I could do without the "if this were Nazi Germany" comments but in principle they are right and have good cause for complaint. People don't understand the anger, we've got to control that best we can and talk to them in terms they'll understand. We've got so much to work with, they've surveilled groups ranging from the Amish to Greenpeace to church groups for daring to exercise freedom of speech and have at times been caught posing as protesters while trying to provoke illegal actions to give the cops something to respond to.

All we have to do is put the facts in front of people in a way that doesn't offer them the excuse to look away, the anger and the choice of language such as Nazi I'm afraid often does offer them that excuse.

Oh noes! They're filming people without subterfuge in a public place! Mass genocide and death camps must be right around the corner!

Contrived and unnecessary connection between rioting, police action and Nazi Germany? Sure.

Unsettling that attending what appears to be a peaceful protest is enough to be filmed on permanent record by the police? Sure.

Sorry Fed, but I hate this stupid bitch and people like her. You want to know why they take time to capture details? Because when someone covers their face it screams "I'm about to do something illegal, and I don't want you knowing who I am."

And "Collecting information"? WTF is that? All they are doing is videotaping for evidence. If you have nothing to hide, if you've done nothing wrong, and won't do anything wrong, then don't cover your face.

And I love how half of these "dissenters" aren't even old enough to have their balls drop.

Oh yeah. Nice and peaceful demonstration.
There's people silently flipping the cops off, and people screaming "Fuck you, ass hole"

Oh, but covering your face is on;y to protect you against the fascist pigs, not because you may break the law.

And I love how no one here had to invoke Godwin. This stupid bitch did it for us in the first minute of the video.

ABUSE OF POWER?!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK? All they're doing is videotaping!!!!!! Ahhhhh!

AHHHGGG!!!! Baseball bats? Please tell me this is a fucking joke that's missing a * comedy tag!
"It's a police state! All we're trying to do is peacefully protest!...with swearing... and fingers... and baseball bats..."

If you have nothing to hide, if you've done nothing wrong, and won't do anything wrong, then don't cover your face.

The same argument could have been used against the founding fathers as they published the Federalist Papers anonymously.

TORTURE?!?! CHEMICAL WEAPONS!?!?! POTENTIAL TO KILL PEOPLE!??! It's just fucking pepper spray!

Here's the best part: "A 'Shoot the pigs' productions." Yeah, that screams "peaceful"

Except that the founding fathers had to hide themselves because they were indeed breaking the laws set by the British government. They were considered to be traitors.

haha, I see you enjoyed this one MG!

It's just an alternative look at a situation we see often, thought I would share it, you are under no obligation to agree with it...but again turns out you got plenty of entertainment out of it.

What you voted it down!

Haha - Yes, I thoroughly "enjoyed" it.

MG:

Do you seriously have no problem with arbitrary use of force by the state against its citizens? What about right to assemble, or right to be secure in person+effects? Do these tenets of american democracy not matter when the govermnent does not want them to?

P.S. use [edit] much?

Oh, normally I only edit my comments. But I just felt like typing them as I watched the video.

On to the main point: I have no problem with the use of force when it's justified. In this case it was. I very much support the right to be secure in person and property. The right to assemble is one of the most important rights we have. The problem here is that they were not peaceful. Peaceful people do not swear and yell at police officers. Peaceful people do not feel the need to cover their faces. Peaceful people do what they are told by of officers of the law, unless it is blatantly unconstitutional.

And this wasn't the "State." It was the local police force. People always seem to tie local P.D. with some higher form of government. Why?

The PD is empowered by the force of law, they are an extension of the government, their power derives from no other source.

Speech of an "offensive" manner is not violence, it is also constitutionally protected. In the US we all have the right to assemble anywhere we want in public and tell anybody we feel like to go fuck themselves (even the VP agrees), the state, and its empowered representatives are constitutionally barred from interfering.

As for "Peaceful people do what they are told by of officers of the law, unless it is blatantly unconstitutional." I think that is exactly the point, the right to assemble on public property is constitutionally protected, being told by representatives of the government "you can't assemble here, under penalty of violent assault" is a violation of that right.

Right, but one right only goes so far until exercising it breaks a law. They were disturbing the peace, so they were asked to move back.

they were disturbing the politicians they were protesting.

You seem the be reading "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." to say that we can protest, as long as we are not heard, we can petition, as long as it is nobody notices. "peaceably" dose not mean silently, it means non-violently.

