Occupy Oakland Tries to Capture the Oakland Convention Center - Occupiers Getting Desperate
Occupy Oakland attepted to occupy the Oakland Convention Center, with grandiose plans of turning it into some sort of political-social headquarters. The Oakland Police Force disabused them of these delusions, arresting some 300 of them. Interestingly, the Occupiers are becoming more violent.
Occupy Oakland organizers had earlier vowed to take ( Read more... )
Occupy Oakland organizers had earlier vowed to take ( Read more... )
There is nothing about membership in a mob which morally or should legally confer a defense against criminal acts committed by the individual. This is actually the principle at law: to the extent that we fail to enforce it, we encourage violent and destructive mobs.
As for "martyrs," their creation or non-creation has nothing to do with any official action likely to be seen in America, and everything to do with the extent to which the Occupiers manage to spin the deaths, injuries and arrests of some of their number as "oppressive" or "unjustified." For that matter, given the protest-as-party attitude of most of the Occupiers, I would predict that if the authorities did become unreasonably violent, it would help end the riots -- though I don't want to see this happen, because of the obvious potential bad side effects on the right of legitimate assembly.
I give you the example of Kent State, where the ultimate action of the National Guardsmen was unplanned, foolish, excessively violent, caused the loss of innocent lives -- and, pretty much, spelled the beginning of the end of the mass anti-war rallies of the era. Why? Because even a trivial risk of death or serious personal injury was enough to deter the spoiled brats of c. 1970 -- and consider just how much more spoiled, and less motivated, are the spoiled brats of today.
If you want a more recent example, Mayor David Dinkins of New York City decided to tolerate violent mobs to allow the protestors to "vent their emotions." The result? Lethal riots (such as the one against Crown Heights), a city poised on the brink of ethnic civil warfare, and a depressed municipal economy owing to the general perception that the authorities were losing their grip on law enforcement. Dinkins lost office (in part because of his adherence to your theory of riot control), and Rudolf Giuliani became Mayor.
Mayor Giuliani enforced all the public order laws diligently, even arresting and prosecuting people for misdemeanors. The media quacked about his "serious blunders." The result? Rioting vanished, ethnic tensions eased, and the municipal economy recovered as the general perception was one of restoration of law and order. Giuliani became a heroic national figure, in part because he did not believe that his main job was to avoid the creation of "martyrs."
Oh, and yes, there was some increased radicalization of extremists. The New York City Police Department was quite adequately able to put violent radicals where they belonged. Some are probably still serving their time.
Happy ending for all, save for those who really didn't deserve one.
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“My theory of riot control”? Oh, yah - it was you, tried to smear me as an “anti-Semite” some while back. I'd forgotten just who that was… It's always worth a grin.
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'Sides, I think I refuted that charge pretty effectively…
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Now, the first problem is that, while the authorities are sitting around "laughing at" the Occupiers, there is nothing preventing them from becoming increasingly violent and doing more damage. The Occupiers have already injured people and damaged property, and their "blockades" have cost the City of Oakland many millions of dollars in lost revenues. The use of relatively passive police cordons to keep them out of sensitive areas is (a) unreliable since almost entirely passive, as witness the damage they did to City Hall, and (b) very expensive in terms of police manpower. This imposes additional human and financial costs on the city as the police are unable to deal with other criminals at the same time.
The second problem is that it emboldens the Occupiers, makes them feel more important, and establishes a platform of appeasement from which they can climb to further and more severe illegalities. As Dinkins and Guiliani demonstrated in my New York City example, trying to appease violent mobs is a sucker's game; the violent mobs will simply become bolder and more violent as they see that they are being allowed to get away with breaking the law. Opposing the mobs works far better: there is immediate violence but the mobs are then forced to disperse, and their ringleaders may be jailed or imprisoned and are for that period of time out of action.
The third problem is that the Occupiers can find "martyrs" anyway, no matter what the authorities do or don't do. Many of the European Muslim riots start when one or two teenage Muslims do something stupid in response to police pursuit and get themselves killed, for instance by climbing into a transformer station to hide and electrocuting themselves against the wires. This is seen as "martyrdom" by those looking for "martyrs," despite the obviousness of the deaths being self-inflicted. You can't stop the creation of martyrs.
Sure, the authorities shouldn't go out of their way to make "martyrs" (say, by beating to death harmless teenage girls caught waving signs, as is done in the typical Muslim dictatorship's response to demonstrations). But they should go into riot control fully aware that their main job is not to avoid making martyrs -- it is to restore order. And in a strategic sense, when the disorder is being perpetuated by the same leaders, night after night, this means going after those leaders and taking them out of the equation -- preferably through arrest, to be sure, but ultimately by whatever means are made necessary by the degree of resistance encountered to the attempt to arrest them.
