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[Levi]

I'm glad there were riots.  If society is failing these people and protesting isn't working then why should they bother with society?  Economic damage is about the only thing the people in charge will actually pay attention to.

Riots are horrible, but they have a purpose when everything else fails.

[Bauglir]

I don't like riots, but I don't think blaming the rioters is going to help make riots stop happening.

[SalmonGod]

I have so much to say in regards to this past page, but I'm currently wrapping up my lunch break... so I'll just quickly throw this in.

The public does sympathize with peaceful protests that get shut down.  Even if the cause is wrong, people will at least listen and consider.

They sympathize... but does it actually motivate them to DO anything.  This is the #1 problem.  People have sympathized with victims of racism for decades.  But sympathy is not action.  Sympathy does not translate into change.  Your average comfortable middle-class white guy isn't likely to make it a high priority factor in his voting decisions.  He's not going to go out of his way to support protests.  He's not going to care enough about incidents of racist action in his community enough to pick apart the official stories that cover it up.  It has to become personal to people besides only the minorities themselves to provoke the kind of action that can result in change.  No, riots are not going to earn sympathy.  But a rational person will want the riots to end for their own sake, and will understand that supporting or allowing further victimization of those doing the rioting will only cause the rioting to continue.

And keep in mind that it's not only rioters that have started fires.  There was a library that caught fire, because of a spark from a gas canister hitting some dry trash.  Dozens of protesters witnessed this and reported it, but the police still blamed it on the rioters.  I'm sorry I don't have time to dig up a citation right now.  A lot of stuff that gets reported as rioting is the result of police violently confronting peaceful protesters.

[lijacote]

I have so much to say in regards to this past page, but I'm currently wrapping up my lunch break... so I'll just quickly throw this in.

The public does sympathize with peaceful protests that get shut down.  Even if the cause is wrong, people will at least listen and consider.

They sympathize... but does it actually motivate them to DO anything.  This is the #1 problem.  People have sympathized with victims of racism for decades.  But sympathy is not action.  Sympathy does not translate into change.  Your average comfortable middle-class white guy isn't likely to make it a high priority factor in his voting decisions.  He's not going to go out of his way to support protests.  He's not going to care enough about incidents of racist action in his community enough to pick apart the official stories that cover it up.  It has to become personal to people besides only the minorities themselves to provoke the kind of action that can result in change.  No, riots are not going to earn sympathy.  But a rational person will want the riots to end for their own sake, and will understand that supporting or allowing further victimization of those doing the rioting will only cause the rioting to continue.

And keep in mind that it's not only rioters that have started fires.  There was a library that caught fire, because of a spark from a gas canister hitting some dry trash.  Dozens of protesters witnessed this and reported it, but the police still blamed it on the rioters.  I'm sorry I don't have time to dig up a citation right now.  A lot of stuff that gets reported as rioting is the result of police violently confronting peaceful protesters.

Yep. The police intentionally provoke protesters because they know that violent protests are easier to disparage. Disparaging violent protests is exactly what they want and what they require, they want that change is seen as sinister and dangerous. The media, similarly, is loath (at least here in Finland, I  suspect the same is true in the US) to report on protests that are peaceful, or if they do, it's very milquetoast and meaningless. "Some folks marched, the weather was quite nice." No mention of any political substance.

Someone mentioned COINTELPRO. Indeed. It's not like there's class struggle only when the lower classes decide that now's the time for action, it's on all the time, and the upper classes are more conscious of it, more capable of waging it. For now, at least. There's this quote from Warren Buffet:

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[wierd]

Dog bites man? No story there, but man bites dog? News at 11!

In other words, the media wants a sensation. A bunch of people showing up peacefully with tea and cookies, wishing to discuss equitable social progress is not terribly sensationalistic.  People going apeshit and burning down their own city? THAT'S NEWS!

The media is looking for bulls in china shops. To use it effectively as a weapon, you need to understand this, and give them the sensationalism they are seeking.  "Corrupt cop beats up little old women for booze money"-- "Pedobear lurks in city parks, protect your children!"-- etc.

This is ultimately what happens when you have for profit news.  The news that grabs the most eyeballs is the most sensational, and thus, since the news company wants to maximize its profits, it selectively focuses on the most sensational drivel imaginable.  Blogosphere news is not profit motive driven, which is why it is carrying actual news!

This really is not hard to wrap your head around. You just have to accept that bigtime media is not really out to tell you what happened in the world today-- it is out to deluge your eyeballs in blood, gore, sensationalism, and moral panic.

[lijacote]

...
This really is not hard to wrap your head around. You just have to accept that bigtime media is not really out to tell you what happened in the world today-- it is out to deluge your eyeballs in blood, gore, sensationalism, and moral panic.

I'll paraphrase another quote that I can't seem to find. A US steel company officer-of-some-kind commented thusly or thereabouts: "We aren't in the business of making steel, we are in the business for profit."

[nenjin]

So the Baltimore case is about to get a lot more complicated. The prosecuting attorney and the police department have run their own investigations and not all of their facts are in agreement. Both sets of evidence are going to do the defense (i.e. the cops being charged) which is going to open up reasonable doubt. Which, combined with good faith, paints a very good chance these guys will walk.

That and the district attorney's office and the police are disagreeing on the legality of the knife, and the law technically seems to be on the side of the Baltimore police. Never mind the fact they only find the knife after they apprehended him. That technicality is going to get overlooked in light of the other technicality about the knife's legality.

