Google shuttle bus vandalized in Oakland

[alp227]

Source: Oakland Tribune

OAKLAND -- A window was smashed and tires were slashed after a group of protesters surrounded and temporarily blocked corporate shuttle buses for tech workers Friday, according to a spokesman with an industry group.

Rufus Jeffris with the Bay Area Council said Twitter posts and photos corroborated reports by Google employees of a shattered window on a bus that was picking up the tech workers at Seventh and Adeline streets near the West Oakland BART Station. Oakland police, however, said they had not received any complaint related to vandalism.

A flier posted to Twitter by a Google employee centered on the issue of working-class residents being displaced by tech workers as rents rise, a common theme of recent protests centered around employee busses run by Google, Apple and other big tech firms.

No one was arrested.

Read more: http://www.insidebayarea.com/crime-courts/ci_24769355/google-shuttle-bus-vandalized-oakland

[2banon]

1. pisses me off when vandalism is used to get the point across.

I'm generally quick to suspect police infiltrators, but it happens that there exist people who seriously self identify as black block "anarchists" - stressing to say that I don't know if this is the case in todays event - it's primarily why I avoided getting involved with the Oakland Occupy demos.

Not only is this kind of behavior completely egregious, it is completely self defeating. But there's no reasoning with people bent on violence and destruction.

[jtuck004]

2. "But there's no reasoning with people bent on violence and destruction." < You mean like Bankers

foreclosing on over 5 million families after destroying the economy, stealing the money, and costing many the jobs they needed to live?

Or is it different because they don't just stop at breaking a window, and instead break entire lives?

Fuck Google and the people who enable the sneaky bastards poking through our mail and lives for their own profit while helping the snoops at the NSA.

[2banon]

3. I share your passion for justice

We're on the same side.. but these workers aren't the cause of the problem. it's the system that allows for unchecked corruption, fraud and abuse. justice isn't served breaking windows and injuring innocent people. and you gain no empathy from the masses, just the opposite. That's not winning a damn thing.

[jtuck004]

4. They are enablers, not innocent. They are Google. And there isn't any empathy now, but they felt

safe enough to walk the streets and take the homes out from under the people in San Francisco. At least until now...

[24601]

5. Yes they are innocent - unless the US Constitution has a brand new interpretation that anyone, with

the exception of Google employees, are presumed innocent of anything until proven otherwise. Am I enthralled with Google? Not really given that they are far more likely to try to squeeze your $ out of you than say, for example, NSA. But no street vigilantes are justified. Civil disobedience does not encompass any degree of assault.

[jtuck004]

9. I don't presume them to be innocent. Fuck them.

I presume them to be the proximal cause of people becoming homeless in San Fransisco as they buy their cheap-ass homes out from under them.

But it's a larger picture than that. If they don't want to be the victims of the defensive action you call assault, people with money and wealth shouldn't start assaulting others by removing their jobs, their homes, and killing their families with high-priced and sometimes not very good medical care.

I will continue to think about it differently, because for me to look at it another way just makes me just one more of those scumbags.

[2banon]

12. I strongly disagree with your point of view as to how to respond to the issue. eom

[24601]

14. There are alternatives those whose starting position is a presumption of guilt and who defend

violence. But there isn't enough lipstick to make that pig appear progressive.

[jtuck004]

18. What kind of lipstick needs to be on the bodies of frozen dead homeless people and children for one

to call what is being done to them anything but murder? People in power did it and are doing it to them, so I don't have a problem with people who are being thrown into the street, who are being assaulted in their homes by others, responding in the only way left to them. I prefer that to feeling all smug and self-righteous, trotting out the lines that serve the plantation owner, the business owner, the politician, the thief in a suit.

I should note - their violence is not necessary. Frankly, for at least the past nearly 500 years it has always ended badly for the oppressed. As a strategy goes it's a particularly sucky one.

If people would work together, (people have died and gone to prison for trying to encourage it, because those in power know what they would lose if the people who now support them stopped), help each other instead of the tyrant, the tyrant would fall. The tyrant has nothing except what they have taken from others - most never produced a damn thing in their lives. (A few produce germ warfare agents for war criminals, a few write programs for Google - sure, some produce, but they support the tyrant in their murderous quest, not their neighbors)

If we quit supporting the oppressors they would have no eyes to watch us, no arms to grab and jail us. Those are OUR eyes and OUR arms they are using - remember. The tyrant has nothing without us. It's much harder than it sounds, but if we began to cooperate and help ourselves, a lot of this would be over.

