Slashdot Mirror
Bikes Against Bush Creator Busted
An anonymous reader writes "Joshua Kinberg, creator of Bikes Against Bush, was arrested in NYC for vandalism while being interviewed by MSNBC. Kinberg's website describes his project as 'using a Wireless Internet-enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk". Both Wired and Popular Science have done stories on Kinberg's work." Update: 08/30 01:30 GMT by J : Mr. Kinberg has been released; he describes his arrest and brief stay behind bars on this MSNBC blog.
Didn't IBM get into the same problem in NYC before?
Remember "Peace, Love, Linux"?
Oddly enough when I first clicked on the "Read More" link I got this:
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Scarry for someone like me who operates an Anti-Bush site.
Get your Unix fortune now!
although I can't say I'm upset either!
Even though the chalk is water-soluble, he admitted previously that it takes almost 2 weeks to wash off. I don't have a problem with his political stance - in fact, I agree with him - but the mere fact that his plan revolved around the defacement of public property is enough to warrant an arrest. IANAL, but writing stuff all over the sidewalk (over an extended area) - even in chalk - has to be against some local laws.
A blog like any other.
Was he doing it in Linux? Slashdot humor aside, he was arrested perfectly legally, for vandalism. People here will say "Omg look at them arresting people for not liking bush, blah blah blah!", but guys... what he did was vandalism, whether or not it was about pink elephants, faeries, or a dumbass president.
Well fuck the first admendment here. I'm a Bush supporter and I think this guy got railroaded. Nothing wrong with what he was doing. I hope he sues the fuck out of NYC for this.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
The /. effect is starting.... the website referenced in the article is very slow.
There's no place like localhost
Big suprise.
Politics aside, he got what he diserved.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
First Swift Boats are against Kerry.
Now bikes are against Bush.
This is only the beginning. The machines will soon rule us all...
I can foresee the EFF possibly getting into this..Something smells fishy and it isn't my upperlip...I find it highly surprising that he wasn't told what he was charged with, was he even read his miranda rights?
the message "support our troops" would have gotten him arrested.
I'm laughing at clouds.
Yeah, this is an absolute, 100% bullshit charge, designed solely to jerk him around, get him off the front page and news shows (of course, it'll have the complete opposite effect), and try to deplete his bank account. It'll fail on all counts.
Microsoft was spray painting stencils on the sidewalk, and Toyota's doing it right now in SF... don't see any marketing execs getting frog-marched out of the building over that.
One would hope that this guy has some possibility of defending himself, if the charge is for vandalism. IANAL, but as far as I know a charge of vandalism needs proof of the intent to damage property. By using water-soluable chalk this guy has shown that he's not interested in damaging the property, only in showing his messages.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
I don't agree with most of the crap Bush believes in. For what it's worth, I think Bush is a sleazy, shady douchebag. And, save for the level-headed folk I see on Slashdot, I can't fucking stand Bush supporters and militant Republicans. I really hate those fucking pudgy, clean-shaven, uptight business suit republican twats on my campus. But my distaste for conservatives and Republicans pales in comparison to my distaste for whackjob liberals.
The way the left-leaning have conducted themselves in regards towards Bush is utterly fucking appalling. Never before in the 20th century have I seen people so fanatically and stupidly obsessed with insane and idiotic hatred towards a president. When Clinton was president, I was appalled by the behavior of Republicans towards him, and I can tell you that as a left-leaning person myself I donated to Nader and was rooting for Al Gore. But the hatred for Bush has taken a new low.
One can make a great case for hating Bush. He's fucked up a lot, he was not level with the American people, he supports laws and ideologies that are potentially dangerous in regards to our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that's not to say that there have not been plenty of reasonable, erudite condemnations regarding Bush. But this is not true for the majority of Bush haters. If you're going to hate on Bush, hate on him for the right reasons, and do it in a reasonable, erudite manner. For example, when he says "the terrorists hate our freedom," instead of accusing him of stupidity, try to disprove that claim in a reasonable, intelligent manner.
That's not to say that the right wingers are not full of profoundly stupid anti-Kerry idiocy. But it does not hold a candle to the stupidity in which the left has bashed Bush. Instead of rational discourse, we are treated to whiny, strawman lecturing by Tom Tomorrow and Gary Trudeau. Instead of tact, we hear cries of "Bush iz dum lol." Instead of truthful discourse on Bush's evils, we have fat media whoring fucks lying and distorting the truth in ways which makes George Bush look like George Washinton. Moore should have learned a thing or two from Bush - lying to make your case will always bite you in the ass in the long run. Instead of balanced, fair investigation, we see one-sided rants and conspiracy theories propogated by Rolling Stone and other mags, which then have the tenacity to complain that the media is controlled by capitalists and righties (I think the media is controlled by no one). Instead of voting one's conscious, we see nihilism and cynicism towards the political process, with the mantra "anyone but Bush." We see Bush punching bags, Bush bashing books, basically a capitalist franchise of playa hating which legitimizes the very capitalist system the idiots abhor as being spearheaded by Bush. An entire culture of angsty, misguided stupidity. So, I'm being angsty in the other direction.
In short, the liberal left has managed to piss me off more than the Radical Right. And as far as I'm concerned, Kerry's differences are so miniscule so as not to make a difference. Better to stick with the evil you know than the evil you don't know. But most importantly, I'm voting for Bush as a big FUCK YOU to all the idiots who have made me lose faith in the liberal mode of thought.
I can't argue with these people, I can't reason with these people. There is nothing I really can do in any tangible manner to silence their idiocy. But as an American citizen, I can cast my vote.
So unless Teresa Heinz personally gives me a blowjob, or Bush consumes an infant on live television, my vote will be going to Bush this November, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
I think it's safe to say that if being inconvenient or embarassing to Republicans during the Convention was a crime, that's what his charge would have been. As it is, they'll just have to hold him for a while.
Shameful the level some officials will stoop to silence dissent.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Here
There is a fine line between protest and vandalism. The stuff comes off with water so I don't see how this is effecting anything.
I also have a different attitude in general towards what other people would call vandalism. I've been through the Bronx which has its fair share of "paintings" on walls (most of which is not environmentally friendly like what the biker is using), and I don't call it vandalism but I call it art. Most of these paintings are not banal expression like "fuck you" but rather creative expression and political/social commentary.... much like what Mr. Kinberg is doing.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I don't care if you're campaigning for the girlscouts, painting on public property is illegal.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
So much for Coral ending the slashdot effect. I'm just getting a 408 timeout error
tried takin it to the streets.. protesting spam anyway.. by sending this to the bike. Was too late. *sigh*
/dev/null.
I do not want your MLMs;
I don't want to see nude teenage femmes.
I do not want psychic advice,
So there's no need to mail me thrice.
I do not like New Jerseyan swearing,
And I don't want the panties you're wearing.
I do not want your Asian chicks;
I don't care about your lame stock picks.
I do not want to see Pam's bod,
Don't care about your views on God.
I don't want calling cards prepaid,
Nor Herbalife's new diet aid.
So, Dave Rhodes, lawyers Seigel and Canter,
And the "I am so great" ranter,
And all you others who have no name--
Whether small-time or of nanae fame:
I do not want to sound too crass,
But I think someone should kick your
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Defacing public property is not protected speech.
Let's all send him messages like, "ONE WAY" and "RIGHT TURN ONLY"
:)
That should make NYC streets even more interesting than usual for a while.
Great, here come the Slashdot lawyers out of the woodwork. We're sure to be blessed with some rock-solid legal advice now.
I don't recall such activism around the Democratic national convention - leave the freaking Republicans to have their week too.
That's funny, I plan to cast my vote based on whose policies I think are best for the country, and not because I hate Bush's supporters on cable TV, the religious right, etc., etc. ...
As for it being vandalism you could call almost anything that has to do with protesting a criminal act. Carry a banner? Unlicensed advertising. Hold a sit in? Traffic disruption maybe even holding the people you are stopping against their will.
I think it is intresting that he is hardly the first to use grafitti. Microsoft advertised with it in the same city. Was Bill Gates arrested? No? Says it all doesn't it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Unless a "te'wowist" will kill you...
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I don't agree with most of the crap Hitler believes in. For what it's worth, I think Hitler is a sleazy, shady douchebag. And, save for the level-headed folk I see on Slashdot, I can't fucking stand Hitler supporters and militant Nazis. I really hate those fucking pudgy, clean-shaven, uptight business suit socialist twats on my campus. But my distaste for socialists and Hitler pales in comparison to my distaste for whackjob allieds.
The way the allied-leaning have conducted themselves in regards towards Hitler is utterly fucking appalling. Never before in the 20th century have I seen people so fanatically and stupidly obsessed with insane and idiotic hatred towards a fuhrer. When someone else was fuhrer, I was appalled by the behavior of Nazis towards him, and I can tell you that as a left-leaning person myself I donated to Nader and was rooting for Al Gore. But the hatred for Hitler has taken a new low.
One can make a great case for hating Hitler. He's fucked up a lot, he was not level with the German people, he supports laws and ideologies that are potentially dangerous in regards to our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that's not to say that there have not been plenty of reasonable, erudite condemnations regarding Hitler. But this is not true for the majority of Hitler haters. If you're going to hate on Hitler, hate on him for the right reasons, and do it in a reasonable, erudite manner. For example, when he says "the Jews are a menace to our pure Aryan blood," instead of accusing him of stupidity, try to disprove that claim in a reasonable, intelligent manner.
That's not to say that the right wingers are not full of profoundly stupid anti-Kerry idiocy. But it does not hold a candle to the stupidity in which the left has bashed Hitler. Instead of rational discourse, we are treated to whiny, strawman lecturing by Tom Tomorrow and Gary Trudeau. Instead of tact, we hear cries of "Hitler iz dum lol." Instead of truthful discourse on Hitler's evils, we have fat media whoring fucks lying and distorting the truth in ways which makes Adolf Hitler look like George Washinton. Moore should have learned a thing or two from Hitler - lying to make your case will always bite you in the ass in the long run. Instead of balanced, fair investigation, we see one-sided rants and conspiracy theories propogated by Rolling Stone and other mags, which then have the tenacity to complain that the media is controlled by capitalists and righties (I think the media is controlled by no one). Instead of voting one's conscious, we see nihilism and cynicism towards the political process, with the mantra "anyone but Hitler." We see Hitler punching bags, Hitler bashing books, basically a socialist franchise of playa hating which legitimizes the very socialist system the idiots abhor as being spearheaded by Hitler. An entire culture of angsty, misguided stupidity. So, I'm being angsty in the other direction.
In short, the liberal left has managed to piss me off more than the Radical Right. And as far as I'm concerned, Kerry's differences are so miniscule so as not to make a difference. Better to stick with the evil you know than the evil you don't know. But most importantly, I'm voting for Hitler as a big FUCK YOU to all the idiots who have made me lose faith in the liberal mode of thought.
I can't argue with these people, I can't reason with these people. There is nothing I really can do in any tangible manner to silence their idiocy. But as a German citizen, I can cast my vote.
So unless Teresa Heinz personally gives me a blowjob, or Hitler consumes an infant on live television, my vote will be going to Hitler this November, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
http://bikesagainstbush.com.nyud.net:8090/
_________ Help me get a PSP!
What this guy's actions were over the line and he was well aware of the risk that he was taking. While the timing of the arrest is suspect (can they hold him for a week over a valdalism charge?), quite frankly I'm surprised he was able to go on for as long as he did.
I don't care if you're campaigning for the girlscouts, painting on public property is illegal.
But that's the point. It _wasn't_ paint - it was chalk. The same chalk that millions of kids draw all over sidewalks with ever day.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Bush is already in hot water for putting foreigners in prison with being charged. Putting americans in prison without being charged should surely even get republicans worried.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Have a nice day.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, "am I free to go?" After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle.
Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, "can I ask what I'm being arrested for?" to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything.
I've noticed that dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. If you're not for us, you're against us. It's fairly clear that water soluble chalk will not meet the minimum requirements for "vandalism" and you can see above that even the arresting officer had doubts about this arrest.
The changes are coming fast and furiously. The DMCA, restrictions on freedom of speech. Has anyone else that by contrast to the 1960's we don't need to protest FOR change, at this point we need to protest to prevent these weekly changes that are intended to reduce our rights?
Think about it. This is a major difference. We're on the defensive. That cannot be a good sign.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Shall we then arrest all the local children who draw on the sidewalks in water soluable chalk? After all the kids' messages are non-political and much less deserving of first amendment protection according to the US courts, who have upheld consistently that government criticism deserves the highest protection of free speech?
No, really? We shouldn't arrest the kids? Shouldn't the law apply equally?
This person did no permanent damage to the public environment. He was not trespassing on private property. His message was protected free speech. Weighing all this, he should not have been arrested. I hope he makes a federal case out of the arrest, because even in a pro-Bush climate he'd likely win.
And before anyone asks, I'd have the same opinion if the messages were pro-Bush, pro-Kerry, pro-Nader, or anti-any-of-the-above. Free speech need not be popular to be permitted! In point of opinion, the least popular speech should be afforded the most protection.
...and yet we let our kids draw on the sidewalks with chalk. They'll use anything to shut the mouths of truth, won't they? Looks like free "speech" is limited to just the act of talking. Its a sad world.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
So what you're saying is that you're voting for Bush because people who support Kerry annoy you more than those who support Bush?
Fucking brilliant.
He didn't paint any thing. He used chalk.
Idiot. You didn't even have to read the fucking article to know that.
Here's that coral cache thing
Interesting that he's being charged with defacement of public property. We'll see how long it takes to release him. His goal of printing messages during the republican convention may not happen. Was that intentional on the superiors part?
Cool idea, but if it was widespread, i think i would agree that its defacement. If there were messages everywhere on the ground, would you still consider it benign? As it is though, one person on one bike, i don't think it's defacement.
What to me is really insulting is that companies can get away with printing their messages in the sky via those cloud making airplanes. When superbowl was here in san diego, they wrote heineken in the atmosphere to be read at least 20 square miles away from the stadium. I would rather not see my beautiful southern californian sky poluted by such nonsense that nobody can erase. At least this fellow uses chalk that can be removed pretty easily.
http://dv.open4all.info/bblog/torrent_files/200408 28_kinberg.mov.torrent
He's a member of the public, he painted ** with water soluble chalk so it isn't vandalism ** on public property? What is the problem?
