Zip

Ok. There currently are laws regarding public performances and demonstrations on public property and if the people in question did not have those permissions then they were in violation of the law.

Picture this, these people start their dance. A small kid who doesn't know what is going on wanders out into the performance and one of the dancers spins around and knocks the kid into the corner of one of those stone benches or the statues platform. The kid is badly hurt in the accident. The parents of the child now have legal recourse not only against the dancer but against the park police (the government) for allowing the unapproved dance to happen.

As for the arrests. The police were actually quite restrained. You see when you are being informed that you are being arrested then non-compliance with a police officer when he says things like "hands behind your back", "stop moving" and "do not resist" are reason and invitation for escalation of force. The people walking away hands up or not, or struggling against the police who are attempting to handcuff them are in fact resisting arrest and should count themselves lucky that these police did not resort to some of the other weapons at their disposal.

The stupidest act one of the police did was to tell the one guy to shut up. He just should have removed the demonstrator from the site in the first place.

Just as you do not have the right to do whatever you want on private property without the owners consent you do not, under today's laws have the right to do whatever you want on 'public property' without the consent of government.

Yes I watched the entire thing. If the people doing it have no right (have not been granted permission to demonstrate - it does not matter what sort of demonstration) to do it in the first place then the possibility or not of someone getting hurt is absolutely and entirely irrelevant. As it was, the idea was for there to be a flash mob. You know what that entails, a bunch of people performing a dance or what have you. With a number of people dancing like that there certainly is a possibility of someone being hurt and therefore there is a responsibility on the part of the security guards to prevent it.



Wrong. The security officer approached the people and told them that if they demonstrated without a permit they would be arrested. There is warning # 1, and any violation from that point onward is a direct violation of the orders they were given by those responsible to ensure the safety and security of EVERYONE visiting that memorial that day. The police were obviously informed that something was going to go on, probably because the person who had the idea to do this announced it on the internet or on his radio program or something.

At the 1 minute mark the two people who were later arrested for slow dancing walk into the frame from the direction where the police officer was explaining the repercussions -the girl was close enough to touch the person standing on the right side of the frame as she walked out. They look directly at the police officer and the camera smiling and begin to dance that is called provocation, and again is in direct opposition to the orders they were just given by those responsible for the safety and security of everyone in the memorial.



No, not doing anything would be an abdication of their responsibility to ensure the peaceful use of a national monument to EVERYONE and not let a bunch of people disrupt others use and enjoyment of that public facility.



At 2:35 one person was complying when his friend comes in and starts pulling him away the officer is then forced to take the original man down to the ground to control the situation and he then begins telling the other man to "Sir, back of, back off"

At 2:48 the man with the brown shirt who had been pulling on the other one is on the ground and the police officer is trying to handcuff him. You can see him resisting putting his hands behind his back in spite of being ordered to do so. The police then escalate as they are trained and have every right to do in the completion of their duties.

At 3:03 the guy in the white shirt walking away from and pulling away from the officer is resisting.



Actually in my opinion the police were doing exactly what they have been trained to do. I'm not a cop but I have had to deal with similar situations and the police handled themselves well in the most part.


As much as you may believe that being arrested for dancing is stupid you should realize that they were not arrested for dancing but for demonstrating without permission. The rest is emotional sensationalism.



I bet that if they had planned to do this flash mob in the middle of a field on the national mall then they would not have been stopped but they planned to do it in an enclosed space in a public memorial without permission.

It doesn't matter how stupid you think it is there is a correct way and an incorrect way of changing the law.

If I decided that drug laws were stupid (which they are) and I planned to get 100 of my best dope-fiend friends to do lines of coke on the white house lawn would you still claim that we were arrested for no reason and that it was just stupid?

Yes I watched the entire thing. If the people doing it have no right (have not been granted permission to demonstrate - it does not matter what sort of demonstration) to do it in the first place then the possibility or not of someone getting hurt is absolutely and entirely irrelevant. As it was, the idea was for there to be a flash mob. You know what that entails, a bunch of people performing a dance or what have you. With a number of people dancing like that there certainly is a possibility of someone being hurt and therefore there is a responsibility on the part of the security guards to prevent it.



