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11.21.11 - 12:17 PM
On Smashing Laptops, Trashing Books, and (Badly) Losing the Moral Battle
Here's how the laptops confiscated from Zuccotti Park mysteriously ended up looking when found at New York's Sanitation Department. And the People's Library, re-constituted after the eviction, has again been destroyed by police. Wow: Bloomberg should be booked too. Then again: Here, at UC Davis and elsewhere, the perpetrators' spin crumbles and they lose the moral battle in the face of omnipresent cameras.
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Show Allthis country is speeding backwards so fast I can't keep up. It seems every advance that has been made - fought for with great difficulty by millions over decades - for the common good has been undone. Think of all those Amereichans who died for nothing, fought for nothing, struggled for nothing. It all must be done again. Absolutely fucking ridiculous. We are now approaching the early 20th Century in terms of "progress," heading swiftly back to the late 19th Century. Another decade we should be finished.
NYPD ... the folks who sodomized a Haitian with a broomstick so violently they perforated his colon.
If they people whose computers don't sue they're either young and naive or crazy. A young attorney looking to enhance her reputation might do well to consider some pro bono work and contacting the people whose computers were smashed.
Good luck with that. There are still lawsuits going on against th NYPD for their unlawful arrests during the 2004 RNC. The City has a way of dragging these things out for years. Maybe in a decade or so we will have our justice.
Unfortunately, Demonstorm (Nov 21 2011 - 11:02am) is totally right.
Social, political, and judicial regression has been the order of the day since at least the 11th of September 2001.
In this respect, Morris Berman's American trilogy is all too prescient (the trilogy is: "The Twilight of American Culture," "Dark Ages America," and, just recently, "Why America Failed").
Much pain for so little gain. I could cry me a river.
I too find this photograph horrifying. However, it is very likely NOT the result of deliberate destruction. Rather it is more likely the result of these laptop machines being crushed together with everything else in a NYC garbage truck, that is, compressed together. The eviction was grotesque and horrifying, to be sure. But this I submit is very likely not what it seems to be....
How naive'! It is exactly what it appears to be. Wake up!!!
Actually, the remarkably uniform degree and nature of the damage to the laptops strongly suggests that something syatematic, and therefore deliberate was done to them. I heard no reports that trash-packer trucks were used - they were merely piled in a roll-off container with other, mostly soft items like backpacks and sleeping bags. And even if a trash packer was used, the damage would have been more random.
People can claim it was just a trash compactor, but as an owner of many laptops over the years, and lots of experience with various materials, nobody will ever convince me that these were just randomly smashed. Unless I was forced to say it was by some goon threatening me with a billy club. (I don't want a ruptured spleen.)
A distiction without a difference.
I'm sorry, and just what law gives the NYCPD the right to steal personal property, toss it in a garbage truck, and destroy it? Some of those laptops probably cost over $1000, which somebody had to pay out of their own pocket. Do they get reimbursed by the pigs or NYC? Of course not. Can you say "totalitarianism?"
alanwmoore, Nov 21 2011 - 11:48a, is being ironic, I suppose.
This is blatant destruction of property that belonged to others!!!!!!!!!!!! You are all right -- the people ruling this country (temporarily I say) are trying to speed it backwards at lightening speed. It burns me up to know so many with little money contributed to buying these computers and tents, etc. for the people out there in the freezing cold every day!!! They had NO RIGHTS AT ALL to take property and destroy it!!!!!
Are we pissing in the wind? Did Grover Norquist drive to town on a public street this morning? Did Bloomberg deposit a public funded check this month? Are republicans going to allow tax increases on the top one percent? Or allow any type of health care for Americans? Why are young people being abused in California's schools? Is this America?
It is Amereicha. America is a dream. A dream that is over.
yes, how terrible...and how unexpected...
perhaps more terrible:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/151690/our_techno_culture_is_creating_dangerous_digital_dumps_of_e-waste
Don't worry about the E-waste. It gets shipped to India and other Third-world pestholes where the natives disassemble this toxic crap by hand for pittance wages with no protection, so they can recover the minute scraps of gold and other industrial metals to be resold on the world market.