As has been pointed out already, it seems to be okay for big corporations (not members of the public) to paint on public property.
So this really does come down to the fact that he is painting anti-Bush stuff, which is his right, and he has been owned for doing it. This just shows how despicable the US government is, and why most of the rest of the world detests America, especially its foreign policy and attitude towards the rest of the world. Its government is just a bunch of self-serving greedy people that will do anything to stay in power, even if it means destroying the foundations of what the USA is built upon.
Funny, you rant about the lefties, consider yourself a leftie and will vote Bush?
So if you are a liberal as you say you are, why not Nader? If you truly believe in a democratic system and are disgusted by both sides then voting for Nader is the only logical discourse, no?
Of course if I may be cynical here, maybe you are a center right who will vote for Bush because you want to point out the "evils" of the left.
Frankly there is nothing wrong with Moore or the media. More like it, it reminds me of the early seventies where people did the same thing. The problem is that as a society in the Western world we are being faced with many changes (abortion, civil liberties, gay marriage, etc). Many people cannot handle those changes and that is causing strive.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
But then I saw this:
Get your Unix fortune now!
That's one of the first times you and I have ever agreed and made the same point.
-JL'B
Database Error
Could not establish database connection.
DB: nycdada and SQL: -->
The administrator has been notified and will
resolve the problem ASAP.
Go back
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Torrent of the arrest.
That's it, I'm calling the cops on those 6 year old 'vandals' playing on the sidewalk outside my window! These hearts and flowers tags on the street have been cluttering up our fine community for too long!
Kneel before Sig!
Mr. vuvewux, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on /. is now dumber for having read to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I don't respond to AC's.
Is it just me, or is that coral thing down...? The site's been /.ed and i was hoping this would work...
At least I was able to write a post without copying Billy Madison.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
Josh was arrested at the RNC yesterday evening, because the cops said they couldn't remove the chalk from the sidewalk.
0 15/index.php#106015
The bike was confescated, and Josh & friends are working on a replacement. They have spare parts, but need some quick cash. You can give some quick cash via the Paypal link at the
top of http://www.bikesagainstbush.com/ . $5 or more, I'm sure anything will help.
http://publish.nyc.indymedia.org/feature/rate/106
-= Flarg
Is anyone else having this problem when they click on the link to the article? 3 straight times, I click on the link and my D-Link 614+ router resets.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't
It looks like NYC is gonna get wild this week. Please post as many photos and first-hand accounts as possible. Any helpful or relevant links would be greatly appreciated. Let's just hope nobody gets hurt!
http://www.letspaniclater.com/
http://www.rncnotwelcome.org/
http://www.counterconvention.org/
But most importantly, I'm voting for Bush as a big FUCK YOU to all the idiots who have made me lose faith in the liberal mode of thought.
What state do you live in? Unless it is one of a handful, your vote won't make a goddamn bit of difference.
If you don't like either candidate or think they're too close to each other politically, vote for someone you do like. That will send a real message, not some sort of knee-jerk reaction to the fact that--gasp--some people express themselves in ways you don't like.
So unless Teresa Heinz personally gives me a blowjob
Right, everyone else is being immature.
Shows to go ya...
Better to stick with the evil you know than the evil you don't know.
Not really. Better to kick out evil when you see it after one term rather than re-elect it. Besides, we have a republican congress so you'd just be bringing the system to a halt.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Have you read Houston v. Hill Recently. You're a texas guy.
...Relying, inter alia, on the Supreme Court's decision in Hill, we ruled in Mackinney v. Nielsen that expressive conduct such as writing with chalk on the sidewalk does not itself create probable cause for arrest ...
And GULLIFORD v PIERCE COUNTY
He should be released ASAP, and the state should pay for his pains, plus reimburse the lost opportunity costs.
(All this said - i believe the first amendment protectes those who disagree with protected speech and their right to "clean up the mess" personally i prefer to collect litter on a stick - and have been arrested for that so - it cuts both ways.
AIK
Is this a joke? Some guy saying "Fuck you for not being more tactful fucking retarded fucking liberals."
That is about (quite possibly exceeding) the idiocy of the "Anyone But Bush" mentality. Here's an idea. Examine their policies and track record, and make an informed decision? Ironically, it is people such as yourself that have poisoned our political process with phony outrage over some perceived (and carefully constructed) cultural divide, and casting your vote as a big 'FUCK YOU' to the other side. Do you think this is original? It's the very heart of conservatism vs. liberalism for most Americans these days. The leadup to this election resembles a mindless sporting event with armchair quarterbacks yelling and screaming about the other teams fouls, accusing the referees of bias, and generally only caring that their side wins. "Bush/Cheny '04" and "LICK BUSH" stickers might as well be fan gear.
Well...let's try out Corel http://bikesagainstbush.com.nyud.net:8090/
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
There is reciprocal support between candidates and their supporters. Perhaps if Kerry would denounce his frothing at the mouth supporters yhbt I would vote for him, but he does nothing of the sort. He takes all he can get, even from prototerrorist groups.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
I wonder how often they bust schoolgirls for drawing hopscotch guides on public sidewalks.
The cops would rather see schoolgirls go into an arcade and play hopscotch on the ready-made guide.
But not on that corner.. and not in that park.. and certainly not in temmporary political grafitty.
"/Dread"
Please say "I wonder how often they arrest school children" next time. For enyone who uses Internet, and especially Japanese portion thereof, "busting schoolgirls" just doesn't sound as serious as you might think.
Sounds like China. The policeman knew there was
nothing wrong but a higher up party wonk told him
to arrest him anyway.
have a nice day, AC
At least Bush has the decency to renounce the radical right, while Kerry caters to extremist proto-fascists:
.html
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040823/D84L3OO00
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush denounced campaign commercials aired by outside groups on Monday, including an ad that accuses John Kerry of lying about his combat record in Vietnam.
"That ad and every other ad" run by such groups have no place in the campaign, Bush said when asked about the commercial sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth that has roiled the race for the White House.
Asked directly whether his Democratic rival for the presidency had lied, Bush said, "I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record."
The president made his comments as the Kerry campaign fought back against charges made by the outside group about the senator's wartime service in Vietnam for which he received five medals.
In a conference call with reporters arranged by aides to the Democratic presidential candidate, Navy swift boat officers Rich McCann, Jim Russell and Rich Baker said Kerry acted honorably and bravely and was well qualified to be the nation's commander in chief.
"He was the most aggressive officer in charge of swift boats," Baker said.
Additionally, crewmate Del Sandusky said at a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., that he personally witnessed the battle action for which Kerry received Silver and Bronze stars and two of his three Purple Hearts.
"He deserved every one of his medals," said Sandusky, a retired computer repairman who drove Kerry's Navy swift boat boat for nearly three months.
In Texas, Bush said, "I don't think we ought to have 527s," a reference to the outside groups that have poured millions of dollars over the past year into attack ads. Bush himself has been a main target of ads costing some $60 million. Bush said all of the ads should be stopped.
"That means that ad," he said, referring to the anti-Kerry ad, "and every other ad."
The anti-Kerry ad, no longer running but much publicized in news accounts, says Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts, lied to get his Bronze Star and Silver Star and unfairly branded all veterans with his 1971 congressional testimony about atrocities in Vietnam.
"I couldn't be more plain about it," Bush said "I hope my opponent joins me in condemning these activities of the 527s."
With polls suggesting Kerry's standing was beginning to slip - at least among veterans - the Democrat last week called on Bush to call for the attack ads to be pulled from the air. He also accused Bush of allowing front groups to "do his dirty work."
Bush's campaign heatedly denied any connection with the anti-Kerry group, and called on the Democratic challenger to join the president in a call for all outside groups to pull their ads.
Underscoring the impact of the anti-Kerry ad, the Democratic National Committee began airing a commercial last week that offered a testimonial to Kerry's fitness for national command.
And in a shift in strategy, Kerry's campaign has responded with two commercials, despite plans to preserve its campaign funds for the general election campaign.
Kerry running mate John Edwards said Sunday that Bush needed to tell the veterans group to pull its anti-Kerry ads. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has said the tactics are the same kind used on him and asked the president to denounce them.
A new Kerry ad says Bush smeared McCain four years ago and "now, he's doing it to John Kerry."
A former Vietnam prisoner of war, McCain lost the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000 after Bush supporters accused him of opposing legislation to help military veterans. McCain never recovered from that primary loss.
Former Sen. Bob Dole, a World War II veteran and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, suggested Ke
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
So, obviously this guy has to ride his bike in a straight line at about 1 mph for anything he writes to make be legible and make sense, hm?
C'mon, this is Slashdot... technical details, here!
oh just go away.
you're replied to every followup to your yammering.
you are boring
go think about that.
yhbt
I thought that might be the case.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Well, I can do that too, and I tried. I thought of a good way to express myself, but every time I worked on it, I ultimately came up with that post. Pure coincidence.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm sure he'll get off for this sooner or later, and that video will surely help. For one thing, I never saw the cops read him his Miranda rights. We'll see if they remember to do so before they start asking him questions. For another, it doesn't help them that they couldn't offer a simple reason for why he was being arrested, although I can see why they wouldn't want to say anything, especially to that crowd.
Neither of those things points to anything but embarrasing media coverage--coupled with the triviality of the actual events, and the fact that he was at an interview talking to Ron Reagan--well, I can't help but think that we'll be hearing more about this. If not, then there probably *is* some sort of 'Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy'. We'll see.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You're really fixated on this Hitler stuff. When was the last time any liberal mentioned "Hitler" and "Bush" in the same sentence? And I'd like a link please, otherwise you're just trolling.
Water soluable chalk is not damage, permanent or otherwise, to property and even the arresting officers had their doubts as to the applicability of a vandalism charge, whereas murder is permanent damage to a human life and no arresting officer or court would have the slightest problem making that distinction. Sorry, the analogy just doesn't fly comparing a doubtful misdemeanour to an assured felony.
All your CHALK are belong to US!
Remember when IBM (or their employee(s)) were spray painting Linux ads on sidewalks? I sure do. IBM was ordered to pay a fine as well as perform community service. I have a feeling that this case will end up the same.
If you're a conservative, hope that a real conservative runs.
If you're a lemming, vote for Kerry or Bush. We lose either way.
Thank you for putting to words what I feel.
Respect
McSweeneys perhaps one of the last bastions of American wit.
Anarcho sometimes goes off on tangents but he should be more accesible to you than McSweeneys.
Read up on current American Foreign Policy, and try to stop following herd mentality. Just becuase someone that likes somone acts a certain way does not entail that everyone that likes that person acts that way.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
" For example, when he says "the terrorists hate our freedom," instead of accusing him of stupidity, try to disprove that claim in a reasonable, intelligent manner."
To most people who have two brain cells to rub together, it's so obvious why this is stupid that it's not worth belaboring the point. It's much like if you were to witness someone slamming the back of their hatch-back car closed on a load of wooden posts that don't quite fit in the car, causing his rear window to shatter. You might comment "That was really stupid" to the guy standing next to you, and it wouldn't really be necessary to go into a detailed explanation as to why.
You can hear all about it on XMMS
o .mp3
I'm listening to the stream at
http://liveradio.indymedia.org:8002/rnc2004-l
Forget that this guy got arrseted. I want one..for my car! Finally you can send a message to the guy behind you..
/. ::Digitac
!!!
OFF
BACK
3210
554-
(555)
me
Call
And of course:
You mean Denouncing your base!?
That's political suicide.
You don't mean that the Republicans and conservative end isn't frothing at the mouth? Haven't you been paying attention to the Swift Boats ads? Listen to a little right wing radio and you'll find yourself some frothing at the mouth.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Whoever went NYPD Blue on this guy should have thought a little. I have seen more offensive and more permanent "Public Art" in the City & nothing was done. This could easily blow up in their faces--persecuting someone who was conscientious enough to choose an instantly reomovable media to express tame political views in. They should have at least just let the guy off with a warning.Great--not even a sergeant seems to know the law well enough, but they still arrest him.
He, (either himself or by judge rule) take the time and responsibility to wash it off the street.
Since when do hippies give a damn about public property? And when did these rancid, paranoid junkies start caring about the law?
He could have been arrested for bio-terrorism. After all, chalk crumbles into a white powder and we all know that white powder = danger.
Can you make anthrax infused chalk?
This fellow was making a political statement. The courts have held that political statements are the most protected of free-speech rights. The children are creating artistic expression of a unique and persusiave nature and Gulliford v Pierce County held that artistic expression of an individual is also among the free-speech rights, even if expressed in chalk. Commerical entities using chalk are making a non-political, non-individual, non-creative use of speech, and though I might disagree; the courts afford commercial speech less protection.
So there you have it: my unbiassed bias. I believe it should be perfectly legal for this fellow, the children, or even Microsft to use chalk to display speech. The courts, however, do not agree. As I am a creature of law, more than I am a libertarian, I stick by the court - free speech must be protected and some speech more than others. Commercial and functional speech is at the bottom of the heap, but that's not my doing.
Point is, and your barb doesn't address it. If the highest form of speech is reason for punishment, and the lowest form is reason for punishment (as you cite), then should not the middle protected speech be reason for punishment as well? Should we not therefore arrest those kids? Hopefully, you recognize the difference and your own implied bias or will you just ignore the logic and move on?
What's the point of civil disobedience if you don't get arrested for it? The whole idea is to get arrested to get publicity for your message and to put a stress on the system. Would any of us have heard of this if he hadn't been arrested? If he's really committed to his cause, spending a few nights in jail should be a small price to pay for this kind of publicity.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I am a conservative and I fully understand you when you say that you cannot reason with the left. BUT ... I have the same problem reasoning with many registered Republicans. See, GOP is no longer conservatie, it's a "borrow and spend" neocon party. There is a great essay by Ron Paul (Texas, R) called "Neo-Conned". Read it! You correctly understood that the politcial left is a trap. I only want to save you from running into the same trap on the right. Protest-vote! Hopefully that'll send a message.
Well said by some fucking Swede who can't even spell out the word AMERICANS.
... "
And yet he is a pussey who says " I don't trust an american site to allow me free speech - to
What a tool!
If YOU want Kerry for my President, then I am voting for Bush!
.. in Boston, they caged the protesters before they had a chance to do anything... how's that for the freedoms of speech and assembly!
