Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Protest In Panopticon Nation
Hugh Pickens writes "James Fallows writes that you don't have to idealize everything about the Occupy movement to recognize the stoic resolve of the protesters at UC Davis being pepper sprayed as a moral drama that the protesters clearly won. 'The self-control they show, while being assaulted, reminds me of grainy TV footage I saw as a kid, of black civil rights protesters being fire-hosed by Bull Connor's policemen in Alabama. Or of course the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square,' writes Fallows. 'Such images can have tremendous, lasting power.' We can't yet imagine all the effects of the panopticon society we are beginning to live in but one benefit to the modern protest movement is the omnipresence of cameras (video) as police officials, protesters, and nearly all onlookers are recording whatever goes on bringing greater accountability and a reality-test for police claims that they 'had' to use excessive force. 'What's new is that now the perception war occurs simultaneously with the physical struggle. There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'"
First Post
"There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'""
haha come on, parity?
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
Its a sad day our society thinks this is some kind of achievement or "balance" of power
With the proliferation of video and photographic 'evidence', people seem much more ready to believe an event didn't happen nowadays if there isn't visual 'smoking gun' evidence to prove it.
Look for more incidents involving agents provocateurs in future protests. It's easier to "justify" whatever actions are taken if they can show footage of a "protester" acting in an "unreasonable" fashion.
The public footage is having a huge impact right now because people are seeing people like themselves at the protests and NOT causing problems ... and hearing the official reports contradicting the footage.
The blacks and Tank Man couldn't be sure the government wouldn't kill them on purpose. They faced down the very real threat of death for participating in their movements.
For the OWS movement, any deaths caused by the government will be accidental.
Oppression is ugly and this 99 percent one percent thing isn't likely to get better and will probably get a whole lot worse in your lifetime.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Blog explaining the protest:
http://studentactivism.net/2011/11/20/ten-things-you-should-know-about-fridays-uc-davis-police-violence/
Sig? Heil
You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.
That's nice. I will never meet or deal with the police officer who maced those protesters. I've already forgotten his name. When 90% of the population sees these things, they think "huh, sucks to be them. glad they're out there fighting the good fight and not me. What's for dinner?" When the sadists and psychopaths see them, they say to themselves "wow, they take the punishment and stay put for more."
We all know the 1% (or "powers that be," if you prefer) are tracking us now and will continue to expand the scope and depth of how they track us.
But we in the 99% (or "little people/hoi poloi/peasants," if you prefer) have access to most of the same technology at an affordable price point. There is no technical reason we cannot track them as much or more than they can us, especially if we use our vastly superior numbers to crowd-source the most difficult part of tracking: making sense of the deluge of data.
If we repeat what we did with searching for Steve Fossett's plane using Google Earth crossed with FoldIt and SETI@home we can develop a real-time picture of exactly what the 1% are doing, where, and when. That's a tremendous amount of intelligence we can leverage in many ways.
So, for example, if we map radio transponders used by our friendly neighborhood shock troo, er, police then we can equal the spying they're already doing on peaceful protesters (Google "NYPD spying protest groups." What would they do if we knew exactly where they keep their LRAD cannons and pepper spray depots and stage sit-ins at the entrances before they can deploy? What if every single Lt. John Pike gets followed home by the protesters who surround his home, quietly sitting and linking arms?
Or, more to the point, what if we made sure that the puppet masters never have a moment's peace and that they know we all know them exactly for the scum they are?
That, I believe, is what needs to happen next to break the back of this beast.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I am posting in anon-mode for reasons that will become obvious.
As terrible as police brutalty is, and as unjustified as the pepper spray incident obviously was, many of us UCD students are still not really on-board with the protesters now occupying our campus. While there are many students, a large percentage of the protesters are outsiders who have come from Berkeley, LA and further. They are camping on our lawn and drumming up support for various causes that our mildly conservative campus is not fully in support of (Davis typically serves the people from the central valley of CA). Our quad is now a mesh of ragtag tents, a pipe-frame geodesic dome, and dozens of media vans. Personally, I just want to do my homework and hopefully graduate so I can move out of california and find a job.
Is tuition high? Yes. Should taxes be more equitable? Yes. Is blasting reggae music till 11:30 PM right next to our library going to effect those changes? Probably not.
To end on a quip; protesting for the right to protest is like having sex for virginity.
Tiananmen Square protests really didn't do anything for civil rights in the People's Republic of China, while the US Civil Rights movement did change things, the Occupy movement doesn't really have a tangible goal that is achievable in the short term.
because the cop used weak sauce pepper spray and casually doused them
Cops shouldn't be "casually dousing" any group of students assembled in a park, no matter how "weak sauce" the pepper spray is. Perhaps the resulting video was a little melodramatic, but the fact that you think it is okay for police to pepper spray citizens in a park shows you for the fascist that you really are. I hope you enjoy your anonymity, you pig.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
I almost immediately thought that it looked like the cops were fertilizing the tree of liberty.
There's a good idea there for a political cartoon, if it hasn't been done already.
At least, we hope it's the tree of liberty and not just weeds; but it's certainly something.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yep, it is shame that we are not born some 200 years ago, when only the real men could stand the inquisition. or some 2000 years ago, when you could be crucified for your believes. Silly us, silly times, silly people, not like you, the real man. At least, i hope you have some sense of humor. Maybe.