The erecting of a barricade to contain protest, and the application of laws against "disturbing the peace"(different definition then the peace in peaceably) to protected speech are in themselves abridgments of constitutionally protected rights. The PD was acting illegally before they started assaulting people.

Let us assume, for a moment, that somebody(other then the police) did break a law, even though we have no evidence to suggest that this in fact took place. In that case that person is subject to the rule of law, and can, subject to due process, be temporarily denied their right to freely assemble by being arrested. The person standing next to them, on the other hand, may not. Assaulting a crowd on the premise that one of them has broken a law violates the rights of everyone else in the crowd, it turns the officers into criminals, and the protesters into victims of a crime.

Of course "peaceably" is not suppose to be silent or even quiet! But it does mean not yelling obscenities. The barriers were put up so that the politicians and hotel workers could also be secure in their persons and things.

If I saw an unruly crowd like that walking toward a building with their faces covered, I would immediately think something or someone is not safe.

The barriers were put up so that the politicians and hotel workers could also be secure in their persons and things.

This is called prior restraint, it's unconstitutional. If the protesters entered the hotel , they could be arrested for trespass. Since they were not in the hotel they posed no clear threat of violence to people inside.

If I saw an unruly crowd like that walking toward a building with their faces covered, I would immediately think something or someone is not safe.

The legal test is clear and present danger, which a group standing still behind barricades, obviously does not pose. Lacking that, or an actual crime observed by an officer, these protesters are fully within their rights, no matter what they wear, or how offensive their speech, or if they walk where the PD does not want them to.

Yup. You're right.

Some of the content is unsettling and may be important to see; I was about to vote it up, but her melodrama (ie., they're-torturing-babies-with-chemical-weapons) and Godwinisms got to me. Novote.

MarineGunrock: "If you have nothing to hide, if you've done nothing wrong, and won't do anything wrong, then don't cover your face."

Is your house made of glass so everyone in your neighborhood can see you? No? Then what do you have to hide?

Maybe I don't want everyone to see me fucking your sister.

But really, that analogy makes absolutely no sense.

Maybe I want everyone to see you fuck my sister! And, yes, that analogy makes sense - I will concede not perfect sense.

calvados:

I agree about the godwin problem, they could have made a much more effective rhetorical piece if they had used news reel footage from Mussolini or Stalin, as it is not as emotionally charged. The contention of police state/facist tactics is not unfounded, but could have been packaged better.

As for they're-torturing-babies-with-chemical-weapons:

I would like to note that OC spray/gas is illegal to use in war, it is barred by international law, and could get you brought up on war crimes charges if you used it against the citizens or military of another country, it also has, in fact, killed people when used for crowd control in the manner shown in the video.

While we tend to talk about pepper spray as a benign method of self defense I can assure you I would much rather be punched full-force in the face (clearly assault/battery) then be sprayed with pepper spray. If the PD walked in and started swinging at people would we as a society be so cavalier about dismissing it?

Yeah, I'm gonna need you to cite some references there, dgandhi, for two reasons: 1)I'd rather get gassed than shot, and two (*gasp, here it comes again, raven!) we brought gallons and gallons of it with us when we went to Iraq.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it seems a little far-fetched to me that it would be barred by international law. It's pepper juice.

@dgandhi: it wasn't my intention to dismiss or trivialize the use of pepper spray -- use of OC is not to be taken lightly and the footage of the police apparently calmly strategizing to use it to push back the crowd was fairly disturbing. I guess I wasn't clear, but I was trying to point up the narrator's theatrical tone and rhetoric, which is what made me novote.

I'm pretty sure I'd also prefer to be clocked in the face rather than get a dose of OC.

The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 states "Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare", but does allow "law enforcement including domestic riot control."

CS and OC gas/spray are classified as RCAs in the CWC. While they are not in the same ballpark as Serin, it's still illegal. Of course I suppose you could claim a loophole while working riot control "under the direction" of the local government in Iraq, that not technically being a use in "war".

Ah, thanks for the info! As a matter of fact, the O.C. that we brought was stored in a container full of other riot gear, as we had riot control training. (Fun stuff, btw!)

MG, I guarantee you could could be killed by a cop with a can of OC. Or OC/CS or the other variants they might have been using. Sure it might be a little more extreme and used "inappropriately" but I guarantee you would be dead. Ok, maybe two cans. But you would be snuffed out. So shut it. And yes, infants can die from a little bit of OC.

Sorry I was a little late to the party.

[hmm.. profile reply is broked...]

Sorry, *dead

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