Sadly, you must have missed the blowjob party. There were huge lines tho, and it took forever. :(
So cast your vote. That's the cool thing about voting, everyone can vote - even those who want to make a middle-school retaliatory gesture. See you at the polls; don't forget to take your bat and ball and go home.
So long as the government - in this case, NYC - does not regulate content, it can regulate the time, place, and manner of expression. The case law is well-settled on this, yet every time some radical group "protests" in some unlawful manner (again, T, P, & M) by shutting down a street or trespassing and hanging a banner on some building, they scream "First Amendment."
This is utter nonsense. The funny part is these groups almost always consult with First Amendment attorneys prior to their actions, so they know good and well that their conduct is illegal. Yet they still screech like scalded hogs when they get arrested for breaking the law. I say, great, carry the law breakers away in shackles. Most of the time, that's all part of the act, as in, "Look at me! I am being carted away by The Man for protesting!"
No you aren't idiot, and you know it. But it makes for good political theater.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So, you call us fascist, but you'd have us vote for the socialist Kerry? That just doesn't make sense.
Why don't you just confess? You're anti-capitalist to the core. You hate the USA because you're jealous. Our system works and yours doesn't. Case closed.
"But most importantly, I'm voting for Bush as a big FUCK YOU to all the idiots who have made me lose faith in the liberal mode of thought."
Isn't that kind of hypocritical? You just spent a hundred or so words complaining about the misguided hate which you then go on to justify with a few good reasons to not vote for bush....now you are going to throw your vote away for him to spite some people who will never even know about it. That seems a whole lot more irresponsible than anything I've heard out of left field. You sounds like most Republicans, no reason to vote for Bush other than the fact that he calls himself a republican and the otheside really hates him; no one wants to admitt to being conned but bush is the mother of all 419 scams. Also, I'd question how you developed you idea of "liberal thought"; was it fox news? or maybe gop.com? There is lots of rational discorse by the left, but it dosen't make TV because the dancing hippies are more sensational.
Oiy! You guys are really clueless about NYC, aren't you. This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing, this is a mayoral law and order thing. Mayors abuse their powers all the time, arresting people "by mistake," closing down the subway stations "for repairs" near a museum that is showing a controversial exhibit, levying fines and excercising eminent domain against people who don't fit their vision for the city's future.
:-)
And they wonder why so many people are suing the city.
In a city the size of NYC, our civil liberties are more tightly circumscribed than in a place like Lincoln, NE. It's just a big city thing.
Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government
Try and derail the discussion by using slippery slop logic and exaggerating things to the extreme. Some examples from this story include "OMG they will arrest poor defenseless little girls for drawing in the stree!!!!1111!!" and "ON NOSE, CARRYING A 'BUSH T3H SUXX0RSSS!!!11' BANNER WILL GET ME ARRESTED!!oneOne111!!one!!!"
I am a Democrat and I don't like Bush, but lets look at this form the other end. Would you mind someone spraying in "chalk" that doesn't go away for two whole weeks pro-Bush/anti-Kerry propaganda on your home sidewalk, in front of your business, in the public park, etc? Or do you think that people should have the freedom of speech to print what ever they want on yours or others property as long as it goes away in about two weeks?
"Excellent point, just because the law forbids something doesn't mean the law should forbid it. When the Indians protested against the British it was illegal, but nobody would dare claim their cause was unjust. Sometimes the right thing to do is to break the law."
Funny you left off the "going to jail" part.
The other funny part is that we neglected our social structures for so long, and now we're acting all surprised that things aren't going the way they should.
If you did the same thing to your car, should you be surprised that it no longer works like it use to?
He explained and demonstrate to the arresting officers that the chalk was water soluable. The officers even agreed that chalking with this substance was not a crime. They were not under any misimpression that he was using paint or permanent chalk. This arrest was not a misunderstanding by the officers on the scene. This was a decision handed down from higher up. It will be argued in court perhaps that the higher ups misunderstood, but that still doesn't explain why a half-day later the "vandal" still has not been charged.
The question remains: the most protected speech is political speech. The next most protected speech is artistic speech. Both have limitations which were not broken here nor are broken by children everyday. The less protected speech in chalking is commercial speech and arrests have been made for it. So, by logic, if we can arrest or punish for "vandalism" for the highest protected speech, and we can arrest or punish for the lowest protected speech, then we should logically also arrest and punish for the middle of the protected speech - the child artiste drawing with equally non-permanent chalk. QED.
Just think, our streets and roads could have more advertizements than a race car. There might be problems with distracting advertizements causing accindents and maybe so much chalk pigment spray during rains to blind drivers, but that's a small price to pay for commercial freedom of speech. As for individuals, screw them. They think just because their taxes paid for the roads, they own them?
Completely true and valid. Police officers on scene even thought that it wasn't defacement when he showed them it could be washed off.
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DB: nycdada and SQL: -->
The administrator has been notified and will resolve the problem ASAP.
looks like "dada" has some issues ^_^
Did they arrest Bill Gates?
You can't break the law and then bitch about how the law is wrong. Its questionable if chalk advertisements are legal, companies typically pay permits for that medium. After IBM and NBC outraged people by spray painting messages around town, I think advertisers are treading lightly. If chalk advertising was clearly legal you'd probably see "eat at mcdonalds" all over your city.
... There is a chance I could be arrested. Am I criminally defacing property? I don't think so." I think he knew what he was doing was legally questionable.
Well what's the real complaint, that he was held without a reason or that he was arrested for chalking the sidewalks? Did the cops give him a reason, later on, when they weren't in front of cameras? If not, I agree that's fascist. When asked, "Do you have any fear of being arrested during the Republican Convention?" JK responded: "I think anybody planning an act of civil disobedience has to accept the risk of getting arrested
I work in advertising, so I know chalk art is questionably legal. I guess that's my point. Read for yourself:
Chalk art is one form of guerrilla marketing, an in-your-face, direct-to-the-people kind of advertising. Guerrilla marketing in public spaces can be tricky and even illegal, as Nike and Microsoft found out separately last fall when they took heat from New York City officials for slapping promotional decals on sidewalks and buildings. "I guess we haven't addressed that during any meeting I've attended," says Heather Freeman, who does public relations for Red Sage (www.redsage.com). The chalk art is just supposed to be "fun and friendly." It's unclear whether the city agrees. The District typically requires permits for any disruption of a public space, including an event or activity that might hinder foot traffic or the movement of the disabled on a sidewalk. Permit requests go to the city's Department of Transportation, and permits are issued by its Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs.
Personally, I think it's bullshit if they are enforcing it to different degrees, like letting pro-lifers put messages everywhere but not letting the bike guy get the word out. He obviously wasn't keeping the shit low-profile by talking to the media.
So the guy is going out of his way to advertise that he is defacing public property, he gets a news crew to cover his activity, and THAT is when he gets arrested. Nothing staged here, move along and continue your paranoid hate fest.
OH COME ON! Pull your collective head out, take a breath, and please remember how to think for yourself....
No brain, no pain.
were put in a giant cage under a railroad trestle.
I have blog like everyone else
You know what the really sad thing is? Some people will send a message to his bike just to see how it works and when the times comes they'll still vote for Bush.
Agh, the news site has been slashdotted:
ASAP being when all the chalk washes off the streets of NYC.Thank god someone who was a Kerry supporter came out and said this.
the Political Inquirer
"Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, "can I ask what I'm being arrested for?" to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything."
Gee that sounds like what happened in Cuba.
"I don't care if you're campaigning for the girlscouts, painting on public property is illegal."
/* then your comment would be valid */ }
if(paint == chalk){
You just proved this guys point. Moron.
the Political Inquirer
I beleive that the constution prevents the inprisoment of a person who is't tried for anytring for over 24 hours? It looks like 24 hours or so have passed, so I belive that the guy should be out by now, or on the way to being released. It will be interesting to see how this would play out in the courts if this went to trial.
First of all, this guy does no permanent damage to public property.
Secondly, while not all graffiti is equally defensible, I think of it as a valuable form of expression. And the problem is that as with many other free speech issues, you cannot protect the positive uses while penalizing the negative ones. Hear me out, before you jump the gun.
See, there are times when the appropriation of public space is the only way to speak because the state or its corporate allies controls all legal -or the most effective- forms of communication. This isn't as true in the United States, although the large media conglomerates do exercise a great deal of control over what he hear and listen. Thankfully, we have the internet still left.
Yet, as surprising as that may be to some Slashdotters, a piece of wall is an easiser medium to master than a computer and thinking otherwise only shows how out of touch some of you may be with some very poor communities in the United States where internet access does not exist nor do the skills to use a computer are common (I am working on fixing both, by the way).
Moreover, graffiti and leafletting have both played a crucial role in breaking the fear that grips societies in authoritarian regimes. In dictatorships where people often die for less than painting graffiti on the wall, a piece of political graffiti can serve to end the sense of isolation caused by fear that often renders people unable to seek other ways to overthrow the military junta.
If you are interested in history, read about how graffiti was used against the dictatorships of the southern cone in Latin America in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The ethymological origin of the word is also very telling:
Graffiti Graf*fi"ti, n. pl. It., pl. of graffito scratched Inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs, or at Pompeii.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Until someone puts this in the queue
"- - - " x 100 copies
Nothing wrong with a little vandalism is there?
This is political free speech, in water-soluable chalk. You could post big "Bush is an Iraqi Killer" posters all over, but the chalk (which produces *less* of a mess) isn't okay? Come on. If somebody chalked "Bush is Defending us Against Evil, You Wimpy Hippies" on a sidewalk, I'd be fine with that (though I'd probably add a comment of my own). It's not the partisian content that matters. Its that this is a form of political expression that can reach a large number of people, is accessable to the average guy, causes no destruction of property, and so forth.
This is *not* comparable to the IBM spraypainting case, where physical damage was caused -- the paint is *permanent*. No property is being destroyed in this case. Hell, when you were a little kid, didn't you chalk up the sidewalk in front of and around your house, and in front of the neighbor's house? I know that I certainly did.
May we never see th
It would have been funny if someone hacked the WiFi connection to that bike and instead of painting anti-Bush messages it would paint Vote Bush! and Kerry is a liar!
Really, lets not have any of them. We all know which way the guys who run this site lean and if we start getting into Political posts pretty soon this site will look like another 527 site.
So how about we just stick to technology and NOT have anything related to the convention or the election?
I'd really like to have one site free of all the politicing.
+5 Insightful, since it had to be said. I can't believe so many people don't grok this simple concept. Maybe it's because all they subject themselves to is commercial propoganda.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
"I would rather not see my beautiful southern californian sky poluted by such nonsense that nobody can erase. "
Can you still see the sky in California?
"Can I write '$RACIAL_EPIPHET GO HOME' in 6 foot letters on a minority person's house with sidewalk chalk? Water based paints"
If you can't see the difference between doing what you suggest and writing messages on the road in chalk then you are probably even thicker than you appear to be.
I can see nothing wrong as a one off protest in writing on the road in water based chalk, no one is getting hurt, no permanent damage is being done and any sensible police force would let that go as legitimate protesting.
You're obviously a young uneducated republican. I was only a kid but I remember the 1968 riots at the Democratic Convention and Republican Convention (less well known).
Go learn before picking up the keyboard and spouting ignorance.
Better yet, try out this experiment. Put on a No More Bush t-shirt and go to one of his rallies. If you're real nice, I'l post your bond when they arrest you. I don't hate Bush. I hate the assault on the Constitution his administration is guilty of. My family has fought and died for those rights over the centuries and I'll be damned if I'll let anyone take away those rights without a fight.
Lastly infeeding this troll. I'll just add that voting for the wrong candidate because of the actions of radical liberals is utterly irresponsible and idiotic.
the bike in action!7 -64417-iloveny_qt_hi,00.html
wired has a video:
http://www.wired.com/news/mediaplayer/0,2108,6441
I thought the self-important asshole with the delusions of fascism was quite hilarious.
So he gets arrested right before the "live" event! Considering that he wasn't arrested immediately, but rather a few hours later, one wonders if some higher-up checked his website...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The poor pay more than 17% of the taxes. While it may be true that they only pay 17% of INCOME taxes the poor pay property tax, sales tax, gas tax, phone taxes and a host of other taxes.
It is playing word games when you say that the top 1/4 pay 73% of all taxes.
What if he was chalking the DeCSS code? Or maybe the Win2000 code?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Yeah, because paying someone else to smear your opponent, then going on record as denouncing it (as well as their ads, suggesting they are smears, although they are not) is very honorable.
I don't care if you get blowjobs in the oval office and lie about it (clinton), or if you're a rich french-looking frankenstein-faced war hero (kerry) with a prettyboy sidekick, or if you were a drunk with DUIs (bush), or if you're a "gay american" who cheats on his wife (mcgreevy). What does that have to do with their politics? Nothing... except in Bush's case, both the politics and the politician suck-- he's a bible-thumping speech-impaired idiot who lied about way more than a victimless blowjob, and that's way more dangerous than your average "character flaw").
--
Power to the Peaceful
This guy shouldn't be able to do this.
Hell, the city should only license such activity to upstanding corporate citizens!!
And people want more reasons to send Bush to hell, after all the Republican Geeks never thought of something so ingenious like this, well dumb pastor attracts dumb sheeps.
Keep beleiving in Bloomberg and Gulliani's crap dumb New Yorkers
FREE JOSHUA!!!!!!.
Dude should have mounted it underneath his car so it would print on the street. No one would know... the message would just appear like magic as he drove by.
So to silence those that hate Bush you will vote so that Bush will get a second term. This will just make those Bush haters shut up and go home and take their whining with them. You, sir, are brilliant!
The first amendment says that the message is not relevant. There can be restrictions placed on the manner of expression, but the content of the message is irrelevant.
If a school girl wrote "Principal Skinner Stinks"...
If a Republican wrote "Boycott Heinz politics"...
If a Democrat wrote "When Clinton Lied No one Died"...
If an asylum escapee wrote "We should bottle purple"...
Their content is not punishable. Only the methods of expressing that content are. If they let school kids chalk protests to their school board, there's nothing they can do about another political message taking the same form.
No. The fact is that he's kept in custody for hours without being told why, nor being charged for anything.
