I think the lesson to take away from this is "Keep Your Head Down". I have some respect for a number of libertarian ideas and I would never defend the treatment of Sonne by the police and State. Nor would I agree with the authoritarian comments made on the article that he somehow deserves the treatment that he is getting. But if someone attacks a beehive and then is stung, it seems like they should have known what might happen.
Sonne's actions of filming the security measures and his belief that this was an effective method of action were very naive. There are a number of reasons why.
To begin with, the G8 (rebranded as the G20) has long been protested and the police response can be brutal. A protestor, Carlo Giuliani, was shot and killed by police at the 27th G8 summit (the police were surprisingly found not responsible). A bystander, Ian Tomlinson, was beaten to death by riot police at the meeting of the group in London. The Miami Model is being expanded and police are becoming militarised, with Long Range Acoustic Devices used on protesters in the United States http://youtu.be/QSMyY3_dmrM and similar pain rays http://youtu.be/dmuyLIrSjxI tested on protestors in Iraq -- when these devices and Miami Model tactics are the routine at summits and simple protests, it is foolish to talk about "civil liberties" and "civil rights" and "the Constitution".
Consider the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, occurring nine months before the Toronto summit where Sonne had trouble. At Pittsburgh, military police make snatch-and-grab arrests - http://youtu.be/G8CNa_viKg0 . Peaceful people are denied the right to assemble - http://youtu.be/etv8YEqaWgA and marches are deemed "unlawful" - http://youtu.be/5k0Y7_5a5d0
To see this atmosphere and then 9 months later to attempt to challenge these same authoritarians by filming them, purposely provoking them, and having them ruin your life and then being surprised by this is as naive as the college kids who chant "Let him go!" (in that last video above) as police drag away their fellow marcher. Police do as they please, and they are supported by their district attorneys and courts. Get in their way or challenge their authority in any way and enjoy the inevitable.
Filming a fence does nothing to the agenda of the G20 and even if you are only protesting the spending of the city of Toronto, it likewise does nothing. Peaceful assemblies are mocked, derided, and ignored by the politicians and bureaucrats who make up the Department of Homeland Security and the City of Toronto. And those protestors who employ property destruction? Breaking the window of a Starbucks does nothing to the G20 and it does nothing to Starbucks who makes up the cost of the window in less than one second of worldwide sales. Burning a Toronto police car? The city could care less as they will simply send the bill to the taxpayer (you and your neighbors).
Opposing these people and their secuirty apparatus -whether by peacefully chanting feel good slogans from the Sixties or by "exercising" and flexing your "civil liberties" and natural rights by filming a fence- is futile. Additionally, they will not hesitate to ruin your life, nor feel any remorse for someone who opposed them.
I don't think HN readers, particularly those reading this story, need to be advised, yet again, to just give up and live with their dysfunctional and corrupt legal system.
People will "get in the way", regardless of the danger. Some will protest because it's the only way they can sleep at night. Others will be dragged into the fight by circumstance or just find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Whoa, whoa - I actually agree with stuff you say, but you do yourself serious discredit by saying Ian Tomlinson was 'beaten to death by riot police' as if he was a protester somehow set upon by multiple officers with truncheons until he passed away. The guy was a drunken bystander, not a protester, and was hit on the knee (by an arsehole, yes, though one that had been on duty since 5am in a 14 hour shift) before being pushed out of the way and falling to the ground. Swearing, he got back up, walked off for 60m and collapsed of internal bleeding from where his elbow (which he fell on) had bumped his cirrhotic liver! His death has more to do with biological misfortune (not all of it cosmic, since the liver cirrhosis came from his serious alcoholism) than the sort of brutality associated with 'beatings to death' - to my mind, at least.
Aye, but the idea that our authorities can assault someone who is doing nothing wrong is a pretty fucked up thing. It'll be interesting to see what repercussions the inquest has.
'Keep Your Head Down' and 'Do not get in their way', are I realise, perhaps not the optimistic slogans people like to hear. I consider myself a geek and based on my own experience and also discussions with other geeky people, I think geeks and hackers and generally creators have a difficulty accepting what the state is doing based on two key traits of (many) geeks: idealism and belief in rationality (perhaps these attributes contributed to Sonne's behavior). The world, of course, as far as its political organization and practices go, does not operate based on science, rationality, or fair play. If anything, you might best understand the government's actions by considering individuals' psychology, and how those individuals will behave when given power over others.
What you see in Toronto, and in Sonne's case, is part of a never-ending conflict between individuals with respect for liberty and individuals with a need for authority. Authoritarians and libertarians have been clashing as long as humans have existed. A spoiler: the authoritarians win.
Consider this passage from Bertrand Russell:
"I am naturally pugnacious, and am only restrained (when I am restrained) by a realization of the tragedy of human existence, and the absurdity of spending our little moment in strife and heat. That I, a funny little gesticulating animal on two legs, should stand beneath the stars and declaim in a passion about my rights—it seems so laughable, so out of all proportion. Much better, like Archimedes, to be killed because of absorption in eternal things... There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the ‘intellectual love of God.’ Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle."