It's true that you didn't put forth a coherent theory of riot control. Instead, you merely carped at my proposal, without substituting anything better.
That is not something of which to be proud.
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Ulrike Meinhof was arrested and imprisoned for involvement in another violent shootout with the police. She either hung herself, or was murdered in prison.
A lot of the Red Army Faction died by apparent suicide in prison. It's not obvious whether or not this represented a policy of murder by the West German government, or a common insanity and suicidal tendency on the part of these terrorists.
The West German government would have had to have been seriously crazy to not arrest Baader, Meinhof, and the many other extremely violent and criminal individuals of the RAF. They were not merely waving signs or even throwing things at the police, they were engaging in assassinations, bombings, kidnappings and murders.
If the West German government did murder them in prison, then its motive was obvious: other terrorists were attacking Germany demanding the release of the jailed RAF members. Killing the prisoners would have been a (ruthless and illegal) way of ending this threat: in particular, it would have avoided the worst possible outcome -- namely, that some of them might have been released (which would have only emboldened the terrorists and resulted in an escalation of the terrorist attacks). I understand the logic, though I consider the West German action immoral -- if they did it at all.
I'm not sure of the relevance of any of this to the Occupiers. The RAF was far more criminal and violent than are the Occupiers, long before the arrests of Baader and Meinhoff. And, unless we began covertly murdering arrested Occupiers, I don't see how we'd be creating martyrs by simply by arresting Occupiers.
(Occupiers might, of course, choose to start killing themselves, but that's hardly something which we could avoid by different riot control policies).
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Unless he's implying that the Occupy movement is as dangerous as the RAF, in which case, I'm curious as to how he came to that conclusion.
Actually, I was curious = have the Occupy 'moms' lost custody over their children for endangering them?
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I don't know, though I suspect not: these tend to be well-connected people who know how and can afford to get their hands on lawyers and look very respectable in court.
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Is the possibility that your common, run-of-the-mill burglars and the like objected to them precluded by anything?
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There is a German Romantic obsession with suicide as statement of individual autonomy and protest against the cruelty of the world that dates back at least to Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. This is the main reason I think that it's possible, maybe even likely, that the Bowel Movement gang really did kill themselves.
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It is possible that you hate Israel for some reason other than the obvious one (it's a Jewish State), but that reason is murky, since you do NOT display the same devotion to attacking OTHER Western liberal democracies. Hence, the conclusion most economical in an Ockhamite sense is that you are an anti-Semite. Q. E. D.
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Nope: Sorry, Jordan. I don't hate Israel. Nor Jews. Only if you polarize the world into If You Aint Fer Us, Yer Agin Us, where anyone who does not coincide precisely with your views is obviously an “anti-Semite” - and come to think on it, you do just that…
Meanwhile, the truth is more subtle: I don't care about the religions or races involved. Jew, Schmoo - I'm looking at the politics (which may or may not be the same thing). I say the people who say Shalom Aleichem and the people who say Salaam Alaykum are Tweedledum and Tweedledee, because they are. The only difference between their actions is that Israel, supported by the USA, influenced by Western law, can afford to be more merciful than her opponents - who were pretty damned magnificent themselves, when they could afford to be.
But Israel has shown all along that she is willing to do whatever it takes to survive - just like her opponents. Turn the situation about, and it would be Jewish women blowing themselves up in Arab marketplaces. Do you doubt it?
[Their bravery in the face of death is unquestioned; it takes nerve to volunteer to act as a human shield, and make “Jewish-settlement” one indivisible word. That was the most astounding, courageous, and utterly despicable tactic ever invented in modern warfare, to use unarmed women and children as annexation and occupation forces, daring your opponent to fire on them while “the whole world is watching.” But it worked - and in warfare, there is no other award.]
The answer to your other point is that the rule of law must be flexible. Unimaginative, heavy-handed adherence to every bureaucratic rule and regulation merely makes you vulnerable to your more flexible, imaginative opponent. To treat the Oakland protesters as Enemies of the State™ not only sets a very, very bad precedent, but it legitimizes them. You've said all along that they're childish; fine. Treat them accordingly. How long do you think this business would last if the Oakland police sprayed them with skunk? Something fiendishly persistent, non-water-soluble and eye-watering, such that no one including their friends can stand to be downwind of them?
Finally, don't sling smear-labels around. It's rude.