It seems that nobody including the sergeant himself who arrested this guy was sure about the reason for this very arrest. The only thing I can see here is that the sergeant was told by somebody to arrest him for some reason that is not known to us at the moment.
Maybe it was vandalism indeed, maybe not. But if it was the case, they could have told the guy that he was arrested because of vandalism. Anyway here's the article, in case you're too lazy:
When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, "am I free to go?" After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle.
Kinberg cooperated fully with the officers as he was being handcuffed, only asking, "can I ask what I'm being arrested for?" to which no one provided an answer. As of 11:00 PM Saturday evening, he was still in custody without being charged with anything.
I believe in most cases, those signs are placed in areas known as easements (typically close to the street). You may believe you own that portion of the property because you water and mow the grass, but in all reality, the city/province owns it and they're just letting you "borrow" it until they decide to add sidewalks or widen the roadway. Checking a true surveyor's map of your property will often reveal the extent of truly owned land, which to too many folks is very surprising.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
isnt it kind of suspicious riding a bike that is spewing white powder out the back? im not saying this joker would intentionally put anthrax or small pox mixed in with the chalk, but with the story of this bike out there weeks before, it wouldnt be hard for a terrorist to switch out the chalk with something else. i for one am glad he is off the street, and his bike impounded.
Or we could simply look at the opposite side. There we see revisionist historians who say the Holocaust never happened, Hitler never committed suicide but was 'murdered' by the Russians, the Americans secretly started the Cold War to fuel weapons development, FDR was worst than Hitler for the internment of Japanese Americans, etc etc etc.
Should it not have read: "Bikes Against Bush Creator Arrested". For me the word "Busted" implies that not only is it illegal but also a reproachable activity.
:)
I dont see anything 'wrong' with a bit of civil disobediance.
Hmm though I guess that would make it slashdot boring too if it was just neutral. Nevermind this is a pointless comment.
he would print this " I'm anti-Kerry..I'm just anti..I'm even anti this stupid water soluble chalk printing bike sys...oh did I mention I'm anti...now please for the LOVE of God PLEASE KILL ME!!!"
So how about we just stick to technology and NOT have anything related to the convention or the election?
If you can get the government to stop making laws that curtail the use of technology, then I'll agree that we should stop yapping about politics in here.
But when technology and politics overlap (particularly when it's a pretty geeky creation, and its creator is getting arrested on political grounds) then it sounds like fair game to me.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
please mod up. Grax is not a troll (I'm a democrat).
Open Source Sushi
I can't remember anything after the Alyssa Milano part... What was this post about? What was this story about?
I'm surprised no one made a ketchup-as-lube joke.
Good ol' Apple!
Actually, those political posters, in many areas, are on public right-of-way and are technically litter. Saw a story on a guy that was taking photos of them, proving they were on public land, and then collecting them and selling them back to the people running for office. I'm still trying to get my hands on some hard data on if this would be legal in my area.. I could use the extra cash...
Officer: Sir, the chalk comes off with water, we can't arrest him on that. ...
Superior: Well our orders are clear, we can't afford to let him go and write his messages.
Officer:
Superior: Arrest him anyway. We'll figure something out on the way back. We only need a few more days, and we'll keep the bike after we let him go so he can't write that crap anywhere.
... is that it is the Republican party who is about to exercise their first amendment rights, by having a convention. If the parties were reversed, the chalkers would be called "nazi thugs" or something.
What you feel you should let people do or not do is irrelevant. Case in point, the sidewalk in front of your business is not your private property. Someone can come and sit there with a sign and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Otherwise, by the same logic you could muzzle all protests to somewhere in the desert where no one is inconvenienced.
I suppose you have a link to the police report that proves he was arrested on political grounds... There were hundreds if not thousands of them. They posed a huge security risk. It was civil disobedience.
And like someone else has said here, what is civil disobedience worth if it doesn't earn an arrest? How else is it effective? It doesn't earn near as much attention without someone getting arrested for it.
These people were not arrested for political reasons. They were arrested for breaking the law. If they were not arrested, it would suggest that the police allowed masses of protesters to keep on breaking the law for political reasons. Is that what you want? A stopped-up NYC with a police department that only warrants arrests when in disagreement with the perpetrators' political ideals?
Right under the nose of the Slashdot Editors the really BIG story is breaking on the blogosphere and many (e.g. Slashdot readers and the few subscribers) are completely detached from the discussion of the long-term implications
From the Belmont Club blog ...
The undercard in the Kerry vs Swiftvets bout is Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet, two distinctly different fights, but both over information. The first is really the struggle over the way Vietnam will be remembered by posterity; .... But the undercard holds a fascination of its own. The reigning champion, the Mainstream Media, has been forced against all odds to accept the challenge of an upstart over the coverage of the Swiftvets controversy. Joe Strupp at Editor and Publisher writes:
The article is a candid and unconscious description of the actual nature of news. It is not just raw information or pixels pushed onto a screen, but a system of semantic entities: an series of information objects, containing properties and methods containing embedded logic, set loose on society. The power of the Mainstream Media lay in the fact that they controlled the generation of news objects; how they arose, what they did, how they ran their course. They were the news object foundry; able to make them "type safe"; define what they could do, and what they could not. And that power was enormousYet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.
I believe Juanita
Wow... Good job in letting others decide your vote for you! Yay for no free thought! : thumbs up :
*NM*
The logic of the "Anyone But Bush" camp is that this man has screwed up so dramatically that you could throw a suvlaki roll-up into any given crowd and hit someone more capable.
Veracity aside, I'm not sure you can call this stupid. What could be more intelligent than saying "the boat has sunk, I'll settle for a life vest now!"
My
Limekiller
Conspiracy theories aside, is it possible some internet troll sent some sort of threat message about a public official through this chalk machine, and that's why the guy got busted?
So then I DON'T have to water/mow the lawn there! That's the city's job. I KNEW IT. Burn in hell, neighbors who don't like my tall grass.
Nope. An easement is a contract between two parties permitting a non-owning party some otherwsie non-permitted use of the owner's land. For instance, one of my neighbors has an easement to a thin strip of my property for a fence between our lots that he wanted and I didn't care about, one way or another.
The city/province doesn't own the land; you still do. They don't, for instance, own mineral rights under it, or air rights above it. They just have certain rights to it: to build and maintain a sidewalk, or to build and maintain utility access, etc.
TedCheshireAcad writes:
... Oh crap, you're a Christian fundamentalist, aren't you?
"Here comes the logic. I can't stand everyone who is 'anti-Bush'. Why don't you devote your efforts to being pro-Kerry? I ask you, who do you think should be president, and you say, "Not Bush!". Well, Jerry Falwell is not Bush. Saddam Hussein is not Bush."
Hoo boy. This is you just being hyper-literal. CLEARLY it isn't meant that they'll take anyone whatsoever. What is meant is that if they can find a person who is (a) willing and (b) not a complete fsck-up then yeah, better than Bush.
Do you read *everything* literally?
*sigh
My
Limekiller
Not only are you lying, but you didn't RTFA. It all happened in front of a news TV crew, amd he reporter stated how controlled and polite he was. Plus, there were no "cohorts".
You're not only a troll, but a stupid troll. And whoever modded you interesting has no business being a moderator.
(Oh, sure, the reporter lied too, because big media is so antiBush. Spare me).
I'm not on either side. I'm against the Dems and the Reps. But I'm against the Reps more, because I view them as a slightly greater threat to liberty and justice than the Dems.
how can a libertarian be a socialist? lib == system runs wild doing whatever. soc == people in dc run wild making the system do whatever
This is a common misconception. Look up Libertarian Socialism in Wiki. Socialism is not equivalent to totalitarianism. Socialism is the principle that the workers should control the means of production, in particular, and that society should be organized to provide for the common good, in general. Historically, this idea has typically been implemented through government control of the means of production and various forms of statist or authoritarian socialism, which in my view is even worse than capitalism, being simply a form of totalitarianism.
Libertarian socialists believe that society should be organized to provide for the common good from the bottom up, rather than the usual top-down approach of big government and mega corporations. I support small collectives and cooperateves, and am against any form of large organization or concentration of power.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
When Kraft Foods, Kraft Foods International, Miller Brewing Company, Philip Morris U.S.A. (makers of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Benson & Hedges and many many many other cigarette brands), Philip Morris International, & Starbucks are all owned by Philip Morris who donates huge amounts to the republican party I would say they are related. You don't know where your money goes until you look.
Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.
- Archimedes
The "contract" is signed/agreed to when one purchases the property. The city "owns" it in that they can come along and take it for street widening... unless of course, you want to maintain you "own" that part of the street now (as some folks do with lake front property, that they own part of the otherwise public lake). I suppose easements can differ by municipality, but in the areas where I've lived, this has been true. The original intent of my post was simply to say, you as a land owner, don't always get to decide what happens on "your" land (as an example, the utility access you mentioned).
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
i tried posting something about this guy friday (or was it saturday) only to get my post pimp-slapped down the shitter. guess membership does in fact have its privvies doesn't it?
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
I was trying to be generous. My homepage URL reveals how I feel about Bush. But I put myself out of the ABBA camp by paying careful attention to the alternative and comparing it to the vast failures of Bush in the past four years. Looks good so far. :)
If you think four more years of Bush is scary, that's nice, but if you want us to vote for someone else, you need to make an argument for why four years of Kerry is better.
I'm quite sure that four more years of Bush would suck. But what I'm not sure of is that four years of Kerry wouldn't suck more. Unless someone is willing to at least do some minimal pro-Kerry arguing (i.e. "he's mediocre at worst"), then there's really no reason to vote for him.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
McSweeneys is shalow, way too biased and offers no realistic solution to anything.
Then I looked at the book... Chomsky??? You are the one who needs help, sir. Chomsky is one of the most decietful men on the plannet. He took you for a ride? Seek help, seek help!
I've never seen anyone arrested for stapling campaign posters to utility poles and those damn things last forever.
Are plans for the chalk writer open source?
Bikes Against Bush has been /.ed, how about the NYPD? You can send a message to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly here.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein
By your reasoning, a person should be able to break the law to express himself. So they can stop traffic? Spray paint walls of public buildings? Come into my business and disrupt it? Enter my home? This would be a prescription for anarchy.
In order for society to operate, it needs order. Many of these "protesters" are, in fact, either anarchists or professional activists, so they would disagree with this premise. But most reasonable people would agree that there are limits on all rights. If you are an anarchist, then I cannot reason with you on this. But the Constitution also contemplated police powers for the states, including trespassing and disturbing the peace laws, which were in effect in 1787 and continue to this day. Clearly, the "peaceably assemble" phrase carries some weight here.
Keep in mind another purpose of time, place, and manner restrictions is to protect expression itself. Now, before you call me Orwellian, don't shoot the messenger; this is the Supreme Court's rationale. Part of the reasoning behind requiring permits for demonstrations is to put the police on notice that they need to staff the event, and protect both the protestors (who would scream bloody murder if no police showed up to their event and they got hurt) and the general public.
One key point: A mob of demonstrators can shout down and intimidate a smaller group of dissenters, as in the cases wherein the ACLU defends those Klan knotheads. One function of the law is to allow unpopular opinions be expressed in safety. The authorities cannot do hat with people racing all over the streets of NYC on bikes.
But then again, the bigger the spectacle, the more likely the "protesters" are going to get on the nightly news, so the chaos is intentional. It is essential that anyone analyzing "protests" takes this into account.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
On top of it, this guy was not arrested for "throwing spaghetti" or assaulting a police officer. It's clear this arrest was politically motivated, and I'm sure there will be many more such arrests before this is over.
Um, examples?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
blah blippety blah
It never fails to stupify me at all the really lame, stupid, pointless, and all-around "I'm-a-bitter-lefty-protestor-with-too-much-time-o n-my-minds" tactics lameasses like this come up with. About as stupid as Al Franken's "yell-out" during George Bush's appearance at the RNC.
John Kerry is a Joke!
I used to work as a surveyor's assisstant and, as part of our job, we'd sraypaint things, including public roads and sidewalks. Obviously spraypainting public property is something that you can, and people do, get arrested for. Now us, however. The reason was two fold:
1) Scale. We made as little marks as possible. Just lines and arrows to indicate existance of power, gas, water, sewer, etc. We didn't go and draw a big picture all over the street and sidewalk.
2) Intent. The reason we did this was for the safety of workers. They needed to know if the dug in a certian spot, there was a gas line and to be careful to watch for it.
Thus I can see how both legally and morally this is different from kids drawing hopscotch fields. They are marking up a small area so they can play a game. He is marking up as much as he can to try and make people notice his message. He is advertising, really, though it is political in nature.
The post is right on.
Well, regardless, I was unaware that the city/town/whatever can own, or possibly just have rights to such things as you've listed, that property. While I do believe there are times when these signs have been put FAR too far from the road to be in that zone, that would be a case by case thing. In any case, though, thank you for pointing that out.
Really, the rationale I've seen is very close to that of spammers:
- Cheap mass-delivery method
- Excuses that "it's easy to wash off" sound a lot like "it's easy to hit delete"
- Assumption that everyone's interest or need to see what they have to say surpasses the inconvenience of those who have to clean up after them
- Not being content with letting people interested in finding them. Must go out and force people to see what they have to say.
- Likely to develop into an arms race of self-important corporate and political interests, if this isn't determined to be illegal
Smells like spamming to me. We of all people should see where this is headed and seek to stop it as soon as possible.Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
At the moment, I'm on probation, so getting arrested for a misdemeanor would get me several years in prison. However, if it weren't for that, I'd probably be spending the night in jail in NYC tonight.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
"I'm quite sure that four more years of Bush would suck. But what I'm not sure of is that four years of Kerry wouldn't suck more."
I guess that depends upon your personal goals and values. 4 years of Bush has been very good if you happen to benefit from his tax breaks and such.
If Kerry rolls back the tax cuts on the wealthiest, then 4 years of Kerry would be "worse" for them then 4 more years of Bush.
It isn't like Kerry's voting record is not publicly available.
"Unless someone is willing to at least do some minimal pro-Kerry arguing (i.e. "he's mediocre at worst"), then there's really no reason to vote for him."
Let me explain something to you.
Democracy only works when the voters EDUCATE THEMSELVES about the issues.
You want someone to convince you to vote for Kerry. Well, that's very nice for you. But how do you know that what that person tells you is factual?
