problem. A protest is a response to that problem. I don't operate under the illusion that all protesters are vestal saints with virtuous causes -- but sometimes they're right anyway.
Good example -- but if globalization is so great, why isn't it improving us already? There are some very excellent web sites showing the harm of globalization to localities. But as long as the numbers benefit the corporations, no one seems to care.
I was thinking pusher + shover robots for the front lines or something
"WE ARE HERE TO PROTEST THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE"
Are we going to see a slow-moving bomb-squad robot heading towards the protesters with the tear-gas gun? Or Johnny 5?
/. rally for Dmitri gone awry. Next rally, bring your 'bot.
Then maybe the protestors will retaliate with home-made Battlebots! The police bot would have no defense except a radio jammer and an EMP grenade.
Seriously, do you really see cash-poor protesters using expensive bots? Not unless it's a
According to Game Theory, the only way to win is by choosing your course of action randomly so that even you yourself have no idea of your tactics until the last instant.
spread this message on, please.
"The only way to win is not to play"
-Mr. Fusion
They often do receive such training. How many protesters do?
Yes, it is a shame that often no one - most notably most of the protesters - seems to care about the issues. Every protest I attend, it seems like the majority are there for the adrenaline rush, or publicity, or the social scene - anything but the issues.
Less snidely, the police are expected to be dispassionate regarding the issues under protest. They are not there for the issues; they are there to preserve public safety and the law. You might not like that, you might not like the laws, but there it is.
That's not what they're doing. They're not protecting points of view; they're protecting people, and laws, and sometimes property, against inappropriate expressions of a POV. As mentioned before, they are dispassionate wrt the issues, and concerned only with preventing criminal acts - including politically motivated criminal acts.
Proximately, the civil authorities. Ultimately ourselves, through our duly elected representatives. If you don't like it, elect someone else. This is a (representative) democracy, not rule of whoever shouts loudest.
Those same police. I almost wish that some corporation would be stupid enough to hire their own goons, so you could see those very same police protecting the protesters - which they most assuredly would do. What a conundrum that would create for the self-righteous cop haters.
They do, and that's why the protesters prefer to misbehave in public places. They're too cowardly to risk getting their asses kicked on private property with little or no legal recourse, so instead they subject the public to all the BS they claim is directed at the corporations.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Would I rather be shot by a beanbag or a bullet? Not a tough choice, that one. But the rules of engagement change with non-lethal weapons and the threshold for their use is lowered by virtue of the fact that they generally don't kill -- not intentionally, anyway. It becomes much easier to pull that trigger.
I could write a dissertation here, score a five, get some cool responses and maybe some E-Mail, but I don't have the time or resources. There's a lot of information about this; check out some of it. Google, teoma, even Yahoo.
Let me note that the military's use of non-lethal weapons has historically been to disarm/disable an enemy so that lethal force could then be used, from the days of catapulting rotting carcasses into the keep to the gas attacks of WWI.
woof
It is beyond the scope of this discussion whether the soldiers are supposed to be there or not, however any armed force will not tolerate big crowds (remember the National Guard in the 60s, don't tell me the NG was an alien force occupying California universities)
Have you ever even bothered finding out why globalisation is really a bad thing if it done on corporate terms or are you just content spouting the media/corporate prepared propaganda?
Did you watch Berlusconi's final speech in Genoa? That gives you a pretty good idea of what the unrestricted globalisation will mean: "Free trade is democracy and democracy is free trade". What a load of bollocks. Free trade and capitalism are not equivalent to democracy. In such a free trade world the people with the most money will also have the most votes.
yes, but we knew that. why don't you do something about it?
Protest is simply showing the people that rule, the people that are ruled. That's all. Every body knows that. You can unknot your knickers now.
No, it does not. There are plenty of pigs in the world, and there are also plenty of punks. Overall, though, the average policeman has far better training and discipline than the average rioter, and is motivated to preserve rather than undermine public safety. One might reasonably disagree with the colonel's overall views regarding correct balance between protest and public safety, but mis-paraphrasing him like that only makes you - and by extension your "side" - look dishonest.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
What percentage of the population engages in some kind of home taping?
