> It will never stop, the only solution is to play their game and try and keep legislation from being passed, and get existing laws dismissed.
"The only solution"? Not hardly.
Lampposts, rope, politicians. Some assembly required.
"The only solution"? Not hardly.
Lampposts, rope, politicians. Some assembly required.
Dude, they have 50 years of tech advantage over the pitchfork wielders. We are truly fucked if the military and police do not mutiny
If we are talking about treason - which hanging politicians from a lamp post would be - it won't be crowd control with tear gas and riot shields. It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns.
Fortunately this law will not require that level of trouble. It is so draconian that it will not pass - so long as it is made public. The only way the government can control us is through secrecy. When something is so obviously against the public interest it won't be passed if enough people fight against it. The reason the Patriot act and others stood was because they just didn't effect enough people. If you start talking about losing your internet because your son posted a YouTube clip, voters will get mad.
tear gas and shields is the OLD stuff. The new stuff hasn't been widely utilized, but it IS widely in place and police and military have been trained on it.
The purpose of these non-lethal riot control methods is to destroy the power of assembly without losing the hearts and minds of the masses.
LRAD is one of the most widely known riot control technologies that is totally TV-friendly. The TV can't even tell that it is being used - in fact unless it is used on you you don't even realize it is being used.
This can be deployed from all kinds of platforms that impersonalize it.
If the public doesn't complain about waterboarding they aren't going to complain about LRAD. And yet LRAD will totally destroy a peaceful demonstration.
You're right that we should be able to get former military and police on our side, but we better hope they mutiny and are able to steal technology.
Sometimes engineers forget not every problem has a technological solution. Picking the right out cropping of rocks to defend yourself from has more value than millions of dollars in tech if you can extract the right price from the people attacking you.
But if you are going down that road, it is just a matter of how many people you take out before they get you. I won't be getting that enraged about copyright law, ever. If they start infringing on my right to complain about the copyright law, then we're getting warmer but even then not so much. People over react to the problems we have today, when you start infringing on the average person's rights a lot more than this people like me who are generally calm and don't freak out about small infractions will start getting mad, and thats when it will boil over and either a political or violent adjustment to the direction of the country will happen.
They can hold out for a long time with their low tech, but they still take losses at a 50:1 ratio.
You have AR-15s but do you have UAVs? Do you have tanks? Do you even have nukes, for that matter, that ancient 60 year old tech?
You can't win as a collective which means you can't win. Unless you can deploy an army that will actually DEFEAT the opposing army you are talking about Hamas-style resistance. The Palestinians are not winning. They are conquered. It's already over. They are bad people to take advice from.
Your brothers, cousins, and sisters don't understand what is wrong with censoring the internet. They think it's a good thing because they're afraid of pedophiles.
The whole point (as I explained) of modern non-lethal weaponry is that it can be used to enforce bad laws without causing a public uprising. Brothers, cousins, sisters, etc think waterboarding is okay because they watch too much 24. They think anyone who flees in pain due to LRAD is a pussy cause it's just like loud music.
WTF has been going on for the last 40 years? There has been an accelerating decline in liberty since about 1970.
Your sisters, cousins, etc have proven themselves to be easily manipulated idiots.
Intellectuals have proven themselves to be spineless lovers of comfort who will complain but never put anything tangible on the line.
Besides, I think that shooting back is rarely effective in modern warfare; it's all about 'hearts and minds' these days, not about who can kill more of the other dudes.
I think Iran (and Iran's success against the USSR) is a prime example of how 'hearts and minds' is much more important than guns and bombs in modern warfare.
Isn't that what they said about the Viet Cong?
It sure is a hollow victory if your entire country and way of life is destroyed and all your descendants are horribly mutated, etc.
If winning means getting what Vietnam got, I'll take surrender and slavery.
I don't mean to troll, and perhaps I missed the tongue-in-cheek element, but this kind of corny quote means nothing. Canada did not fight a war for the "land of the free" and is doing quite fine in its slavery to the British crown, thank you.
You don't need any of this, In guerrilla warfare mechanized infantry (tanks) are really only good for expensive body armor and neither side could use nukes if they had them (you would just be bombing yourself). Utilizing either would cause to many civilian casualties and the nasty part of guerrilla warfare is that for each 1 killed their are 50 recruits that have seen family and friends die (hardcore). Once this happens you have one of three choices surrender, withdraw or genocide.
1. You can't win through pacifism because of modern anti-protestor technology.
2. You can't win through conventional warfare because you have no collective ability to project power except through the incumbent government.
3. You can't win through guerilla warfare because guerillas never win wars. They just make life really suck for everyone.
I agree that it won't get to that. but if it did, barring massive police/military mutiny, who do you think is going to win that one? If both sides have guns, I'd say it will likely be the side with more training, experience, body armour, huge ammo stock piles and armoured vehicles. Unless the majority of the police/military mutiny I don't think even the US civilian population with your ridiculous amount of guns could prevail.
I'm not worried about the police force. They have shotguns and pistols just like everybody else, and in most cases the enthusiasts have just as much skill as the police.
And the military is tiny, less than 1% of the population. About 50% of the population owns at least 1 gun, and most who own at least 1 own several. If they can barely secure Iraq, there is no way they will secure the USA.
Side note: While I agree this particular article is relevant to HN, its starting to bring out the crazy a bit. Can we have a moratorium on political articles for a day or two to cool it off?
Swat teams are only effective against small groups and individuals - they can't kill 300 million+ people.
Yes I have. That's why I didn't mention riots. I also didn't mention massed assaults on govt installations.
There are ways to lose against a modern military. Don't use them. (BTW - If you think that tanks are decisive, you need to spend some time with Marines.)
Don't you know anyone in the armed forces?
The US Marines (I assume that other countries have similar forces) practice killing tanks with individual weapons. I assume that it's nasty work, but their slogan is something like "Killing tanks is easy and fun."
Tanks have problems in cities and other places with limited visibility and mobility. They can get stuck.
Yes, tanks can blow holes in walls and they have machine guns. However, if they're not moving fast, doctrine says that they require infantry support. I assume that that's because of vulnerabilities.
Militaries "leak" in civil wars, so some of the smaller weapons will be available.
> Don't you know anyone in the armed forces?
No. I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. (That's true. You have to get that recognition if you don't want to serve in the military in Germany (and you happen to be male, healthy and educated).)
Is there a connection between not knowing anyone in the armed forces and being a pacifist?
Are "not military" Germans are generally hostile towards members of their military? How about "recognized pacifists"?
How about police?
Ah, then you're willing to lie down in front of the tanks and "not cooperate", but if that doesn't work....