But they have a very effective weapon - the minds of the people they have in servitude. Some of them, wealthy tyrants, plot strategies and implement plans that keep people from discussing such things, teach others to call them names like "socialist" or "commie" or "criminal" - they work hard at it every single day. Their agents and dupes (sometimes unwitting, sometimes not) are unable to see that they have, in fact, adopted the thinking of those who oppress others. And they often think that they are somehow morally superior. No they aren't.

And until things change I refuse to persecute the people who fight back in the only way they can.

But the post above wants Progressive? Easy enough. Sort the ages of the children below we have killed, progressively, from youngest to oldest.

There ya' go.

Oh, and this is an old article, the list is longer now. So it's only a small part, a representation, of the total number of people we have killed without trial, who have never done anything to us, with a new excuse every time we need another one...

"A List Of Children Killed By Drone Strikes In Pakistan and Yemen, here.

...

Proponents of the drone war, including President Barack Obama, claim that drone strikes are precise and only target terrorists. But a study from Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute finds that the number of Pakistani civilians killed in drone strikes is “significantly and consistently underestimated" and that as many as 98% of those killed by drone strikes are civilians.

While it is ultimately impossible to get exact numbers, this means that for every "terrorist" killed by a drone strike, anywhere between 10 and 50 civilians are killed.

Read that sentence again. Let it sink in. Obama has authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan – four times the amount authorized by George W. Bush. According to Global Research, over the past four years, Obama has authorized attacks in Pakistan which have killed more than 800 innocent civilians and just 22 Al-Qaeda officers. That constitutes at least 36 civilians per target.

How many of those are children? A new study compiled from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism lays it bare:

PAKISTAN

Name | Age | Gender

Noor Aziz | 8 | male
Abdul Wasit | 17 | male
Noor Syed | 8 | male
Wajid Noor | 9 | male
Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male
Ayeesha | 3 | female
Qari Alamzeb | 14| male
Shoaib | 8 | male
Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male
Tariq Aziz | 16 | male
Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male
Maezol Khan | 8 | female
Nasir Khan | male
Naeem Khan | male
Naeemullah | male
Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male
Azizul Wahab | 15 | male
Fazal Wahab | 16 | male
Ziauddin | 16 | male
Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male
Fazal Hakim | 19 | male
Ilyas | 13 | male
Sohail | 7 | male
Asadullah | 9 | male
khalilullah | 9 | male
Noor Mohammad | 8 | male
Khalid | 12 | male
Saifullah | 9 | male
Mashooq Jan | 15 | male
Nawab | 17 | male
Sultanat Khan | 16 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male
Noor Mohammad | 15 | male
Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male
Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male
Abdullah | 18 | male
Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male
Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male
Shahbuddin | 15 | male
Yahya Khan | 16 |male
Rahatullah |17 | male
Mohammad Salim | 11 | male
Shahjehan | 15 | male
Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male
Bakht Muneer | 14 | male
Numair | 14 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Taseel Khan | 18 | male
Zaheeruddin | 16 | male
Qari Ishaq | 19 | male
Jamshed Khan | 14 | male
Alam Nabi | 11 | male
Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male
Rahmatullah | 14 | male
Abdus Samad | 17 | male
Siraj | 16 | male
Saeedullah | 17 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Salman | 12 | male
Fazal Wahab | 18 | male
Baacha Rahman | 13 | male
Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male
Iftikhar | 17 | male
Inayatullah | 15 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Adnan | 16 | male
Najibullah | 13 | male
Naeemullah | 17 | male
Hizbullah | 10 | male
Kitab Gul | 12 | male
Wilayat Khan | 11 | male
Zabihullah | 16 | male
Shehzad Gul | 11 | male
Shabir | 15 | male
Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male
Shafiullah | 16 | male
Nimatullah | 14 | male
Shakirullah | 16 | male
Talha | 8 | male