That percentage should be alarmed by the facts of this case.
D
Nice Something Awful allusion. I caught it!
http://www.somethingawful.com/spam/icq/spacerobot/ index.htm
- Adam
Erm, I don't know why that is coming up as goatse.cx. Don't click, kids, cut and paste instead, making sure to remove the space.
Not a Troll,
- Adam
All you need to do to fight back is scrounge a gigawatt laser...
Non-lethal weapons are still weapons and they are still very capable of causing serious injury or even death. Just think back at the Quebec protests just a few months ago and the many people who were poisoned by tear gas, and one particular individual who was hit in the throat by a rubber bullet at very close range. He now breathes with a metal tube in his throat because his oesophagus was crushed by that allegedly non-lethal weapon. He's fucked for life because of these idiot weapons that aren't supposed to be "dangerous".
Just as a kitchen knife isn't supposed to be dangerous if it's used PROPERLY and RESPONSIBLY, perhaps these mild weapons might also be safe if they were wielded by intelligent trained people; not common badge-bearing thugs whose checks are signed by the same fascist leaders we'd all like to strangle for selling out our lives to the highest bidder.
People didn't need these bullshit meta-weapons 20 years ago, I don't see why we'd need them now.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
...courts will look at him as a hero, "protecting his livelyhood".
Doubtable, especially if he/she shot someone who wasn't looting (I don't know how it works in the US, but in europe most large protests are mainly non-violent with 1-2% of protesters being violent in some way)
/Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
This quote emobides what is wrong with law enforcement in America (especially) and (I'd assume) across the world!
Basically, this quote says "Everyone participating in the protest is wrong and just an agitator - a malcontent - someone who we should lock up anyway."
That thought, combined with these new weapons - I'm scared.
"One more day before the storm
At the baracade of freedom
when our ranks begin to form...
will you take your place with me?"
--- "One Day More" from Les Miserables
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
I don't think so.
Institute for Applied Autonomy
Also, in that event it really would knock out any publicity the rioters would be hoping for. Just think about which one of these is more likely to be the headline in a major newspaper: "Rioters fight WTO injustice" or: "Police successfully test new non-lethal riot gear" That would take out any useful publicity in the protester's eyes.
As far as I can tell it is about a half a million unrelated problems, whose solutions often conflict with one another.
Such weapons exist, and have for some time. They're called a rifle with a heavy barrel, solid rest, and damn good scope. However, the Supreme Court has saddled us with a court finding that use of force is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and therefore must be reasonable under the circumstances. A use of deadly force for a purpose other than protecting a person against a threat of death or great bodily injury would probably be found unreasonable. Shooting rioters to protect property would be VERY hard to defend in court.
The case is called Tennessee v. Garner, if you're interested. It's at the very heart of police use-of-force case law. It should be familiar to any law student or law librarian, should you wish to look it up.
Yeah, I know some Texan is going to talk about a state law about protecting property after dark. I don't think that statute has been tested in decades, but god help whoever tries to rely on it.
If there's no blood, or more importantly interesting video, then who's going to be interested in reporting it. Maybe I'm just feeling cynical tonight, but I'm starting to think that Net protests may well be ineffectual simply because they aren't interesting enough to watch on TV. The general public needs something to get their attention like entertainment. A bunch of people typing e-mails or sending letters doesn't sound like an interesting story. People getting beat up by cops on video, or run over by a tank...now that's interesting.
Thinking about it a little more...some video is better than none. For instance, is anyone producing any video on the Sklyarov case? Not something especially entertaining, but wouldn't people be interested in an interview with his family. Crying about how their loved one has been taken away from them, they have no idea if/when they'll see him again. That's a tear-jerker right there...someone will be interested in that. The irony of a Russian being unjustly held prisoner by the USA (at least to US citizens) will appeal to another subset of people. If people get beat up protesting his captivity that will appeal to an even larger group of people (especially if it's on video.)