Can big brother withstand the onslaught of a hundred thousand little brothers?
I remember a comic book put out by Omni Magazine about a guy who took down criminals and dictators by walking into their headquarters and declaring their reign of power over. He was followed by thousands of tiny flying webcams being remote controlled by random people all over the world. I could honestly see something like that happening sometime soon.
Technoli
From the summary:
"'What's new is that now the perception war occurs simultaneously with the physical struggle. There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'"
No, what you inflict is spin - because all you have to is show a carefully focused video showing the police swinging their truncheons or spraying pepper spray, and those who believe video bites represent the entire truth will defend your interpretation, and forward it, and 'like' it, etc... You'll hang 'em in the court of public opinion, but that's much more important than reality.
Gandhi came from a wealth family, too. Their background and (sometimes flawed) methods doesn't change the validity of their complaint.
I'm sick of this crap meme of that because they aren't dirt poor they have no right to proest.
BULLSHIT.
The government has been bought up by the super-rich corporate types. Democracy has been stolen. The legislation that gets passed gets bastardized by lobby groups that are funded by the super wealthy.
We all have a right to be royally pissed and should be out protesting. We have a democracy to take back. The poor AND the middle classes have a stake in this. Fuck off with your divisive rant and get out there and help for fuck sake.
The bigger these protests get the more brutal the state will become. Yes, there is a fair comparison between the current protest and those in more oppressive regimes and times.
The point of the "agent provocateur" is that he works WITH the authorities while POSING as one of the protesters.
So when the calm protesters are engaged in non-violent protests, the agent provocateur becomes violent. That "violence" is used to "justify" the violence against the non-violent protesters.
And it is that one "violent protester" who is shown in the media as an example of how "unreasonable" the protesters (as a group) are.
In twenty years, the young protesters will be in the board rooms that they now protest. Been there, done that. Long live the 60's
Infamy ? It should be worse than that, like years in jail. But I'll go with infamy: I have a cousin who's a cop. I haven't been in touch with him in the last decade or so, but if I ever saw him on youtube do one tenth of what that asshole cop did, you can bet your ass I'd be insulting him on the phone right now, AND I'd be calling everyone in the family to make sure they know what an criminal asshole he is. I don't understand how asshole cops like this can live over this.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You don't have a lot of real-world experience, do you? Incidentally, everything you said about "$3000 laptops" and "$400 smartphones" and "$5 cups of coffee" is both false and irrelevant.
The pervasive presence of cameras does not, by itself make a panipticon. The theory of the Panopticon is that the prisoners self regulate behavior because they are unaware of whether they are being observed, because the guard in the tower is hidden. While omnicient surveilance is a big concern, it is more often the visible presence of police at protests that keep people's behavior controlled.
The interesting thing about this is that protestors' behavior is more beholden to their chosen audince than the authority figures. There are a mass of bystanders who could obviously physically step in and stop the cop from spraying their freinds. Its easy to do, but protestors are performing an act of nonviolence and no one wants to deviate from that performance.
My father was a college student and newspaper photographer in Ohio circa May 1970. His photos of student protest and civil disobedience remind me of what I'm seeing with the Occupy movement.
A year or more ago, I commented that I didn't think the Tea Party would have a long-term affect because they weren't motivated enough to burn down an ROTC building nor were the police scared enough of them to hit them with tear gas.
Agree with them or not. Understand them or not. The Occupy movement is going to leave a mark upon this country because they are willing to have skin in the game.
Cheers, Matt
They can't leave the square, or they will look like losers. The police can't let them hang around, or they will look like losers.....
We'r in for a looooong ride.
Some not all, actually if I recall there was sort of an unofficial line with wealthier people on one side, and less wealthy on another, another thing to note, not everyone with a $400 phone is a self entitled ass, many OWS protestors are fresh college graduates (IE people who have racked up enough student loan debt to keep them in a position of paying off loans until there 40's IF they actually can get something better then a minimum wage job). I don't know the origin of the quote but someone said "I am angry with the previous generation, they continued to push me saying if I didn't go to college, study and keep my grades up I would wind up working at McDonalds, now that I've done all those things and acquired $15,000 of debt, they now say I'm a self entitled jerk because I don't want to work at McDonalds. In other words many of the protestors are just off of the free ride, last point where parents cover you, and hit the point where everything they have worked hard for, they finally could be independent, but the economy and job market are in such chaos, they have nowhere to go but down.
[citation needed]
Last I heard nobody is rolling tanks over protestors in Sweden or Denmark, to name two mixed capitalist-socialist countries of the sort most OWS protestors tend to favor as a model for a more equitable society. Stop believing the crap you're hearing in your echo chamber. The rank-and-file OWS protestor is no more a Mao-loving communist than the rank-and-file tea party protestor is a redneck racist.
Gandhi did his work in homespun cloth to protest colonial British industry. Despite the fact that he could have chosen otherwise, he forsook all the benefits of his wealthy pedigree.
It most certainly does change the validity of their complaints, from the context you've provided, if they continue to reap the "benefits" of the system they purport to oppose while they protest.
In short: Gandhi they ain't.
Parent is illogical.
Makes no sense!
