Sister of Python Hacker arrested for protest - His essay on protest and change | Hacker News Reader

Sister of Python Hacker arrested for protest - His essay on protest and change

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62 pointsjmtulloss58 comments

If the government is going to file charges against the protesters for "conspiracy to riot", shouldn't the people that were maced for holding a flower file charges against the government for assault? I would. The way you "beat the system" is not by standing around holding a flower -- you beat it by ruining the pepper-spraying guy's life. Once people's lives start getting ruined for hurting people exercising their right to free expression, they're going to stop doing it. (As an aside, I have some savings that I call "fuck you" money. It's so that if I'm ever arrested, I can pay a good lawyer to get the charges dropped quickly. Generally a good idea, I think.)

BTW, at the '68 DNC, the government lost its case against the protesters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven

Unfortunately, the charges against the cops didn't stick either, which is probably why things like this keep happening.

Those kids probably don't have any "fuck you" money. and as you say the charges against the cops didn't stick. Dare I generalize and say that charges against cops usually don't stick.

So what's the solution? I'm not sure, the best thing I can think of is 1 year terms for elected police chiefs. Police too hard or too soft, lose the election. Police just right, stay in office another year.

It's hard to win a case against a cop in this country. Radley Balko has chronicled the plight of many citizens who were victims of paramilitary SWAT raids for the suspicion of committing non-violent offenses. In most cases no action is taken against the cops, even if an innocent person or a non-violent offender is killed in the raid.

This can get you started: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

Even more disturbing have been cases of people being severely beat by police officers in jails. Rather than helping bring the culprits to justice, police departments rally around their own and it is rare that any charges are filed against officers. Here's one case:

http://www.theagitator.com/2006/08/02/jesse-lee-williams-jr/

(NSFW, a picture of the victim in the hospital after the beating)

If police can get away with murder in this country, then I doubt that a little pepper spray will be noticed. Government is a monopoly of power. They have it, you don't. There is no justice if your assailant has a badge.

Finally, a post on anarchism on HN that doesn't imply anarchism means "being greedy."

However, speaking as an anarchist, not all anarchists are against institutions in general. That is, all anarchists (I believe) would say they're against the State, but some anarchists include more than some of us would in that term.

I am implying that on HN "anarchist" often refers to a particular niche, anarcho-capitalism, which is mostly unconcerned with notions of cooperation, voluntaryism and humanism.

Huh? Anarcho-capitalism relies on cooperation, voluntarism, and humanism as much as any other anarchism. It just posits that respect for property, including giant consensual property constructs like capital/corporations, is the best basis for creative cooperation.

Demand curves are not democracy.

Both democracy and demand curves are means, not ends.

Hallelujah! Markets are great because they are a decentralized method for regulating resources that can adjust for changing conditions. One wants them in situations where there are too many factors and actors to be regulated by something as large and slow moving as a government. Markets aren't to be worshiped. They are a tool.

Governments and laws are good for certain things too. I would like murder and violence to be illegal. I want human rights to be a given. Democracies aren't perfect, but they do embody a mechanism for ensuring the above. Unfortunately, they also allow their constituents to turn them into non-democracies. Democracies require constant maintenance.

Who has committed more murders and violence in the past century? Random individuals/groups, or Governments? If you support nonviolence, why support an organization that threatens violence if you do not follow rules have no moral basis (ie, not "don't murder" and "don't steal") that you never agreed to follow?

Do you honestly believe that random individuals organized in some other fashion than government - say a corporation - are not just as able to murder and pillage on the same level as governments past?

If you think that governments are some sort of special organization, and that the same problems would not occur with any other power, you sir are a fool.

Voted up, but almost didn't with the reference to corporations being as evil as governments.

Haven't seen that yet, mostly due to free market influences. (There is a good reason why your neighborhood store owner is not also a flagrant lawbreaker -- it's bad for business)

But substitute "armed gangs", "the mob", "terrorist organizations", etc -- works great.

Give corporations power and an absence of government and it does happen. Look at the industrial revolution prior to workers' rights, or even look at telecom and communications monopolies today.