It's da 'Capitalist Way(tm)', baby! Ship your dirty little secrets overseas to chumps who will do it for less, no matter if it cripples the once middle class at home by stealing employment and depressing real wages for the past forty years.
I had a friend years ago who got junked computers from the city (San Francisco). He took them apart at home while sitting on a couch watching the tube- in a cloud of reefer.He called himself an "urban gold-miner." He was kinda making a living doing this for a while. He was ahead of his time.
I'm surprised they were destroyed, actually.
I figured that they would probly be hacked into to see what kind of info was on them.
They did that too.
The ruling class has been fighting this battle since the invention of the printing press and before. You are shocked by this but not by disinformation campaign that stunts the young minds in the so called public school system?
Be careful Bloomberg, remember America has the right to bear arms, sooner or later if pushed far enough people will stand up in defense,
how many vets are still alive in America, the military actually belongs to us and are made up of us. Our military is not made up of billionaires!
It has often happened in other countries: when the ruling class overreaches, some elements in their military starts deserting them in droves. Even earlier today, I hear that many of the police in Madison are supporting the protesters who don't want to give up their rights as citizens.
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By the way, I'd also like to know if there is any qualitative difference between destroying laptop computers, and the Nazis burning books in the Third Reich? I really believe it is the same concept at work. Is this a nascent Fourth Reich we're seeing here?
How come that they think they can quell the protests by provoking more resentment, or is it that they are just too stupid to pick tactics that are consistent with what they say they want.
Their tactic is to push so hard that they get a violent response. Once a violent response occurs, they can then demonize the OWS movement - and all protesting against the government - as "terrorism," and fan the nationalistic, patriotic flames much like they did after 9/11. Then they can do anything they want to the protestors with very little outrage from Amereichans in general. Even if that violent response is 100% appropriate.
I'm so confused. Please help me out here.
You buy a computer made by a corporation, that has parts in it that require the military to protect and to gather. People died and lost their civil rights for those resources to make those computers.
They were assembled with cheap labor and shipped destroying the environment. The stores selling them have no labor laws, and also destroy the environment.
And now, here's where I am confused, you're protesting for what again?
Yes, you are confused.
You know something is dreadfully wrong. But you don't want to give up your techo-toys or the comfy lifestyle they entail.
This is called 'cognitive dissonance', the refusal to understand the obvious right in front of you.
You have some choices:
1) Pretend nothing is happening, go back to shopping like a good little coppertop, and take the blue pill.
2) Rant, rave, bitch, and moan online, but still provide tacit support to the system you know is killing the planet.
3) Get your shit together and START TO FIGHT BACK! Learn how to plant a garden, how to defend yourself, engage in guerilla tactics of alternative community support, and anything else that will get you out of this giant mental ward called 'Civilization(tm)'!
You pacifistic, you-can't-fight-the-system 'morally-superior' cowards piss me off. If you won't fight back, just volunteer to walk into the KBR camps.
Both the original point by queerplanet, and your response that doesn't address what he or she said, are confused. Queerplanet seems to be pushing *against* the use of computers etc by OWS, as do you, which to me is wrong-headed.
But I agree with the rest of what you are saying at least, GWW.
But the question is, should OWS eschew the use of technology provided by the agents of the 1%, even if that technology is ironically extremely helpful, perhaps even necessary to the success of the movement? There is a conundrum here, but I think to me, if the 99% use the power and the technology to bring the 1% back in line, and into serving the interests of 100% of society, then its definitely worth it.
Technology, enlisted in the service of OWS, is a good thing, imho. And the destruction of these products of science and technology is a low blow with little redeeming silver-lining.
I don't want to get pepper sprayed, shot nor go to jail so three might have to wait for a while.
A garden will have to be pretty big to feed the three additional people being born every second.
Any other ideas?
Thank you for demonstrating you are a coward, It took guts to do so.
But where EXACTLY did I say doing anything that would attract 'unwelcome Imperial attention'? If you read 'guerilla community action' as causing acts of violence, that's in your head, not mine. There are many ways to bring down the system. And many of of them involve no violence at all.
We don't have the ability to feed everyone.