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
If you consider pepper spray to be "weaksauce", there are a few people who were still coughing up blood 45 minutes afterward who'd like to have a word with you. There are a few marines who might want to tell you about their war veteran friend who was shot in the head and almost killed, while the police tossed concussion grenades at the people trying to get him to medical care. The fact that the methods used "aren't as bad as X" doesn't make them any less heinous.
One AC +1 to another AC? I call sock puppet.
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
Exactly.
The general populace understands that the State is the only entity that has a legitimate right to project force. Whether via the military (hopefully outside the country) or the police (inside the country). I include the CIA / FBI / etc in those categories.
Anyone else using force (particularly outside their social group) is IMMEDIATELY identified as a criminal. A threat to society.
There may be problems in society. And the majority of the population may even AGREE with you about those problems. But they do NOT want to have to deal with non-State violence. They see enough of that (and its effects) from criminals.
In the present, police departments are already arresting people for video tapping them.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Unless you make $400k per year, you aren't in the 1%. The 1% (and the stupid, like yourself) are trying to divide the 99% by pointing out the obvious fact that there's diversity within that 99%. Yeah, I was in that 99% with $200k per year income and a $500,000 house. And I was in a better place to protest the 1% than many other 99% who have to work or they won't eat that day.
I mean permanently injured. But the officers who did it are being investigated. There will be trials, lawsuits, etc.
But the Chinese protesters knew they'd be killed without repriasal to those who did it. If not killed, they'd disappear into the prison system to be shot or waste away the rest of their lives, no recourse for them or their families. The blacks knew there were organizations out to kill them, and many died. They knew no cops who beat them on marches and protests would be charged with anything. They could be attacked with impunity.
It's not like leftists didn't shoot up the Holocaust Museum or fly their planes into IRS buildings (the media tried to portray Stack as Tea Party, but he left behind a leftist manifesto).
Individual kooks do things like that. I'm talking about the organized ones, like the Democrat KKK during the civil rights movement, and the goverment.
The only students that are racking up loans that would take them into their 40s are those who are looking for jobs that would place them in the 1%.
The average school loan dept of a person who had graduated in under $25,000 so less than the average cost of a car. How many people take 25+ years to pay off a car?
To get that high of a loan would require that they are training for something like medical, banking or high finance all those common 1% jobs.
No intent to kill.
The Chinese shot them, drove over them with tanks. The Democrat KKK killed civil rights activists with impunity under the tacit approval of local governments, even having victims handed to them by the police (who were often KKK themselves anyway). Khadaffi used snipers and helicopter gunships to kill dozens of people in just one protest. The protesters in Syria know full well their protesting is very likely to be deadly, with thousands dead so far.
An OWS protester has no real fear for his life in comparison to them.
The tanks won. In the end, the people were oppressed, and nothing changed. Also, you're making the mistake that our master and rulers didn't learn from Vietnam. It wasn't photos of protestors being gunned down that changed public sentiment; it was the pictures of body bags and caskets coming home. And being black in southern America still sucks.
The OWS protestors were sent a message: Go ahead and play around as much as you want, but don't forget; as soon as there's any chance of you changing the narrative our goons'll clear you away, and there's nothing you or anyone can do about it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The funny part is that the OWS hippies are protesting because they want to impose the very kind of government which rolls tanks over protestors like that.
Huh?
What is this propagandist tripe doing in Slashdot? I don't idealize anything in the Occupy movement, and am part of the growing 65% who feel the same way. I don't recognize it as stoic resolve, but rather unending stupidity, on the part of the protesters who refused to leave after multiple warnings by the police that it was long past time to go. I don't consider obstructing the police to be "peaceful" or "protected" protest, and if I'd been there myself with a pepper spray container the size of a small fire extinguisher I would have hosed them down myself as a lifelong lesson to quit being so stupid. There are valid ways to protest -- and this was none of them. Those protesters won nothing in my book.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If it does come to revolution, these people will be the useful idiots that every revolutionary leadership needs to act as shields. Look at mob of Revolutionary France, the Mensheviks of Revolutionary Russia or the the Brown Shirts in the rise Nazism. In all cases there were the willing fools who got shot to bits, first by the old regime in its dying days, and then whoever is left ends up getting a bullet from the ascendant masters who seize the revolution to gain power.
But it won't come to revolution. Eventually the economy will right itself and all these malcontents will go back to buying the latest iPhones and iPads, and maxing their credit cards and mortgaging themselves to the hilt, because the one universal truth they don't get is that this economic collapse is every bit as much their fault as it is the politicians, bankers and the CEOs. If the middle class had kept its head and had practiced the old prudence that it once had, and hadn't just as eagerly been a pig at the trough of cheap credit, we wouldn't be here right now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't see how these children of privilege won't get burned to the ground along with the Church of Mammon should the actual revolution come.
The left have a phrase for these kind of people: 'useful idiots'. They're the ones the leaders send out to get beaten and shot before they take over and impose their totalitarian state on the survivors.
Seems to me (though not having been quite old enough myself to be drafted at the time) that the American audiovisual access to events in Vietnam during the war there, while not quite the real-time access being discussed here, might arguably be considered the genesis of this Panopticon Nation.
You know, in gun verses camera, I'm betting on gun. It's bad to try to hurt me when I'm capable of hurting you much worse in return and you're only counting on my good nature not to. It's the same as rock verses gun, bottle verses gun, molotov cocktail verses gun, or even bringing a knife to a gunfight. You may survive today, but you can only afford to be wrong once.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It also helps that the protesters are playing an asymmetrical game with reporters who are sympathetic to their cause.