That law that the store owner doesn't dare break is what holds him back!

But it didn't happen. No private organization ever produced something on the scale of the gulag or the Nazi concentration camps, even in places where government was very weak.

Corporations are government-defined entities. You can't have them without governments.

Not trying to argue, but it's a non-sequitur.

The industrial revolution had corporations over-taxing the body politic. It was the natural result of taking rural agricultural ethics and putting them in a mechanistic world. It led to labor reforms. trust-busting, and labor unions. Sucked a lot, and lots of folks probably died early, but it was hardly the stuff of the holocaust. You have to remember that everybody was just figuring all this stuff out as it was happening. Once it became clear where we were headed (and that we didn't want to go there) then the government, which defines corporations, defined what they could and couldn't do in a different way. Badda bing, badda boom, your democratic republic at work.

So your theory is that no matter how people organize themselves they will always commit mass atrocities? I can agree with this on some level, there is a lot of psychological disturbance among human beings and has been throughout history.

I'm wondering if you are aware that there is ample evidence in the work of Adorno and his collegues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality), Lloyd deMause and the Institute for Psychohistory (http://www.psychohistory.com/) and Alice Miller (http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php) that political and military disasters are not linked to something intrinsic and inevitable in human nature, but rather to childhood and even prenatal experiences that can be avoided?

If you haven't, you might take a look at Lloyd deMause's book "The Emotional Life of Nations" (readable online: http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/childhod/chindex.htm), which I think traces this ability of humans to murder and pillage to it's source and provides a plan for how it can be eliminated in the future.

So your theory is that no matter how people organize themselves they will always commit mass atrocities?

Not quite, my theory is that the ability to commit atrocities is (much like I would assume your evidence would suggest) certainly evident in every being on the planet.

Mass atrocities and murder on large scales is simply a result of many people getting together, regardless of how they do so. Because it's the individual, and not the organization that is the actor, your point that "governments have murdered more people than corporations" is bunk. Given more power, any organization is capable of such crimes. For example, the Catholic Church.

Well if you ever have some time to kill, check out some of those links, they provide a way out that isn't easy, and is probably mulitgenerational.It seems pretty solid to me and would get rid of the ability to commit atrocities not by a new form of organization, but rather by curing individuals.

"Who has committed more murders and violence in the past century?"

Just googling around, looks like communists governments, by a long shot. Made Hitler look like a boy scout.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.FIG1.GIF

And it is impossible to run an economy as prosperous as ours without "abstract institutions". By rejecting such institutions, left-wing anarchists are really rejecting modernism. Some of them understand this, but not all of them.

Personally, I favor political systems which contribute to the further advancement of the human species. That's why I'm a right-wing anarchist. I have no nostalgia for tribalism.

That seems sad. I wish someone had a solution as to a viable method to effect change in government.

I think that's called an "election".

Hmm. No. That's called a "revolution".

I'm not sure I'd call that "viable", either. The vast majority of revolutions do not accomplish their goals, even if you only count the revolutions that succeeded in overthrowing an existing regime. The US War for Independence is remarkable in large part because it actually worked and the result was more freedom (for a while), rather than less.

So what is to be done? Tolerate a degenerate system of government? How can you elect officials to represent the people, when the very men and women that run for office have absolutely nothing in common with the average citizen? According to your position, maybe our founding fathers should have been more cautious.

The founding fathers didn't have anything in common with the average citizen either - if anything, they were relatively more wealthy than politicians today.

Which demonstrates that wealth isn't the problem per se.

"So what is to be done?"

I don't know. It's possible for someone to be almost completely free now, if they have enough money and are familiar with the tools required (crypto, etc). My hope is that increasing technology will prove too disruptive for government as we know it to continue to be effective at protecting its local monopolies, but it doesn't seem like a sure thing, and with higher tech comes higher numbers of existential threats (biowarfare, etc).

The cynicist in me would like to point out that pretty most every revolution accomplishes their leaders´ goals. Pretty few of them have the same goals the leaders stated before the crowds that helped them with the revolution.