YEMEN

Afrah Ali Mohammed Nasser | 9 | female
Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 7 | female
Hoda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 5 | female
Sheikha Ali Mohammed Nasser | 4 | female
Ibrahim Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 13 | male
Asmaa Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 9 | male
Salma Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | female
Fatima Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 3 | female
Khadije Ali Mokbel Louqye | 1 | female
Hanaa Ali Mokbel Louqye | 6 | female
Mohammed Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | male
Jawass Mokbel Salem Louqye | 15 | female
Maryam Hussein Abdullah Awad | 2 | female
Shafiq Hussein Abdullah Awad | 1 | female
Sheikha Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh | 3 | female
Maha Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 12 | male
Soumaya Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 9 | female
Shafika Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 4 | female
Shafiq Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 2 | male
Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari | 13 | male
Daolah Nasser 10 years | 10 | female
AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout | 12 | male
Abdel- Rahman Anwar al Awlaki | 16 | male
Abdel-Rahman al-Awlaki | 17 | male
Nasser Salim | 19
...

[CthulhusEvilCousin]

16. Uh...

So google is running hospitals, providing crappy healthcare, and foreclosing on people's homes? Sounds like you're either a hardcore communist or an anarchist. Either way, you've placed yourself well on the fringes of society with your calls for violence.

[jtuck004]

21. I didn't call for violence. I said I would not hold it against the people who did it, because they

didn't start it.

[CthulhusEvilCousin]

32. IOW

You're not calling for violence, you're just condoning violence against innocent people whom you accuse of foreclosing on your house, even though they work for Google as technicians. Even a "brick to their face," you say. Very vile.

[jtuck004]

27. And I wanted to add - THANK YOU for calling me those names. They are the same thing that Mother

Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Matles, many unnamed "industrial union" organizers and members and others were called by business owners, government officials, people from the "business unions", ordinary citizens who had adopted the viewpoint of the wealthy and more powerful, their thugs, liars, cheats, frauds, and killers.

They were incorrect, of course, because those good people above were none of those, and instead just wanted workers to control their lives for themselves. That might have constituted buying the assets to own them, or more of a say in the business. But it wasn't socialism nor anarchism, though their enemies and opponents were able to use epithets to harm them.

And just so there is no question, should we every figure out how to get back to that point again I will stand shoulder-shoulder-with people who are trying to accomplish the same thing. And if there is any place we go after this life, (which I doubt), I want to go where they are.

Presuming they take dogs there. If not, I'll go with the dogs.

[CthulhusEvilCousin]

33. Delusions of grandeur now?

Do you really think you and your "brick to the face" comment ought to be compared to Van Jones, Obama, or any body else? More like an internet commando who declares he wants to commit violence against random employees. If there is a heaven or hell after you die, where do you think you'll go with all that rage?

[jtuck004]

36. Not my rage - I wasn't the one calling people names <LOL> But if I was called to a jury

and told to judge them, I would find the evidence against them lacking.

I was just pointing out that your tactics are the same as the people who beat down the Industrial Unions in an era about which I am guessing you won't know much, and left us where we are today.

But since that's all you got, enjoy the echo. You will be typing to yourself now.

[Dash87]

48. So, because Google did something somewhere, it's okay to attack innocent people on the street?

Google taking peoples' homes away? Huh? What the heck are you talking about?

[jtuck004]

52. Who the fuck do you think Google is?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay-tech-riches-alter-a-city.html?_r=0

Collaborators, like scabs, are never innocent.

[Dash87]

53. I don't get the reasoning here. The whole idea of this is silly.

'Let's not create any tech jobs because living here will become too expensive!' Would it be better that these tech employees just be unemployed instead, with no jobs in the area? That doesn't make any sense.

[jtuck004]

54. So just let the people freeze on the street? Make them homeless because these rich motherfuckers

can't find anyplace else to spend their money?

All kinds of excuses when it's someone else's home, eh?

[Dash87]

55. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

If there's homeless people freezing on the street, that's the city or state's fault, not some tech guy on a bus. I don't get why encouraging unemployment is a good idea. What do these protesters expect, exactly?

[Gormy Cuss]

56. Why do you think they'd be unemployed?

Google and other tech companies are enabling their employees to live in the hipper cities while they maintain operations in SiliValley. That's why there are buses picking their employees. It's a perk because commuting by car or mass transit from these areas to their places of business would be difficult or impossible. Even if the employees can afford the housing prices near work, there's not much "there" there for a 20 something. The action is in Oaktown and SF.