Net protests aren't going to go over well unless there's something at least as interesting as the hampster dance web site to the general public. In the US at least, freedom from tyranny, freedom of speech, and the pursuit of happiness are all things that we've always been taught that we have in Social Studies/Civics/US History classes. Reading about it online is going to be about as interesting as your average high school history class. (Not that history isn't interesting, but most people I know could give a shit about history. They're more concerned about tomorrow and more often the present.) The rights we have as Americans are guaranteed by our constitution, correct? Why should we worry about crap like that when we can hear about drama (Elian Gonzales), violence (OJ Simpson), or sex (Clinton) on the news.
I think getting some video of the key players in the Sklyarov case is important. Even if it's not on the news, there are aspects of the story that will appeal to people, especially if it comes with some video with tears and/or violence. If it's interesting enough it will spread around the Net as quickly as the original South Park epsiode.
Very simple:
-You don't get a nail in with a screwdriver
-You can't solve social problems with technical solutions. The money would be better spent on studying conflict resolution and teaching it to the cops.
In my experience, the less cops around, the more peaceful the demonstration. If the cops are so damned worried about their security, then stay the hell out of people's way!
---------------
Fire Your Boss!
I watched CNN after the g8 in genoa. The best they could do to explain why the protesters were there was one libertarian talking head and one blue dog democrat blathering at each other about how they were isolationists, the other talking head rebutted saying they were ludites. It was disgraceful. It's a BIG movement with a big umbrella that pretty well covers the gambit between extreme far right anarchists who see just flat do not exept government rule, they protest at the g8,IMF,World Bank stuff because they know there will be others and media coverage. On the other side you have hard core communists who see capitalism as the root of all evil. What people don't understand is that those fringes make up about 1% of people opposed to the globalisation movement.
About 20-30% are there on a single issue. They are environmentalists there to protest the fact that the WTO is trying to enforce a world standard of low environmental standards, it's reached a point where the US succesfully sued mexico into having to take a toxic waste dump because their refusal was a "restriction of fair trade". I'm not a big tree-hugger but I do think that is sort of spooky.
The other single issue people are there for debt forgiveness for third world nations, or labor organizers who are scared of the WTO because they treat labor the same way they do the environment as far as "restriction to free trade" goes.
I'm there because I think it is scary as hell that the g8 (seven wealthiest nations plus russia) all come together and have secret closed talked meetings about how best to divide up the wealth of the world. I'm there because I see the world rapidly devolving into a state of corporate fuedalism.
Blah, I sort of understand why the mainstream media doesn't try and explain this for reasons other than conspiracy theory, it has about 150 different facits and just trying to describe what the WTO and world bank do doesn't sound byte well.
A nice summary of what most of the anti WTO folks not on the fringe is here http://www.50years.org/platform.html
it's sort of dry and boring, no crazed manifesto calling for everyone to beat their computer into a plowshare and go get behind the ass of a mule all day. Sorry to disappoint
Your comment about the advantages og a global market is true.. but you can also buy a cheap oriental rug of high quality that was woven by children underconditions that amount to slave labor... this doesnt sound quite as good, does it? I dont have the answers, but a lot more questions...
There's just no telling....
Yes, that's right. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. However with machines instead of people making the decisions can lead to serious problems, as the price is too high: human life.
Even the relatively elegant solutions often fail. Thus, for example, the "rubber bullets" that the Israeli Army and Police use are especially designed to be non-lethal - their velocity is lower than a real bullet's, and their shape discourages penetration of the protestors' skin. Usually all these bullets do is a serious bruise (which is the desireable outcome, and essencially the reason why real ammunition is not used instead). However, at close range, if a rubber bullet hits a protestor's head, it might lead to severe traumas or even death.
