Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Truean]

People could start to care, use the official channels  instead of calling them "stupid/corrupt/whatever." They could pass laws on the use of police force. They could set up a fairly impartial administrative system to deal with the legit problems of larger protests (sanitation, bathrooms, etc), while giving actual reasons for permits that aren't BS.

Instead they don't and this happens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BjnR7xET7Uo

[sigh] We live in a police state....

This shit keeps up, I don't see it ending well.... Honestly how stupid are people? What does anyone think is going to happen here as an end result. People aren't going to just "go back home" assuming they haven't been foreclosed/evicted out of theirs....

There's really no good endgame here. All the people who protest are gaining records, the bad kind, and businesses don't hire them/fire them over this. This is a problem with a society that writes people off. What does anyone think those people will do in the end of this?

Those police better pray those protestors stay peaceful, cause there are 5000 of them and how many of you...? You're talking about a bunch of tech savy kids who know how to look up addresses.... Someone is going to screw this up really badly. I really don't want that.

[Melagius]

I was originally enthusiastic about these protests, hoping that they would bring electoral reform and bring an end to lobbyists controlling congress/the government, but now it seems like they won't accomplish anything. Don't think there's any hope for change without violence. :/

[Impending Doom]

I was originally enthusiastic about these protests, hoping that they would bring electoral reform and bring an end to lobbyists controlling congress/the government, but now it seems like they won't accomplish anything. Don't think there's any hope for change without violence. :/

Even if the entire Occupy movement decided to go all Libya on their asses, it'd probably end up just like it's working up to be over there: the same damn thing as before, with a different name and different faces.

[GlyphGryph]

People could start to care, use the official channels  instead of calling them "stupid/corrupt/whatever." They could pass laws on the use of police force.

Most of this stuff is already against the law, though, isn't it? The problem is the classic "who watches the watchers".

What we need is a big social movement for believers and activists to actually join the police force, I would think... or would that just beat them down and turn them into the same type of person?

[mainiac]

Don't think there's any hope for change without violence. :/

There's this radical idea called "voting".  It's a lot easier to change the system that way then through violence.

And before you give any shit about voting doesn't change things, yeah it really does if you band together and vote for things.  Look at the success of the NRA.  Love or hate what they stand for, they used their votes to get what they want.

[Bdthemag]

If any violence breaks out on our side of the movement, then it'll all be over. The media will turn it into a massive shitstorm, and then the police will actually be allowed to use force to take down the violent protestors.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

So bear with me there,  the SOPA act will allow them to shut any site, and if thing get real nasty, the president can now shut down Internet.

SOPA won't stand up even if it does pass. It allows them to shut down sites, but there has to be a court case on the matter, which will all but certainly lead to the Supreme Court applying the First Amendment to the Internet and ending these kinds of challenges forever. A lot is wrong with the US government, but the Supreme Court has at least a little good left in it. The president can't shut down the internet. He could very well try by sending people to shut down major ISP's, but that would lead to riots. Lots of riots.

You can be executed without warrant if you're accused of terrorism and can be held indefinitely without judgment.

The former isn't actually legal, but it does probably happen. The latter is legal under the PATRIOT Act, but acts like that have been passed in the past (Alien and Sedition Acts, Wartime Sedition Act, ect) and were all eventually struck down.

All your communication can be listened, all ip traffic is sniffed to and the FBI routinely use GPS tracker without warrant.

The GPS tracker thing isn't going to last. It's up to the Supreme Court now, and pretty much all of the justices are already against it. Hell, fucking Scalia is against it, and he is about as conservative as they come.

And your military is now very experienced in counter insurrection.

The military would not attack fellow Americans. I know enough about the general mindset of those in the armed forces that there would be serious issues if marital law was domestically declared. We are talking violent mass defections here.

Well I hope it's all coincidence, and just stupid authoritarian policies...

Oh trust me, it's not coincidence. It just won't work.