A soldier was insulted when Archimedes insisted he finish working on his math problem before obeying the soldier and meeting with a general, so the soldier killed him. Today, while immediate techne are different, those two psychologies still exist. And while the soldiers might not kill you, their apparatus will not hesitate to imprison you and ruin your life in other ways (or in the case of Giuliani and Tomlinson, will indeed kill you). And so, as Russell points out, better to spend your limited days on eternal things, like Archimedes, then to fall into their game and be distracted by petty struggle.
Hunter S. Thompson summarises the protesters of the 1960s:
"The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. There had to be a whole new scene, they said, and the only way to do it was to make the big move — either figuratively or literally — from Berkeley to the Haight-Ashbury, from pragmatism to mysticism, from politics to dope... The thrust is no longer for "change" or "progress" or "revolution," but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been."
As Gavin McInnes says "Boomers, who are masters at glorifying their past, insist they stopped a war, but we all know it was Kissinger’s relentless bombing that ended it." Protest does nothing. The success of the hippies was not their conflict with authoritarians (our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates how they won and always will win) -- that was a complete failure. The success and value of the hippies was their ability to create autonomous zones and safe enclaves from which they could explore personal growth and become, as Russell advises, absorbed in eternal things.
Bollocks to the idea that the authoritarians always win. Look at the French revolution, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, the recent Arab uprisings...there are so many, many examples in history where the authoritarians have been crushed by those seeking freedom. We just have to step up our game.
Furthermore, I see that as a fairly selfish attitude. Whilst I might have the ability to "escape", others might not, so I see it as my duty to fight for the freedoms of others to make that choice.
"The revolutionaries of any decade will become the reactionaries of the next decade, if they do not change their nervous system, because the world around them is changing. He or she who stands still in a moving, racing, accelerating age, moves backward." -/Prometheus Rising/, Robert Anton Wilson.
They do always win. Consider France, India, South Africa, and Egypt. All of the examples you gave are of authoritarian states being replaced by authoritarian states. France, Egypt, India and likely South Africa would all be just as likely to trod on an individual who was opposing their security apparatus, especially when said security apparatus is taking orders from the visiting G8.
As far as you feeling guilty about being "selfish", that is your issue. You need to get over the idea that the world owes you something, and likewise that you owe the world something (apart from perhaps fair play and non-aggression - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle )
Well, then we have to keep revolting. I see myself as owing the world something, because my skills and abilities could help others. I am so lucky to have them, and I can pay it back by paying it forward. If everyone had that attitude, the world would be a better place.
Sonne's actions of filming the security measures and his belief that this was an effective method of action were very naive. There are a number of reasons why.
To begin with, the G8 (rebranded as the G20) has long been protested and the police response can be brutal. A protestor, Carlo Giuliani, was shot and killed by police at the 27th G8 summit (the police were surprisingly found not responsible). A bystander, Ian Tomlinson, was beaten to death by riot police at the meeting of the group in London. The Miami Model is being expanded and police are becoming militarised, with Long Range Acoustic Devices used on protesters in the United States http://youtu.be/QSMyY3_dmrM and similar pain rays http://youtu.be/dmuyLIrSjxI tested on protestors in Iraq -- when these devices and Miami Model tactics are the routine at summits and simple protests, it is foolish to talk about "civil liberties" and "civil rights" and "the Constitution".
Consider the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, occurring nine months before the Toronto summit where Sonne had trouble. At Pittsburgh, military police make snatch-and-grab arrests - http://youtu.be/G8CNa_viKg0 . Peaceful people are denied the right to assemble - http://youtu.be/etv8YEqaWgA and marches are deemed "unlawful" - http://youtu.be/5k0Y7_5a5d0
To see this atmosphere and then 9 months later to attempt to challenge these same authoritarians by filming them, purposely provoking them, and having them ruin your life and then being surprised by this is as naive as the college kids who chant "Let him go!" (in that last video above) as police drag away their fellow marcher. Police do as they please, and they are supported by their district attorneys and courts. Get in their way or challenge their authority in any way and enjoy the inevitable.
Filming a fence does nothing to the agenda of the G20 and even if you are only protesting the spending of the city of Toronto, it likewise does nothing. Peaceful assemblies are mocked, derided, and ignored by the politicians and bureaucrats who make up the Department of Homeland Security and the City of Toronto. And those protestors who employ property destruction? Breaking the window of a Starbucks does nothing to the G20 and it does nothing to Starbucks who makes up the cost of the window in less than one second of worldwide sales. Burning a Toronto police car? The city could care less as they will simply send the bill to the taxpayer (you and your neighbors).
Opposing these people and their secuirty apparatus -whether by peacefully chanting feel good slogans from the Sixties or by "exercising" and flexing your "civil liberties" and natural rights by filming a fence- is futile. Additionally, they will not hesitate to ruin your life, nor feel any remorse for someone who opposed them.
Do not get in their way.