The tension comes in because the long term, lower income renters in this communities are being pushed out by people who aren't invested in the community. There's nothing new about that. What is new is that these well heeled newcomers are being encouraged by their employers to do this.

What the protesters expect is recognition that the employers could share a bit of their wealth with these communities ---funding school programs in the chronically underfunded public schools for example or adopting and updating/maintaining local recreational facilities for another. Hell, they could even use their resources to help the cities fund more affordable housing solutions. IOW, become good corporate citizens rather than takers.

[jtuck004]

57. Maybe they expect to be treated as human beings, with a right to live? Or perhaps that's a stretch.

Why don't the rich kids go buy a golf course? Plenty of land there, can build what they want. Or some of that expensive shit down the road?

Oh, wait, those people have money and might complain. Instead they pick on the powerless, people who have nothing else, and kick them to the curb to die.

Anyone on the side of these bastards is on the wrong side, not innocent, and deserves what they get.

I appreciate your response, however, and thank you.

I often hear "well, why don't people in poverty go out and vote for change?" Ok, so who do they pick? Here is an example of why it really wouldn't matter if they voted for the Democrat or the Teabagger, the only difference being different excuses. One tells them they should move because they are not wanted, the other says "it's someone else's responsibility". Screwed either way.

I'm gonna save this one.

[luxmatic]

37. I'm with you, brother.

I'm with you, brother. You're not thinking big enough. A modest proposal:

Doctors and other well-paid professional health-care workers are the real problem. They're everywhere, and in every city. They buy and rent houses with their overly generous salaries and cause rents for everyone to be raised. This has been happening for decades. Here's the kicker, these so-called "health care" professionals are literally killing people by moving into homes placed on the market by owners and landlords.

A much better protest strategy, and this will work in every city in our country: The local Occupy movement should wait for ambulances at retirement homes and block their movement. Raise the stakes a bit by breaking windows, and give the enablers inside a good scare. Imagine the spotlight that'll be shown on the guilty when the ambulance is delayed enough that the patient inside dies!

Like I said, a modest proposal. Let us know how it goes.

[penultimate]

6. So you believe these protesters are correct to be angry with tech workers just

because they have higher salaries? Are you going to start singing "The house next door to me was just sold to C++ programmers"????

[jtuck004]

7. I think some motherfucker that uses his money to buy homes out from under people with no

power and no money gets a brick in the face, it's what they deserve.

Those particular "tech workers" are taking information from you and me and selling it without compensating us, and using the banks to finance their operations, both of whom screw millions of people in the process, and kill a few of them. For their own profit.

If the house next door was sold to a C++ programmer (really? - I would prefer someone that does Ruby and...well that's another post ) who is creating Linux modules, and lives roughly the same lifestyle as me, I would be happy as hell. And my wife and her husband could go watch football while we talk about and work with computers.

The bastards you are defending are not buying the homes next to people, they are dispossessing people who live in poverty, in government-aided housing, who will be either homeless or must leave the area, perhaps move 50 miles or more away, because these people who are working with other thieving bastards are using the money the make to ruin their lives. Some may even have been among the 7 who froze to death on the street this week. One of those was waiting on government housing, which might have been available if these sons-of-bitches weren't buying it up to profit from it.

In my view they are no better than the scabs and traitors and business owners and government officials and police, some of the lowest forms of life on the planet who work to break unions and non-union employees to fill their own pockets.

And just so you know, I'm not a follower of the Quran, but I agree wholeheartedly with this statement by Malcom X:

"“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” "

I think if more people followed that there would be a lot less bankers and business owners screwing people over instead of kowtowing to them. A lot of this self-righteous non-violent crap is nothing more than words which serve those in power.

Sound like I am singing?

[2banon]

10. conveniently ignoring..

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” "

part of the quote you posted..

cherry picking much?

[24601]

15. Singing? No, "...but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery" reads instead like

a stand your ground defense statement from Sanford, FL and leads to the reasonable inference that you may be dangerously violent. Please assure us you don't have concealed carry.

[jtuck004]

22. I don't need to assure a number on a web site of anything. But you are equating a couple hundred

years of racism and murder, and a person who tried to free a people in servitude and was killed for it, with a racist killer who got off with the help of some white folk in his neighborhood?