BTW, thanks for the link, very useful. I agree that prison rape is a huge problem. However, I think this dude will probably be just fine.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
The U.S. Constitution only prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of speech or the right of peaceable assembly. It does not require either the government or the people to provide a free (as in beer) forum for the exercise of those rights.
Case in point - Chomsky does not recognize that there is Radical Islam. Actually he defeneds it! This is a biggie. Both parties do the exact same thing. Even more, they do everything to RADICALIZE Islam even further. Kosovo and Iraq prove the point. Both countries had no Radical Islamists before the wars and both have them now. Saudy Arabia is the financial and ideological sponsor of this murderous strain of Islam. Even most Arabs will tell you that. But both parties count Saudi as "alies".
In a word - Chomsky is in the game. He took quite a few honest people for a ride. You are not the only one.
At protests around the U.S. in the last six years, the police have been actively employing preemptive arrest tactics, which have almost always have resulted in dismissals or "not guilty" decisions.
Not always of course, but much of the time (comparing numbers arrested against numbers inidicted and then convicted.)
Americans say they're for freedom of speech, but anytime a large, public act of communication takes place (mainly demonstrations for this point, but the implications are similar for pirate radio imo), there's always a government entity duly empowered to curb that expression, so that it doesn't have quite so strong the impact its creators put into it. For example, the FCC, appointed by the Executive, and the police and FBI, appointed by that jurisdiction's executive, or, in some cases, elected by the public (yet still a single human with much power over many.)
It's the imperfect, political humans controlling those speech-altering government entities who have the power, here, not the citizens. Too much power in the hands of too few. The U.S. is no longer a good model of a participative democracy. Look toward northern Europe for better examples of directly-involved citizens.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
I think I get off on a technicality, I didn't actually mention Nazi's or Hitler though I alluded to them. Fascism is somewhat more the Italian flavor of right wing extremism.
If we are going to start invoking Godwin's law then you really aren't going to be able to run any threads on the new Republican party any more.
Its a sad day for that historied party but you simply can't continue to apply the "conservative" label to what they are today. Outside of tax cuts everything they are doing today is anathema to conservatism.
If someone can suggest an appropriate recognizable political label to apply to the new Republican party I will certainly it take under consideration using it. They seem to be adherents of many of the principals of Fascism:
- Authoritarian government backed by an extensive internal security apparatus growing in leaps and bounds every month
- The head of state and the security apparatus has the power to arrest people, detain them indefinitely without due process and subject them to forms of torture.
- Suppression of free speech by opponents of the party and the state
- Aggressive warfare to preempt threats, real, perceived, fabricated or imagined.
- Fascism, as opposed to left wing socialism, works hand in hand with large privately owned corporations and industrialists. It is the authoritarian form of capitalism which seems to be what we have. The government massively intervenes in superficially free markets to make economic winners out of its friends and losers out of its adversaries.
"Compassionate Fascist" is the most descriptive term I can think of. It tends to be the logical conclusion of a right wing party which tilts to far to the right especially when blessed by an attack on the state which can be used to justify the tilt.
@de_machina
Bushes Against Bush!
or Bush consumes an infant on live television
Woah.. I hate Bush.. but that would get my vote!
and they can only happen in a specially designated area of Colorado designated the "National Protest Area". This is to keep you safe from terrorism.
Oh, the irony.
He got arrested. That sucks.
:P
But man, that thing is pretty darn cool! How did he set all of that up?
Notice the PowerBook, too.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
obviously, since bush was elected by the popular vote, he embodies all that is america
therefore, anybody who thinks that bush is leading america in the wrong direction simply hates america
Instead of bitching about how Bush hasn't made any jobs, he ought to take some of those brains of his and start selling his inventions. That will do more good for the economy than any stupid protest will.
This is my sig.
I suppose you have a link to the police report that proves he was arrested on political grounds...
Nope. Coincidentally there aren't many arrest reports from the 19th and 20th centuries that prove arrests were made on racial grounds. Are you implying that if it isn't in the arrest report, it is definitively untrue? He was completely cooperative throughout the whole ordeal, why would they arrest him rather than just cite him?
And like someone else has said here, what is civil disobedience worth if it doesn't earn an arrest?
It's worth a lot. The emotional impact is the willingness of people to be arrested, not the act of being arrested.
They were arrested for breaking the law.
But was this person breaking the law? If he was spraying water soluble chalk, he wasn't.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
He has one already
Of all of the freedoms that people in the United States of America enjoy, perhaps the freedom of speech is the most important. Of all forms of speech, perhaps the most important is "political speech."
Why? Because if we can't speak out against our government, we can't effect change. We end up with an oppressive government. If there is one right that sets a free country apart it is our right to agree or disagree with those in power. While there are obvious limits to other kinds of speech (you can't yell fire in a crowded theater) there really can't be the same kinds of limits to political speech in our free society (with perhaps the exception of slander/libel).
This freedom extends to such unpopular organizations as the KKK - and is what gives them the right to speak their unpopular brand of politics. It extends to every man, woman, and child regardless of their political persuasion and it trumps the rights of others who may disagree (ie the NAACP can not stop the KKK from disseminating their hate, nor can the KKK quell the NAACP from their rights to speak against the KKK).
As I've just demonstrated, the right to political speech can sometimes be uncomfortable but it is the right of every citizen of the United States.
Still, if it can be proven that using degradable, water soluble, organic chalk is a form of vandalism then perhaps the police had a right to detain and confiscate but according to the article that is not what has happened. Right now it seems like the NYC Police are acting as agents for the RNC and simply limiting this man's right to free speech.
That is un-American and unconstitutional! Not to mention unconscionable.
I suppose that's your idea of a proportional response, is it? Do you shoot kids who play on your lawn too?
OK, kidding aside, you make some valid points, so I'll address them.
People generally work pretty hard for the things they own, even harder for the things they make or build.
Though I don't recognize the legitimacy of private property, particularly corporate property (if it was me, I would have spray-painted the message on Starbucks windows), I do recognize the value of labor, so this is a legitimate point. However, it's simply a matter of relative value. At this point, denouncing the Bush admin is more important than the labor it takes to repaint a building or whatever.
Now, we can argue tactics if you want, you can say this is not an effective means of denouncing the administration and you may be right. However, in terms of moral justification, I say sacrificing the paint job on a few buildings is a small price to pay to spread an anti-Bush message. If you want the guy to do the work to repaint afterward, I think that would be fair.
It's called "civil" disobedience for a reason.
Actually, this is a common misconception. The word "civil" in this case refers to disobedience to "civil authority," not to being polite or respectful or anything like that. Civil disobedience is often what some would consider "uncivil" in the sense of being rude or socially inappropriate.
As for books, I would recommend "The Disposessed" by Ursula K. LeGuin, and "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.
If you're going to get arrested for an act of civil disobedience you'd better be getting arrested for breaking the law you oppose to get it contested
I addressed this earlier. I think it would indeed be better to accomplish a dual purpose, by breaking an immoral law at the same time. For that purpose, I would recommend defacing only corporate property, as I definitely think the laws protecting corporate "personhood" are immoral and should be abolished, and corporations should definitely not be allowed to own property. When it comes to personal property, the issue is much trickier, and our society is not remotely ready to do away with the concept of personal property, so maybe spray-painting people's houses would be a bit out of line.
9 out of 10 of these political protest idiots are stupid sheeple
This I really object to. It is this sort of condecending, elitist, anti-democratic attitude which is really jeapordizing what little liberty we have left in this country. Perhaps some of the protestors are not educated to your standards. But I assure you, there are plenty of principled and well-thought-out reasons to protest aginst Bush, so I would advise looking closely before you assume someone's opinion is uninformed. Some people are a lot smarter than they look.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
good post, man. good post.
Doesn't compare to Iraq.
Dozens of Americans were killed in Bosnia, and what do we have to show for it? The Europeon countries for whom we took this action -- shed this blood, sacrificed a Cabinet Secretary -- have proven they will not reciprocate. We cannot build or use military facilities in Bosnia.
We have nothing to show for our work in Bosnia. We are left with the conclusion that President Clinton's actions were simply to distract from his dishonorable domestic conduct. Readers are encouraged to rent and view this documentary.
On the other hand, for the cost of a thousand American soldiers (and a hundred billion Iraqi babies!!!), have created an ally in the middle of the Middle East. We have a great big unsinkable aircraft carrier. We have a California-size staging area for further pacifications.
In other words, we have a whole new country to show for our work. Pretty damn impressive!
And the only pinheads who think it was a "distraction" from the War on Terror have not heard of the Abu Nidal Organization or the Salman Pak training camp.
Of the socialist ANO, the Federation of American Scientists says, "Has received considerable support, including safehaven, training, logistic assistance, and financial aid from Iraq, Libya, and Syria (until 1987), in addition to close support for selected operations." (emphasis added to make it perfectly clear that Iraq supported terrorists) Of special relevance is Libya -- whose capitulation in the War on Terror was a direct result of the action in Iraq.
Like the song says,
If you want a President who kicks ass, vote Republican.
If you want a President who kisses ass, vote Democrat.
If you want a President who is an ass, vote Green.
If you want a President who will let you buy ass, vote Libertarian.
The "news cycle" makes it difficult to get any attention unless you do something novel and/or dangerous. Greenpeace is well known precisely because they are grandstanding nutjobs.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Basically you have to sign an endorsement for Bush/Cheney'04 before they let you in, no matter if you are a reporter, student, etc. No, I am not kidding.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Ron Reagon (son of Ronald) was the MSNBC correspondent interviewing Joshua about the arrest, jailing, and subsequent release.
It was pointed out that the police claimed that they had watched him (Joshua) spray-painting the sidewalk with grafitti, but Ron (the interviewer) and Joshua (arrestee) knew that was false. The marks the police saw were put down the day before, not while the police were watching.
By the time Joshua and Ron got back to the scene of the crime today for the followup story, the chalk from the previous day was already gone.
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they rarely are.
When the sergeant on duty can't find anything wrong, but gets orders to arrest him anyway, it's obviously a politically motivated arrest. Here's hoping they can't keep him off the road for long.
vibrators against bush
is this an intentional pun?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
To use an oft-cited example, let's use the salt march. Gandhi -after much organizing on constructive policies- marches to the ocean with the stated intention to make his own salt. Now the English must lose. If they let the man in a loin cloth make his own salt, their tax revenues drop and they won't be able to afford their occupation. The other option is to demonstrate how fragile their rule is by being forced to arrest an old man... if a single person can so threaten their ability to rule, well, the rest really is history. Victory assured, no arrest necessary.
Getting back to Joshua Kinberg, he had to win no matter what the police did. He came up with a new style of political expression, and without arrest he would have been effectively using his new gadget to spread his medium|message, and been part of a larger effort of CD (his actions by himself obviously don't put the system in a situation where it must react). The harder the system tries to repress him, the more impact he'll have, a good example of why nonviolence is often referred to as political jiu-jitsu.
But this is only possible because Kinberg can't possibly be charged for anything that most people would find reasonnable. A system that can not tolerate slogans expressed with chalk on its streets and sidewalks is a fragile system indeed. Who can possibly suggest this ought to be a crime?
What if 1,000 Joe and Jane RNCs decide to hand-write/stencil/spray their messages with chalk? If they don't arrest you now, they look silly for having arrested Kinberg, and it may be evident to many they simply can't repress dissent anymore. Arresting that many people for using their right to free speech- well that impact is hard to calculate. Isn't your first amendment central to your idea of civilization, that which is being defended against the terrorists? If it doesn't exist, what moral superiority can be claimed? This is very problematic... and would let you frame the Bush gang as a bunch of radicals ready to subvert American values to keep their hold on power.
Ok, let me say that since A16, these protests haven't been my cup of tea. For the RNC, I find the strategic objective rather weak given the resources spent on staging the protests. What if they just ignore you? If someone can explain to me what was gained in that case, I'd love to hear it (I'll confess that I haven't really been paying attention to this issue).
This has been a long post... if you read this far, thanks!!
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Yeah, but if they hold him for 47 hours, then release him w/o charging him, while technically legal, it raises some interesting questions about harassment and suppression of political speech. If something that seems to go counter to the commonly accepted idea of "fair and just" is determined to be legal, I personally think that the law is what should be changed, not the average citizen's idea of fair and just.
You can get a copy of the arrest video off BitTorrent.
4 08 28_kinberg.mov.torrent
http://dv.open4all.info/bblog/torrent_files/200
I much prefer seeing erasable stuff on the sidewalk than stapled or glued to a wall.
Even the arresting officer agreed that this wasn't defacement.
Quote from the article:
"When Kinberg showed the police sergeant how the bicycle used a non-permanent spray chalk, the sergeant seemed to agree that it wasn't defacement, at which point Kinberg asked, "am I free to go?" After conferring about it, officers decided to call superiors, then came back moments later to place Kinberg under arrest and confiscate the bicycle."
And from bikesagainstbush.com:
"Bikes Against Bush will utilize a water-soluble chalk mixture. It is the same material used for marking athletic fields. It is environmentally safe and removes easily with water, or naturally biodegrades within 15-30 days. Thus, while the messages may have the appearance of graffiti, this is certainly not an attempt to damage or deface property."
perl -le 's;;uoli;;$a=length;y;g-w;e-u;;$a--;s;j;$a;;print'
This is a great point, and I hadn't thought of it. You are quite right about the necessity of forcing the system into a lose/lose situation, which I think this guy has done an admirable job of doing.
frame the Bush gang as a bunch of radicals
I understand the sense in which you are using the word, but I'm going to make a play on it: you can't frame someone for a crime they have in fact committed.
For the RNC, I find the strategic objective rather weak
I think the point is simply mobilization for mobilization's sake. There is no chance the Republicans are going to actually be affected by the protests. However, it's a good excuse to make a lot of noise and let people know that a lot of people object to Republican policy. OTOH, there's a good case to be made that the RNC is a trap. Norman Mailer quoted Trotsky on this: "'some questions, once asked, answer themselves,' and the question we need to ask is, why did the Republicans pick New York?"
The trick, then, is not to walk into the trap: to protest in non-violent ways that will not turn public opinion against the protestors, and still get the message out. So far people seem to be doing a good job of this, and Kinberg is a good example.