Revolutions are not a very safe solution. Quite the contrary.

Is there anything simpler? I often wonder what if all the activists, Reddit/Digg readers etc, focused on a single issue at a time, collectively phoned and wrote 1000's of elected officials every day. Would that effect some change?

Is there any way to channel of the internet peoples' energy into a single goal?

Obama is running on internet money. The internet might determine the next leader of the free world.

Except we used the 2006 election to enact a large Democratic majority in Congress, and yet nothing has been done by them since the election... What say you to this?

The main result was that a lot of officials in the administration resigned. ie: Rumsfeld.

The only inherent goal of any political party is to stay in power so it isn't surprising the democrats haven't legislated any drastic change. Allowing the mess to perpetuate itself serves to further their political aspirations.

There isn't a "large" Democratic majority in Congress. The Senate is basically evenly split. The House has 35 more Democrats than Republicans, out of 435. They have only been in office since 2007. They are ~50-55 members short of a veto-proof majority.

Democrats have tried mightily with what they have. Bush vetoed [via Wikipedia]:

1. July 19, 2006: Vetoed H.R. 810, Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, a bill to ease restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Override attempt failed in House, 235-193 (286 needed).

2. May 1, 2007: Vetoed H.R. 1591, U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007. Override attempt failed in House, 222-203 (284 needed). A later version of the bill that excluded certain aspects of the initial legislation that the President disapproved of, H.R. 2206, was enacted as Pub.L. 110-28 with the President's approval.

3. June 20, 2007: Vetoed S. 5, Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007.

4. October 3, 2007: Vetoed H.R. 976, Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 ("SCHIP"). Override attempt failed in House, 273-156 (286 votes needed).

5. November 2, 2007: Vetoed H.R. 1495, Water Resources Development Act of 2007. Overridden by House, 361-54 (277 votes needed). Overridden by Senate, 79-14 (62 needed), and enacted as Pub.L. 110-114 over President's veto.

6. November 13, 2007: Vetoed H.R. 3043, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2008. Override attempt failed in House, 277-141 (279 votes needed).

7. December 12, 2007: Vetoed H.R. 3963, Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007.[18] Override attempt failed in House, 260-152 (275 votes needed).

8. December 28, 2007: Pocket Vetoed H.R. 1585, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008[19]. A later version of the bill that changed a minor provision of which the President disapproved was quickly passed by Congress (H.R. 4986) and was enacted with the President's approval as Pub.L. 110-181 on 28 January 2008.

9. March 8, 2008: Vetoed H.R. 2082, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008.[20][21] Override attempt failed in House, 225-188.

10. May 21, 2008: Vetoed H.R. 2419, 2007 U.S. Farm Bill.[22][23] Overridden by House, 316-108 (283 votes needed). Overridden by Senate, 82-13 (64 votes needed). Enacted as Pub.L. 110-234 over the President's veto. Due to a clerical error, this act was repealed by Pub.L. 110-246.

11. 18 June 2008: Vetoed H.R. 6421, 2007 U.S. Farm Bill, re-passed by Congress to correct a clerical error in HR 2419.[24] Overridden by House, 317-109 (284 votes required). Overridden by Senate, 80-14 (63 votes needed). Enacted as Pub.L. 110-246 over the President's veto.

12. July 15, 2008: Vetoed H.R. 6331, Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act.[25] Overriden by House, 383-41 (283 votes required.) Overriden by Senate, 70-26 (64 votes required). Enacted as Pub.L. 110-275 over the President's veto.

Thank you for the clarification. I had actually misspoke; I meant we had replaced a (relatively) large amount of Republicans with Democrats, as well as gained a majority in both houses. However, yes, even with majorities we can't ever get anything done because of the way the senate and vetoes were designed, regardless if you think the design is good or bad. My interests in political science classes at university have taught me to be far more cynical and pessimistic about our entire government... :(

I love how our president will veto water resource development and chant the infantile "offshore drilling" mantra when parts of our nation are experiencing very real and prolonged drought.