Agreed.
That leaves us with reducing the population. Either we manage it, or natures does.
And baby, nature swings a mean bat.
We face a system of moral cowardice, run by human scum, parading about in the finest of business suits.
The destruction of the intellectual property of OWS reminds me of Rumsfeld's nonchalance when observing the looting and pillaging of Iraq's National Museum, location of some of humanity's most precious artifacts:
"Stuff happens"
And when I see the vaunted spires of the 1% crumble and topple over, that's exactly what I'll be saying... "Stuff happens".
Just tell yourself we had a fascist coup on 9/11/01 and it all makes sense.
Obviously,
Just like the "Abu Grave" torture policy, er, I mean: "enhanced interrogation" policy, this illegal behavior is being ordered and condoned by the top. So we can't blame the entire NYPD, imho. And just how many "vagabonds" have $1000 dollar laptops? No, these victims are members of the former middle class that Wall Street is attacking. That is US and our families. I say we respond in kind and flush all our 401K's down to cash this week. Wanna hurt Bloomberg where it hurts? Let's trash his ponzi scheme for a while. Lets turn his Bloomberg channel off, and cancel the cable subscriptions. The azzhole wants devaluation of property? Let's give him some.
When a guy can't even lay down in a park, or read a book, or cover himself against the cold, he's no longer living in America: He's living in North Korea. Maybe about 100 million of us ought to show up at bloomberg's banks and demand he vacate all personel since the taxpayers now own these banks, and we're going to convert them into housing for the people he kicked out of Zucotti Park. I expect a few lawyers could make that case; and become famous overnight.
Might start a sustainable backlash against these banksters and their insatiable greed.
TJ
Add the right against unreasonable search and seizure to the rights of free speech and free assembly, on the list of BoR rights currently being trampled on all over the country by the authorities intent on ending the OWS movement.
Exactly 48 years ago - Friday afternoon, Nov. 22, 1963: My Dad called me at work to tell me the President had been assassinated. I later read a report that a prominent congressman (Everett Dirksen?), responded to the news by blurting "We're nothing but a goddamned banana republic".
Happy anniversary.
From a comment up above I read: "Thank you for demonstrating you are a coward, It took guts to do so."
Not only is that a sentence that contradicts itself, it is damning with faint praise, and it seems to be uncalled for in this situation.
It's not a huge deal, maybe. People certainly write worse things. But it's an unnecessary, and somewhat vicious, snipe.
I come to CD to find refuge from the madness "out there" in many other Web forums. I like websites that are not dominated by sarcasm and infighting. I hope we can keep CD that way.
Ad hominem, for example, should not be tolerated here at all, for the best possible forum. I don't care to waste my eyes reading angry verbal tennis matches of "lib" versus "con" or "God" versus "No God" and other essentially futile disputes.
The people who write comments here on CD are generally very intelligent and well-informed, compared to the rest of the internet population. At least, that's how it seems to me,with my own limited perspective.
CD is one of the relatively few websites that is-- I would say progressive, or democratic, or something like that, but those words all carry unfortunate connotations- that is (relatively) very open to rational thought about social and political affairs domestically, and foreign policy and other subjects internationally.
CD is the website I read the most, and that I use as a springboard for more intensive reading on subjects introduced to me here, and I hope that it retains the good it already has, and only gets better in quality.
It's not a flashy website with dozens of blinking, talking things that come at you the minute the page loads up, and I like that.
I think one reason the "left" is mostly so self-defeating is that "leftists" tend to be moral hair-splitters, people who not only see two sides to every question but see a hundred facets to it as well.
The right political wing is so successful because the messages are brought down to the lowest common denominator, so that the greatest number of cooperating individuals will jump on board, and everyone put their shoulders to the same wheel more or less at the same time.
Even if doing so is the most stupid thing imaginable, they "get her done", as folks out here in the Midwest say.
So every moment the "Left" wastes in internal argument just reduces any chance of influencing events and policies in the real world, because while we bicker about angels dancing on the heads of pins, some real pinheads have organized, and pinheads or not, have succeeded in taking over a lot of things that sooner or later involve us all.