Meaning the various transgressions taking place in the Occupy movement (the rapes, the thefts, the public masturbation, shitting on cop cars, lobbing human waste at street vendors who don't give them freebees, etc) are all being ignored and will be ignored because they don't play into the story of the downtrodden standing up to The Man. But the handful of cops who lose their cool and snap, or the frightened police officer who suddenly discharges his weapon when it wasn't called for--that is what will be reported ad-infinitum until it becomes the only reality that anyone remembers.
The panopticon won't matter, simply because with more information we don't get more truth; we just get a flood that more people will tune out. Oddly in the flood of information it will become easier, not harder, for the spinmeisters to weave a tale that their target audience will eat up without question.
Worse, because each of us have conformation bias, we'll tend to throw out the ten thousand images that don't confirm our bias, while clinging onto the one image that does as the grain of truth in the flood of lies.
Really? What 'mark' will they leave other than the gigantic piles of feces and garbage they leave behind?
They also stand to get shot and breakout in to civil war by other 99ers that can't stand their shit anymore. Leave a mark? You bet your ass it will! Word to the wise. Stay the hell away from that maelstrom if you know what's good for you.
Life is not for the lazy.
It is only a matter of time before we have another Kent State on our hands. Things will escalate between both sides and there will only be bloodshed before concessions are made. That is the only way I see this playing out. I imagine in the spring of next year, and during the height of 2010 election mania, there will be a surge in OWS as people become even more outraged at the current crop of incumbents. Who knows. Interesting times.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I'd +1 punch you in the face if you weren't an anonymous coward.
And I'd +1 punch YOU in the face for punching him. He makes a lot more sense than you do.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The Ninth Circuit has already ruled on this sort of situation.. the courts will and must revoke the police's qualified immunity against claims of excessive force. Let the lawsuits begin: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1332957.html
In other words many of the protestors are just off of the free ride, last point where parents cover you, and hit the point where everything they have worked hard for, they finally could be independent, but the economy and job market are in such chaos, they have nowhere to go but down.
Then why aren't they protesting in front of the White House? Wall Street isn't going to fix the problem. And it really is okay to protest a Democratic president -- even the first Black one. Remember Chicago 1968?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I don't even know what most of these people stand for, or even want.
Well that's clearly a failure of your own research, isn't it? The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
Color Lines
Patch
People's World
Oh, and here's the UC Davis faculty association page
This information exists, and is readily acquired, but you have failed to even look for it. Instead you have enthusiastically swallowed a series of unsupportable right-wing talking points and then dutifully repeated them, thereby proving to the world that you are an outrageous tool.
Everything else you wrote is a similar display of lies and misinformation. You have not provided enough substance to be worthy of a complete response. Please try harder.
A year or more ago, I commented that I didn't think the Tea Party would have a long-term affect because they weren't motivated enough to burn down an ROTC building nor were the police scared enough of them to hit them with tear gas.
The Tea Party took their protests out of the parks and into the voting booths -- and have already had a long-term effect.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If the story is to be believed, the Buddha did, too. The whole being a king thing and traveling the world and all.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
The four links provided supporting evidence for this claim, but apparently you were unable to read through to the second sentence.
Do not brazenly display your ignorance, child.
A year or more ago, I commented that I didn't think the Tea Party would have a long-term affect because they weren't motivated enough to burn down an ROTC building nor were the police scared enough of them to hit them with tear gas. ...
The Occupy movement is going to leave a mark upon this country because they are willing to have skin in the game.
Remind me, which party gained control of the House and almost took the Senate in the 2010 elections? And which party gained seats in the elections that happened a few weeks ago?
Law enforcement grade pepper spray ranks from 500,000 to 2,000,000 on the Scoville heat scale, meaning that it's detectable by taste in a solution of 1 part pepper spray to 500,000+ parts water. For comparison, your average Habenaro pepper ranks 100,000-350,000 on the same scale. The spiciest Chili ever grown ranks at about 1,200,000 on the scale.
Being a bit of a spice lover, I cook with Habanero peppers on a pretty regular basis. I can say that 4 hours after cooking a dinner, washing my hands multiple times, and rinsing with a sterile saline solution, the resedue from the Habanero peppers is usually enough to cause severe pain and temporary blindness when I remove my contact lenses (blindness is induced by watering of the eyes, and pain caused by opening them. I can still see light if I keep my eyes open.)
Weak-sauce Tabasco ranks at about 3500-8000 on the scoville scale. So, if you're the kind of person who finds Tabasco to be at all spicy, I want you to imagine having a solution 250 times stronger than the tabasco applied directly to your eyes, nose, and mouth. Then tell me how weak that stuff is.
You are being intentionally stupid. Despite your weak intellect, you are more than capable of understanding that you are being asinine.
You may be thinking of the Cracked.com article: "5 ways we ruined the occupy wall street generation." Good article, and definitely worth a read.
Maybe. But I think the situation may be a bit different today.
There are probably better places to "do drugs" that a place with, literally, dozens of cops standing around you. Who can come in at any time and knock your tent over.