Bill O'Reilly would be proud.

But this is a waste of time. Enjoy the echo.

[jtuck004]

19. In The Wealthiest Area Of The Country, 7 Homeless People Have Frozen To Death This Winter

Here. His picture is at the link. I think he deserved to live as much as anyone, have enough food, at least not be freezing. Perhaps we disagree on that.

Joe White was this close to making it.

A 50-year-old California man described by relatives as a “loving father and a doting grandfather,” White had been living on the streets of Hayward for years. He wanted to work and was able to find odd jobs here and there, but it was never much or consistent enough to afford a place to live. Hayward has no emergency shelter with beds for single men, so White slept outside.

But things were looking up. Last Saturday, White was second on a long list to get permanent supportive housing in Hayward. He had been waiting in line for months and it seemed as though he might finally catch a break.

White died on Sunday.
...

I wonder if he would have been in a warm place had not some asshole bought the only place he could afford out from under him?

Speaking of blight, your post...Did you mean Joe was a blight on the landscape, or ...? Because I guarantee you would not be alone in thinking that - heck, people have been elected to office saying much worse.

But I wonder why you care so little about you neighbors?

[Agschmid]

24. You have about 10 minutes.. just FYI.

With that attitude anyways.

[Agschmid]

26. Yup.

[jtuck004]

28. Wow. I'm in awe.

Why can't people understand there are real people in these homes? They aren't just tearing down architecture.

I can't help thinking there is some kind of virus that eats away that portion of their brain. And the killer part is that such a person is most likely one of those making less than $50K a year and suffering the consequences, rather than making 2 or 3 times that.

Which means it could infect any of us at any time?

Unless we inoculate ourselves in some way...

[SpectorGrowl]

38. Spoken like a typically privileged, white, and middle class hegemonic advocate of nonviolence.

True revolutionaries are those keen enough to rise above the simplistic nonviolence/violence dichotomy that permeates mainstream discussions of events such as these. Nonviolence is maintained as an article of faith and, hypocritically, the inclusion preached by nonviolence advocates (racial diversity, gender diversity, economic diversity, etc.) unilaterally involves isolation of those who do not conform to the zealotry of passivity. In effect, those aligning themselves with the nonviolence groupthink are deliberately shutting their minds to any rational debate of tactics in the struggle against oppressive systems such as capitalism. For those who habitually harangue anyone within squawking distance about the righteousness of diversity, they are quick to purge their "inclusive group" of any legitimate discussion regarding diversity in responses to oppressive powers. Anti-authoritarians and anti-predatory-capitalists are abandoned by the same comrades they've just marched with in solidarity once even the whisper of militancy arises, denying access to resources and protection from being scapegoated to those willing to raise their fists when their voices alone do not suffice.

Nonviolence is ineffective -- Ghandi gets a lot of press, but British control of their Indian colony was wrested by a set of more complicated events. Casualties sustained during two violent world wars, particularly WW II, drained Britain of resources necessary to retain their iron grip on India. Read up on Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh to strip the whitewash off of the revisionist history of Ghandi. In India, militancy won independence. The same nonviolence bias can be found in the history of stopping the nuclear arms race, US civil rights movement, and Vietnam.

The doctrine of nonviolence is also racist. To be nonviolent is to take an inherently privileged stand, emanating from white suburbanites who grew up with all their basic needs met. Though they may good intentions, those intentions pave the way to well. The well-to-do counsel the oppressed (many of whom are people of color) to suffer patiently under greater violence, until such time as the mythical critical mass is achieved or the oppressive power makes a conscious decision to oh-so-charitably cede some control back to the people. The latter never happens. Obama is a perfect example. Once in power, he expanded Bush's already egregious control of the executive branch. There exists a Eurocentric universalism that all of us are part of the same homogenous struggle and that white people can dictate the disenfranchised in the best ways to resist.

There are also arguments that to practice nonviolence is to be an accessory to the state in preventing reform, that it's patriarchal, that it's inferior strategically and tactically, and that to earnestly believe in pacifism requires one to depend on a number of delusions, but I've written enough for the time being.

[uppityperson]

40. "The doctrine of nonviolence is also racist"? Ghandi was a racist?