If any violence breaks out on our side of the movement, then it'll all be over. The media will turn it into a massive shitstorm, and then the police will actually be allowed to use force to take down the violent protestors.

If any violence breaks out the media isn't going to be a factor anymore. Any violence will make this escalate into domestic armed conflict with the kind of tensions that are being thrown around right now. And as noted before, there are more armed civilians out there than there armed cops. It will be bloody and horrible if anything like that happens, and it just might.

[mainiac]

Sigh... I guess I better start hitting the shooting range... Way to ruin my weekends with your stupid civil war people.

[Impending Doom]

Hate to break your little LCS fantasy, but when it comes to combat quality trumps quantity. Law enforcement have access to much of the same weapons, equipment, and training as the military. Unless a sizeable portion of the U.S. military sides with them (Not likely: whichever side they choose, they'd be firing on American citizens, so I suspect most soldiers would just refuse to fight altogether.) Occupy would be crushed horribly.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hate to break your little LCS fantasy, but when it comes to combat quality trumps quantity. Law enforcement have access to much of the same weapons, equipment, and training as the military. Unless a sizeable portion of the U.S. military sides with them (Not likely: whichever side they choose, they'd be firing on American citizens, so I suspect most soldiers would just refuse to fight altogether.) Occupy would be crushed horribly.

Whoa, wait a minute, I do not want a civil war to happen. Let's get that straight now. Such a conflict would leave many dead and probably lead to Congress passing even more oppressive laws.

But I'm still really not so sure the police are in as good of a position as you say they are. I agree that the military would probably stay out of it, at least at first.

[The Master]

don't you people think you might be over reacting just a tad? I honestly doubt there's going to be a civil war...

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We've got mass protests going on all over the nation and police forces constantly getting more and more violent about suppressing them. It might not be a large conflict if violence happens, but it would still be a conflict. Hopefully you are right, though.

[alway]

Heh, the faculty member of UC Davis responsible for the police resulting in the pepper spraying of students gets a less than welcoming pathway to her SUV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8775ZmNGFY8
Students lining the path, entirely silently, with linked arms.
A letter from another UC Davis faculty is certainly worth a read: http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/
She was also asked to resign by the board of faculty; a request thus far refused.
...
Then again, if she refuses to leave, they could always use pepper spray.

Oh, and thedailywh.at has been doing some pretty good coverage of the news about ows; they have a pretty much daily update on it whenever something warrants attention. Certainly better than the piss-poor coverage most news outlets have been doing.

[Truean]

People could start to care, use the official channels  instead of calling them "stupid/corrupt/whatever." They could pass laws on the use of police force.

Most of this stuff is already against the law, though, isn't it? The problem is the classic "who watches the watchers".

What we need is a big social movement for believers and activists to actually join the police force, I would think... or would that just beat them down and turn them into the same type of person?

That's the question. It may be illegal for the police to do that, but there is no remedy. So the question becomes, "so what?" Legislate a remedy.

You get 200,000 people to out of a country of 300,000,000 to vote one way, I assure you, someone will listen. This is especially true given how close elections are today. As for who watches the watchers, accountants. You fire them if they don't. Really simple standards here. As an attorney, I have a timesheet for every bloody thing I do. I can explain to you what I did on every single day if I can look at it to jog my memory.

Unfortunately, we've got a nation of people who think doing pretty much anything is "stupid," or "lame." In addition to the apathy, no one can agree on shit, at all.

Basically everyone gave up long before this recession. People hear the stock phrases they like to hear or at least don't object too terribly much to hearing and that's it....

As for a civil war, I dunno. I don't think so. I hope not. Is it possible someone could get pissed off an' track down a police officer and do something stupid in revenge. Yes, unfortunately. If that happens, the movement's all over.

[mainiac]

don't you people think you might be over reacting just a tad? I honestly doubt there's going to be a civil war...

I was making a joke.  I thought it was rather obvious.