Well, "viable" precludes that in many cases, like most national elections in the US.

A set of half-a-dozen or so candidates goes into the primaries as potential winners. Last time they were McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton. Those were the only people who could have become president. The composition of that set of people is more-or-less outside the power of any democratic activity. The people who decide that are the only real voters.

Instead we should have a call-in show like American Idol, where any talented young American could win?

Each of those 'finalists' you mention won many elections to lower offices before becoming credible presidential candidates. That process may be long and arcane and in many ways twisted/irrational, but it's definitely democratic as well.

I'm not pretending there's a good alternative. Assigning a head of state to 300 million people is necessarily undemocratic. 1/300,000,000th of a vote? I have more effect on public life by bitching about parking meter tickets.

The real solution is moving power to smaller bodies...states, then municipalities....

But what happens then is that municipalities are going to need to coordinate their actions. They set up higher level bodies and those set up even higher level coordinating entities. You get a pyramid of layers delegating power and the entire thing becomes intransparent and corrupt. That's how the the soviet union "worked". "Soviet" actually means "workers council" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_%28council%29). To a lesser degree that's what the EU suffers from. Citizens have no way of influencing the most powerful institutions directly and therefore these institutions seem remote and aloof.

But it didn't work that way at all. Government action didn't start with the Worker's Council; it started with the Poliburo.

They liked the term 'democratic centralism', which meant that it was just like a Democracy except that you couldn't vote, but you were allowed to say anything you wanted as long as you didn't say anything negative about the state. It's very streamlined!

Of course it didn't work that way in reality, but it was meant to work that way. What I'm saying is exactly that a corrupt undemocratic top down system can be the result of a dysfunctional bottom up system that has too many layers. But I see that my post didn't make that clear at all.

Damn it! I haven't paid my parking tickets!

>The real solution is moving power to smaller bodies...states, then municipalities....

It's great that our Constitution is written that way. It's sad that Wickard v. Filburn effectively threw out our Constitution.

Not Clinton. She married someone who did, and then won one election based on name recognition.

So now the sister of a programmer being arrested at a political rally qualifies as Hacker News? The signal to noise ratio here decreases every day. sigh

No politics, please (especially not of the whiny-extremist variety).

The fact that the guy has occasionally whacked together a few lines of python doesn't make it relevant.

Why no politics?

(1) It's considered off-topic by the site guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

(2) It's political silly season -- a presidential election year -- here in the US and every other forum without strong topical guidelines is already full-up with politicized crap. Having it here, too, is redundant and dilutes the unique value proposition of this site.

(3) If "happened to a sibling of a hacker" is enough to rate a story here, everything is again on-topic.

All good points.

I wouldn't normally post something that just presents a political opinion, but in this case I felt that the story was more interesting than that. Here's a guy that wrote some software that I and hundreds of others use every day, and that's why I respect him. However, this is a reminder that there are much bigger things than software happening to real people every day, people who are just like us. These are issues we all have to deal with.

I apologize if it's not appropriate.

I used to use a lot of Ian's earlier work on webware back in the day. I found this much more interesting than the article about the guy who scrubbed a Lamborghini for 2 days straight.

I have to disagree with you on this particular story because:

1. The particular incident described is a sufficiently egregious violation of established norms to qualify as a new phenomenon.

2. Warrantless searches; trumped up charges and the willful violation of civil rights speaks directly to the suitability of the US business environment.

I'm sorry but if this is the sort of behavior we can expect from law enforcement should the republican party retain power then no business is safe in this country.

Your promising startup could be nuked because your main competitor is the nephew of the local capo of Homeland Security. And money is no protection; look to the experiences of the Jews in Europe.

I agree with you except for the warrantless searches part. I think they did indeed have a warrant, which they were able to obtain by infiltrating the RNC Welcoming Committee and getting enough evidence to get a warrant from a judge.

The standard of the comments in this thread is the best argument against politics.

Precisely

> "Hmm. No. That's called a "revolution""?

If people made that kind of silly, hand-waving comment about something technical, they'd be voted down.

>Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

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