"Obama is a perfect example. Once in power, he expanded Bush's already egregious control of the executive branch. There exists a Eurocentric universalism that all of us are part of the same homogenous struggle and that white people can dictate the disenfranchised in the best ways to resist. "

What? Oh, by the way, FRP.

[SpectorGrowl]

42. Yes he was.

FRP in my world is functional reactive programming. Your use of the acronym is lost on me.

But, yes, Ghandi was blatantly racist against black South Africans. Also liked his twice a day enemas. And was likely bisexual, although a self hating one. Then again he hated heterosexuality. Very confused and odd fellow...

By racist, I mean that the doctrine of nonviolence emanates from the typically safe middle classes. Mostly white. Secure in their suburban enclaves. The ideology and messaging of tactics and strategy are controlled by and emanate from those content and capable of infinite patience. And by the state to a large extent via coercive means. The middle classes take on the mantle of best authority on how to improve the social fabric. They disingenuously assume that the struggle they engage in is shared by everyone equally and that their tactics will prevail. These tactics are raise your voice and say something. Then be patient. Yes, the disenfranchised may suffer continued violence manifested as no health care, homelessness, figurative and literal starvation of their children, no upward mobility, denial of participation in the larger economy. But just be patient. We, the comfortable, have faith and know in our hearts that the end of your misery is just around the corner. We can convince the powers that be to cede back your lost opportunities, years of sickness, inability to afford college.

Patience is an easy virtue when you're free from money worries, a roof over your head, whether your child will be shot walking down the street. Racist in this context is to discriminate via failure to discriminate. Those white suburbanites can't or won't discriminate between their universal ideology of reform and how incompatible and harmful it is to the underclass. A person with much to lose has no authority or credibility in deciding the fate of those with nothing.

Obama, by virtue of being co-opted by the plutocracy also has no authority or credibility. He blathers the same milquetoast handwringing you see at WASPy charities. In that sense, he has adopted the Eurocentric universalist view of nonviolence in discussing domestic inequality. When your position in the power structure eclipses your link to the people you come from, you're essentially a white patriarch. Yes, I'm claiming that the non-leader in chief has adopted the same racist stance of whites know best.

[uppityperson]

43. Just for curiosities sake, who did you support for pres last election?

[SpectorGrowl]

44. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice...

In the last bout of Bush the Sequel vs a Bigger Bush the Sequel. And, yes, since repukes are obsessed with sex, that was indeed innuendo, I took the line above from Rush's (the Canadians, not the opiate addict pedophile turd on the radio) Freewill and voted straight D in everything but the presidential race. I voted for no president since neither candidate shared my values, vision, or struck me as a leader enough for a Kindergarten parade, let alone the country.

The notion that by not voting, I'm somehow letting the bigger evildoer win, feels like a hostage situation. I don't much care for being held hostage with a gun marked "you must vote for the least worst" pointed at my head. I also have as much right to discuss politics as a prez-voter does, perhaps more so. If the candidate you voted for won and continues his streak of mediocre awfulness, you knew what you were buying and presumably made peace with it. Complaining about the candidate you voted for, despite knowing he'd suck at the job, just looks silly. Like an abused wife returning to her husband.

Romney is just a vile human being. And Obama is basically a bureaucrat suffering from gross political naïveté, an inability to make decisions, and has his crony rainmaker from Chicago, Valerie Jarrett, as co-president. Chicago style politics fail to function in the context of Washington, D.C. For a president to be so stupid as to not know that, it's revolting. His has a talent for crowing victories facilitated primarily by his staff as his own. Not much else.

[uppityperson]

58. Ah, so you supported Ron Paul?

[SpectorGrowl]

59. What? Shit no. Fuck no.

Any dude who wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act, rails against the Americans with Disabilities Act, hates public health care, thinks global warming is a hoax, is convinced that man didn't evolve from lower species over millions of years, is pro-life to the point where he should be diagnosed with crippling mental illness, legitimately thinks we atheists are waging a war against Christmas, is most likely homophobic and racist, and whose though process produces nothing particularly thoughtful or constructive is not a dude I can support.

Ronald McPaulnald can go fuck himself -- he should go fuck himself. He's a piece of shit object of lunatic right-wing fetishism.