The problem is worsened by the tendency of the protesters to put the police forces in unfavorable conditions, so that the nonlethal weapons become lethal. For example, in the recent Palestinian riots, one could see groups of few soldiers facing crowds of few hundreds, that approached them with sticks, stones and guns. Since a violent crowd of such size poses a serious threat, the soldiers had to shoot rubber bullets, some of them at ranges which were not as safe as it could be desired.
So it looks to me, that no matter how safe is a weapon, protesters will always find a way to push the law enforcement forces to the corner and make them use it in a dangerous way (or simply fire their handguns).
heh, comes with a free host
Photos.
I mean, come on. You claim not to have posted a troll or flame bait, but your only reason for this it that the poster "sucks" and is a "fuckin moron" that is out to "lower the integrity of slashdot" because "this is a bad story and everyone thinks it sucks."
Sounds like a troll to me. Differing exchange of ideas is what Slashdot is all about.
By the way, what the hell kind of "professional web designer" uses popunders and mouse trapping? I'd recommend against your company in a millisecond. Shock my monkey, why don't you?
Set phasers for 'fascism'. :)
or set your perl to phaser for you. That's why we call the Internet democratic, duh.
I don't know, but it's fun to watch.
Oo, looka that one stuck like a fly while the rest set their phasers to "stun"
[fizzle]
Hey, that's not stun.
--- Do not feed User hostile
seriously slashdot, it takes a fuckin moron to post a story this lame, michael you suck, no this isn't a troll or flame bait, but this is a bad story a bad concept and everyone thinks it sucks, don't lower the integrity of slashdot. Reply below if you think this story was insanely stupid
Photos.
I worked on the first version of the GraffitiWriter robot that is mentioned in the article. The second version (which is much more effective) isn't a replacement, but more of a fast attack tool for the protesters. It's small and can spray paint a message in a public space at 15 MPH. That allows for high visibility during highly watched public events. You can find more information at The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) web site
Vladinator's troll nest called Geekizoid is currently under DoS attack!
Serves those troll right!
At the world trade protest in Melbourne last year, I did not know what many of the people were prostesting. They were there in large numbers but very few knew what they were protesting.
The current www.s11.org web site seems to be about protesting but they are not very clear on what they object to. Their "facts" on the web site are about as old as the vague ones on the mcliabel site. The vatican is listed for owning stock in Pan Am. Why?
save slashdot. Believe me, it hurts us more than we'll hurt it.
yeah, whatever. just support the cause, will ya'?
I like the bloody, but meaningless rituals we have now. I especially liked that bit in Genoa where the crowd of modern-day Luddites (assorted bums, malcontents, the ignorant, the unemployable, and other various parasites) tried to show their solidarity by attacking a cop. It's amazing how little solidarity they had after Alfonse there took two in the eye.
Let me be the first to tell some of you that a real action group with real tactics and unit cohesion would have taken that cop, even if losses had been incurred. That would be taken seriously, since relatively few of the world's bottom-feeding anti-globalist whiners put anything above their own comfort, much less their lives.
But instead, now we are promised "soft" harmless mechanisms to round up Johnny Hooligan and send him back to his high-rise dorm unscarred. Great.
If these people, and I use the term loosely, want to stage an exercise in raw power by using their bodies and improvised weaponry to disrupt their society, destroy property, endanger lives, and otherwise subvert the normal democratic process (which they hate because it allows a working person to have some say in the way the country should run) then I say, let's let them have a taste of raw power in return. If they want play games designed by Mao, well, we have read that rule book too. It says "power comes out of the barrel of a gun."
If a free and democratic society is what you want, then you don't want what these malingerers want. They may use such a phrase, but their actions reveal them to be nothing but a tiny revolutionary minority that should be stamped out exactly as they try to stamp out free dialogue in democratic countries.
Me mum commented the other day that if the media didn't make such a circus out of the things there wouldn't be as many protests. I asked her if she thought The Man would exercise the little restraint He does if there weren't heavy media coverage...
Personally, I think that protests have meaning as long as they're actually protesting something.
;)
Of course, many protests these days don't actually protest anything.
now isn't this more interesting?