The same with "hook-up with the opposite sex". Not to mention that the ratio is rather slanted to males. Unless you're a woman looking for a guy ... in a cold tent ... in a public place ... with lots of cops around. And while I'm sure that those women do exist, I think we've wandered into fantasy territory.
The party people, sure. As long as there's a party. But there are other parties out there. In warm places. With a lot lower police presence (because the cops are all at the protest).
Again, maybe. They've claimed that the cops were pushing the homeless and regular vagrants to the protest. So there is at least some people there who would not be called "dedicated" to the general cause.
On the other hand, not many people would choose to live in a cold tent in NYC if they had any other options. So those who aren't "dedicated" are indicative of the overall problem.
Pepper spray is NOT non-violent law enforcement. it is Non-Lethal, A very big difference.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Now for a great cause like this you need to be prepared. Now when the cops come, they're probably gonna shoot the high-powered hoses at you. If you don't want them to knock you down the street, the best thing to do is tie yourselves to trees or poles.
That doesn't sound fun.
Oh, it's not. Especially if they have dogs. And then when they arrest you, make sure they know you're a juvenile. That way they can only keep you in jail till you're 21. And about jail, the good news is, they have a library so you can still go to school.
-Hank Hill
Your comment does a pretty good job of describing how extremely successful the public relations industry is. First, these people protesting know something is horribly wrong with their society, but the way their society actually works has been so carefully muddled and obfuscated that when they try to tell you what's wrong and how to fix it they tend to become confused and incoherent. Second, the public viewing thousands of people trying to organise in order to improve their society as spoiled squatting bums, now that's a a PR success if there ever was one.
Except that they could be protesting to help other people. The fact that they continue to benefit from the current system means little to me.
And having a few things does not mean that they aren't poor or in debt.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It your expectation that those students should be allowed to set up permanent camps there? Yes or no?
If not, describe your ideal peaceful human relocation protocol.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
No, the funny part is that you actually believe what you just posted.
A - I want to impose a Democratic government.
B - There is a country that is formally labeleed as democratic that set's up military bases outside their own country(so as to circumvent their own laws) for the purpouse of detaining without charge for indefinate amounts of time people they have deemed 'enemies'
C - I really wish my governemnt would set up something like This
Essentually you are saying C logically follows from A&B. It does not.
That is nearly the first thing one learns when studying logic.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I think he's trying to say that OWS is full of communists. (Yawn)
The death may not be intended, but you can't call it an accident. Typically, that sort of crime is considered to be manslaughter. As soon as you assault someone, particularly with a weapon like a truncheon, you know you run the risk of killing them. That's why the police should only use that kind of force when their own lives are at risk. To use it against an unarmed, non-threatening individual is criminal. Sadly the police get away with such assaults on a daily basis.
The amount of belligerent, right wing disgust for people trying to assert their democratic right to protest astonishes me. Yet I suppose these right wind nut jobs are the same people who keep ranting about the right to bear arms to defend oneself against the government.
But you miss the point completely. Whoever THEY are and what they do doesn't have an impact on the reality. If they were protesting child slave labor and then wore clothes made by child slave labor does that reduce their argument at all? Child slave labor is still bad - it just makes them hypocrites.
I can make it very easy for you to understand. Forget specifics - the general argument is this:
A very small percentage of the population has an inordinate and unfair control of the government, corporations, and the worldwide monetary system. This small percentage then reaps most of the benefits of their good decisions and bears almost none of the consequences of their bad decisions.
Does that make sense?
in no shape or form. Big Education is to blame. They simply keep raising their prices to soak up available financing and then market to the same that if you don't have a degree your not going to get the bling. You got part of it right with the chancellors of the school, but its the whole structure of BigEd that is wrong, if not a horrid copy of public ed.
People are kept and paid based on seniority and nothing else, it doesn't matter if you suck or use stand ins all the time. They they lard up with extras like counselors and such so they can hire their whole family.
Students are simply guided by the same people who are the problem to focus instead on another bogeyman. It is no different than some petty 3rd world dictator declaring another nation the "big satan". Best to give the populace an enemy OVER THERE so they forget the one with the boot on their neck.
When you resolve it all it still boils down to the real problem in the US and elsewhere, the political establishment, the truest one percent. They decide the winners and the losers and use your money to make you the enemy of one group or another.
I am not excusing the banks but they are only empowered by the politicians and they return the favor. The US Congress is being nailed now for insider trading and you can see the hilarity as they find excuse after excuse.
Yet come next year people will vote for D or R on the ballot and we lose yet again.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
ok, so you are in the 5%. what about those of us who are doing the 15k a year back breaking, long hours to get that 15k? College education don't seem to be helping us much. (i got through without any student loans thank God) but the point is, there is a lot of people who are being ejected from the graduating end of a degree and looking around going 'wtf, i was told there would be a good paying job at this end'
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I think the fact that homeless people have found OWS encampments does not mean that the entire OWS movement should be defined by the actions of largely mentally ill people. as for shitting on cop cars, well... they've earned it.
However, our taxes pay the organized, professional forces that are, in some locations, regularly lapsing into unnecessary violence rather than dealing with groups of misdemeanor violations in any kind of rational way. They are supposed to be held to a higher regard, because we pay them to wield violent weaponry in our name... to say nothing of the power players behind them, ordering them into these situations in a paramilitary fashion.