Dr. Dean, I'll vote for. Elizabeth Warren I'll vote for. Bernie Sanders, yes. Al Franken, sure. Run a candidate in line with the values exhibited by those individuals and I'll gladly pull the lever. But the likelihood of that is zilch, since the vast majority of public is easily swindled by things like the theatrics and empty rhetoric of Obama's campaign. And they apparently process information only at lizard-level parts of the brain. Little more than reflexes. Just shout "death panel", "death tax", "terrorist", or any other Republican-coined one-or-two syllable bogeyman and the response is a Patellar reflex of the mind leading them to stupidly, gladly, even proudly vote against their interests.

Ayn Rand was a nutjob. Neoclassical economics and what's now called Keynesian economics (although they're really not) are utter failures, whose foundations themselves are entirely rotten and no one in the congress or senate is intellectually capable of or even interested in probing at the heart of what thieving monsters like Bernanke and Timmaaaay Geithner actually believe.

So, no. I don't support Ron Paul or his ilk.

[uppityperson]

60. Well, that is good. Thank you for clarifying.

It is sad to realize that the choices are not what one would wish for. I hope you go into politics in some manner as anything will help.

[uppityperson]

61. Also, another question and welcome to DU.

What inspired you to start posting after signing up so long ago? I am just curious. Thanks and welcome.

[SpectorGrowl]

62. The encroachment of Groupthink as it relates to liberal causes.

I've lurked for years. In its infancy and for some time after, DU fostered an environment conducive to fairly intelligent discussion and tolerance of diverse viewpoints regarding strategies and tactics for what I'll call carrying the torch of JFK. Liberty, equality, social mobility, economic security, uniform justice, peacefully interacting with the larger world, and so on all died with JFK. His death left the sails of liberalism luffing in the wind and the rudder has since been commandeered alternately by ineffectual leadership and DINOs.

Over the course of the Obama administration, the majority block of self-identified "Democrats" and "Liberals" have fallen under the spell of Groupthink, sacrificing a commitment to difficult but necessary changes in their participation in the political process for a harmonious hegemony. This manifests itself in various ways, such as "Obamabot Syndrome", accepting the DLC and Clinton-inspired "triangulation" as the only means to run an electable candidate, being scolded to "vote for the least evil", the rule of pragmatism, etc. All of which is bullshit and cowardliness.

The thread of "nonviolence" which runs through the liberal narrative is also a constant trip-wire. I refer, of course, to the sentiment that taking the moral high-ground, taking great pains to avoid "looking angry", that "our party is above them, so we shall not fight fire with fire" shuts down any possibility of countering the conservative in an effective way. And, predictably, most liberals will accuse me of proposing the anti-thesis of "nonviolence". Again, it's that narrow-minded dichotomy that splinters the party into a mealymouthed, weak, powerless agent with a chronic victim mentality. And, again, it's an agenda driven by those for whom patience doesn't mean suffering. There are shades of grey between the diametrically opposed extreme of complete passivity and war-mongering violence. Yet, the majority of liberals are blind to that reality, and so are incapable of effecting meaningful change.

So, with all that said, the forces driving me out of the shadows of DU are apoplexy and disgust on many levels toward many things. Anger is a gift. Anger does not imply an incapacity to reason. Anger does not imply one is unhinged and unstable. And yet, my liberal comrades are pissing themselves, terrified of behaving in any manner that would appear as "angry", for it would supposedly only alienate us from the mainstream and give the opposition a means to publicly shame and thus muzzle us. Remember the infamous "Dean Scream" controversy?

[2banon]

46. couldn't be more wrong on all counts

[SpectorGrowl]

50. Not necessarily.

Do you vehemently oppose any and all violence in furtherance of a cause for the greater good? If so, my demographic j'accuse might be wrong, but that doesn't disprove you're free from the isolationist policies rampant among that class.

Also, police infiltrators are only successful to the extent that mainline nonviolence practitioners work to neuter any discussion of militancy. As I stated above, those who practice only nonviolence are fair weather friends. Discussing tactics and strategies that are more coercive leaves the "anarchists" without resources, free to be scapegoats, maligned by the media, and held as criminals by the government. The refusal of the nonviolence zealots to even debate rationally other means of combatting the power structure leaves the state in control of the message without any countervailing force.

You expect us to march and protest with you in solidarity, but only to the degree that it remains truly ineffective and toothless. As soon as the infiltrators show up to malign other segments of the protest movement, the tune changes to "yeah...ummmm.....we're not with THOSE guys." We're left with no support, no competing narrative demonstrating a separation between the agendas of infiltrators and legitimate agendas of those who don't strictly adhere to nonviolence.

[2banon]

49. Spoken like a typical COINTELPRO Agent Provocateur!

You got the speech down pat, and could be your just trying to establish progressive "radical" creds on the internets.

I've seen this through out my life, time and time again.. decades of it.. nothing new to this clap trap..

so, it wouldn't surprise me in the least that's who you really are.

But if in this case I'm wrong and, you actually believe what you're representing here... just be aware this ain't nothing new, and I hold it in very low regard.

and this is where we part company.

eom, eod.

[SpectorGrowl]

51. COINTELPRO happened on your generation's watch.

And your generation has done little or nothing about it, except to complain and continually prove its efficacy. You could be a COINTELPRO honeypot, looking to attract dissidents to add to government watch lists. But I'm not dumb enough to believe that with no further proof. In fact, the faith in your own convictions -- blind faith -- is telling enough.

So, for you, the space between normative and radical is approximately the width of my cat's whisker. Seems like an awfully narrow aperture.

Proposing that there exists a spectrum of continuity between violence and nonviolence is hardly radical. That it should be debated less so. The notion that the tent of reform ideas should be inclusive of multiple perspectives? Radical. Really? Pointing out that the history of allegedly successful nonviolent change is more complicated than the Cliff Notes version is a means of establishing "radical creds"? Utterly nonsensical. The totality of your rebuttal is an ad hominem attack with no reference to the ideas presented, except to make it painfully aware what emotions the elicit.

Poor reading comprehension ain't nothing new and I hold deliberate ignorance with slightly more regard than I do for rapists and pedophiles. And you failed to comprehend what I wrote. 'Nough said.

[SpectorGrowl]

41. So.....

1) Why did you enclose anarchists in quotation marks? Is this because they are faux anarchists? There are sects of anarchists who promote nonviolence and those who advocate more coercive measures. In either case, both are anti-statist. But they do have a political belief system. So is it the anti-statist sentiment you find repugnant or the refusal of some anarchists to rule out violent means of reform? Unless you're actually referring to the media's and government's distortion of militancy as a legitimate means of reform. In that case, you're echoing the notion that anarchists are nothing more than violent, psychopathic, amoral actors committing senselessly destructive acts toward no good end. Which amounts to participating in aiding and abetting the status quo.

2) Not all violence is self defeating. And to start from that principle is to assume any violent act is irrational with no legitimate foundation. In a single breath, you condemn those who fought the Revolutionary War as men with no reason, no cause, just warmongering colonists interested in killing for killing's sake.

[2banon]

47. police infiltrators love to pose as anarchist - long history of this - the agenda is obvious and it

works everytime.

[1000words]

8. Oaktown doesn't fuck around.

That city is at a constant simmer.

[2banon]

11. sounds like you're proud of that? eom

[Nye Bevan]

13. Well I for one think it's terrible that techies are buying houses and apartments.

How inconsiderate of them.

[Jesus Malverde]

20. This is kinda creepy development.

I would rather see direct actions against the companies not the employees.

I passed a google street view car today. Hope it caught me at my best..

[ripcord]

29. Study get a good job

And you too can be attacked, the American dream.

[CFLDem]

35. A disconcerting undertow of anti-intellectualism has always been a part of the American landscape.

This is just the urban version.

[SpankMe]

30. I condemn the violence and vandalism.

That's no way to get your point across.

Violence or not, the cause is lost. The bay area's artist districts and other diverse "bohemian" enclaves will soon be extinct - due to highly paid tech workers barging in, buying and remodeling properties and willingly paying high rents. It's worse than it's ever been.

Listen to the podcast here: http://www.npr.org/2013/12/03/247531636/as-rent-soars-longtime-san-francisco-tenants-fight-to-stay

[seattledo]

31. You say condemn, but then...

go on to explain how an entire culture is being systematically destroyed. Why can't we defend against this genocide?

Or, did you mean condone?

[Exultant Democracy]

34. Down with shuttles, can have companies make carpooling attractive.

[politichew]

39. People that would terrorize others just trying to make a living are no allies of mine. nt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

45. Exactly