This is shameful behavior - it is tantamount to mob rule & harassment, with the effective statement that "We strongly dislike what you're doing, so we are going to disturb your private residence and prevent you from going to work".
No person who isn't committing a serious crime deserves that whatever his/her beliefs.
As far as I can tell, it's a necessary consequence of any mention of firearms on HN, in any context. There seems little point in blaming any one participant, in any one instance, for the perennial argument over what is perhaps the most immediately, or at least the most reliably, polarizing issue ever raised on HN.
Others include Isreal / Palestine; sexism; RMS; etc. it is trivially easy to troll HN. HN does not do well at ignoring trolls or not responding to overly-enthusiastic posters. (There are some exceptions to this where a person will carefully talk through differences in opinion to try to understand or communicate a point of view but these are exceptions).
If I am getting threatened by random loonies yes - just as if I had worked for one of my previous employers in NI I would have been very careful about who I talked to and which places I went.
one of my mates is married to a DA in the USA and has had to "cheek his guns just in case some one tried to make the threat good.
Don't assume that all us Brits are fluffy little things who will have a fit of palpitations when fire arms are mentioned
I can come up with lots of reasons for why carrying a concealed weapon is more likely to be harmful than beneficial in these circumstances.
But why is it a bad idea to carry a weapon in SF? Are people stopped and frisked? Are there metal detectors everywhere? Are there pickpockets all over the place that will steal your weapon and use it against you?
It is extremely difficult to legally buy and conceal a handgun that conforms to California law. You also can't pickpocket a gun to anyone carrying it appropriately.
Try to take a gun from a cop and see what happens.
Weapon retention is an extremely stressed training point for most law enforcement agencies (even over effective shooting in many places). That's because many LEO shootings involve their service weapons that have been taken (I've seen estimates in the 8-12% range).
This is in a population that is trained in weapon retention. I've rarely met non-LEO folks who spend adequate time on the skill.
Good luck. I'd encourage this even if you are not a Google employee. You'll probably want to move out of California if you want the right to defend yourself and family though. Getting a concealed carry license there is next to impossible.
Well you asked so I'll answer but I understand that a lot of people on HackerNews may not share my same views on self defense. Also to be clear, I don't think a non-violent blockade necessitates the use of a firearm. However, I think the topic came up because protests can and do lead to a handful of rogue protestors going too far, getting too angry and attacking people.
So to answer your question in a general statement: I'm a firm believer that is my responsibility to protect my life and my family and no one else's. I also think it is naive to believe that I could never be the victim of a crime or brutal attack by someone equipped with a more effective weapon than my hands. I'd much rather have a firearm in my hand then a cell phone waiting for 911 when someone is clearly trying to inflict severe harm or death.
Fair enough; I respect your desire and right to do so. I don't think it's for everyone, though, so I asked why you wanted to encourage everyone to do it. Thanks for answering my question.
I, personally, believe that I'm statistically likely to make a situation worse or possibly hurt myself if I own a handgun. So I choose not to have one. I might choose differently at a later date, depending on where I live.
San Francisco almost never issues such licenses. If memory serves, only two people currently have CCW licenses issued by the City and County of San Francisco. Those two people who have them have serious political connections.
However, CCWs in California are state-wide licenses and many of the more rural counties are pretty liberal with giving them out. Even Sacramento is close to a "shall-issue" county. I've heard San Diego is pretty decent too.
In other words, if you live in a county where you can get a CCW, you can carry it legally in the entire state.
"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."
The trouble with the eternal firearms argument is that anti-firearms types tend to be theorists (many of whom, in my experience, have never even laid hands on a firearm, to say nothing of firing one), and pro-firearms types to be practitioners.
It's sort of like expecting a random Haskell programmer and a random PHP programmer to see eye-to-eye on anything, or indeed to be able to have a productive conversation with one another. In theory, this can occur. In practice...
Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally? If I were in the above situation I would not draw my gun with out feeling that there was a real threat to my life or property. And in that case I would rather have a gun than not have a gun.
But I see recommendations for guns all the time. I don't see recommendations for de-escalation techniques.
Perhaps this is something that gun companies could do to promote their responsible gun carry image? They could provide training programmes on conflict managemen and de-escalalation along with safe gun use?
Of course, and ericcumbee's point is well made; people who've never put any actual thought into what it's like to go armed are generally very quick to assume that those who do go armed see putting holes in things as a handy means of resolving any situation, from an argument in traffic to a panhandler begging change. (Far be it from me, of course, to speculate on any personal qualities, or lack thereof, which might be inadvertently revealed, by those who make this unwarranted assumption, in the process of doing same.)
That said, if I am effectively trapped in my home by a currently non-violent protest which has as its manifesto the sort of manifest lunacy on display in the linked article, I am going to want to be able to defend family and self with force majeure, should matters proceed beyond noisy and foolish hot-headedness into an outright attack.
> Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally?
Because they're a real live human fucking being with anger and emotion and desperation and base needs and selfish wants, not a theoretical hyper-rational philosophical strawperson.
Real live human beings are pretty classically incapable of acting rationally, and if you think otherwise, I would suggest that you have only very recently come out from under a rock.
Are you by chance familiar with the axiom that, given an audience without any other information about the parties or principles involved in a given argument, the side which presents its claims in a calm, level-headed fashion is more likely to be taken seriously than the side that's red-faced and flinging spittle?
I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.
That's not an axiom, it's just an opinion. Personally, I find passion pretty compelling to read/hear, and I won't present my side with a false posture of academic distance if that's not how I feel. Additionally, I'm not really interested in winning over the people who are more concerned with the tone of an argument than the actual facts presented.
Well, exhorting the choir is very satisfying, of course, and I can see the tactical benefit in so doing to the exclusion of any attempt to increase the size of the congregation. This does, of course, imply an abandonment of any desire to find a modus vivendi, but the impression I have is that such abandonment is more or less implicit.
I'm a former partisan of that sort of thinking, so I'm well aware of it -- from the inside, as it were. The trouble with it is that it only works on people who already substantially agree with you. When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing, and at worst it actively impairs your efforts.
Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.
> When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing
Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.
If you are not trained in self defense and how to use a gun to defend your life maybe you shouldn't be carrying one and you also shouldn't be commenting on it like you know what you are talking about.
Why do you assume a gun would be randomly taken out in a tense confrontation?
I can spin this idea as well by saying "What if a few rogue protestors were really pissed off, kicked in your front door and began to beat you with a baseball bat, wouldn't that be a great time to have some leverage to protect your life?"
Or what if you were walking your child to school and just one angry protestor twice your size followed you, became increasingly more agitated and decided to smash your head into the curb.
It's all relative to how you phrase it.
[EDIT] And apparently "hbags" found this comment really insulting for some reason and thinks I'm nuts for demonstrating an alternative way to phrase a situation... and I'm the unstable one...ok.
Don't you imagine it is easier to keep a level head in a confrontation when you are confident of your ability to defend your person, should it become necessary to do so?
Post Dunblane, all handguns are illegal in mainland UK. The only exceptions are for law enforcement/armed forces. [We'll ignore diplomatic missions using immunity/convention exceptions.]
Without getting into all the republican politics, Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of the legal system and status compared to the mainland (of Scotland, England and Wales). You cannot use an example from NI to extend to the rest of the UK.
I'll leave other commentors to discuss how sensible it is to talk about bringing guns into what seems to be a pretty hot debate on the street. One comment I read recently which has stuck with me goes along the lines of "there is no situation which resorting to violence will not make worse".
I have my CCW (Carrying of Concealed Weapon) license. In Kentucky, you must go through an instructional class before getting your weapon -- and you learn that pulling your weapon out should only happen when you're prepared to use it in a lethal manner -- otherwise the aggressor could fight you for your weapon.
You don't get a handgun as a show of force -- you get one to protect yourself from imminent harm...and some asshat blocking a bus isn't putting you in imminent harm: you're in the bus, and hopefully the bus driver has already called 911 to get the person/people who are blocking the road out of your way.
Meanwhile in another thread, people are lamenting the idea that the government can require you to get a permit to peacefully protest, and arrest you otherwise...
I don't think there should be harsh penalties for misusing public space, but I don't really trust people to be reasonable either (meaning I'm comfortable with some rules about the uses of public spaces).
I'd imagine if a bunch of google employees did something similar at the house of the person who organized this protest, it wouldn't be seen as being fair.
I mean, it's kinda like driving by your house with a camera then putting the pictures on the web. Or slurping up your wifi credentials. Good thing Google employees would never get involved in anything like that.
err do I need to "tell" you that being blockaded into my home and having flyers with threatening language abut me handed to my neighbors woudl make me feel threatened - it's perception that matters here.
You have repeated your belief that if you /feel/ threatened then you /are/ threatened. But threatened feelings are not enough to convict. Feelings are not facts.
But, let's suppose you /were/ right for a moment. What conclusions would that lead us to? If you were right and gaius (the poster above) or I felt /threatened/ by google's actions of photographing our houses and slurping our wifi credentials, would that mean that google had indeed threatened us?
After all, he /felt/ threatened. In your words, the perception of being threatened matters, right? So, if you're to be believed, google _has_ threatened /me/, because /I/ feel threatened by their taking pictures in public and slurping my wifi. If this is true, then according to you, what they have done /is/ tantamount to mob rule and harassment, and Google /is/ guilty of same, as it follows all the way back up to Bahamat's post above.
But of course this is not true. Google is not guilty of mob rule and harassment. Or do you believe that Google is guilty of mob rule and harassment?
If there is a threat, there must be evidence of a threat. Above posters and I have requested evidence. Evidence of a crime, not evidence of feelings. To back up the charge of a threat, can you articulate:
1. A statement to inflict pain, injury, damage, etc.
2. The event for which retribution is sought?
If you have those two, you have a threat. Otherwise, I'm very sorry for the feelings you feel, but the protestors have acted no worse than Google. I'm grateful my country allows us to communicate our grievances to one another.
Meanwhile, Kiev is under siege by a REAL threat, and children in Africa are starving.
Every single one of these "demonstrators" seeking to prevent people from working, harassing them, and destroying their personal property needs to seriously rethink their priorities in life.
By your logic, you should be in Africa RIGHT NOW distributing food to children instead of whining on HN. So, why are you waiting to book your tickets? Aren't you thinking about your priorities in life?
That something bad is happening somewhere else in the world doesn't mean you can't spend effort on something close to you.
It's more about perspective, not priorities. For example. I think the citizens of Detroit would probably kill to have the sort of problems that San Francisco currently has. Low unemployment, high rents/real estate prices (yes, these suck, but so does miles of blighted and unmaintained housing and a bankrupt city government) and a youthful and thriving industry would make San Francisco the envy of a lot of cities.
mm last year I almost brought a listed building and it's mentioned in pevenser (the definitive guide to uk architecture) - obviously the SF mob would have me guillotined.
My thoughts exactly. As another raised in the Midwest (and a less affluent area than Minneapolis), my mom's house would cost several million in the Bay Area, but is only middle-of-the-line middle class here. 200K max.
I thought exactly the same thing. I just looked it up on Zillow to check out the lot size, and noticed that it still had photos from the last time it was sold (in 2010). They may have done the same thing, and confused the rather overwrought decorating sensibilities of the previous owner with the Google developer.
Is this serious or supposed to be satire or something? Cause it reads like something a deranged person would write to me... Making comments about how Google employees automatically bring police, "All of Google's employees should be prevented from getting to work", etc. Yeah they do bring police.. to deal with nutjobs that decide to randomly show up at their houses and stop them from working, stop a bus in the middle of the street and cause a disruption, etc.
Just read the PDF, and it's an interesting and reasonable perspective on tech. Probably sounds blasphemous to an audience excited about investments/acquisitions of $15M, $30M and $1.54 billion (from HN's current front page), but I think techies are due for a reasonable backlash for their usual servility to power, by people concerned about their society.
With respect, you are wrong. It's neither interesting nor reasonable, and indeed is barely coherent.
Gentrification is a real problem, with inequality at it's roots. I think most people would agree with that. And I'd also agree that it's easy for some in the tech community to lose touch with the relative privilege that they often live in. But this is not a "reasonable backlash" – it's a bunch of incoherent knee-jerk harassment by people who should really be doing something better with their time.
The proper channel for dealing with housing issues is local government; for NSA issues, national government; in neither is the correct channel the harassment of individual employees of a company which may (or may not be) the cause of those issues.
A while ago I was talking to an extremely cynical person in line to inherit a british aristocratic title.
He told me something his grandfather taught him: People who are protesting against you will almost certainly disagree with you about what an "acceptable backlash" is. Specifically you will prefer ineffective protests and those that that don't inconvenience you, while they will prefer effective protests and those that are spiteful.
Gentrification is a really complex problem that is superficially bandied about. While it involves changes they are not all negative and the net impact on existing residents is very situation.
This PDF is so far from reasonable. This is a group of people that seem to be angry about anything and everything tech related - from exploitative production labor all the way through to not paying enough attention to your family. The PDF reads like an anti-technology manifesto and anti-government war cry more than anything else to me.
Your perspective on "usual servility" is underrated.
I read the flyer, too. Kind of a PITA to rotate it, but:
It's just their perspective, mostly PR-style publicl-available history of projects for that particular developr. It's worthwhile to read, to remind ourselves to be respectful of the larger scene, rather than just the dollar signs.
Still, it's hyperbolic in places. I think their view would be more persuasive if they talked about "the kind of world we want to live in" rather than leaping to "evil." It would also be more persuasive if they discussed more ways everyday people can avoid giving power to their "opponents." Mom and Pop are much more likely to starve Google by switching to DuckDuckGo than to "take down surveillance cameras."
However, I don't think it's utter crap. Both sides in this issue have some large, philosophical questions to consider.
Political theatre, for its own sake, is a very effective way of attracting press coverage and staying in the news. Has been a go-to in the radical playbook for nearly a century now.
Is this an Onion style web site or is it real? If real its utterly incoherent thinking and illogical behavior on part of the people involved. I still cannot accept its real.
Looking at their other stories/posts, I find it - I dunno what I find it, actually. It does strike me as a fight and struggle with everything. A war on life.
Personally, I'm not into the military at all, never have been. I do find that Google's connection with the military (more than just Boston Dynamics) unfortunate. I'm sure they have a reason why they are doing what they do with them, as do all the companies that work with that part of the government. It would be nice (a pipe dream I suppose) if tech companies shunned the military. Singling out this this guy - I'm not sure what good it will do.
Which ultimately leads me to think about you have to be the change you want to see. Harassing people like this is probably not going to get them to change their mind. At all. Reminds me of some documentary I watched (The Corporation maybe?) where some protestors were at an ex-Shell Oil ceo's house, doing their thing. The guy came out, offered them team and biscuits and engaged in a sit down discussion with them on his lawn. Granted, no one changed anyone's minds, but the fact they could engage in a civil conversation - both sides! - was a good thing.
As someone who's lived in SF since the early 90's and seen it go thru good and bad and ho hum times, I think all this tech worker/bus hype is misplaced. I've also lived in NYC and dated someone who completed their masters at Columbia in urban planning. While I'm not claiming to be an expert, I know a thing or two about the real reasons for skyrocketing rents and 'gentrification'. For anyone looking for a great history of NYC, check out Ken Burns 'New York'. Awesome in it's scope and presentation. It get's really interesting and relevant to today when it hits the 20th century and Robert Moses appears. (SF's version of Moses is Justin Herman)
So would I prefer the manhattanization of SF over the detroitization of SF? Absolutely. Is it that simple? Probably not. But for anyone that's been around for more than few years, you remember what the corner of 10th & Market was like before it went thru it's Twitter and redevelopment phase? This is one example and I do feel like it was a dick move on Twitter's part to cry about the tax break. But, if it means the area is cleaning up, then I figure that's better than the way it was.
Anyway, I don't feel like any of these tech protests are worth much or will amount to anything. I feel like the protesters are targeting the wrong thing and need to refocus their efforts on their local government.
Where were these uber-concerned citizens while George Bush was raping the US and Iraq? Why are they not protesting at the White House or stopping NSA employees from getting to work? But yeah, trample the rights of individual people, that will help. It's easy (and a lot less dangerous) to hate and pester a guy who makes more money than you. Forget about who's ruining the country and focus on the guy you think is responsible for you losing your rent controlled apartment. A few disingenuous trouble makers (organizers) stirring up the poor and the stupid for a cause that isn't a cause, just the distracting, headline grabbing, crusade du jour.
In all honesty, I found TFA extremely hard to read. It is almost as if the text would be random generated. Something about that style made my brain pick up parts, maybe because parts make sense while whole paragraphs make much less sense.
So, I missed the anti-surveillance state aspect. My bad.
It's a very first world "not in my backyard" movement. Righteous indignation about someone with more money encroaching on "their place" in the universe. Get used to it little hipsters, you're not the first it's ever happened to and you won't be the last.
I hope that Google is working to protect the people who work for them. It's scary that nutjobs like this are publishing personally identifiable information and all but directly encouraging mob action.
I wonder what the person did? If it were me, I'd be tempted to just pop out the back way, and take the train to work or something. I'm sure the protesters are hoping for a big confrontation.
OK, actually, if it was me I'd stay home and peek through my windows, take a bunch of pictures, and write up a blog post about it. I kinda want a group of crazies to protest outside my house, it sounds sort of exciting.
Nothing dramatic, I was working at a different company within the compound and not involved at all with the dispute. Just... nerve wracking a bit (confined road in, rows of people abiding by the law but just looking you straight in the eye)
If this guy and all of his friends would actually get off their lazy butts and get a job, they might understand the need for other people to work. We all need to make money to live, have a roof over our heads, and feed our family. Just because you don't have a job or an income doesn't mean other people shouldn't either.
That's not really a fair comment and it trivializes the issues these guys are trying to raise.
Getting a job isn't the issue; it's a complex mix of the privileged position and hard work that led to them being able to get that job, which these people cant do and the extremely obvious difference in economic status having that job grants, which includes people being evicted from their homes so that higher paying individuals can move in.
You can see how people can get upset about it.
You can't just tell them to go get jobs; that won't solve anything. All it does is make you feel better, for now.
If you want to solve the problems like this you have to actually engage with the community which is feeling disenfranchised. No one wants to, but problems like this don't just 'magically' go away.
(To be clear, I don't like what's happening here at all, but comments like yours are inflammatory and make things worse for the people on both sides)
I lived in Berkeley for 5 years, and I can totally imagine this happening. While some parts of the condemnation are crazy (2 story palace!?) I nevertheless see the kernel of truth that lies somewhere in the murky rationale of that rant.
Now, it's certainly not fair or reasonable to target a private individual like this, but I used to work in a DoD lab and I've considered many of the same issues raised by the protestors.
I think the bizarre nature of this protest reflects a widespread confusion over the best way to surface the issue of government/commercial collaboration on the topic of surveillance. On the collaboration point, the protestors are right on. Like so many Berkeley events, lucidity comes with a parade attached to it.
when you target corporations, people point out that they are complex structures and that the decisions made by them do not represent every single employee
when you target specific employees with decision-making power, people point out that the corporations are the problem and they are beholden by law and so on and so on
when you discuss that maybe the blame is on capitalism for institutionalizing antisocial behavior, you're called naive and showered with examples of the good things it's produced
there's some cognitive dissonance from detractors/businesspeople not primarily concerned with social welfare in taking one of these positions at a time and not realizing that everyone else sees them take the three in conjunction
I feel for the plight[1] these people are facing, I really do and I want to help. _BUT_ if you started showing up at my home protesting and making my family uncomfortable, that creates a different problem entirely. Anyways I'm assuming this site is fake because I can't find this being reported anywhere else... and I assume the protesters know better than to pull a stunt like this.
1. Let's be clear though, this is a first-world problem.
What they're doing is trying to make it socially unacceptable to assist the NSA/ DoD, and quite frankly it's overdue. I get the feeling that most of the criticism here against the protesters is because HN identifies with the Google employee(s), not because the protesters are wrong. It's a purely emotional reaction.
These protesters are skirting the real issue which is that they cannot afford prime SF real estate anymore. When these protesters, themselves, were uprooting the original inhabitants they did not really care but now that they are being uprooted, they suddenly are crying foul.
The criticism here against the protesters is because they are asking for free handouts rather than them actually working to earn them. Yes I understand it is not easy to be retrained and I don't have a good solution for people being uprooted.
Yet, most commenters here on HN identify with startups/capitalism and believe that creating something that the market wants is ultimately the only way to earn a living. Certainly not protesting for free handouts.
The strange thing is that the protesters would have found lots of support among Google and other Tech industry employees if they had not targeted them in the first place.
PS: Google does not assist the NSA. Google has made it categorically clear. Guardian too had to backtrack on it's claims about that.
"These protesters are skirting the real issue which is that they cannot afford prime SF real estate anymore. When these protesters, themselves, were uprooting the original inhabitants they did not really care but now that they are being uprooted, they suddenly are crying foul."
I cannot up vote or emphasize this enough. They do not want the Meatpacking District of the early 20th Century. They want the bohemian eclecticism that -they- created in the 80s and 90s when they evicted -those- families.
And now it's happening to them, and it's the most evil thing that needs to be stopped by any means necessary.
Supporting the DoD should be unacceptable? Isn't that the same situation? That someone is working for the DoD or NSA needs a job just as much as the next person, he was merely an employee for the DoD, not on top and pushing an agenda.
I doubt the individual Google engineers are the ones "assisting" the NSA -- remember the angry post[1] when one of them found out the NSA was tapping into their private fiber?
> Fuck these guys. I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to keep Google's users safe and secure from the many diverse threats Google faces.
You are making it seem like these companies had a choice in providing data to the NSA. In reality, the data were either taken without their knowledge or forcefully (i.e., serious legal repercussions if they told anyone or didn't fork it over).
Hey, I completely support the protesters. If this protest is peaceful then I'll probably just call the police. But if you do something that I perceive as an immediate physical threat to my family, the logical part of my brain shuts down and the primal part turns on.
I'm not trying to justify it. I'm just telling it like it is. You won't be able to reason with me anymore than you can reason with a mother-bear whose sees her cubs in trouble. During those exact moments in time any context about the protests and any compassion I had goes out the window. All I'm thinking about is the safety of my family and will proceed to remove the threat; one way or another. I may even regret my actions afterwards but... the actions will still occur.
I'm probably getting all riled up about nothing. For all we know this could be some kind of astroturfing or another fake conflict like the fist GoogleBus incident.... this whole thing has troll written all over it. For now I'll just pretend I never even saw this article.
Excellent. If engineers and technologists refuse to take personal political and ethical responsibility for the future they help build, they need to be reminded to do so.
Are you seriously suggesting, Citizen, that the same standard applies both to the oppressor and the oppressed? Have a care, Citizen; such regressionist attitudes court accusations of reactionism.
In what way - I agree that responding with violence would not be a good first response at some point you do have to take a stand.
Maybe the bus drivers from all the tech company could protest against this threat to their livelihood and stage a drive in and shutdown the city like the french farmers do by driving extremely slowly though the city.
What does left-wing have to do with this?, stupidity doesn't requires a political affiliation. Actually all governements in the world are left-wing by American standards.
I've never felt the need for a down vote button for a comment on Hacker News until now.
Yes, we should be ethically aware of the tools and products we build, but this is not the way to go about this! Harassing a man at his home like this is unnecessary and aggressive.
Please stop the promotion of individual harassment.
You claim that it's unnecessary and aggressive yet you do not discount its effectiveness. Therefore I'm going to discount your argument. Protest is worth it when its effective. And we're reading about it, so its done its job. Protest need not be cozy, clean, friendly, or Batemanish.
I never claim effectiveness. Reading an article about a protest and a protest causing actual change are two very different things. I don't see what job was done.
When people block Google busses, and break one window of one bus, it's inappropriate violence on par with barbarism [1].
When people peacefully protest a Google employee and try to raise awareness in his neighborhood of his activities that they disagree with, it's individual harassment.
Isn't that just lovely? Hacker News: privileged technologists setting the standards for techno-skeptical protest. Tell us what the proper way to go about it (outside the established means of the sham that is representative parliamentary democracy, of course) is, then.
"We intend to prevent you and your family from leaving your home" - by what means do these protestors feel acceptable? Verbal? Staring intimidatingly? Pushing his wife back as she crosses the property line? Punching his child? Drawing guns?
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".
I don't know how I would respond to this. If I had a family, I would be completely terrified for the safety of my kids. I guess when it comes to family its hard to not be irrational. Anyway, I guess I would stay calm and call the cops, and unfortunately think about moving.
This is getting to be a bit absurd. I understand and can sympathize with the plight of folks who feel that they are becoming economically marginalized in the region, because in many ways it is really happening. But public badgering of mid to low-level folks is not a way to gain a lot of support.
It's like damaging the lobby of a Bank of America or smashing the windows of a McDonalds -- all it does is ruin the day for the poor middle to low income folks who run the branch and does nothing to the folks who you aim to target.
The analogy between Google and McDonalds only works in regard to commercial creepiness. It does not sufficiently cover collaboration with the surveillance state's organs.
>The analogy between Google and McDonalds only works in regard to commercial creepiness. It does not sufficiently cover collaboration with the surveillance state's organs.
What??? Uhh. This guy is the surveillance state's organs. You mean he's from Oregon? No wait...
In a country where corporations seem to have more power over the government than its people, it more effective to target the corporations than the government.
Only individual persons have moral agency. The NSA is not a proper target for the expression of moral outrage because it is not a moral agent [and neither is Google or any other corporate entity]. If you call up the NSA to express moral outrage it is likely to be handled as a matter of law enforcement one way or the other though handled not in your favor is more likely. Call Google or Microsoft or Apple and your moral outrage is treated with standardized customer service protocols.
The NSA is not a proper target for expressions of moral outrage, the individual elected officials who allow, facilitate, or collaborate with its behaviors are as are those who are just following orders. The people responsible are responsible whether the context is some three letter agency or a publicly traded company. A corporation doesn't shield one from moral liability.
What's ridiculous is, they do it to themselves. If they just used their votes to get a zoning board and laws that let people build housing there wouldn't be this problem. 64% of people in SF rent. If you want lower rents, stop trying to make the city look the same in 2014 as it did in 1964.
I've noticed the same people that are crying about the gentrification are the same people crying about the new buildings killing the culture of the city. It seems like they just want to kick all the new people out and just keep the status quo.
If the status quo means having a place to live in what was your and your family's neighborhood (cultural and actual) for a long time, yours is not really an indictment.
Perhaps, but the view fails to understand what a city is and that cities change, grow and die. Cities are not monolithic static entities. They are not 'living' museums.
It's a pretty damning indictment for anyone who thought, even briefly, about exactly how that would work. How exactly will someone and their family have a place to live, in the same neighborhood? Will someone be responsible for ensuring that population doesn't grow too much? And will someone else be responsible for deciding how long "a long time" is, or what happens after said time passes? I mean, of course it would be fantastic if nice shit just fell out of the sky and could be had merely by bending down to pick it up off the ground – but that's an infantile hope and it's stupid to expect it.
This is the behavior of desperate people who have lost hope that our government functions and are motivated to action.
This seems like the natural conclusion of our government's inattentiveness to it's citizenry. Violence isn't far when folks have achieved this level of frustration.
The last line of the link makes it clear that Google isn't going to be the only target. "All of you other tech companies, all of you other developers and everyone else building the new surveillance state--We're coming for you next." Burn the witch!
I don't think people should be resorting to violence out of principle, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that "folks" who are economically marginalized should put up with this because "manners."
I just wanted to point out, it's _not just the economic marginalization_, it's the cultural mismatch that fuels so much frustration for those in the outside group.
Of course the economic stuff is easy to measure (being numbers!), but stuff like calling yourself a robot (the develop calls himself a robot in his soul), having employees wear different colored badges according to their privileges and so on are cultural differences that people don't like and feel compelled to call out.
But targeting developers is exactly backwards! Or at least it would be if development was, net, increasing the number of housing units. SF has some insane zoning laws; why aren't they a target? Or is there an implication that SF should only ever serve the interests of those that live there as-of some unspecified date in the (recent?) past? Will the police enforce the borders of the city to prevent anyone from entering or leaving? How exactly is this worker paradise supposed to work?
I doubt the protesters are going to be logging into HN to answer your reasonable questions.
If I lived in SF- i would be concerned that something major has changed. Your response describes reasonable questions in a level playing field where people have hope that the system works.
I don't think these people have hope in the system anymore. They're trying fundamentally different approaches rather than just giving up.
If they are willing to go after specific employees like this in spite of perception damages that come with the approach, they probably aren't averse to the perception damages that violence cultivates either.
Why should it matter what level they are? If its wrong to harass the low level worker its wrong to harass any level of worker at their home. If you wish to protest a business do so at their business.
Lets just hope feel the same the next time they read about some mid level banker or stock broker having people outside their homes. Amazing how even in this community we have groups who think there is a difference just because of who you work for.
> If its wrong to harass the low level worker its wrong to harass any level of worker at their home.
If we stipulate that actual harassment is illegal, I don't think the rest of your statement follows. Protesting at the home of a worker without decision-making authority is unlikely to change anything, protesting at the home of a high level executive (hypothetically--you'd never get past their security) could potentially convince them to change the way their company does business.
This is a good example of what the liberal democratic movement should be about: policing corporations. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the rest of them will never end their reprehensible behavior from lawsuits or other slaps on the wrists. Until there is a boot-on-ground movement to obstruct these corporations and their employees they will continue to act without consequence using their hoards of capital.
what negative things do you really think google are doing with their capital? if you're talking about rising house prices in san francisco making it difficult for people to get housing and apartments I understand, but do you specifically blame google and other tech companies for that? is there something else that has made you angry about this? I am genuinely curious as I personally don't see anything wrong with the companies actions and do not agree with a protest that ( I think) constitutes personal harassment. full disclosure I'm from the UK and somewhat removed from the situation so there may be news stories that have passed me by, if you think they're relevant please link them.
Agreed. It's time to obstruct these money-making corporations. We can slap their hands with lawsuits brought against them for making money, or we can shut down their greedy, wealth-building schemes. These money-loving fat cats have it coming to them and we need to stand up against them, especially since we have nothing better to do after quitting our mindless jobs at our former corporate greed houses.
Anyone who wants money should be obstructed and shut down!
Anyone who starts a new company should be seen as a money-loving greed-inducing pawn in the corporate cog, renewing their vicious cycles of greed!
Anyone who takes part in a money-making company is no better than taking part in Nazi Germany!
The issue isn't about capitalism. The issue is about the responsibility that these corporations are willfully ignoring once they have acquired copious amounts of capital. There seems to be this tendency with especially big corporations and individuals to suddenly throw their users and customers under the bus in favor of working with the government. Now the government shouldn't be engaging in this kind of solicitation to begin with, but that doesn't mean these corporations should be absolved of all guilt.
Any corporation that would rather derive its value as a government datafarm than from wealth creation has betrayed its user, customers, and capitalism.
Their employees? Certainly in all of my employment history I have never had a vote or serious decision in the direction of the company, that even goes for a non-profit school I worked for. Targeting employees is, at best, a bad idea. Who is to say that this guy didn't support them? Or others support their cause? Now they appear like kids that don't have jobs or that can otherwise afford to picket someone's house during normal work hours. When they try to go to the negotiating table I doubt they will be taken seriously with these kinds of antics. I also wonder if the actually have convinced anyone that might have been in middle or moderate to be their side of this issue?
Can someone help me understand what effect would be had if Google did exactly what these people wanted and uprooted to elsewhere? I feel like that would cause a way bigger problem than it would solve, but my intuition doesn't have a solid basis.
Like it or not these Silicon Valley types are coming in and pillaging the local economy with capital that isn't even theirs. It's a very unsustainable and disruptive environment that displaces workers, creates instability, and increases civil unrest.
Innovation and economic progress, while essential to the advancement of society, needs to be amortized to decrease these negative side effects.
"Can someone help me understand what effect would be had if Google did exactly what these people wanted and uprooted to elsewhere?"
Together with the rest of Bay Area tech? Perhaps like the collapse of the auto monopoly in Detroit, but with an even larger industry and a worse-run city (SF).
How is protesting in a residential neighborhood allowed? Did this group have a permit? Is the SF Bay area different in this regard - no permit allowed?
If you tell someone and their family that you are going to stop them from leaving their home, and there is a not unreasonable expectation of assault and or battery in that, you are going beyond the right of peaceable assembly and into the realm of false imprisonment, or kidnap.
"peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances". Is Levandowski in any meaningful sense the government, and if so what grievances is he in a position to redress?
More so because there are actually people here in this thread defending the crazy person who's trying to destroy somebody's life because they don't like the company he works for.
That article was insane. How dare he try to get actual houses built so people can live there! And those crazy tech people with their law and order, and the jobs they create in the service industry! We cannot tolerate that!
No, there aren't "people"; there is "a person", me. Just one person.
Everyone else is speculating on how the poor little "Googler"'s life is destroyed by a naive peaceful protest, derailing the issue with anti-left wing jokes, suggesting that "Googlers" carry weapons, and so on.
HN at its best: when its ideological toe is stepped on. popcorn
A group posts pictures of your house, your name, and detailed descriptions that attempt to dehumanise you and paint you as some supervillain.
Would I feel threatened and oppressed if I was the target of that? Yes. I'd probably make sure I had weapons in the house.
My lunatic meter went off time and time again while reading their flier. I would not for a second trust that there's not at least one crazy guy that decides to take things one step too far in that group.
They state that they chose to block his personal commute not merely protest at his residence. That means they chose to attempt to prevent him from leaving (since once he left he would be out of their control and may well go to work).
If you were someone that needed to go to work, and needed to drop your child somewhere on the way, and there was a large group of people outside your house with the stated intent of preventing you from doing so, you would not feel threatened? I mean sure they are peaceful while you are inside not attempting to leave, but when you try to oppose their goals by leaving, it raises the question of how dedicated they are to their goal, which I believe would make a rational person feel threatened.
If they had not made the point that the purpose of this was to restrict him from going about life then I would be much more willing to consider the view that he should not feel threatened.
So if I hang out in your front lawn and prevent you from leaving your house (in a non-violent manner) with a bunch of my friends, does that make me non-threatening and non-oppressive?
That kind of egalitarian viewpoint is alien to these protesters. They are entitled to attack this individual because he is powerful and wrong, and they are powerless and right. You're thinking "no punching" and they're thinking "punch up, not down."
I'm a marxist - certainly not aligned with any right wing libertarians. But right from the headline that article disgusts me.
Unless they have concrete proof that this specific guy have done something particularly bad (and they've not presented any), calling him out by name and with photos of his home is way over the line to begin with.
Not only is it creepy, it is deeply counterproductive and will only serve to alienate people that might otherwise be sympathetic.
What they describe as a "pompous two story palace with stone lions guarding the door" looks to me like a quite average suburban house. Yes, I get that there are people substantially worse off, but they're not getting any sympathy with crap like that.
Further, trying to dehumanise him with their descriptions of him as a "robot" and contrasting him with his child, and their use of words like "evil" ought to make everyone concerned.
This is not progressive. On the contrary, this is moronic petit bourgeois luddites staging ineffective and creepy demonstrations that will achieve nothing but play straight into the hands of their opponents.
It also shows that they fundamentally fail to understand the mechanisms they are fighting. Everyone on the other side will see what they are doing as perfectly reasonable. They are just "hacking the system" and following consequences. The moment they are described as "evil" and faced with personal demonstrations, these guys start creating enemies, when they could instead have searched for partners.
But these clowns use socialist terms while they clearly don't understand much of its basis. Marx, for example, was very clear in his agitation against the kind of moronic vilification demonstrated in this text: The typical capitalist, and those aiding him, according to Marx, is no more evil than the worker he oppresses - capitalist and worker alike for the most part are trapped in the same machine, and have little choice but to stick to their roles: A capitalist that stops exploiting labour will fail, and end up a labourer by necessity himself. Marx was not against the capitalist. He was not even against the capitalist system per se - on the contrary, he realised that for any chance of socialism to succeed, it would be _essential_ to bring about the economic development and automation required to be able to meet the needs of everyone.
In fact, socialism as an idea is a child of the industrial revolution more than anything: It arose out of the hope that the industrial revolution would bring about such wealth that poverty could finally be beaten, Marx held that the capitalist system would play out its role once production had reached such a height that poverty could be eradicated.
Socialism originated as an ideology deeply intertwined with a positive view of technology and automation as tools of liberation. To see these guys play modern day luddites and drag out socialism in the same breath just shows a staggering degree of lack of awareness of history. To see them target individuals rather than the system equally so.
My wife is from Cuba, I've witnessed first hand what "applied" marxism creates, misery and strife. Let alone places like North Korea etc.. Honest question, how do you cope with the reality vs the ideal?
Wait, do you actually think DPRK is actually communist? It reads far more like an autocracy to me.
On the other hand, look at the rest of the industrialized world. Almost every industrialized nation has socialized medicine, social insurance/welfare, etc. You're trying to characterize it as a binary when it's a lot more like capitalism in that there's a lot of latitude.
> My wife is from Cuba, I've witnessed first hand what "applied" marxism creates, misery and strife. Let alone places like North Korea etc.. Honest question, how do you cope with the reality vs the ideal?
IME, self-identified Marxists outside of countries run by Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships tend to view nominally "Marxist" Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships as having roughly the same relationship to Marxism as modern self-identified proponents of democracy outside of Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships have usually viewed nominally democratic Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships like the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" of having to democracy.
A friend of mine calls this "The Horror". It is in the very application of Marxism that the whole thing falls to pieces. I think Marx was great at analysis, however he didn't understand work or the layers of design and engineering that lies behind the means of production. Also, he was a theorist whose ideas got applied while he was still tinkering with them and pretty much all of his ideas of how to solve the problems he had identified were pretty terrible. The economic questions he posed however, have still not been satisfactorily answered.
> I've heard Marx described as having been great at diagnosis, but terrible at prescription.
Marx and Engels weren't all that bad at prescription -- a substantial portion of the 10 key concrete policies for "advanced countries" in the Communist Manifesto have been widely and successfully adopted in the modern, developed, "capitalist" world.
Lenin's rewriting of Marx's program to a very different one, with notionally the same end state and, in many cases, similar near term policy changes to be applied in very different contexts, that was supposed to work in conditions which had neither the specific problems Marx's program was designed to address nor the foundations from which Marx's program was designed to address them, hasn't worked out very well, but that's a different issue.
I appreciate the perspective of a person who identifies as Marxist.
I'm not a Marxist but I've been struggling to articulate why I believe this sort of protesting is counterproductive. For one thing, their complaints are not actionable-- they're co-opting a grab-bag of leftist, luddite terminology and the end result rounds down to a primal scream. I don't live in SF, but it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn: SF has changed irrevocably and it will never go back to what it was. I suspect they know this on some level.
A large subset of tech workers have libertarian leanings, to be sure, but there's a strong leftist/liberal bent, as well. More than a lot of other well-off folks, I'd expect tech workers to be allies. Regardless, though, they're/we're not going to consider ourselves evil just because someone says so. The incentives are simple and compelling: we get paid well for doing work we ostensibly enjoy. They want "techies" to go away because we're ruining everything but the only way to make that work at any scale is highly, highly questionable-- shit like violence and/or intimidation, in other words.
I'm sympathetic to the protesters' feeling of disenfranchisement, but it's increasingly difficult for me to remain sympathetic. The top tier tech companies can't undo the last few decades of Bay Area history. Gentrification is not a solved problem, but density seems to be one way to go. That involves compromise. My sense is that these folks feel entitled enough to claim ownership over SF such that I'd expect a rather cool response to compromise.
Why shouldn't googlers carry weapons? Everyone has a right to self-defense, and certain recent actions at least hint that googlers may be at an increased risk of being attacked. Choosing to carry a weapon is just being prudent.
The point of the protest isn't to destroy a person's life, the point of the protest is to (1) make Google's employees reluctant to continue being Google's employees and as a result (2) make Google rethink their official and unofficial policies, in order to (3) make the world a better place.
AFAIK, they haven't really hurt anybody (this time). They are just pressing the points that (they think will) hurt the most.
You'd have to be completely insane to believe #3 is in any way related to #1 and #2. I personally feel the world is a much better place (certainly Oakland is) with highly skilled employees flushing out the trash.
The people taken in by this movement are worse then insane, and they are worse than morons. They are articulate enough to be dangerous.
However, comments like the one you make here just strengthens their movement. "Trash" ? No one is trash! If you refer to criminality, know that good hearted and decent poor people are also adversely affected.
No one deserves to feel unsafe, especially in their own home. Just because they haven't literally harmed his person doesn't mean that they're acting morally.
That's not a particularly good argument, because one of the main point of people protesting the NSA surveillance (which Google is a part of) is that it makes them feel unsafe. It's all a matter of perspective.
I'm not sure how I feel about the protest in general, but I was reacting to the idea that they "haven't hurt anyone". As far as my system of morals is concerned, making someone feel unsafe is still hurting them.
Of course. The essence of the argument is whether or not threatening to maim and murder as necessary, to produce whatever result the protesters hold dear, is a morally sound tactic.
If one takes "kind of" to mean "not," then yes. Otherwise, no, the point of protest is not to threaten anything or anyone, including revolution.
Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.
Your argument suggests a certain naïveté, or else a desire to claim there is no subtext whatsoever in organizing a mob to serve as the medium of the "communication" to which you refer.
Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!"
Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?
My argument parrots the dictionary. Yours smuggles in all kinds of baggage, such using a weak definition of the word "mob" while implying the strongest and saying "surrounding" when they were likely only in front of.
Your suggestion that a subtext exists would be useful if there were a history of protestors at Google employee's houses. However, there is none beyond what you are imagining in your creative (how do you evidence your statement that they were shouting?) mind.
In fact, now that a peaceful demonstration has taken place outside a Google employee's house, a precedent has begun to form in which the subtext is that employees should NOT feel threatened by protestors. I would not have realized this myself had not you not mistakenly claimed its opposite, so thank you and have an up vote.
You talk of parroting the dictionary as though that were desirable. While a dictionary is a good and useful thing, there is much of value which is not to be found in such a book.
In particular, a dictionary concerns itself with what a given word is currently agreed upon to mean, and not with the history of the phenomenon that word might happen to denote; your apparent desire to constrain such historical consideration, to include only incidents in which a protest occurs at a Google employee's house, is quite neat, I suppose, in that it neatly sidesteps any concern over the implicit threat of violence which is part and parcel of any deployment of the tactic. But I don't find such circumscribed historiography particularly compelling.
They haven't really hurt anybody physically this time would be a more accurate way to put it. Its hard to imagine that he and his family aren't going to be up late nights worrying about what comes next. I'm truly stunned to see folks on hn defending this behavior.
I wish I were. They agree with the protesters, don't you see? And, because they feel themselves to be on the "right side of history", whatever that means, they are utterly innocent of fear that they should ever themselves awaken to find a shouting mob on their doorstep.
Of course, they're also utterly ignorant of history, or they'd know what happens, in a revolution, to people who consider themselves on the "right side of history", but are found insufficiently so by those to whom all weapons are friends. Little Dantons, all of them! -- and I'd be perfectly sanguine about the sanguinary fate to which they'd unknowingly consign themselves, did it not take such enormities to slake the thirst of the mob; one of the Terror's distinguishing characteristics, after all, is that it is always so very hard to steer.
They agree with the protesters, don't you see? And, because they feel themselves to be on the "right side of history", whatever that means,
This sounds so familiar, where have I heard it before? Seems to have a lot in common with the anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors . . .
I really can't believe people are trying to justify bullying like this. The points they're trying to smear him on are outlandish like saying he's personally responsible for NSA surveillance, or because he made an app for construction blueprints he's personnally kicking people out of their homes?
Let's pretend Google isn't causing very real problems for the poor and lower middle class in the Bay area. Let's also pretend that we can blame an inorganic "corporation", but never the individuals who design it, steer it, and totally embody it.
Right. It is important to cast this protestor out rather than try to understand their perspective. Thats the kind of response that has no consequences.
No defense is possible for the truly evil and nonviolent behavior of that sinister protestor.
Wait, what? I'm not sure which levels of sarcasm you are applying to which parts of your post. Do you think there are real negative consequences to casting out this moron?
Morons are going to find things to protest. Some address real issues, others invent issues, or build them out of poor research.
The more reasonable direct action would be to simply not use a smartphone, not use the internet (or Google Maps), and not host a website. Opt out of the whole thing. I'm not clear on how these people can justify blocking the buses and showing up at people's houses, but then organize using Google's products.
No way. The benefits of technology (and the natural resources it consumes such as airwaves and exotic materials) should not be reserved for those who kowtow to commercial interests.
A more reasonable direct action is to develop and socialize technological practices which uphold community values: DuckDuckGo, Open Street Maps, Firefox, Cyanogen, encryption, CB radio, amateur radio, GNU/Linux.
I'm saying it is MORE reasonable than showing up at someones house, not necessarily the best course of action. I agree there are other reasonable courses of action as well, as you outlined.
Well, if this isn't an incentive for Google devs to get together and make a gated community together completely cut off from other people, I don't know what is.
Not only that, it certainly won't endear this group's ideals to Googlers, while in fact they may have value.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] threadNo person who isn't committing a serious crime deserves that whatever his/her beliefs.
PPW is short hand for the Uk licence to carry a gun for personal protection - and yes there are tech companies that do have staff that do that.
Others include Isreal / Palestine; sexism; RMS; etc. it is trivially easy to troll HN. HN does not do well at ignoring trolls or not responding to overly-enthusiastic posters. (There are some exceptions to this where a person will carefully talk through differences in opinion to try to understand or communicate a point of view but these are exceptions).
one of my mates is married to a DA in the USA and has had to "cheek his guns just in case some one tried to make the threat good.
Don't assume that all us Brits are fluffy little things who will have a fit of palpitations when fire arms are mentioned
But why is it a bad idea to carry a weapon in SF? Are people stopped and frisked? Are there metal detectors everywhere? Are there pickpockets all over the place that will steal your weapon and use it against you?
Try to take a gun from a cop and see what happens.
This is in a population that is trained in weapon retention. I've rarely met non-LEO folks who spend adequate time on the skill.
How come?
So to answer your question in a general statement: I'm a firm believer that is my responsibility to protect my life and my family and no one else's. I also think it is naive to believe that I could never be the victim of a crime or brutal attack by someone equipped with a more effective weapon than my hands. I'd much rather have a firearm in my hand then a cell phone waiting for 911 when someone is clearly trying to inflict severe harm or death.
I, personally, believe that I'm statistically likely to make a situation worse or possibly hurt myself if I own a handgun. So I choose not to have one. I might choose differently at a later date, depending on where I live.
However, CCWs in California are state-wide licenses and many of the more rural counties are pretty liberal with giving them out. Even Sacramento is close to a "shall-issue" county. I've heard San Diego is pretty decent too.
In other words, if you live in a county where you can get a CCW, you can carry it legally in the entire state.
The trouble with the eternal firearms argument is that anti-firearms types tend to be theorists (many of whom, in my experience, have never even laid hands on a firearm, to say nothing of firing one), and pro-firearms types to be practitioners.
It's sort of like expecting a random Haskell programmer and a random PHP programmer to see eye-to-eye on anything, or indeed to be able to have a productive conversation with one another. In theory, this can occur. In practice...
Perhaps a gun is a useful tool in that kind of situation, but surely there's a bunch of other conflict de-escalation stuff that can be learnt first.
Perhaps this is something that gun companies could do to promote their responsible gun carry image? They could provide training programmes on conflict managemen and de-escalalation along with safe gun use?
That said, if I am effectively trapped in my home by a currently non-violent protest which has as its manifesto the sort of manifest lunacy on display in the linked article, I am going to want to be able to defend family and self with force majeure, should matters proceed beyond noisy and foolish hot-headedness into an outright attack.
Because they're a real live human fucking being with anger and emotion and desperation and base needs and selfish wants, not a theoretical hyper-rational philosophical strawperson.
Real live human beings are pretty classically incapable of acting rationally, and if you think otherwise, I would suggest that you have only very recently come out from under a rock.
I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.
(That was sarcasm. Opinions are not facts, and condescension does not signal wisdom.)
Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.
Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.
Why do you assume a gun would be randomly taken out in a tense confrontation?
I can spin this idea as well by saying "What if a few rogue protestors were really pissed off, kicked in your front door and began to beat you with a baseball bat, wouldn't that be a great time to have some leverage to protect your life?"
Or what if you were walking your child to school and just one angry protestor twice your size followed you, became increasingly more agitated and decided to smash your head into the curb.
It's all relative to how you phrase it.
[EDIT] And apparently "hbags" found this comment really insulting for some reason and thinks I'm nuts for demonstrating an alternative way to phrase a situation... and I'm the unstable one...ok.
Why the hell wouldn't it be? Because everybody's always super calm and patient in such situations?
No, because this requires clairvoyance I don't possess in order to know the other guy doesn't also have a gun.
I mean, I'd also be pretty level-headed if I knew I could explode people's heads instantly with my mind, but we don't live in that sort of universe.
Post Dunblane, all handguns are illegal in mainland UK. The only exceptions are for law enforcement/armed forces. [We'll ignore diplomatic missions using immunity/convention exceptions.]
Northern Ireland does have PPW (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kin... and, handily for this topic, an FOI response on PSNI website http://www.psni.police.uk/firearms_applications_ppw.pdf).
Without getting into all the republican politics, Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of the legal system and status compared to the mainland (of Scotland, England and Wales). You cannot use an example from NI to extend to the rest of the UK.
I'll leave other commentors to discuss how sensible it is to talk about bringing guns into what seems to be a pretty hot debate on the street. One comment I read recently which has stuck with me goes along the lines of "there is no situation which resorting to violence will not make worse".
You don't get a handgun as a show of force -- you get one to protect yourself from imminent harm...and some asshat blocking a bus isn't putting you in imminent harm: you're in the bus, and hopefully the bus driver has already called 911 to get the person/people who are blocking the road out of your way.
I don't think there should be harsh penalties for misusing public space, but I don't really trust people to be reasonable either (meaning I'm comfortable with some rules about the uses of public spaces).
I'd imagine if a bunch of google employees did something similar at the house of the person who organized this protest, it wouldn't be seen as being fair.
Can you please tell me where they threatened? I'm curious to know if they overstepped the boundaries of peaceful protest.
But, let's suppose you /were/ right for a moment. What conclusions would that lead us to? If you were right and gaius (the poster above) or I felt /threatened/ by google's actions of photographing our houses and slurping our wifi credentials, would that mean that google had indeed threatened us?
After all, he /felt/ threatened. In your words, the perception of being threatened matters, right? So, if you're to be believed, google _has_ threatened /me/, because /I/ feel threatened by their taking pictures in public and slurping my wifi. If this is true, then according to you, what they have done /is/ tantamount to mob rule and harassment, and Google /is/ guilty of same, as it follows all the way back up to Bahamat's post above.
But of course this is not true. Google is not guilty of mob rule and harassment. Or do you believe that Google is guilty of mob rule and harassment?
If there is a threat, there must be evidence of a threat. Above posters and I have requested evidence. Evidence of a crime, not evidence of feelings. To back up the charge of a threat, can you articulate:
1. A statement to inflict pain, injury, damage, etc.
2. The event for which retribution is sought?
If you have those two, you have a threat. Otherwise, I'm very sorry for the feelings you feel, but the protestors have acted no worse than Google. I'm grateful my country allows us to communicate our grievances to one another.
Every single one of these "demonstrators" seeking to prevent people from working, harassing them, and destroying their personal property needs to seriously rethink their priorities in life.
That something bad is happening somewhere else in the world doesn't mean you can't spend effort on something close to you.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fallacies+starving+africa
Given that this seems to cover almost anyone involved in telecoms, if they are successful how will they know?
Gentrification is a real problem, with inequality at it's roots. I think most people would agree with that. And I'd also agree that it's easy for some in the tech community to lose touch with the relative privilege that they often live in. But this is not a "reasonable backlash" – it's a bunch of incoherent knee-jerk harassment by people who should really be doing something better with their time.
The proper channel for dealing with housing issues is local government; for NSA issues, national government; in neither is the correct channel the harassment of individual employees of a company which may (or may not be) the cause of those issues.
He told me something his grandfather taught him: People who are protesting against you will almost certainly disagree with you about what an "acceptable backlash" is. Specifically you will prefer ineffective protests and those that that don't inconvenience you, while they will prefer effective protests and those that are spiteful.
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/22/264528139/long-a-dirty-word-ge...
I read the flyer, too. Kind of a PITA to rotate it, but:
It's just their perspective, mostly PR-style publicl-available history of projects for that particular developr. It's worthwhile to read, to remind ourselves to be respectful of the larger scene, rather than just the dollar signs.
Still, it's hyperbolic in places. I think their view would be more persuasive if they talked about "the kind of world we want to live in" rather than leaping to "evil." It would also be more persuasive if they discussed more ways everyday people can avoid giving power to their "opponents." Mom and Pop are much more likely to starve Google by switching to DuckDuckGo than to "take down surveillance cameras."
However, I don't think it's utter crap. Both sides in this issue have some large, philosophical questions to consider.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media_Center
Looking at their other stories/posts, I find it - I dunno what I find it, actually. It does strike me as a fight and struggle with everything. A war on life.
Personally, I'm not into the military at all, never have been. I do find that Google's connection with the military (more than just Boston Dynamics) unfortunate. I'm sure they have a reason why they are doing what they do with them, as do all the companies that work with that part of the government. It would be nice (a pipe dream I suppose) if tech companies shunned the military. Singling out this this guy - I'm not sure what good it will do.
Which ultimately leads me to think about you have to be the change you want to see. Harassing people like this is probably not going to get them to change their mind. At all. Reminds me of some documentary I watched (The Corporation maybe?) where some protestors were at an ex-Shell Oil ceo's house, doing their thing. The guy came out, offered them team and biscuits and engaged in a sit down discussion with them on his lawn. Granted, no one changed anyone's minds, but the fact they could engage in a civil conversation - both sides! - was a good thing.
As someone who's lived in SF since the early 90's and seen it go thru good and bad and ho hum times, I think all this tech worker/bus hype is misplaced. I've also lived in NYC and dated someone who completed their masters at Columbia in urban planning. While I'm not claiming to be an expert, I know a thing or two about the real reasons for skyrocketing rents and 'gentrification'. For anyone looking for a great history of NYC, check out Ken Burns 'New York'. Awesome in it's scope and presentation. It get's really interesting and relevant to today when it hits the 20th century and Robert Moses appears. (SF's version of Moses is Justin Herman)
So would I prefer the manhattanization of SF over the detroitization of SF? Absolutely. Is it that simple? Probably not. But for anyone that's been around for more than few years, you remember what the corner of 10th & Market was like before it went thru it's Twitter and redevelopment phase? This is one example and I do feel like it was a dick move on Twitter's part to cry about the tax break. But, if it means the area is cleaning up, then I figure that's better than the way it was.
Anyway, I don't feel like any of these tech protests are worth much or will amount to anything. I feel like the protesters are targeting the wrong thing and need to refocus their efforts on their local government.
I do not understand what SF issue is really about, but it seems to be local problem unrelated to international or security politic.
So, I missed the anti-surveillance state aspect. My bad.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_8626408
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/03/21/18487630.php
EDIT:
The same website also covered NSA protests: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/10/26/18745485.php
Probably protesting, just not in front of two-story palaces.
"Why are they not protesting at the White House"
Probably they are from time to time, or anyway in front of federal buildings.
"or stopping NSA employees from getting to work?"
I don't know--maybe because they'd have to move to Maryland?
[Edit: Just to clarify, I do think they are schmucks, just more or less consistent ones.]
OK, actually, if it was me I'd stay home and peek through my windows, take a bunch of pictures, and write up a blog post about it. I kinda want a group of crazies to protest outside my house, it sounds sort of exciting.
Getting a job isn't the issue; it's a complex mix of the privileged position and hard work that led to them being able to get that job, which these people cant do and the extremely obvious difference in economic status having that job grants, which includes people being evicted from their homes so that higher paying individuals can move in.
You can see how people can get upset about it.
You can't just tell them to go get jobs; that won't solve anything. All it does is make you feel better, for now.
If you want to solve the problems like this you have to actually engage with the community which is feeling disenfranchised. No one wants to, but problems like this don't just 'magically' go away.
(To be clear, I don't like what's happening here at all, but comments like yours are inflammatory and make things worse for the people on both sides)
I don't live in SF, but it looks to me like the problem is simply lack of new housing.
Now, it's certainly not fair or reasonable to target a private individual like this, but I used to work in a DoD lab and I've considered many of the same issues raised by the protestors.
I think the bizarre nature of this protest reflects a widespread confusion over the best way to surface the issue of government/commercial collaboration on the topic of surveillance. On the collaboration point, the protestors are right on. Like so many Berkeley events, lucidity comes with a parade attached to it.
when you target corporations, people point out that they are complex structures and that the decisions made by them do not represent every single employee
when you target specific employees with decision-making power, people point out that the corporations are the problem and they are beholden by law and so on and so on
when you discuss that maybe the blame is on capitalism for institutionalizing antisocial behavior, you're called naive and showered with examples of the good things it's produced
there's some cognitive dissonance from detractors/businesspeople not primarily concerned with social welfare in taking one of these positions at a time and not realizing that everyone else sees them take the three in conjunction
1. Let's be clear though, this is a first-world problem.
The criticism here against the protesters is because they are asking for free handouts rather than them actually working to earn them. Yes I understand it is not easy to be retrained and I don't have a good solution for people being uprooted.
Yet, most commenters here on HN identify with startups/capitalism and believe that creating something that the market wants is ultimately the only way to earn a living. Certainly not protesting for free handouts.
The strange thing is that the protesters would have found lots of support among Google and other Tech industry employees if they had not targeted them in the first place.
PS: Google does not assist the NSA. Google has made it categorically clear. Guardian too had to backtrack on it's claims about that.
I cannot up vote or emphasize this enough. They do not want the Meatpacking District of the early 20th Century. They want the bohemian eclecticism that -they- created in the 80s and 90s when they evicted -those- families.
And now it's happening to them, and it's the most evil thing that needs to be stopped by any means necessary.
> Fuck these guys. I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to keep Google's users safe and secure from the many diverse threats Google faces.
You are making it seem like these companies had a choice in providing data to the NSA. In reality, the data were either taken without their knowledge or forcefully (i.e., serious legal repercussions if they told anyone or didn't fork it over).
[1]: https://plus.google.com/108799184931623330498/posts/SfYy8xbD...
I'm probably getting all riled up about nothing. For all we know this could be some kind of astroturfing or another fake conflict like the fist GoogleBus incident.... this whole thing has troll written all over it. For now I'll just pretend I never even saw this article.
We need more of this.
Maybe the bus drivers from all the tech company could protest against this threat to their livelihood and stage a drive in and shutdown the city like the french farmers do by driving extremely slowly though the city.
Yes, we should be ethically aware of the tools and products we build, but this is not the way to go about this! Harassing a man at his home like this is unnecessary and aggressive.
Please stop the promotion of individual harassment.
When people peacefully protest a Google employee and try to raise awareness in his neighborhood of his activities that they disagree with, it's individual harassment.
Isn't that just lovely? Hacker News: privileged technologists setting the standards for techno-skeptical protest. Tell us what the proper way to go about it (outside the established means of the sham that is representative parliamentary democracy, of course) is, then.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951468
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".
I'm fairly sure that the correct approach to effecting political and ethical change is not harassing employees of tech firms in this way.
It's like damaging the lobby of a Bank of America or smashing the windows of a McDonalds -- all it does is ruin the day for the poor middle to low income folks who run the branch and does nothing to the folks who you aim to target.
What??? Uhh. This guy is the surveillance state's organs. You mean he's from Oregon? No wait...
The proper target for anger in this case is the NSA and the government which allowed this to happen.
The NSA is not a proper target for expressions of moral outrage, the individual elected officials who allow, facilitate, or collaborate with its behaviors are as are those who are just following orders. The people responsible are responsible whether the context is some three letter agency or a publicly traded company. A corporation doesn't shield one from moral liability.
This is the behavior of desperate people who have lost hope that our government functions and are motivated to action.
This seems like the natural conclusion of our government's inattentiveness to it's citizenry. Violence isn't far when folks have achieved this level of frustration.
The last line of the link makes it clear that Google isn't going to be the only target. "All of you other tech companies, all of you other developers and everyone else building the new surveillance state--We're coming for you next." Burn the witch!
I don't think people should be resorting to violence out of principle, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that "folks" who are economically marginalized should put up with this because "manners."
I just wanted to point out, it's _not just the economic marginalization_, it's the cultural mismatch that fuels so much frustration for those in the outside group.
Of course the economic stuff is easy to measure (being numbers!), but stuff like calling yourself a robot (the develop calls himself a robot in his soul), having employees wear different colored badges according to their privileges and so on are cultural differences that people don't like and feel compelled to call out.
If I lived in SF- i would be concerned that something major has changed. Your response describes reasonable questions in a level playing field where people have hope that the system works.
I don't think these people have hope in the system anymore. They're trying fundamentally different approaches rather than just giving up.
If they are willing to go after specific employees like this in spite of perception damages that come with the approach, they probably aren't averse to the perception damages that violence cultivates either.
Lets just hope feel the same the next time they read about some mid level banker or stock broker having people outside their homes. Amazing how even in this community we have groups who think there is a difference just because of who you work for.
If we stipulate that actual harassment is illegal, I don't think the rest of your statement follows. Protesting at the home of a worker without decision-making authority is unlikely to change anything, protesting at the home of a high level executive (hypothetically--you'd never get past their security) could potentially convince them to change the way their company does business.
Anyone who wants money should be obstructed and shut down!
Anyone who starts a new company should be seen as a money-loving greed-inducing pawn in the corporate cog, renewing their vicious cycles of greed!
Anyone who takes part in a money-making company is no better than taking part in Nazi Germany!
Who's with me? Who's with me??!!11oneoneone
Any corporation that would rather derive its value as a government datafarm than from wealth creation has betrayed its user, customers, and capitalism.
Innovation and economic progress, while essential to the advancement of society, needs to be amortized to decrease these negative side effects.
Together with the rest of Bay Area tech? Perhaps like the collapse of the auto monopoly in Detroit, but with an even larger industry and a worse-run city (SF).
More so because there are actually people here in this thread defending the crazy person who's trying to destroy somebody's life because they don't like the company he works for.
Everyone else is speculating on how the poor little "Googler"'s life is destroyed by a naive peaceful protest, derailing the issue with anti-left wing jokes, suggesting that "Googlers" carry weapons, and so on.
HN at its best: when its ideological toe is stepped on. popcorn
I am in no way a right winger I was coming at it form the same direction that those who fought in cable street did.
"An injury to one is an injury to all"
You might want to talk to a few people outside of your group from different ethnicity / group.
Would I feel threatened and oppressed if I was the target of that? Yes. I'd probably make sure I had weapons in the house.
My lunatic meter went off time and time again while reading their flier. I would not for a second trust that there's not at least one crazy guy that decides to take things one step too far in that group.
If you were someone that needed to go to work, and needed to drop your child somewhere on the way, and there was a large group of people outside your house with the stated intent of preventing you from doing so, you would not feel threatened? I mean sure they are peaceful while you are inside not attempting to leave, but when you try to oppose their goals by leaving, it raises the question of how dedicated they are to their goal, which I believe would make a rational person feel threatened.
If they had not made the point that the purpose of this was to restrict him from going about life then I would be much more willing to consider the view that he should not feel threatened.
Unless they have concrete proof that this specific guy have done something particularly bad (and they've not presented any), calling him out by name and with photos of his home is way over the line to begin with.
Not only is it creepy, it is deeply counterproductive and will only serve to alienate people that might otherwise be sympathetic.
What they describe as a "pompous two story palace with stone lions guarding the door" looks to me like a quite average suburban house. Yes, I get that there are people substantially worse off, but they're not getting any sympathy with crap like that.
Further, trying to dehumanise him with their descriptions of him as a "robot" and contrasting him with his child, and their use of words like "evil" ought to make everyone concerned.
This is not progressive. On the contrary, this is moronic petit bourgeois luddites staging ineffective and creepy demonstrations that will achieve nothing but play straight into the hands of their opponents.
It also shows that they fundamentally fail to understand the mechanisms they are fighting. Everyone on the other side will see what they are doing as perfectly reasonable. They are just "hacking the system" and following consequences. The moment they are described as "evil" and faced with personal demonstrations, these guys start creating enemies, when they could instead have searched for partners.
But these clowns use socialist terms while they clearly don't understand much of its basis. Marx, for example, was very clear in his agitation against the kind of moronic vilification demonstrated in this text: The typical capitalist, and those aiding him, according to Marx, is no more evil than the worker he oppresses - capitalist and worker alike for the most part are trapped in the same machine, and have little choice but to stick to their roles: A capitalist that stops exploiting labour will fail, and end up a labourer by necessity himself. Marx was not against the capitalist. He was not even against the capitalist system per se - on the contrary, he realised that for any chance of socialism to succeed, it would be _essential_ to bring about the economic development and automation required to be able to meet the needs of everyone.
In fact, socialism as an idea is a child of the industrial revolution more than anything: It arose out of the hope that the industrial revolution would bring about such wealth that poverty could finally be beaten, Marx held that the capitalist system would play out its role once production had reached such a height that poverty could be eradicated.
Socialism originated as an ideology deeply intertwined with a positive view of technology and automation as tools of liberation. To see these guys play modern day luddites and drag out socialism in the same breath just shows a staggering degree of lack of awareness of history. To see them target individuals rather than the system equally so.
On the other hand, look at the rest of the industrialized world. Almost every industrialized nation has socialized medicine, social insurance/welfare, etc. You're trying to characterize it as a binary when it's a lot more like capitalism in that there's a lot of latitude.
IME, self-identified Marxists outside of countries run by Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships tend to view nominally "Marxist" Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships as having roughly the same relationship to Marxism as modern self-identified proponents of democracy outside of Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships have usually viewed nominally democratic Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships like the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" of having to democracy.
Marx and Engels weren't all that bad at prescription -- a substantial portion of the 10 key concrete policies for "advanced countries" in the Communist Manifesto have been widely and successfully adopted in the modern, developed, "capitalist" world.
Lenin's rewriting of Marx's program to a very different one, with notionally the same end state and, in many cases, similar near term policy changes to be applied in very different contexts, that was supposed to work in conditions which had neither the specific problems Marx's program was designed to address nor the foundations from which Marx's program was designed to address them, hasn't worked out very well, but that's a different issue.
I'm not a Marxist but I've been struggling to articulate why I believe this sort of protesting is counterproductive. For one thing, their complaints are not actionable-- they're co-opting a grab-bag of leftist, luddite terminology and the end result rounds down to a primal scream. I don't live in SF, but it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn: SF has changed irrevocably and it will never go back to what it was. I suspect they know this on some level.
A large subset of tech workers have libertarian leanings, to be sure, but there's a strong leftist/liberal bent, as well. More than a lot of other well-off folks, I'd expect tech workers to be allies. Regardless, though, they're/we're not going to consider ourselves evil just because someone says so. The incentives are simple and compelling: we get paid well for doing work we ostensibly enjoy. They want "techies" to go away because we're ruining everything but the only way to make that work at any scale is highly, highly questionable-- shit like violence and/or intimidation, in other words.
I'm sympathetic to the protesters' feeling of disenfranchisement, but it's increasingly difficult for me to remain sympathetic. The top tier tech companies can't undo the last few decades of Bay Area history. Gentrification is not a solved problem, but density seems to be one way to go. That involves compromise. My sense is that these folks feel entitled enough to claim ownership over SF such that I'd expect a rather cool response to compromise.
Anyway, thanks for speaking up.
AFAIK, they haven't really hurt anybody (this time). They are just pressing the points that (they think will) hurt the most.
To what or whom does "the trash" refer in your comment?
However, comments like the one you make here just strengthens their movement. "Trash" ? No one is trash! If you refer to criminality, know that good hearted and decent poor people are also adversely affected.
Please, do not call anyone 'trash'.
Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.
Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!"
Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?
Your suggestion that a subtext exists would be useful if there were a history of protestors at Google employee's houses. However, there is none beyond what you are imagining in your creative (how do you evidence your statement that they were shouting?) mind.
In fact, now that a peaceful demonstration has taken place outside a Google employee's house, a precedent has begun to form in which the subtext is that employees should NOT feel threatened by protestors. I would not have realized this myself had not you not mistakenly claimed its opposite, so thank you and have an up vote.
In particular, a dictionary concerns itself with what a given word is currently agreed upon to mean, and not with the history of the phenomenon that word might happen to denote; your apparent desire to constrain such historical consideration, to include only incidents in which a protest occurs at a Google employee's house, is quite neat, I suppose, in that it neatly sidesteps any concern over the implicit threat of violence which is part and parcel of any deployment of the tactic. But I don't find such circumscribed historiography particularly compelling.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/read-the-8-biggest-tech-compa...
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html
http://www.zdnet.com/google-engineers-rage-at-nsa-7000022874...
http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23090/...
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/google...
The implicit threat, made explicit.
Of course, they're also utterly ignorant of history, or they'd know what happens, in a revolution, to people who consider themselves on the "right side of history", but are found insufficiently so by those to whom all weapons are friends. Little Dantons, all of them! -- and I'd be perfectly sanguine about the sanguinary fate to which they'd unknowingly consign themselves, did it not take such enormities to slake the thirst of the mob; one of the Terror's distinguishing characteristics, after all, is that it is always so very hard to steer.
This sounds so familiar, where have I heard it before? Seems to have a lot in common with the anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors . . .
Are you really defending this shit?
Plus, isn't it obvious that envy DOES have a lot to do with this?
No defense is possible for the truly evil and nonviolent behavior of that sinister protestor.
Morons are going to find things to protest. Some address real issues, others invent issues, or build them out of poor research.
It's generally a good thing to ignore the latter.
A more reasonable direct action is to develop and socialize technological practices which uphold community values: DuckDuckGo, Open Street Maps, Firefox, Cyanogen, encryption, CB radio, amateur radio, GNU/Linux.
What have the Romans ever done for us?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
Not only that, it certainly won't endear this group's ideals to Googlers, while in fact they may have value.