Pretending that media coverage of OWS has been largely sympathetic to the movement is ridiculous. very little in the mainstream media outlets has shown any real understanding of the issues or any willingness to really balance the reporting, they just go for the sensationalistic headlines. just a few weeks ago, almost 1,000 simultaneous protests worldwide occurred. that was given one sentence in most stories, and then two paragraphs of the violence that occurred in Rome. Never mind the 900+ other, by any measure incredibly peaceful protests.. nope, it's all about the violence. that's the only part worth reporting, apparently.
the media is not helping OWS. it is only grabbing headlines. If the cops commit the violence, they latch on it. if any violence not exquisitely captured on filmed can then be blamed on the OWS instead, they latch on to that too. fuck your apologetics.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
"Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
1. Authoritarian submission -- a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression -- a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism -- a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]"
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It your expectation that those students should be allowed to set up permanent camps there? Yes or no?
Why not? We tolerate far worse.
- They were given a letter two weeks before the pepper spraying indicating that they were being evicted - They continued to disrupt normal campus business - Several faculty meetings had to be canceled because of threats to faculty members by OWS - Students were unable to attend classes because OWS refused to vacate the premises - They were given an order in writing that indicated that if they did not leave within 24 hours, they would be forcibly removed, and pepper spray was listed as one of the options So, yeah. They wanted this to happen. It happened. Blame the correct people: the morons who have been blocking up business and schools and tying up traffic because of their childish temper tantrum.
Hmmm.. we ruined people by telling them that their lives didn't have to be boring? Interesting... The other perspective: "Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About".
If not, describe your ideal peaceful human relocation protocol.
You approach them, pick them up, and drag them away. Exactly how the cops did it in the video, except without the pepper spray. They were not resisting arrest - not trying to run away, or beat the cops off, didn't even shout at them - why spray them?
"US Federal Appeals Courts ten years ago declared pepper spraying peaceful protesters to be an illegal violation of their 4th amendment rights to be free from excessive force and that officers who cause such felony assault are liable for their actions and do not receive protection of sovereign immunity as their actions are excessive use of force which the 4th amendment prohibits."
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2011/11/21/pepper-spraying-peaceful-protesters-is-illegal-excessive-force-so-says-us-federal-appeals-court or http://wp.me/ps3dI-1nW
"A Long Island woman Monday became the first Occupy Wall Street protester to file a federal civil rights lawsuit, accusing the NYPD of arresting her without cause at a Citibank branch after she closed her account in protest."
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/ows-protester-from-li-sues-over-arrest-1.3337955
"The complaint in Carpenter v. City of New York, filed in the Southern District of New York today, alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment resulting from false arrest and excessive force. "
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2011/11/occupy-wrongful-arrest-and-police-brutality-lawsuits-begin.html
Look - there were no deaths in Vietnam War protests before Kent State. There is always a first episode of massive violence, and nobody knows when that will come.
We are only in the very beginning of these protests - as the economy gets worse, more people will join them. As police forces make more blunders, they will react with more force. We are on a path that very soon now will be irreversible - of peaceful revolution or bloody ruin. The status quo will not hold - Communism is more popular than Congress these days.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Pepper spray in this case was not used to force compliance. As is evidenced from the video, the students were lifted up and dragged away after being pepper sprayed. They could just as well be lifted up and dragged away without being pepper sprayed. Furthermore, if you pepper spray a group of sitting people, what you get is a group of people rolling on the ground vomiting up - exactly the opposite of what you intend if you actually want to move them away from the spot.
Oh, and that's not the purpose of pepper spray at all, at least not according to UC police regulations. The cops are supposed to use it for self-defense, or to subdue violent offenders. There were no violent offenders in the video. They can't use pepper spray on someone just because they refuse to follow orders, not unless the person physically resists arrest.
Actually, it's both. There is no 'physical force' involved, ergo it does not qualify as 'violence'.
Huh? If I douse you in gasoline and set you on fire while you're sitting or lying down, there's no physical force involved, either - I wouldn't even lay a finger on you in the process. I guess that makes it non-violent.
Actually, fire is forceful. Acid would probably qualify as well since they both inflict permanent harm. But thanks for playing the definitions game with me, and ignoring all the salient facts: that these kids were given notice, refused to leave, then surrounded the cops who were trying to evict them, and after the heavily edited pepper spray video, threatened the cops then 'allowed' them to leave without violence.
Pepper spray is not a vomiting agent; if the protesters were vomiting then whatever was in there was more than pepper spray (CS).
No-one was threatening the cops. The whole "allow to leave" thing was a bunch of guys sitting down in front of the cops as a symbolic protest. The cops could - and, in fact, a bunch of them just did, including the guy with the pepper spray - step over those people. This all is plainly visible in the full version of the video.
Regardless of that, "giving notice" is not sufficient justification of using pepper spray, nor is refusing to obey orders. There are only two valid reasons: violent resistance, or apprehending the arrestee who is running away. Neither occurred in the video - at no point did the students behave violently towards the police. There's absolutely no excuse for the police use of pepper spray in this case.