No WHAT kind of backlash? Try reading 42 USC 1983. (Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code.) In terms of empowering members of the public to take legal action against government agencies for civil-rights violations, it's probably the most sweeping law of its kind in the world.
Also, look at the backlash after Rodney King got beaten. Read on, for the relevance.
The only way I would endorse nonlethals in government hands is if every single use had to be scrutinized by a very-public review board, not only to determine if it was a justified use, but to give the individual targeted a platform to speak
First of all, there's no such thing as "nonlethal." There's lethal, consisting primarily of firearms and knives, and then there's less-lethal, which includes the technotoys of the original article. Less-lethal also includes the batons that cops have carried for over a century, the defense sprays of the last 40 years, and the unarmed, empty-hand restraint techniques taught everywhere from police academies to Tai Chi classes. They ALL have the potential to kill.
Second, such a review board does exist. It's called civil court, and there are a lot of attorneys who will take 1983 cases on contingency. The reason civilian review boards aren't popular is because they tend to make decisions based upon ignorance: very few people on such boards have ever been faced with situations where they need to either act or die, and have about a second to decide what to do. Therefore, they have no conception of what the job actually entails, and what the cop sometimes has to do, just to ensure that he goes home at night.
So long as the events are covered by media and the message can be understood from that coverage protests will not be meaningless rituals.
I've actually worked with the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA), and part of their aim was to develop inexpensive disposable gadgets to help in civil disobedience. And they have created some good stuff. (esp. GraffitiWriter)
Or find a nonlethal ricochet modem. Perfect for protests...fire it into the center of a crowd and mow dem down.
Protesters won't.
Why? Because the cops can afford it, and the protesters usually can't.
And if real people have to hit the streets on either side, then the other side has an advantage.
End result: protests will become even less effective and more meaningless than they are now, because the police will have a lot less incentive to keep the violence down. They'll be able to use violence at will.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
was it illegal?
support the cause
"Down with multi-national corporations!...(gasp)...can't...breathe!...(gasp)
Slashdot is a multi-nation corporation, you kow. Fight it.
Extra bonus if you submit two posts with this URL. If everyone (or even 5% of readers) did that, then pretty soon everyone would have the message). Cool, huh?
The shit with which you've been replying to half the posts on this pageis akin to the hooliganism that discredits any actual protest. It's this small but problematic group which causes the problems that result in increased police response. Because they know the shitballs will come out to take advantage of a large assembly of people (Loot the store! That'll show those evil globalising bastards!), more police are sent in, dressed in riot gear, armed & ready.
DoS Slashdot. And what'll that accomplish, other than giving a 2-minute woody to a useless twit who can't get laid? You don't like what you read here? Go somewhere else. Or post from an account and quit being such a pussy AC (I'm AC here because I don't want this post or thread modded up). DoSing will only bring about other networking implementations which will put an end to that kind of attack, but at a possible cost of, say, anonymity.
Please do not mod this post up.
woof.
Even the mere thought of sending a robot to protest for you makes me sick. What a way to show your conviction by doing something else.
And say you send one of these to go protest Dmitry's arrest for you? Then you'll probably just be arrested yourself for breaking some kind of DMCA rules which makes no sense here in RealWorld (no affiliation with Real Networks). And God knows they're all going to have Linux installed anyway, which is good and all, except the companies making them will go under, because Linux just doesn't make money.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
When we had some protests over here that got ugly with tear gas, the student politicians were hot on the student press pushing them to go crazy and put the Liberal government went through the ringer, which was just fine with the student gov't, most of whom were getting themselves ready for a future with a rival poltical party.
Robots making graffiti will only steal the thunder from a potential PR fiasco, which is exactly what many of the protestors are going to want.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The problem is not the legitimate protestors, but the small minority who insist that extreme acts of violence and vandalism are required to get their message across.
what the enforcement officers need are not non lethal weapons, but more precise weapons (letheal or non lethal) to be used to incapacitate the ones inciting or engaging in violence. Take this violent minority out, and the protests will be more or less peaceful.
