Live data from Hacker News

The Criminalization of Everyday Life

tomdispatch.com

241–250 of 347 posts

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort cherry-picking of "obtuse" quotes to attack high-level theory is pretty absurd. It's equivalent to somebody from the humanities putting down this formula: Y = λf.(λx.f (x x)) (λx.f (x x)) and saying "I have difficulty understanding this, ergo computer science is absurd nonsense."

And if "theory" or whatever the fuck you English majors call it were mathematically rigorous you'd have a point.

I think you should apologize for making this post. There are a lot of important things that aren't mathematically rigorous but are nevertheless worth understanding.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#242

If every police station in the country is equipped with military-grade weapons and vehicles, what happens in the event of despotic leadership? Suppose someone rises to power with little regard for legislative oversight and activates the sleeping military at home. It might start with a real (or faked) terror event coordinated across several major cities. It wouldn't take much at all, 5-10 cities, and suddenly: 1. Inte…

Perhaps I'm naive, but I never understood why a despotic US President would need all of these weapons and vehicles. I mean, they're a nice convenience, but they're complete unnecessary for a takeover. My thought would be that you just need the presidency and maybe six high ranking military officers. You then declare a presidential address where you announce that you're declaring yourself dictator for life. If anyone…

despots are many things but not suicidal.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to understand power not as a binary relation between oppressors and the oppressed, but as a much more molecular system that spans all sectors of society, and whose modus operandi is not primarily repression, but rather motivation (making someone speak, articulate desires, etc). I know that's…

"But it seems like not the useful insight given a state the clearly has asymetrically greater power than the populace?" Is your assumption true? That is, leaving aside the fact that the police are ostensibly part of the populace, how would some police and a single APC pacify even a couple of blocks of citizens without the cooperation of those citizens? Personally, and I realize that this is opinion, I do not believe…

> how would some police and a single APC pacify even a couple of blocks of citizens without the cooperation of those citizens?

Assuming that the police have no restriction in the use of force, it would be very simple for them to pacify a rather large area with an APC and Police. All they have to do is kill a few people who are out of line, and the rest will cower.

No single or small group of citizens in the US really has the ability to stand up to even a single measly APC. The firepower required to stop one is beyond what anybody outside the US enforcement structure can realistically obtain. You may be able to limit its movement with well constructed roadblocks, but harming the vehicle or its passengers with an assortment of shotguns, handguns and IEDs is not reasonable to expect (given they were explicitly designed to withstand these threats).

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in an era of delicate balance between global overpopulation and resource depletion. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, we are at peak supply rates for oil and other essential resources. We're rendering things less habitable and global climate change - coupled with water table depletion and topsoil burnout - threatens to crash food crops in some key regions. It's not a conspiracy. People who…

Thanks for the response. Fairly inline with what I thought. Next question, how to prepare? Is it futile to make an effort to protect myself and those around me, or is such a thing feasible (I imagine this would require a huge edit to lifestyle)? I don't want to be "that guy" but I also don't want to be caught in the headlights if shit hits the fan (which it seems is inevitable). Anything to study to guide my thinking…

Don't talk to me about that - I'm buying a ranch with farmable defensible land in a remote underpopulated location with good water access, large enough to support friends and family indefinitely. Ya, know. Just for vacations and things of course.

On a serious note (though I really am getting the ranch) I would recommend reading John Robb's resilient communities blog - though his former defense-related work on Global Guerillas is brilliant too (he used to be a military strategist before realizing all these problems boil down to what I refer to above).

It's about resiliency. When things fail, and given our lack of investment in infrastructure, and coming challenges they will, it's important to be resilient and make sure those around you are too. After that it depends on how big you think the bottle neck is we all have to squeeze through to whatever is coming next. I worry it's quite narrow personally, but ymmv.

Finally... that edit to lifestyle is coming. It's just whether it's managed by you or you're managed by it.

Happy holidays.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#245
post #61

I wish people would move beyond 1984 and quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment [1]. There is a much deeper-rooted problem in society than mass surveillance or militarization of police. It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance. We accept and welcome our controllers. Foucault wrote about the effects of prisoner mindset in society in the 1960-70s. Our subjugation and tolerance to au…

I would rather know the inverse; what causes people to reject that system of control? It is extremely rare compared to the acceptance but people do it, how do you "teach" the rest to do likewise?

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a B-movie plot. The problem is, the newly-appointed tyrant would need everyone in the military to play along with the blackmail. All it would take is a few rogue Air Force pilots to shoot down that ICBM.

How on earth is an Air Force pilot going to shoot down an ICBM? A Minuteman III can reach speeds of 15,000mph.

Someone has taken Iron Man saving NYC from a rogue nuke a bit too seriously. If only we could shoot down ICBMs with fighters, my favorite military vehicle, the aircraft carrier, would be far more prevalent in the world.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#247
I'd love to study how long it takes the tanks to fall into disuse, to the point of being inoperable, simply because police departments will lose interest in them, neglect maintenance, forget where all of the pieces are, fail to find suppliers for spares, etc.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a B-movie plot. The problem is, the newly-appointed tyrant would need everyone in the military to play along with the blackmail. All it would take is a few rogue Air Force pilots to shoot down that ICBM.

How on earth is an Air Force pilot going to shoot down an ICBM? A Minuteman III can reach speeds of 15,000mph.

With magical patriot fuel that provides thrust relative to the amount of ridiculous drama that has thus far been painted on the stupid propaganda movie reel. Likely when the meaningless death of the goofy but loveable sidekick has been concluded somehow and the ex quarterback pilot jock is sufficiently despairing and enraged at the same time while his high school sweetheart is crying over said death in some sterile but tense government control room and he can hear her on comms as he spurts out his last gasp of impotent rage doing the actually impossible thing and making watching vaccuous halfwit proles feel proud to be American.

Queue complete bullshit speech by sufficiently aristocratic looking political figure about lessons hard learned and tests successfully overcome.

Swelling music, much tribalism, wow.

Roll credits.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#249
post #61

I wish people would move beyond 1984 and quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment [1]. There is a much deeper-rooted problem in society than mass surveillance or militarization of police. It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance. We accept and welcome our controllers. Foucault wrote about the effects of prisoner mindset in society in the 1960-70s. Our subjugation and tolerance to au…

There are books, both fiction and less so, and then what really happens.

The reasons acquiescence seems an acceptable behavior are:

1. Most people are rarely inconvenienced by arbitrary overkill. It is persons deemed "undesirable" (appearance or manner) that are subjected to disportionate punishment on a routine basis that makes the overkill seem acceptable to them. It is often shocking to learn what people have been forced to endure.

2. There is a modern concept that the government is the only legitimate holder of the absolute monopoly of violence, which necessitates compliant "good" people, which should be helpless and defenseless. This also requires justifying one's business and unlimited access to search physical person, property and digital life, so as to have "nothing to hide." But it's only the fool that hands over the keys to their own destruction by persecution by a voluminous and arbitrary legal bureaucracy.

3. The majority and privileged agree by consent through silence to the ends that the police are "correctly flushing society" of those they deem "undesirable." In their view: "If that's you, too bad (overkill is legitimized, and you're not important so it doesn't matter what we do to you anyhow).

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Do you not understand the implications of arming a local police force as if they were the military? That's terrifying.

Yes, I'm serious. Swat teams have been around forever, this isn't anything new. An armored vehicle of all things isn't particularly harmful. I would react differently if they gave them, say, a minigun or a guided missile or whatever. It's just a bullet proof truck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor'...
Post reply on HN