Wow, interesting read and great photos. Thanks
Um, no. Watch the whole video. At the end the cops are huddled together in a small group, surrounded by activists. The activists then chant in unison (in that creepy echo-chamber thing they do) about how they will give the cops a 'moment of peace' and 'allow them to leave'. It is clear who the aggressors are in that crowd, which is why that part is excised from all the video everyone's getting angry about. And while I'm sure you're qualified to tell us when the use of pepper spray is appropriate, after they ignored the notice they received TWO WEEKS ago telling them to vacate, they were given a 24-hour notice that if they did not voluntarily leave they would be forcibly removed. Pepper spray was listed as one of the options for their removal. You can make excuses for these thugs all you want, but they refused to obey the law, disrupted campus faculty meetings and classes, made threats towards faculty members, refused to allow students to attend class, spread garbage and feces and urine, and generally acted as lawless people. The police did exactly what the police are supposed to do in a society of laws: remove the offenders with minimal force. The only reason they are being vilified is this nonsensical, juvenile, anti-establishment BS that morons keep foisting on us.
And while I'm sure you're qualified to tell us when the use of pepper spray is appropriate, after they ignored the notice they received TWO WEEKS ago telling them to vacate, they were given a 24-hour notice that if they did not voluntarily leave they would be forcibly removed. Pepper spray was listed as one of the options for their removal.
It doesn't matter if they were warned about pepper spray two weeks, a month or a year in advance - it's still illegal.
“Chemical agents are weapons used to minimize the potential for injury to officers, offenders, or other persons. They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.”
“Arrestees and suspects shall be treated in a humane manner they shall not be subject to physical force except as required to subdue violence or ensure detention. No officer shall strike an arrestee or suspect except in self-defense, to prevent an escape, or to prevent injury to another person.”
It doesn't really matter what the people in the video did a day or a week before, either. What matters is what they were doing there and then - and that's sitting on the ground, not moving, and not making any threatening actions. That should not get you pepper sprayed.
Anyway, watching the video, it's very clear that the police wasn't feeling threatened - just look at the guy parading around with the pepper can, holding it up for everyone to see, for a good half a minute before he actually proceeds to shove it right in people's faces. Watch, furthermore, how he first sprays the line indiscriminately, and then goes back and individually sprays everyone who didn't get enough spray on the first go.
In a civilized society, the offenders would be removed without being pepper sprayed. In U.S., a sadistic policeman felt like "punishing" the kids for not obeying, and right-wingers like you are exalting it as some kind of service performed for the public that should be cheered; quite a few people actually chimed in to say that "they should have used baton on those hippies". The cop in the video, by the way, actually threatened to shoot the students if they don't move away. I don't think I was that disgusted with U.S. - both the country, and many of the people - ever before.
...really helped Rodney King.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Boing Boing show a split screen of multiple views at the same time.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Worse, because each of us have conformation bias, we'll tend to throw out the ten thousand images that don't confirm our bias, while clinging onto the one image that does as the grain of truth in the flood of lies.
With that statement in mind, how do you feel about about the pepper spraying incident at UC Davis?
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
A handful of cops. A much larger group of protestors. You spray them to subdue them. Once you start hauling people off, the likely hood of violence escalates very quickly. The pepper spray removes some of the tendencies toward violent reactions and actually improves the chances that no one gets injured.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It doesn't matter if they were warned about pepper spray two weeks, a month or a year in advance - it's still illegal
No, it's not. And you would have realized that if you'd bothered to read the non-bolded section as well as the bolded one.
The bolded section is a purposeful misrepresentation of the actual content of the policy as given directly below. The policy says "They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.” The (obviously impartial) 'student activism' website falsely summarizes that as "University of California Police are not authorized to use pepper spray except in circumstances in which it is necessary to prevent physical injury to themselves or others." So they decided to define what is 'justified and necessary'. However the quoted text (and the actual document, which I actually read) simply state that the use of spray must appear justified and necessary to the policeman.
It's not surprising that you blindly accept several other bald-faced lies about the text of the document, including the falsehood that the police did 'nothing' to attempt to remove the protesters (they were given several eviction notices and granted many chances to voluntarily leave, then granted several opportunities to comply with the verbal instructions of the police, by definition leaving only involuntary removal and requiring physical action) and the blatant misrepresentation contained in noting that UC Police are not allowed to use physical force "except to control violent offenders or keep suspects from escaping", when the actual statement is "to subdue violence or ensure detention". In this situation the cops reasoned that, to ensure detention, using pepper spray was a better option than wrestling with the non-compliant criminals (and if they had wrestled with them and used the batons, you'd be complaining about that).
It doesn't really matter what the people in the video did a day or a week before
Nobody said anything about a day or a week before. And you still refuse to address the obvious imbalance of the situation, where a small team of campus police were entirely surrounded by a menacing group of people. You focus on the ones who stage-managed their sit-in, exactly as they expected you to. The cops were massively outnumbered by agitated people with a history of violent acts.
just look at the guy parading around with the pepper can, holding it up for everyone to see, for a good half a minute before he actually proceeds to shove it right in people's faces
That is clearly a warning. He is showing the pepper spray to the surrounding people to hopefully get them to tell the others to comply. He takes quite a bit of time warning everyone what will happen, so he won't have to use the spray. And you try to make that an indictment of him.
Now, once he uses the spray, he definitely makes sure it is sufficiently applied. Which any cop should do. Cops don't shoot to wound, either. You deploy the solution in the best manner for it to be effective. And for all your whining, notice that none of the kids move after the first blast of spray. Most don't move after the second blast. The whole point is getting them to a state of compliance, and they are being defiant. This is what they wanted to happen, so they provoked it.