I withdraw my earlier suggestion that he should have used permanent marker. That would have been far less effective than this, which everyone will recognize as pretty innocuous, yet got him arrested anyway. I'm still glad he was arrested, though (as long as he doesn't get raped in jail, which I don't think is too likely), it makes a fantastic publicity stunt.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
...I've never been murdered. So I guess I shouldn't complain about all those other people that are. It's not like it has affected me, personally. But then, I lead a life where I minimize places where the murderers can intrude into my life. Bars look cool on the windows, and digging that bomb shelter gives me something to do besides leave the house.
(2) MILITARY ASSISTANCE
(A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations.
(B) The aggregate value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of assistance provided under this paragraph may not exceed $97,000,000.
Did you not even read this section? Or is it just hard for you to grasp the difference between $97 million to arm and train a free Iraqi army if one appears in the future, and $150 BILLION and thousands of lives to go over there and depose Saddam Hussein right now?
Besides, the "Clinton would have done it too" is a really weak excuse. Maybe he would have, it doesn't make damn bit of difference to me. It was still the wrong thing to do.
0 1 - just my two bits
I'm sorry--I completely missed that comment & figured that since the article was dated today & the police work slowly on the weekends, nothing had changed.
Parent deserves to be modded up as informative.
The democrats didn't decide to rack up histories biggest deficit to bomb some random third party country and get americans killed there instead of spending the resources going after the terrorists who used biological weapons(anthrax) to kill americans.
This is "insightful?" Sounds to me like a typical, regurgitated, uninformed statement made by some high school kid who has absolutely zero experience in the real world and bases his opinions on what all his friends think is cool.
"Random third party country?" Christ, where have you been for the past 14 years? I'm going to guess "in diapers." And the "histories[sic] biggest deficit" is not even accurate.
But then again, this does seem to be "insightful" by slashdot standards.
I'd like to charge him $20 for being a dumbass.
You make good points, and I agree in general. I'm willing to concede that CD should have some point other than just getting arrested.
However, in this particular case, if you take a slightly broader view, this still counts as CD. Look at it this way: the guy is not protesting against laws about spraying chalk on sidewalks, he is protesting against the suppression of dissent. Most people who write on the sidewalk in chalk are not arrested. That this guy was arrested is not necessarily a reflection of the law, it is part of a deliberate program to suppress, criminalize, and marginalize dissent. So this guy's arrest can be seen as CD against that campaign, not against laws about chalk per se.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Do you really think that there's a difference between the two? Dream on chaosboy.
I would argue that we are not free simply because we have no clear definition of it. How is it that we are not allowed to walk nude in public? Why, it is simply because it would offend somebody else. So, using this analogy, if I were to protest something that someone else might find offensive, do they not have the right to say that they do not want to see this? We have a situation where just about anything can be percieved as something that impedes the freedoms of another, so therefore, we are only free to do what what everyone else agrees with in public space. The only resolution to this problem is to create enclosed public zones for people with certain views to express themselves like they have been doing with the conventions. e.g. Nude zones, leftist political zones, right-winger zones, beastiality zones. Give everyone the freedom to do what they want as long as it does not involve forcing people to do things against their free will. That's how it should be. As long as I don't have to hear about it. As for issues which cannot be partioned into geographic spaces, well, those will have to be voted upon in a democratic fashion. Since ideological differences do not conform to geographic boundaries, this is about the only solution I can think of. As for this story. This man was unfairly targeted for expressing political views. If people dont get arrested for chalking normally, then I see no reason as to why this man should. Republicans and freedom of speech do not mesh well.
Even though this may cover a type of technology this whole article is flaimbait and should be removed.
Remember this?
12 yr old Washington DC girl put in jail for eating on subway
When basic necessities are denied, Food and personal expression, there is only rebellion and death to follow. the arguments in this forum, resonate witht he ones i'm reading here.
Basic needs should trump any and all rules. Food and Freedom rights of expression (esp when not harming anyone beyond repair) should never be breached in a free world. America is not democratic, and certainly will never be free while corporate investment refuses the rights of individual citizens.
Money is a root cause for the failure of technology to reach the people. (see: Net Pharmacies prosper in Canada).
Today, money controls how and where technology is used. If used against the purveyors of large scale technologies in a capitalist scenario, it will be crushed economically and politically bought out, muscled into obscurity via mainstream media control.
Note, that the chalking was of other peoples words who were also 'participating' remotely. "Mr. Kinberg, 25, will receive the thoughts as SMS messages on a cellphone mounted on his bike's handelbars".
Suppressing these views and the right to express them in a world where public face to face interaction is impossible and the majority of information is 'fed' through televisions via the voice of corporation$ is criminal against any rights and freedoms purported to be available to every citizen.
I like to eat when i need to eat, and speak when i need to speak, given the means necessary to do so. See: South Africa. If prevented from eating or speaking or expressing or downloading information in any format, I would also go to jail until my human rights are completely re-instated.
Wish you'd posted as a logged in user instead of an AC ... I'd add you as a friend.
Commercial speech != political speech!
Rubbish. This is along the same lines as CBS's "we don't take advocacy ads" -- but beer ads ARE advocacy ads (they advocate that you drink a particular beer).
Commercial speech quite frequently is political speech. When ADM has commercials that indicate "we feed the world" -- that is political. Absolutely no way do they really feed the world. What they are intending to do is leave you with the impression that they are good guys. Therefore any bills before Congress are "to help feed the world" -- and ADM got a LOT of money out of Congress (but as a rancher I didn't see one freakin' dime).
Anyone who buys the "commercial speech ain't political speech" is living in the past. How many flags popped up in ads after 9/11? How many of these companies are actually NOT American companies (give you a hint: think Bermuda). How many companies tried to link themselves to the heroes of 9/11? I saw everthing from phone companies to soft drink. Not political?!?
Only a simpleton would believe commercial speech is not political.
Feloneous (a Texan who actually has a brain)
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
From the article:
"I was released after 24 hours in detention with a court date set for Friday. Unfortunately, all my equipment-- bicycle, laptop, cell phone, and custom designed electronics-- has been confiscated. Thus, the Bikes Against Bush performance, where I would accept and print messages sent from web users, is likely to be cancelled."
Even thought he's likely to have all charges dropped, whats the net effect? His protest is no more.
I can always count on some pedantic /. troller pointing out some trivial, technical error, and playing it up as some massive wrong.
Unassimilatible.
No I mean seriously?
If you wish to inform them of their error, perhaps a polite message to their news/online editor, Chris Shaw, might persuade them to correct their article. It'd be good to catch this before other media pick up the same error.
I used little kids side walk chalk, the kind that comes in little plastic buckets with handles, to draw various pretty things on a sidewalk of a park that's regularly washed by staff there and the nightly sprinklers hit it.
My art also made the news as vandalism. I was leveled with people who spraypaint swastickas on houses.
's kinda effed.
Actually most of the things I'm most worried about with Kerry are things I'm pretty sure he'd never be able to get through a Republican-controlled Congress.
Come to think of it, most things I dislike about the Democrats are more often the fault of their congresspeople than their presidents. Clinton was just fine with a Republican congress.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
> It's worth a lot. The emotional impact is the willingness of people to be arrested, not the act of being
> arrested.
Partially. Arrests make the news, though. If you're willing to be arrested, you probably won't unless you are.
The fact is that he's kept in custody for hours without being told why, nor being charged for anything.
While I can't say as I've actually experienced it, from secondhand stories (I've had some employees who led colorful lives...) I was given to understand this isn't entirely unusual.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Sorry, brown shirts are Nazis. Plain and simple. You are an extremist whacko. The sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner you can begin the path to recovery. While I don't care for the free speech squashing of Bush, Kerry and Edwards are just as bad, if not worse. For example, in fighting the Swift Boat veterans, they use legal action against tv stations, complaints to the FEC, and urge the publisher to withdraw their book. I find this more troubling in people who wish to have the ultimate power of the executive in this country, than individual cases of police (who also have executive power) going overboard.
Wrong. Hitler did not immediately become a totalitarian dictator from the moment he was elected (or rather appointed --- he never won the popular vote). In the first few years of Nazi rule, people could and did make anti-Hitler statements.
Nazi Germany's descent into evil was gradual. The concentration camps were originally just for alleged threats to the fatherland, and Hitler's first invasion was seen (in Germany) as a war for liberation. Hitler was in power for nearly a decade before WWII, and longer before the Holocaust.
Did the NYC police get out of hand? Sure they did. That does not, however, make me any happier about the way this is being reported.
The ride was about bike riding not presidential candidates and no one but M$NBC has dropped the ball.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Cops have 48 hours to charge you before your right of Habeas Corpus have been violated.
No graffiti is ever permanent. I still don't want to look at it. Put your message on private property, avoid detection or pay the price.
I hated the M$ sticker dorks and I don't like this guy. The sticker dorks put their garbage in my face without permission. I hate that more than I hate paid billboards. This guy chalked up the street. It's no big deal, unless he covers up traffic markings and that confuses someone and they have a wreck that kills someone, woops. Messing with the street is a bad idea.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Your post is well-intentioned, but ill-informed - I'm sorry you're so willing to state "these people were not arrested for political reasons" as fact.
First, let me state where I'm coming from. I was arrested at the Critical Mass bike ride on Friday night, and spent most of Saturday in a cell diagonally across from Josh Kinsberg. I am an active EMT (and sysadmin) here in NYC, and was present to provide medical support, not to break laws.
#1 - The arrest was for a violation - that's not even a misdemeanor. It's like getting a jaywalking or speeding ticket. People are almost NEVER arrested for violations in NYC - they receive a summons, they're not handcuffed and thrown in jail.
#2 - On 8/28/04, at 10:10AM, at Pier 57 in NYC (temporary holding cells for arrestees this weekend), Patrol Officer Hugo Dominguez said to an arrestee words to the effect that arresting for a violation was highly unusual, but "some people, not myself" thought it was a good way to keep protestors off of the streets for a few days. Giving different punishments based on someone's political beliefs is not only immoral but illegal - see here
for info on the NYPD settling a similar lawsuit out of court a few years ago.
#3 - Critical Mass takes place in the exact same way every month in NYC, and has for three years. The police have wished me a happy ride in the past. Our behavior was no different, but this time over 150 people were arrested. This, along with numerous statements by the police (the item above was only one example) indicated that arrests this weekend were political in nature.
#3 - It's quite common for the police to arrest people during protests without regard to whether they've broken the law or not. Take a look at any major protest (25000+ people) that had arrests in the past few years - the conviction rates are incredibly low, even accounting for people pleading guilty to minor charges in exchange for time served. During this weekend, people were arrested for walking to their home on the same block as a protest.
In short, people ARE arrested for political reasons and not for breaking the law, and even they ARE breaking a minor law for political reasons (such as jaywalking, or drawing in chalk on the street), they are arrested even when someone else arrested for the same crime would get a summons.
Folks who have questions, trolls, etc. about my arrest situation can reply to this post.
for all your protest news go to http://nyc.indymedia.org/
Supreme court says you can be held for up to 48 hours by the police without being charged with a crime. 48 hours.
l ?n avby=search&court=US&case=/us/500/44.html
I'm not saying this isn't an abuse of power, but don't complain that people are using the system. Complain about the system.
The question becomes was he being arrested, or was he just being "detained." Again, this becomes a legal issue, and IANAL.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.p
Scribble over traffic markings, problem. Markings on the street have meaning. Confusion leads to accidents, injury and death. The street is not free paper for your publication.
I like the bike. It's a nifty trick.
He should be able to ride it on his own property without problems. If he wants to ride it on public property, he needs to be ready for that arrest.
The infraction is minor, but confusing. Chances are that he will be held while the police consult with the DA to figure out what, if anything, to charge him with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A Libertarian AND a Communist. Now that's special.
I thought it was interesting how the NY Post described the incident with Josh and his bike:
"A 35-year-old man was arrested for using a convoluted spray-paint mechanism to deface city streets.
Riding a bike and carrying a laptop computer that was programmed to propel spray-paint on the street, Joshua Kinsberg inked the words "America is a free-speech zone" around downtown.
He was arrested for criminal mischief. "
No where does it say anything about it being water soluble chalk, which I think bascially dictates/spears the legality of what he is doing. When someone says "spray paint", I believe most people would simply imagine permanent spay paint... not chalk. That slant takes him from grey area activist to black ink vandal.
Now that I have your probably limited attention, don't you think that question is a little, well, STUPID?
The act of defacing the street is the same, the purpose of the defacement is irrelevant. Yes, the Coke driver would get busted and fined the same as Wonderboy with his Wonderbike. Vandalism is vandalism. That it happens to support your team in this really disgraceful election season is a point AGAINST your side.
I find this willingness to excuse the destructive activities of pro-Democrat protesters very troubling. Did we see anti-Kerry Republicans screwing things up in Boston? No. Do we see anti-Bush Democrat a-holes this week screwing up New York? Thousands. Including Bike Genius. Pretty soon they will be burning cars. Is burning a car protected political speech?
Just as a curiosity, would you agree that WonderVandal chalking "Bush Lied!" with his VandalBike Of Doom is as much a defacement of public property as some Republican chalking "Kerry Is A Backshooter!"?
One of those statements is actually true, (because we know that John Kerry really is a backshooter, he personally capped an unarmed teenager who was running away at the time) wouldn't that make it OK?
Coke PAYS for advertising space, you juvenile. Democrat supporting vandals steal theirs. What does that tell us?
Hmmm... ok then, how about "Political speech is not commercial speech" instead?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Hey moron! Since when does shoe-bomber dude have the right to a lawyer? He was arrested in England, and he's NOT an American citizen. What rights does that give him?
American citizens have all the rights they so richly deserver. The 20th hijacker is not an American citizen. He came over here to learn how to fly a plane into a building. He specifically mentioned that he had no intention to learn how to land. HE TOLD HIS FLIGHT SCHOOL TEACHER! The Gitmo detainees are prisoners of war. They don't get the same rights as US Citizens. God, you might be the dumbest FUCK this side of the Atlantic.
Raybender, you must be a Democrat.
Democrats... too stupid to hold jobs, so they tax EVERYONE to support their stupidity. I guess maybe abortions are a good thing?
Stupid American (n) : an idiot who objects to chalk writing in a urban wasteland plastered with McDonalds adds and other american stupidity.