As it is, this violent minority has all but negated any positive benefits of these protests.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Hell no! We won't go!
One-zero-zero-zero one-oh-oh!
(shamelessly stolen from Futurama)
I fully agree. Being able to suppress protestors with no PR backlash is probably one of the last remaining steps to stripping away freedom of speech.
:)
The only way I would endorse nonlethals in government hands is if every single use had to be scrutinized by a very-public review board, not only to determine if it was a justified use, but to give the individual targeted a platform to speak.
Of course, this could also be the ultimate LART we've all been looking for.
Woot w00t w007.
So your immature whining drivel didn't get posted, eh? Therefore /. must be a bunch of facist bastards. Get a life.
It is sad to see real life following what is often portrayed in movies. Robocop's and terminators may be the police of the future, but what happens when we give machines intelligence or when a robot goes haywire? Ultimately we are not preserving human life when using robots to fight for one side, but killing human life on the other end.
It's so sad to see the US go the way Germany went.
On the other hand, had there not been violence the general public would have been fed pre-digested propganda how the G8 countries are going to make the World into so much better a place. I doubt they would even have shown the peaceful demonstrations.
Not that I accept the violence, though.
Set phasers for 'fascism'.
You're using her as bait, Master!
We know! Do something about it!
There may not be laws wherever you are regarding various nonlethal weaponry, but that doesn't mean that the authorities wouldn't add 'em if they felt like it. Try visibly carrying, say, a stun baton to City Council meetings; you'll probably got a response pretty quickly even if you keep it holstered.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The article reads like a summary of all of the non-lethal crowd control ideas that have been endlessly bandied around during the last couple of decades.
Crowd control techniques that are conspicuously absent from real use.
The problem is that things like lasers and sonic weapons and electrified water guns are more expensive and/or more difficult to keep non-lethal than good old-fashioned tear gas and pepper spray and firehoses.
Lasers blind people. Sonic weapons turn their bowels to jelly, harm internal organs, or both. Electrified water guns have nasty effects on anyone with a pacemaker or just a weak heart. And so forth.
With increased cost and increased number of lawsuits, I don't see why any riot-control force would use them.
How long does it take to immobilize someone? The effect occurs within a few milliseconds.
This will come in great when I need to get in the front of the line for the next Star Wars movie. No more camping outside the theatre - JUST STUN THE CROWD!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This article really makes me think that Erik Baard (the author) has seen Demolition Man one too many times...
Oh well. At any rate, I have to go get my suit from the cleaners. I've got a date at taco bell tonight.
Anyway, it be great to have one of those things. I mean, all you have to do is make it visible to the naked eye when it fires and you've got yourself a real-life phaser, there cowboy!
Too bad that only the evil empire has them.
Ah well. Hopefully they'll be easy enough to build in my basement from an electronics hobby magazine and some spare parts.
Imagine. . . Being able to invisibly & non-lethally zap anybody in a kilometer range. Damn. The world could get really stupid if this kind of tech ain't vapor. I mean, screw paint ball! Though if this tech is only becoming available now, (i.e. it's ancient history), imagine the crazy shit they currently have with which they can drop you at a thousand yards. (How many of us already have chips in our heads? I wonder. Beep beep.)
Whatever.
A Lazy Saturday afternoon. . .
-Fantastic Lad
all they saw was a bunch of "anarchists" trashing the place
So, the mere fact that many (2000?) chose to attack cops, barriers, etc. means that they didn't care about the issue? What evidence do you have of that? Also; a lot of the violence that occurred was instigated by cops. They invaded a building that was being legitimately used to report the riot. Cops beat people inside (it's unclear whether or not protesters turned violent) until the walls were covered in blood. It's sick that either Italy has no law preventing such invasion; or that the cops ignored the law. The day after Guiuliana was killed (shot twice and then repeatedly ran over, then denied medical treatment), the cops were a lot less confrontational and it worked a hell of a lot better.
Some places, such as Massachusetts, do require permits to purchase and carry pepper spray.