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If one ignores the major and pertinent points that the Arabs started the wars and refused to stop them even after they lost them on the battlefield, and that Israel is a liberal democracy with freedom of speech and religion, while her Arab enmies are authoritarian autocracies with State-mandated suppression of both speech and religion. In short, if one ignores the vast moral differences, they are entirely alike.
Which is like saying that there was no difference between Truman's America and Stalin's Russia, so why was there a Cold War?
Turn the situation about, and it would be Jewish women blowing themselves up in Arab marketplaces. Do you doubt it?
Yes. Very much so. For one thing, we Jews don't worship and glorify death the way that the Arabs do, so we'd launch our attacks in ways that we would have a better chance to survive. For another thing, we ACCEPT defeat: if on the losing side of the 1948 War, we would have either accommodated ourselves to the conquerors or fled the region. Finally, Israel has mostly avoided deliberate attacks on enemy civilians: most of our attacks would have been against military targets.
Again, Roosevelt's America and Hitler's Germanuy fought World War II exactly alike: except for, you know, the deliberate mass murders of civilians under German control, and the policy of extinguishing national identities, and so forth. What was the real difference?
The answer to your other point is that the rule of law must be flexible. Unimaginative, heavy-handed adherence to every bureaucratic rule and regulation merely makes you vulnerable to your more flexible, imaginative opponent. To treat the Oakland protesters as Enemies of the State™ not only sets a very, very bad precedent, but it legitimizes them.
I'm not saying that we should treat them as "enemies of the State." I'm saying that we should treat them as criminals. By what logic do their actions lose their criminal status simply because they are part of a rioting mob?
You've said all along that they're childish; fine. Treat them accordingly. How long do you think this business would last if the Oakland police sprayed them with skunk? Something fiendishly persistent, non-water-soluble and eye-watering, such that no one including their friends can stand to be downwind of them?
Oh, you mean like tear gas? Or pepper spray? Both have been used, and are part of the "martyr" making process.
But then you've never explained why we should fear to arrest them and send them to jail (or prison) for appropriate terms because they might become "martyrs." Or why this fear should trump the normal enforcement of the law.
Finally, don't sling smear-labels around. It's rude.
Calling you an anti-Semite is simply descriptive. You condemn Israel, and not her enemies, and you do not give Israel any credit for her virtues or her enemies any blame for their vices. If this is not because Israel is Jewish and her enemies are not, then for what reason?
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What reason? Oh, probably something having to do with you being wrong twice over. “For another thing, we ACCEPT defeat” - if Israelis accepted defeat, the desert would have won. The story of the building of the nation of Israel, of making a modern and agriculturally pretty much self-sufficient nation (at least it was; maybe not, now) out of the most godforsaken lethal desert region imaginable is the story of how these bright, energetic, “stiff-necked people” simply refused to 'accept defeat.' Ever. Failure was not an option: The future of their nation depended on their success.
So in this, too, you are wrong: I do give credit where it's well earned. But this, too, will not matter, for I differ from you, and we both know what THAT means…
[For one thing, it means the amusement value of this otherwise pointless discussion has evaporated. You, uh, 'win.' Congrats.]
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"Accept defeat" by other human beings, with whom negotiation is possible. The frontline Arab Powers, because they have refused to accept the reality of defeat by Israel in the Arab-Israeli Wars, have destroyed their own future: they have worked themselves into a cultural mindset in which the only sort of regime truly popular to their people is Islamist, and this means that they are on a course which can lead only to world conquest or mass suicide. And world conquest is by far the more unlikely outcome, because Islamism comes with the handicap of turning half one's own population into at best unskilled labor.
Israel correctly estimated that it could use modern agricultural technology to grow crops in an arid climate, and so the desert bloomed. The Arabs incorrectly estimated that they could, by continuing to fight even after their armies were defeated, conquer Israel, and so their economies stagnated and their societies froze into sterile theocracies.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the Israelis and Arabs is that the Israelis are rational and the Arabs are irrational. This is not an accident: Jewish philosophy explicitly embraces and Arab philosophy explicitly rejects rationality -- and ideas have consequences.
By the way, even if you were right, that would be "once over," not "twice over."
So in this, too, you are wrong: I do give credit where it's well earned. But this, too, will not matter, for I differ from you, and we both know what THAT means…
Um, no, I actually have no idea what you mean by "I differ from you, and we both know what THAT means." I'm guessing that you are asserting some moral superiority, in that [?], because [?], but I have no idea what point you're trying to make or to what evidence you're adducing to make it.
Would you, or anyone else, like to explain this to me? I'm particularly curious as to what third parties reading this exchange think baron_waste is claiming, and why.
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