I have a sinking feeling these cops are going to walk over shit that happened before whatever happened in that van. It pisses me off they're basically picking and choosing what parts of the event they want to address, none of it about what happened in that van, and the chronology of events is getting ignored in favor just focusing on the first discrepancy they can use to get these guys to walk. Why do they fucking care whether or not they had the legal right to arrest him? Why aren't they asking whether the man should have died in police custody? There's no "good faith" shield for cops when their suspect ends up dead in their custody. Either the suspect did it to themselves, which an autopsy can show, or the cops did it him, which the autopsy will also show.

[wierd]

Cannibalism is how you kill bureaucracies, nenjin. Naturally, the bureaucrats are instinctively adverse to having this happen.  Allowing the underlings to get eaten in this way would open the top dogs up to being eaten.  They dont want that, so they cover for the underlings and pull whatever strings they need to pull to keep things from going cannibalistic.

In other words-- this is just the powers that be, exercising their powers as the powers that be, to remain being the powers that be.

Hardly all that unexpected, really.

This is basically the chewbacca defense though.

[SalmonGod]

One of the other things I wanted to bring up earlier was that everyone always compares these things to previous moments in history where peaceful civil disobedience won the spotlight (the retrospective historical spotlight, anyway).  There's always a charismatic leader associated with these things, and I've seen implications here that another one of those is what is needed right now to turn this rioting around into an organized political movement.

That's not going to happen until the domestic surveillance infrastructure is abolished.  There will not be another MLK so long as big data is able to pinpoint potential candidates for such a role and make it easy for authorities to find ways and reasons to marginalize them.

[Xantalos]

I feel you vastly overestimate their abilities. Presently.

In the future... god knows. Especially if they manage to create some form of rudimentary AI.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)

[Baffler]

One of the other things I wanted to bring up earlier was that everyone always compares these things to previous moments in history where peaceful civil disobedience won the spotlight (the retrospective historical spotlight, anyway).  There's always a charismatic leader associated with these things, and I've seen implications here that another one of those is what is needed right now to turn this rioting around into an organized political movement.

That's not going to happen until the domestic surveillance infrastructure is abolished.  There will not be another MLK so long as big data is able to pinpoint potential candidates for such a role and make it easy for authorities to find ways and reasons to marginalize them.

Another big part of the problem of getting leaders is, ironically, social media. It allows everyone to be heard, which is great from an ideological standpoint, but I wonder how many would-be leaders haven't risen to the top because they've been drowned out by the noise. That anyone who looks to be taking charge in a crowd has a bull's eye painted on their forehead doesn't exactly help either.

Anyway, it's long but I found this earlier and hope at least one other person finds this as interesting as I do. It's an operations manual on crowd control techniques and the rationale behind their particular use. It's aimed primarily at Army units abroad so a lot of the specifics don't apply, and has probably been sanitized to some degree, but chapter two in particular is quite interesting.

Edit: wrong link.

[Helgoland]

One of the other things I wanted to bring up earlier was that everyone always compares these things to previous moments in history where peaceful civil disobedience won the spotlight (the retrospective historical spotlight, anyway).  There's always a charismatic leader associated with these things, and I've seen implications here that another one of those is what is needed right now to turn this rioting around into an organized political movement.

That's not going to happen until the domestic surveillance infrastructure is abolished.  There will not be another MLK so long as big data is able to pinpoint potential candidates for such a role and make it easy for authorities to find ways and reasons to marginalize them.

I think you're once again underestimating the abilities of 20th century government agencies - espionage and surveillance was hella effective before the internet, too.

[SalmonGod]

One of the other things I wanted to bring up earlier was that everyone always compares these things to previous moments in history where peaceful civil disobedience won the spotlight (the retrospective historical spotlight, anyway).  There's always a charismatic leader associated with these things, and I've seen implications here that another one of those is what is needed right now to turn this rioting around into an organized political movement.

That's not going to happen until the domestic surveillance infrastructure is abolished.  There will not be another MLK so long as big data is able to pinpoint potential candidates for such a role and make it easy for authorities to find ways and reasons to marginalize them.

I think you're once again underestimating the abilities of 20th century government agencies - espionage and surveillance was hella effective before the internet, too.

I'm not.  I know they were effective.  But they're even more effective now.  Persons of interest can even be identified before they become significant, without employing any footwork.  20th century methods could mostly only deal with existing threats.  21st century methods are about preventing threats from ever developing.  This is my point.  MLK would have had a two foot thick FBI file put together on him a short while after rising to the status of prominent regional figure, and steps taken at that point to keep close track of him.  A future MLK today has 10x as much data on them that is already assembled before they're ever close to becoming anyone significant, and tracking a person electronically is done at will.

[lijacote]

In the Russian revolutionary period, you had agents infiltrating study groups and other revolutionary (or revolutionary-minded) organizations, and much like now they would probably provoke them to further illegality and get them all arrested, sent to Siberia and into exile, or worse. I'd argue that this is getting rid of a potential threat rather than an actual, existing threat. The thought in part must have been that if you make everyone suspect, you induce an atmosphere of paranoia -- what does the czar's secret police already know about you? Can you commit to any action, knowing that it could be a trap? I'm certain that, in part, this thing about the CIA controlling the Internet is the same. I'm sure they're nowhere near as omniscient as they would like us to believe and base our inaction on.