In a civilized society, the offenders would be removed without being pepper sprayed.
I wholeheartedly agree! In a civilized society, these kids would have obeyed the eviction orders. In a civilized society that respected itself, that expected grown-up behavior from people who are technically adults, these kids might not have been out doing this stupid nonsense. Heck, they might have even cared enough in 2008 to want a qualified candidate for President rather than an unqualified con-man that made them feel good about themselves for voting for him. They might care about polit
I think the fact that homeless people have found OWS encampments does not mean that the entire OWS movement should be defined by the actions of largely mentally ill people.
I won't be. It'll be defined by people like Ketchup in the Stephen Colbert interview. Goofy hand signals instead of Robert's Rules of Order. Now ain't that quaint.
It'll be defined by the people that couldn't be bothered to pick up a job application from the recruiting desk set up at the Zuccotti park gate.
It'll be defined by people like the "drama majorette" that wants the government to give her a job as a director.
Taking a dump on a cop car is just a summation of all of those.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Fact: They where not impeding police from doing their duties
Fact: They had legal right to be where they where
Fact: They where not obstructing or creating a hazard.
Other posters have already explained this in great detail, the police where not required nor had any authority to intervene never mind assault those protesters.
null
I think that many people do not understand (or do not want to understand) what these people are protesting (that includes some, but not the majority of OWS members) .
The protests are about corruption and the fact that the rich can buy politicians for their mutual gain and to the cost of everyone else.
More simply put they are protesting the fact that they feel the current system is not democratic in that there voices are not being heard.
The fact that they have iPhones and laptops dose not neutralise this, in fact it is almost completely irrelevant. They are not protesting "Teh evil corporations" they are protesting the failure of our so called democratic system.
null
Perhaps you should look up what Marxism is and compare it to what the protesters want (I suggest reading @OccupyWallStand @occupy_SYDNEY on twitter).
I would also like to note that Marxism and Communism are not synonyms and that true Marxism is probably not what you think it is either.
null
When I went to a state school in 1977, I had to work roughly 11 hours to pay for 1 credit hour. In 2011, a state school education costs on the order of 20-30 hours of labor depending on the school. That represents a decline in the real worth of labor; it’s not just currency inflation.
In the meantime, administration and professor salaries have gone up, a lot. Schools have nice new buildings with landscaping. Dorms are nicer and roomier than my first three apartments. Carpet has replaced linoleum tile and electronic white boards replaced chalk.
How was all this financed? Government subsidized student loans of course. The banks can make the long term loans at reduced rates of interest because the government subsidized and insured them. Of course, the government now OWNS STUDENT LOANS eliminating the middleman. How is that going to make an education any cheaper? It won’t. There isn’t any reason for a university or college to reduce anything. The money spigot is going to keep pouring dollars into the system.
People should remember that a student loan is a voluntary contract. You aren’t required to get a student loan to go to a school you can’t afford any more than you are required to buy a car you can’t afford. You can choose to go to a less expensive school or pay your own way by working or saving.
BTW, an earlier video cut shows the police warning the protesters that they were going to get pepper sprayed and the protesters agreeing to it. The occupy movement isn’t a civil rights movement. Berkley isn’t Atlanta.
The authorities have found the way to stop this already. Just make recording police a felony.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/special_segments&id=8370540
http://bit.ly/tS2ZvF
I noticed that he didn't mention the untold patience of the 99% of police as the loiterers taunted them. Or how they didn't just fire into the ground like other countries do.
That's the problem with being biased, you only concentrate on one thing and ignore the rest. Where he saw the protestors winning, I just saw a bunch of losers in tents with no sense of purpose other than to be a big pain in the ass to everyone.
Impact mostly to those they claim to represent and are fighting for.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I'll tell you what will happen. The economy will swing up, all these malcontents will forget why they were there at all, will go back to obscene levels of conspicuous consumption, burn through their cash, refuse to save or plan for the future, and the next time the markets go into freefall, they'll be back out on the street. This isn't a political movement, it's a bowel movement.
That is except for the homeless and the drug addicts, who were there all along.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The bathos of it becomes apparent when you realize the OWS protesters live in $300,000 homes or $1500/month apartments, have been oversupplied with everything they could possibly want (quick- count how many $400 cell phones are in that picture, $100 pieces of clothing, or people with $3000 laptops. Hell, how many of those POOR kids are drinking $5 cups of coffee?) or are raging because, having accumulated massive amounts of debt getting educations of little actual value, they now suddenly realize that they actually might be held responsible for their shitty self-choices or a basic heedlessness that "good times don't go on forever"?
In a recent UK TV show (Have I got News for you), one of the panelists (a conservative MP I believe) was complaining about the protesters in London using similar words to yours ("Why are they protesting capitalist greed while drinking £5 coffee?"). Another panelist almost didn't repond because the premise was too stupid, but eventually did saying "You don't have to go back to a barter system to protest about excessive greed", or words to that effect.
Also, the logical fallacy Tu quoque seems worth mentioning here.
Welfare is the new plantation. Keep them dependent.
Was anyone hospitalized?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Well, if you want to arbitrarily redefine "violence" go ahead.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba