Please don't keep switching back to saying that what the cops did was wrong and making it seem like that's what we're in disagreement about. I'm fully in agreement with you that what they did was wrong and illegal in Virginia, and would be in a little more than half the country. In all the 24 states with stop and identify requirements, their actions would have been legal, but not in VA. I'm not arguing that what they did was correct, professional, or legal - I've never said that. This is why I asked you to consider what this guy would be like if he hadn't been arrested, to take their behavior out of the equation for just a sec.

(to be fair, if we take the extreme opposite scenario into consideration - if somebody had driven a truck full of explosives into the FBI building the day after, and the media finds out that a lone white man with a gun holster and a camera, who's on the terrorist watch list*, had been standing in full sight and filming the federal reserve and the FBI all day before, the cops would most likely get pilloried for not detaining him)

The only place thing that we disagree is on his personality, which I aver leans towards the 'tool' end of the spectrum. He can be right and a tool. He went out of his way to provoke a reaction, in what he and his peers call a "first amendment audit," and tried to make cops nervous to see if he could catch them overreacting. That kind of behavior is what drives the implementation of harsher anti-citizen legislation.

*I doubt he's actually a terrorist; he's just on the watch list.

Maybe it's easier to see why some people think he's a tool if you imagine that he hadn't been arrested. Let's say that this was a day before his action, and he tells you that he's going out to the FBI to film the building, all entrances, and the people coming and going. He tells you that he is doping this to test their reaction, and he expects the cops to interact with him, but that he won't say a single word to them until / unless they overstep their boundaries.

You would agree with him at that point, I assume, that what he's planning is legal, but wouldn't you also have a sense that maybe he was being a bit unreasonably provocative? That that's the 'tool' aspect of his perfectly legal action?

I guess this is where we'll just have to end up differing - I don't respect the system enough to go out of my way to fight every single battle I possibly can, and I don't necessarily admire those who do. I wholeheartedly believe that every citizen has a responsibility to pick their battles carefully or we'll never get anywhere, and I don't believe this was a well-chosen battle.

That said, I entirely agree that the cops here are more at fault, no question. They are in the wrong morally and professionally and they're being unreasonable tools - the guy with the camera is just being an unreasonable tool.

If you're willing to make (reasonable) allowances for circumstance, well, then we're just haggling over the price, as Lord Beaverbrook is said to have said. There are all kinds of technical rights available to me that I never choose to exercise, and pretending to be a mime in front of a police officer is one of them. That's not because I'm a principled guy - quite the opposite, I just think it would always be more practical to talk to the cop, even if I'm allowed not to, so for me there aren't any good circumstances for that. I recognize that I have the blithe security of the privileged - I would show my ID to anyone who asks for it, and I realize that it wouldn't be the same for a harassed minority, or an undocumented immigrant.

Also, I think it's a very counterproductive view to see legally allowed behavior as == societally accepted or constructive behavior. That kind of thinking - that every behavior right up unto the very breaking point of the law (but not beyond that point) is 'good' (or heroic) - presupposes unrealistically good and detailed and up-to-date laws. In general I find that laws are much more broad and roughly hewn than that - just because we don't think it's principally or practically appropriate to arrest somebody for doing X, it might still never be appropriate to actually do X in reality.

I guess the toolishness would have been more evident if this guy would have been one of those guys who go into family restaurants while brandishing AR-15's, in open carry states? Those guys are exercising rights that people in some sense fought and died to be able to establish, and they're acting within their legal rights... but they're just such fucking assholes. Maybe you take a stand on principle and call those guys heroes too; if so I'd admire your consistency but still disagree.

Sorry for the later reply, I never check my profile... I just thought you would want to reward these guys by giving them views, since you agree with the message they're trying to convey with the video? I mean... you seem to agree with the message they're trying to convey, ie calling attention to the implicit arrogance and privilege in many of charity-video, so it seemed it would be sensible to reward them, I thought.

What 'why'? The sounds for yes and no are among the most elided and simplified in any language - they're replaced by all kinds of noises ('mm', 'yup', 'uh-huh', 'uh', 'yeah,' etc - not to mention nods, headshakes, or shrugs) and they still make perfect sense. They're some of the most basic and common grunts we want to make daily, and when we're not being formal we shorten them as much as possible.

Wait what? How did this get top sifted - where's the appeal for a non-Swede in all this? Is the Sift just a Swedish cabal?

Also, yeah, this is to some extent used throughout the country but it pretty much comes from Norrland (northern Sweden, as the name implies). A real Norrlänning should ideally be able to go >90 days without saying a single word to another human being, which is why this noise comes in handy.

Aw man, I can't eat sushi without being an unbearable douche? Guess I'M DOING IT WRONG

Hybrid, don't be ridiculous. It would be illegal for Sweden to extradite him to the US. It would be political suicide for any Swedish politician or authority to be anywhere near involved an extradition to a country that practices the death penalty. Barbarians.
(my bad for profile replying - I don't discuss much on the sift)

In reply to this comment by Hybrid:
I don't think anybody is in any doubt that that is just a way to get him extradited to the US easily. Once he's in Sweden, it's pretty much a done deal. It has always been assumed that the sexual assualt charges are fabricated, to simply get him on Swedish soil.

So basically, this is absolutely about the Wikileaks side of things.>> ^Fantomas:

@dag & @Hybrid, I'm sure you're enjoying the debate, but what is happening in the UK is not directly about Wikileaks but extradition to Sweden to answer sexual assault charges.

Man, that's a lot of words for a teenager rediscovering l'art pour l'art and trying to apply it to intellectual fast food youtube videos.