Your comparison between the brownshirts and Bush selling tickets to events is absurd. In fact, it is a logical fallacy - that of an ad hominem attack.
If I want to set the rules for my speaking engagement, it is my God-given right to do so. I can refuse to speak. The audience can refuse to attend. The host can refuse to allow me to speak or the audience to attend, since he owns or manages the building.
If I want to hold a meeting and only allow certain people to attend, then it is my God-given and Supreme Court-upheld right to do so. It's even written into the constitution as the right to peacebly assemble. That's why gays aren't allowed to be scoutmasters in the BSA. That's also why you can't just barge into a board meeting at your local friendly corporation.
I don't see how refusing to allow those who disagree with you and actually want to harm you (not necessarily physically) to attend your meetings where you want to rally your cause can be compared to the secret police of the German National Socialist Party (aka Nazi party). I would hardly expect John Kerry to allow me to attend his political rallies.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to break the law.
When you do decide it is right to break the law, you must accept the consequences that go with it. For instance, our Founding Fathers gave up their honor, fortune, lives, and families so that they could perhaps overthrow a tyrannical government.
If you do decide to face off with the federal, state, or local governments, you have better be prepared for the consequences of your actions. I won't feel any sympathy for you if you take them on and then complain because you lost your family, job, and reputation in doing so. You should've thought about the consequences of your actions before you did them.
I personally believe that the governments are still in the hands of the people, and the most efficacious way of changing said government is through the political process. There is no reason to jeopardize your life and liberty in an act of futility.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
In any case how about: the right to a trial (Jose Padilla), the right to a lawyer (Shoe-bomber dude), the right to call witnesses (the so-called 20th hijacker), the right to hear evidence presented by the prosecution (the Gitmo detainees), the right to not have the government know what you read (at least not without getting a warrant; Patriot Act), freedom of assembly and to protest (e.g. in Central Park).
Enemy combatants don't have rights. Jose Padilla and the Shoe Bomber are classified as enemy combatants because they are associated with an entity we declared war on. Because they did not identify themselves with a uniform, they have no rights, not even under the Geneva Convention, with which we don't have to obey anyway because the Taliban and Al Qaeda aren't signatories. (Neither is Iraq, so we don't have to obey the GC there either.) In effect, they are like captured spies, and captured spies have no rights, not even under the GC. We can put them in a block of cement and sink them in the Gulf of Mexico, and there would be no legal violations, even without a trial.
The Gitmo detainees are all enemy combatants and prisoners of war. They have no rights, not even under the GC. (See above).
The Patriot Act doesn't override the need for warrants. Police and FBI still have to obtain them. The issuing of a warrant just isn't made public, so that our enemies can't watch government channels and determine when they have been discovered. We do the same in the war on drugs and the war on organized crime.
The City of New York owns Central Park, and so they get to determine who can do what there. As far as I can tell, the right to organize protests wasn't one of the rights that New York gave people in Central Park. The city is allowed to prevent people from "peacebly" assembling, where such assembly isn't peaceful and interferes with other's rights.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Bush lost his first debate badly, after which he swore to "never be out-Christianed or out-good-old-boyed again"--and he has stuck to that promise.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
it might just be more proof that the military is *way* too dependent on KBR (Kellog, Brown, and Root) -- there's some good history there, btw.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Normally they do block intersections, So they don't get busted. This time they blocked intersections and got busted. Go figure. You have no right not to get busted for a summons type violation. If you are prepared to protest be prepared to get busted. If you are not and were not you don't think very far into the future. Right or not you can get busted for what you got busted for.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Leave the freaking Republicans to have their convention in a freaking Republican state, as opposed to a freaking Democratic state that incidentally was freaking attacked on 9/11, a freaking event that will be freaking exploited for freaking political gain in the next freaking week, leaving many freaking new york residents and freaking protestors, freaking disgusted and freaking outraged.
Does that freaking make any more freaking sense to you?
Not that too many people crawl the site after it's dropped off the frontpage, but there's a video surfacing around the net of the actual arrest.
2 8_kinberg.mov
Now to see if this Coral P2P file distribution thing actually works....
http://kottke.org.nyud.net:8090/plus/video/200408
Polluting the Internet since 2003...
http://percep
I'm not about to get embroiled in legal technicalities, just drawing some parallels.
Say for some reason, whatever it was, some country launched an invasion on the US. Now, there are many people over there that own guns, and I beleive under your own laws have a right to have them, and a right to defend themselves and their property.
Now the invading force would be quite within it's rights to put those that chose to defend themselves, their property and their country into concrete blocks and dump them into the Gulf of Mexico?
That behaviour may technically be legal, although you will find many many people that would argue against that interpretation of International law.
That behaviour is certainly immoral.
Even though the knee-jerk supporters of the first amendement will be up at arms
That's pretty funny, using the word knee-jerk to describe the reaction to someone getting arrested for chalking up the pavement.
Would companies pay you to "print" ads on NY (or other cities') streets? I don't know US laws so I can't tell whether this is legal or not but I believe this would be quite an ad - well not as successfull as a TV commercial but still a good advertising method.
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yeah, i know, my english sucks
Actually, the Geneva Convention does cover that. The geneva convention covers people who are defending their homeland against invaders, under the category militias. However, they are still prohibited from using mosques and hospitals as military bases and from using civilians as human shields. The Talibs were not "locals protecting their country" notice they're all foreigners who invaded Afghanistan, and they were not fighting by the rules of war. They are illegal combatants. The distinction is important. To ignore the distinction is to legitimize their war crimes.
Yes, they do. Under the Geneva Conventions enemy combatants (by which one means folks openly identified as members of an armed, hierarchical force) are to be treated as prisoners of war and as such are e.g. not to be placed in naked pyramids and led around in leashes.
Jose Padilla and the Shoe Bomber are classified as enemy combatants because they are associated with an entity we declared war on.
You mean al-Qaida? This is a murky area, because al-Qaida isn't a national entity and could not sign the conventions even had they wanted to. Likely the legal situation is that they can be treated as members of a criminal conspiracy; even such people have the rights of accused criminals.
Because they did not identify themselves with a uniform, they have no rights, not even under the Geneva Convention
I think you mean "unlawful combatants" rather than "enemy combatants". However, even those who do not wear uniform have rights; under Article 4 they are to be treated as "protected persons", and if they have e.g. committed murder are to be tried and prosecuted appropriately. By the way, it is not a slam-dunk that the Taliban should not be considered lawful combatants; they were hierarchical and organised and had as distinctive "uniforms" as certain U.S. special forces and snipers had. Then there is also the argument that they should be considered members of a - lawful - national popular resistance movement, which have recognised rights under the conventions.
In any case, under the Conventions, the status of prisioners must be determined by "competent tribunals", not arbitrary decree of the belligerent power.
Neither is Iraq, so we don't have to obey the GC there either.
I believe that Iraq ratified the Geneva Conventions on 14 February 1956.
In effect, they are like captured spies, and captured spies have no rights, not even under the GC.
GCIV Article 5, even a spy or saboteur shall be "treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial".
The Gitmo detainees are all enemy combatants and prisoners of war. They have no rights, not even under the GC. (See above).
Simply not true. (see above). POW's have rights. Civilans in occupied territories have rights, and all prisoners are to be treated humanely. From what we've seen and heard, this is not the case in U.S. prison camps.
The Patriot Act doesn't override the need for warrants. Police and FBI still have to obtain them
The Patriot Act: allows law-enforcement in ordinary criminal cases to get a warrant to track which websites a person visits and collect general information about the emails a person sends and receives. Law-enforcement doesn't have to prove the need; the judge only has to determine that law-enforcement has "certified" that this relates to an ongoing investigation. In other words, the judge cannot reject an application based on the merits.
In plain English, the warrant process has become a rubber stamp and the judge has no authority to refuse. That's not what is meant by requiring a warrant; we do NOT do the same against organised crime.
The city is allowed to prevent people from "peacebly" assembling, where such assembly isn't peaceful and interferes with other's rights.
It appears to have been peaceful, and if the rights of 200,000+ to assemble and protest can be overridden by the right of 10 people to walk their dogs in a public park, then the First Amendment is hollowed out.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
The fact is that he's kept in custody for hours without being told why
[Vandal gets yanked off his graffiti-o-matic...]
"Hey, what gives? Where are you taking me? What did I do wrong? Is this about that tag I ripped off my mattress? WTF?"
Yep, we have a right to kill the enemy in times of war. Isn't that the whole point of war - to destroy the enemy using whatever means necessary? The fact that we moved the battlefield from our homeland to their doorstep mneans that they were unable to defend themselves and that they should've done the math before they started blowing us up. I feel no pity for stupid people that declare war on the US without the resources to prosecute that war.
We didn't declare war on these people first. They declared war on us a long time ago, and we practically ignored them. Now that they have organized themselves to a point where they can inflict real harm on us, and are willing to do so, we have to stop them before they do.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I believe what you're talking about is a "right of way". Signs, telephone poles, power poles, sewer pipes, gas mains, water mains, drainage ditches, etc. are put on ROWs. An easement is a whole other animal.
As a man who has been arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a crowd, I feel for you.
Always a good way to start a discussion on civics, don't you think? Right back at ya, knucklehead.
Since when does shoe-bomber dude have the right to a lawyer? He was arrested in England, and he's NOT an American citizen. What rights does that give him?
He was arrested when the plane he was on landed in Boston. He is a British citizen. However, you seem to have missed the fact that all criminals in U.S. courts, regardless of citizenship, have the right to a fair trial.
American citizens have all the rights they so richly deserver.
Actually, the rights outlined in the Bill of Right apply to "all persons", not just Citizens. Recall the preamble and its discussion of "all men are created equal ... endowed with certain inalienable rights."
Can you please explain to me why U.S. citizens deserve more rights than other people? Why they "deserve" rights at all?
He specifically mentioned that he had no intention to learn how to land. HE TOLD HIS FLIGHT SCHOOL TEACHER!
So if there is so much evidence against him - and I'm not arguing that there isn't- then why don't you trust the courts to come to a guilty verdict? If he is a terrorist he can and will be convicted; there is no need to shred the Bill of Rights just to get one guy. Our system of laws and rights has worked pretty well for 200 years; why do you want to replace it now?
Raybender, you must be a Democrat.
And you, sir, are not only an anonymous coward but an example of why constitutional rights are needed.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
There is a similiar Russian joke about reforms. It goes:
The government published their reform program. It consists of one point:
1. To make the people rich and happy (Note: see Appendix 1 for the list of the people).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Here's a Torrent, which is seeing alot of activity, and it's on MSNBC today:
8 28_kinberg.mov.torrent
http://dv.open4all.info/bblog/torrent_files/20040
Look at the picture in the MSNBC article. His bike is printing HUGE block letters a foot and a half high with 4 inch wide chalk lines.
I noticed a 2x2 foot "chalk" advertisement on the sidewalk here at Yonge and Eglington in Toronto, it takes a couple weeks to wear away and is immedicately "refreshed" every 2 weeks. It's ugly and garish, and that's not what I paid my taxes for the frickin sidewalks to be, someone else's damn advertising billboards. Unless they're paying the city for the advertising space I think it should be a crime or something.
How we split hairs so that "artists" and individuals can do small time expressive/etc things... yeah, we've got our work cut out for us. But it still seems pretty damn clear to me. He wasn't putting the chalk on himself, he was using an automated system instead of hands/hand-tools, and the messages were not his own. Even without money changing hands, it's semi-commercial and/or not "individual".
No, I don't want some bugger cycling around putting 10 fricking kilometers of 1.5 foot high lettering all over my god damn city. (Wait till the script kiddies get ahold of his API and begin cranking out crap.)
Let him rot for 48 hours.
I do agree it's a danger, but the Republicans are no strangers to appointing judges with weird ideas of the law. Scalia in particular has a very odd view of the Bill of Rights, and his reading of restrictions on unreasonable searches and seizures and so on is, I think, much looser than the actual Constitution or its authors itended. For example, I doubt Mr. Jefferson intended intrusive drug tests of all children as a condition of going to school a "reasonable" search, but in Mr. Scalia's opinion the government interest in preventing drug use and attendant crime overrides any civil liberties issues. That sounds like an activist judiciary to me.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So brave from behind your keyboard, Mr. Hawking.
One of the few failures of the american democracy is that the president has too much power. Noone in the world should be allowed to have too much power, every important decision should be discussed between "many big brains".
Look how Norway has its government structured: there is the parliament - or goverment - and there is the King. The king practically has no word in governing the country; he is just a symbol, to represent the country at important meetings: but not politically.
Americans vote for a party and a president. And because so much depends on the president many of them vote Kerry just because they wanna kick Bush's ass. If if wasn't important who is the president probably at least 30% of the americans would vote their favourite party and probably their favourite party would not be the republican and democrat one. I bet now there are a couple other parties but they can't get more than a few percents in the government because "people vote the republicans just to kick democrat's ass".
Romania does not such a cool government structure as Norway but still the two leading parties have about 30-40% and the other 5 parties share the remaining 30-40%. Well Romanian government structure is fucked up because they made a juicy mixture of the french and the american model. Why? Because they like France so they wanna lick their ass and the wanna lick US ass because the US is the strongest country in the world.
Whatever...I believe it's not good to give somebody so much power as the US president has.
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yeah, i know, my english sucks
"Americans vote for a party and a president."
Wrong.
They vote to change their state's vote in the electoral college.
In parliamentary nations (such as Canada, Britan and India) the PM has even more power than the President of the US (assuming that they have a majority government, which the Liberals in Canada currently do not) because everyone votes in party lines, and the PM chooses the Senate.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
Everybody accepts freedom, except when we disagree with something, in which cause of course we try to curtail freedom.
Ask your close soulmates the neocons, they have given ample example of that.
That you make it appear as a leftist trend just shows your bias and predjudices and a flawed critical thinking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
>Enemy combatants don't have rights.
Shouldn't the most powerful democratic nation in the world stand on high ground? Shoudn't we treat people with dignity to show the world what it means to be a free society? Why must attempt to undercut the terrorists and enemy combatants by acting as badly as they do? Isn't it important to win a moral victory by showing ourselves as a shining pinnacle of freedom to the rest of the world? What about Reagan's "city on the hill"? It seems we've forgone any notion that we need to be an example to the world and have devolved into treating people like animals.
Whom do we have to thank for this?
Please feel free to contribute to the Wikipedia article on Administrative resource. It seems a US perspective could really be used today.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Makes me think of close harmony singing, not politics.
At the bottom of the
So, because you don't agree with this guy's politics, you ingore how inherently cool his invention is? Sure, it's inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, but this site is supposed to be for nerds, right?
</rhetorical questions>
If this was directed at my post:
Quite the opposite. I don't care for vandalism, no matter what the politics are. There are many people (clearly among the moderators anyway) that always think the end justifies the means. They took my post, based on it's context as a criticism of the cause that these bikers were espousing, when actually I paid almost no attention to that.
When IBM plastered Linux stickers all over the place they had to PAY to pick them up. I LOVE Linux, but I think that was the right thing to do. I don't like people writing things on my sidewalk, doorstep, or the street in front of my house and I don't care if its a "have a nice day" or a "F___ YOU".
As far as protests go I think they should be non-violent, and they should also stop short of impeding OTHER people's rights of free speech. If the Communists for Kerry organization wants to wave their signs that's completely fine. If on the other hand they want to burn things in the middle of the street, block entrances to buildings, or engage in other acts of harassment (all of which are apparently happening), then that's not fine at all, and speaks volumes for the lack of maturity of those involved.
Regarding the guys "invention", I think its a variation on the dot-matrix printer concept which has been used for making t-shirts, painting pictures on sides of buildings, and a few other things. Basically you break whatever it is up into pixels, figure out how fast your print-head is moving and spit out the dots at the appropriate time. I have trouble thinking of a use for it that doesn't involve some innocent bystander have to spend the three weeks trying to wash it off..... but maybe for a company picknick held in their own parking lot it would be interesting. Or not.
I have been planning on voting for Kerry, preciesely because he is the "lesser of two evils". I suppose I shouldn't do that now. Either way, I'll regret it. ***Sigh***
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
>You are an extremist whacko. The sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner you can begin the path to recovery.
Ask yourself this... if you were around during Hitler's time, would you have supported him? What would have tipped you off that he wasn't doing what was best for the world?
It's the "whackos" of the left that make wishy-washy middle-of-the-road independents question the right wing fascists.
It's VITALLY important to question authority, especially when they oppose free speech and go to war based on flimsy excuses.
In the 1940a, there were a LOT of people in Germany that supported Hitler. Why? Did they support him out of patriotism? Because he had "high moral convictions"? Because he kept Poland from engaging in terrorist strikes on the fatherland? Because he never flipp-flopped?
Please remember to question authority and take those that question it seriously. The nazi regime is a very real part of history. Events like that will unfold again, as history repeats itself. Rush Limbaugh will never question a Republican president, neither will Fox news. If our president really were a fascist (and a propogandist), who would stand in his way? Certainly not you.
the desired outcome of protesting is increased public awareness, not cessation of the activity being protested
In this case, you are quite right, of course -- I don't think anyone seriously wants to stop the RNC from actually happening. They just want to express their opinions about it. However, in general, I don't necessarily agree with this. In particular, in the case of logging and other destruction of the environment, many activists have long since given up on increasing public awareness in time to protect the forests from destruction, and have resorted to direct action to try to stop the activity from happening, and I think in many cases this is morally correct.
I guess the difference in our approaches lies in whether you assume you are living in a truly democratic society, or you are being occupied by a totalitarian regime. I assume the latter, of course, and in that case working outside the law is a perfectly acceptable option.
Getting arrested either means 1) the law in the country is too strict, and violates our founding ideals (which is true, for many laws!), and what you were doing *should have* been legal, or 2) you were overstepping your bounds, and protesting in a way that is inappropriate.
In this particular case, I think the former clearly holds. Writing on the sidewalk in chalk to express your political views should definitely be legal. But in general, I think there is another category: things which, though in and of themselves should be illegal, are nonetheless moral to do if they advance a moral cause and are not actually doing voilence to human beings. But I make a very strong distinction between violence against people and violence against property. I don't really care about property all that much (mine or other people's), and if its destruction serves a good purpose, I say go ahead and destroy it.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
>Isn't that the whole point of war - to destroy the enemy using whatever means necessary?
No. The point of war should be to return the world to a state of peace with a minimal loss of life. Destroying everybody is not a noble goal at all.
>The fact that we moved the battlefield from our homeland to their doorstep mneans that they were unable to defend themselves and that they should've done the math before they started blowing us up.
Who blew who up again? Al Quaeda attacked us on September 11, but the average citizen in Iraq had absoulutely nothing to do with that. Neither did the average citizen in Afghanistan. The attacks were perpetrated by criminals. It was a criminal act.
>We didn't declare war on these people first.
Which people? All "towelheads" as you might put them? Isn't it important to find the perpetrators of attacks instead of attacking all people that look the same or believe in the same God?
Well, for one thing, that seems like an unlikely scenario to me. I expect shopkeepers in NY are used to dealing with graffitti, and that it would not put them out of business or even slow them down appreciably. Certainly, from a business standpoint, if I were a NYC shop owner, I would regard a little graffitti as a small price to pay for the enormous amount of business that is probably generated by having those kinds of crowds around. I bet they're making a killing right now. As I said, let's try to keep this in perspective, I'm not talking about burning down buildings or something, just writing on them.
For another thing, I never said it should be legal. In fact, I specifically said it should be illegal, and that the perp should be arrested for it.
What I am saying is, it's moral, not legal, not within his rights, but nonetheless moral, to deface property in order to spread an important, valid, and correct message. You say what about the shopkeepers in NYC, but I say what about the thousands of people who have been killed as a direct result of decisions made by Bush? Not just in my value system, but in the value system of our culture in general, doesn't human life trump property? If it doesn't, then we're in worse shape than I thought.
Now, as I said to st0rmshad0w, we can argue tactics if you like. Writing on shop windows or whatever may not be an effective means of stopping Bush, and if it is not (and I agree that it probably isn't) then there is no reason to do it. But this is a tactical issue, not a moral issue. In terms of moral value, I say that getting Bush out of office is way more important than protecting buildings from graffitti.
Yes, this is only my opinion, I wouldn't presume to impose it on anyone else, and you of course have the right to make your own moral judgments. As for the law, I will say again, I think vandalism should be illegal. But if someone is willing to go to jail to spread an anti-Bush message by writing on shop windows, and they think that is an effective tactic, I personally give them my moral support, that's all I'm saying.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Chalk. It sprays chalk.
The same stuff 10,000 kids use to write on the streets of NYC every day.
Hop scotch anyone?
Ah. Yes, I agree completely. I thought we were talking about injuring property, not people.
I'd like to thank you, M. Silver, you've given me an opportunity to seriously rethink my moral system, and I've come up with something which may help to explain where I'm coming from.
I think our difference of opinion arises from the fact that you believe in the concept of "property rights," whereas I do not. I must admit, I am prejudiced: I have a prejudice against inanimate objects. I do not assign them any inherent moral worth. This is in sharp contrast to the typical propertarian view, which assigns moral worth to objects relative to their "owner."
I assign moral worth to objects based on their function, as defined in relationship to living organisms. Objects have positive moral worth to the extent that they benefit living organisms, and negative moral worth to the extent that they harm them.
Because of this difference, it has been very difficult for me to translate your argument into terms that make sense in my value system. However, your above statement clarifies it completely, and you have a valid point. Certainly it is immoral to impar the overall function of an object, that is, to transform an object in such a way that it benefits living organisms less or harms them more.
So then the question becomes: does a coffee shop (for example) benefit living organisms more or less if it has "STOP BUSH" written on it?
This question separates the moral issue completely from what I view as the false right of "private property." Now we can talk about it in terms that make sense to me.
So now we have to determine to what extent the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop decrease its benefit to people in allowing its operators to sell coffee and make a living, and allowing its customers to buy coffee which they enjoy. We also have to determine whether the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop will actually have any effect on the presidential campaign.
Now, there's a pretty good case to be made that the answer to both questions is "not much." Most New Yorkers will probably not stop buying coffee at their favorite coffee shop simply because it has "STOP BUSH" written on it. Most people are not going to vote against Bush just because they saw "STOP BUSH" written on a coffee shop. So really, the moral impact of this action is pretty negligible either way, probably not even worth arguing over.
Now, within this tiny realm of moral discrepancy, there is room for argument. So if you can convince me that the negative impact of the graffitti on the business will be greater than the negative impact of the graffitti on the Bush campaign, then I will agree that the act is immoral.
There is also a general issue here. I think that if you impair the function of an object (whether it "belongs to you" or not), you have a moral obligation to repair that function. So if the graffitti does harm the shopkeeper's business, it is the moral obligation of the person who wrote it to clean it up, or to pay the shopkeeper to have it cleaned up. That is why vandalism should be illegal, and I think people should not do jail time for it, but they should be required to pay restitution.
are you a college student?
LOL. No, I am not, I'm 31 years old and left graduate school four years ago. But I can see why you ask. Disrespect for property rights is common among college students because they don't own much property. As people age and accumulate more property, their respect for property rights tends to increase. In my case, I doubt I will ever recognize the legitimacy of property rights, regardless of how much property I "own."
My site: Free Nature Pictures
You guys were blocking intersections, and there are a lot of people in town taking advantage of that who in the past have committed crimes. What did you expect to happen?
You weren't arrested for political reasons, you can claim you were all you want, but you're still wrong. You were arrested because of concerns for public safety. And personally I feel that anyone engaging in organized blocking of traffic in the City deserves a night in jail.
BTW, I used to drive an Ambulance there and my brother was a Fireman. People like you gave us headaches you can't begin to understand.
Yes, I'm aksing myself the same question -let's get organized and build our own "Spraypaint-Internet-Bikes"! No, seriously, I'd really like to see the building instructions! Anybody have some hints? -nb.
So you agree that Bush lies to us, getting us into unnecessary wars, that he's responsible for monkeying with the country, putting our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and other rights, into danger. You'd probably agree that damage has already been done. Sounds like the "liberals" who offend you with their sloppy anger are mad for the right reasons, but their style offends you.
So you'll vote for the guy destroying your freedom, as a big FUCK YOU to these powerless liberals. Aren't you expressing your hate in the wrong style, too, and for the wrong reasons? More importantly, isn't your "fuck you" just fucking yourself, perpetuating Bush's damage?
Americans vote for our own self interests, including interest in the community we want to live in. Get a grip, use the rights you've got protect them. You're not voting for obnoxious demonstrators in November by voting for Kerry, although you'd be voting for fatcat Republicans by voting for their puppet Bush. To give you an idea of Kerry's differences, he won't be running the country for the oil companies, and (among other actual government work) he was key to stopping the last Bush covert scams, helping bring down the giant BCCI bank financing of Iran/Contra terror collaboration, and revealing much of the actual Iran/Contra network. That's exactly the kind of guy we need to undo the damage BushCo has wrought these past 3 nightmare years. Throw onto that his constructive tech industry policies and cost-effective healthcare systems, and you rise above the partisan anger to see the obviously more qualified manager of a big, important country like the one in which we live. Plus, he doesn't fall off his bike as much.
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make install -not war
Water soluable chalk, no less. Next time it rains, it's gone. Want it gone sooner? Take a hose to it.
And he hadn't even used it. He was arrested for owning chalk, his wireless dot-matrix bicycle-mounted chalk printer, a cell phone, and a bicycle.
Well, that and having an opinion that goes against the current administration.
"Dole told CNN's "Late Edition" in relation to Kerry: "I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."
Crewmate Sandusky said Monday, "I was there when he got wounded. I saw the blood. I don't care what Dole said.""
I saw that interview... and I wanted to ask:
Why would anyone believe Mr. Dole's opinion is an informed one?
Was Mr. Dole in that Swift Boat?
And the old trick "I respect his record" followed by the direct opposite message.
It's like the Non-Apology Apology. One of my favorites, right after the Red Herring and Kill The Messenger.
Thanks, actually, but if you read my post you'll see that I, like you, am an EMT, and I ride on an ambulance every week in this city. I'm well aware of how bicyclists do - and don't - provide headaches to emergency workers, so please don't patronize me by saying I can't begin to understand.
You didn't really address my points, so my statements still stand. There's no point in rebutting you - I think my original post does a pretty decent job.
...by the other poster. You got served, bitch.
OK, I'm down with the comparison to the GOP as a fascist party. No argument whatsoever!
Will you please expand on how you find them to be "Compassionate" fascists?
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Father of two school children left behind by "No Child Left Behind."
And you, madam, are very ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.
What does Enron have to do with the economy as a hole? Nothing you shitwit, so stfu.
I can't stand everyone who is 'anti-Bush'. Why don't you devote your efforts to being pro-Kerry?
It is hard to be pro-Kerry when you think that John Kerry is the Anti-Christ.
I'd like to vote for Michael Badnarik but it seems most of the electorate has their proverbial heads up their proverbial asses. I might make a concerted effort to get my state switched over to Approval Voting.
It is weird when dispite this you still think the Anti-Christ would make a better president than the current one.
But you make a good point in that people who say "Anyone butt Bush" should be careful what they wish fore.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
So it's not the advertisers that bug me, they're just doing what sells. What bugs me is the majority of the general populace who fall for the current generation of marketing/advertising bulldada and run out and buy a new SUV...
If people would hold out for products advertized with witty, fun, intelligent advertising, it would be a joy to watch the ads. But as long as people really do "ask their doctor if the new chartruse pill is right for them", we're going to have annoying stupid ads..
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
There's this interesting chalk removing invention they have now called "a bucket of water". You might find it addresses your complaints quite nicely.
Why bitch when you can do?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
To arrest our "Bikes Without Bush" friend for vandalism makes little sense since he wasn't actually using the bike during his MSNBC interview. He had it with him but had not demonstrated its use. So, why was he arrested? America the Free? Not anymore.
That logging is harmful is not opinion, it is clearly demonstrable scientific fact. If we are to abandon science completely and adopt total metaphysical relativism, then sure, the opnions of ignorant rednecks and greed-driven corporate executives carry as much weight as those of trained ecologists. That the corporate execs have succeded in deluding large portions of the population doesn't give their opinions any greater weight.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Yes, you're right about the PM. This is another bad situation. I still don't agree anybody to have so much power in his hand.
I hate politics.
-- yeah, i know, my english sucks.