Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

portlandoccupier.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 113 posts

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#101

Post by pvarangot »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #80
pvarangot wrote: post #51

Please if you think you will ever take part in a protest, for the sake of your own safety and that of your co-protestors, don't read this article. Or if you already did, don't take it seriously. It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. I do agree with most o…

>It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).

You can find some of my opinion about the content in my other reply in this thread. Also, the whole rummaging about light infantry and heavy infantry is completely wrong, short of some movies I really don't know where the author actually saw the kind of formation he seems to think is standard.

He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated.

Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#103

Post by pork »

oldstrangers wrote: post #83
jberryman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people take themselves entirely too seriously. > ... > look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. What exactly is your metric for success here? A sleazy company changed their stance on a bill that the public is completely unaware of and couldn't give two shits about? I think "the internet" is taking itself too seriously. Meanwhile a nation-wide prote…

The occupy camps have been largely impotent. Whatever immeasurable metaphysical success they've found thus far is more than likely purely coincidental. The collective attitudes of all individuals tend to shift in similar directions when shit gets bad enough. If the building is on fire, most people are going to head for the exits. Claiming that it was OWS that got people talking about income inequality is kind of sill…

I was a part of Occupy Oakland, and even though we had the worst police action, I completely agree with oldstranger. It became bizarre when Berkeley students earnestly urged everyone to help the other protestors "find a place to sleep tonight, even at your own home", when at least a third of the protestors were permanently homeless.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#104

Post by marshray »

tobtoh wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My politics are closer to Occupy's than to the Tea Party's, by a big margin. I'm not asking you to flag the story because I have a problem with the politics. I'm asking you to flag this story because the argument for it being on the site is a slippery slope that also includes the fundraising dynamics of the Iowa GOP caucus. Like I said earlier: stories like this have a systemic advantage over most real "hacker news"…

I agree with your 'no politics' stance (although does SOPA opposition fall under that?), however, I read the article more as a 'tactics developed by accident' than a Occupy advocacy thread. I guess we have slightly different thresholds on the same slippery slope. Having said that, I definitely prefer an article on micro dev boards than protest tactics.

SOPA seems about as directly relevant to internet startup business as an issue can get. It's not tax or social policy or political campaigning... it's impending legislation that affects the way people have to configure their servers.

So I would support a ban on most political discussion here as long as the very few relevant things like SOPA are exempt.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#105

Post by andrewflnr »

ldh wrote: post #95
andrewflnr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-violent resistance to injustice is one thing. Indefinitely evading police for little other purpose, that I can see, of getting in the way is another. I'm not quite sure where the line is, but this kind of thing scares me. If a person or group deliberately incites law enforcement to escalate the level of violence in the performance of their duty, are they not partially responsible for that violence? Are their goal…

> Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about how to design a society, I'm talking about a necessary aspect of the relationship between government and the governed. Simply, the government cannot force you to do what it wants all the time. It's impossible, even for brutal totalitarian governments. A few slip through the nets.

For a light example, think about speeding, or carpool lane compliance. Most of the time, there is actually no one to stop or punish you for speeding or driving in the carpool lane with the wrong number of people. Most people do the right thing anyway. This is good.

So any compliance with its laws is largely voluntary, based on, among other things, the value provided by the government and the obvious benefits to everyone if everyone follows the law.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#107

Post by SageRaven »

devs1010 wrote: post #64
nerfhammer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riot police look pretty scary everywhere https://www.google.com/search?q=arizona+police&tbm=isch and generally only armed with batons outside of low-human rights countries due to the obvious danger of losing control of weapons amidst violent crowds.

I wasn't talking just about riot situations, U.S. police look sort of like this (especially where I am in Arizona) all the time, except without the masks.

Is this now state-wide or still only within the "Constitution-Free Zone" within 200 miles of Mexico's border?

I was in Nogales looking for property in winter of '04, and I noted how many of the law enforcement were all dolled up in their military-like gear. This was before the checkpoints, so I never got too close. Still... if I wasn't white and driving a giant, made-in-America pickup truck, I certainly would not have felt too welcome in the area.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#108

Post by barrkel »

andrewflnr wrote: post #105
ldh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about how to design a society, I'm talking about a necessary aspect of the relationship between government and the governed. Simply, the government cannot force you to do what it wants all the time. It's impossible, even for brutal totalitarian governments. A few slip through the nets. For a light example, think about speeding, or carpool lane compliance. Most of the time…

I think you'll find that obeying such things doesn't come from deference to authority, but rather peer pressure combined with a recognition of the justice of such regulations. The reason I don't speed in urban streets isn't because I want to obey the government; it's because I'll look like an ass, endangering other road users.

I think there's a deeper issue. I suspect you have confused mechanism with purpose. Government coercion is a mechanism for enforcing system goals, where hopefully those goals are agreed upon in a democratic or enlightened fashion. But it is not the government coercion that is good; it is the goals. It is right that government coercion be resisted when the goals are not noble; and doing so does not risk society falling apart, because it doesn't attack what makes society work.

It's not mere "conditioning and conscience" that keeps people in check. The biggest thing that keeps people in check is actually social norms and risking the disapproval of your peers. And those are surprisingly strong forces.

And if you think the kinds of disobedience we're talking about here risk government overthrow, you haven't seen what governments are capable of doing to stay in power. It's humorous to read about Americans thinking their second amendment right to bear arms defends themselves from the excesses of government. Governments are a lot more resilient than that. The real risk to governments comes from military avenues: mutinies, coups, invasion. A government with nuclear arms (i.e. MAD deterrence of invasion) and in control of a loyal military will not be overthrown by its citizens.

But I do agree with you that what we're seeing is corrosive to trust in government. But the answer isn't to bow one's head, go home and be a good little consumer. The answer is to demand that government changes. In a democracy, a big part of that publicity-seeking actions. Ideally, we'd be seeing dialogue and debate, not riot police and polarizing denunciations.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#109

Post by guelo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #94
guelo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just wrong. The whole world now knows the 1% term now.

Sure; that was good. But so what? Now what? What does this mean for anybody? What does it mean to continue to doodle around in public parks? The message now is, we're having a grand old time getting ourselves in the news, by distracting the police and annoying the public.

We're having a grand old time getting arrested and harassed in cold winter nights?

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#110

Post by lawnchair_larry »

_delirium wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment (verbatim, "Oh engineers. Shirking morality again.") is an extremely elegant statement of why political threads, even when they "gratify the intellectual curiosity of hackers", are terrible for HN: they generate comment threads that consist of or are repeatedly sparked by comments like this.

I have a related but different complaint about them: political threads are bad because they bring out a chorus of rose-tinted nostalgia about how HN is going down the drain, is "becoming Reddit", etc., etc. I only hope that y'all copy/paste them instead of wasting effort on writing a new comment to that effect each time. ;-)

Also, we have to read about Tom telling us that he flagged something.
Post reply on HN