Wrong. The security officer approached the people and told them that if they demonstrated without a permit they would be arrested. There is warning # 1, and any violation from that point onward is a direct violation of the orders they were given by those responsible to ensure the safety and security of EVERYONE visiting that memorial that day. The police were obviously informed that something was going to go on, probably because the person who had the idea to do this announced it on the internet or on his radio program or something.

At the 1 minute mark the two people who were later arrested for slow dancing walk into the frame from the direction where the police officer was explaining the repercussions -the girl was close enough to touch the person standing on the right side of the frame as she walked out. They look directly at the police officer and the camera smiling and begin to dance that is called provocation, and again is in direct opposition to the orders they were just given by those responsible for the safety and security of everyone in the memorial.



No, not doing anything would be an abdication of their responsibility to ensure the peaceful use of a national monument to EVERYONE and not let a bunch of people disrupt others use and enjoyment of that public facility.



At 2:35 one person was complying when his friend comes in and starts pulling him away the officer is then forced to take the original man down to the ground to control the situation and he then begins telling the other man to "Sir, back of, back off"

At 2:48 the man with the brown shirt who had been pulling on the other one is on the ground and the police officer is trying to handcuff him. You can see him resisting putting his hands behind his back in spite of being ordered to do so. The police then escalate as they are trained and have every right to do in the completion of their duties.

At 3:03 the guy in the white shirt walking away from and pulling away from the officer is resisting.



Actually in my opinion the police were doing exactly what they have been trained to do. I'm not a cop but I have had to deal with similar situations and the police handled themselves well in the most part.


As much as you may believe that being arrested for dancing is stupid you should realize that they were not arrested for dancing but for demonstrating without permission. The rest is emotional sensationalism.



I bet that if they had planned to do this flash mob in the middle of a field on the national mall then they would not have been stopped but they planned to do it in an enclosed space in a public memorial without permission.

It doesn't matter how stupid you think it is there is a correct way and an incorrect way of changing the law.

If I decided that drug laws were stupid (which they are) and I planned to get 100 of my best dope-fiend friends to do lines of coke on the white house lawn would you still claim that we were arrested for no reason and that it was just stupid?

Ok. There currently are laws regarding public performances and demonstrations on public property and if the people in question did not have those permissions then they were in violation of the law.

Picture this, these people start their dance. A small kid who doesn't know what is going on wanders out into the performance and one of the dancers spins around and knocks the kid into the corner of one of those stone benches or the statues platform. The kid is badly hurt in the accident. The parents of the child now have legal recourse not only against the dancer but against the park police (the government) for allowing the unapproved dance to happen.

As for the arrests. The police were actually quite restrained. You see when you are being informed that you are being arrested then non-compliance with a police officer when he says things like "hands behind your back", "stop moving" and "do not resist" are reason and invitation for escalation of force. The people walking away hands up or not, or struggling against the police who are attempting to handcuff them are in fact resisting arrest and should count themselves lucky that these police did not resort to some of the other weapons at their disposal.

The stupidest act one of the police did was to tell the one guy to shut up. He just should have removed the demonstrator from the site in the first place.

Just as you do not have the right to do whatever you want on private property without the owners consent you do not, under today's laws have the right to do whatever you want on 'public property' without the consent of government.

Ok. There currently are laws regarding public performances and demonstrations on public property and if the people in question did not have those permissions then they were in violation of the law.

Picture this, these people start their dance. A small kid who doesn't know what is going on wanders out into the performance and one of the dancers spins around and knocks the kid into the corner of one of those stone benches or the statues platform. The kid is badly hurt in the accident. The parents of the child now have legal recourse not only against the dancer but against the park police (the government) for allowing the unapproved dance to happen.

As for the arrests. The police were actually quite restrained. You see when you are being informed that you are being arrested then non-compliance with a police officer when he says things like "hands behind your back", "stop moving" and "do not resist" are reason and invitation for escalation of force. The people walking away hands up or not, or struggling against the police who are attempting to handcuff them are in fact resisting arrest and should count themselves lucky that these police did not resort to some of the other weapons at their disposal.

The stupidest act one of the police did was to tell the one guy to shut up. He just should have removed the demonstrator from the site in the first place.

Just as you do not have the right to do whatever you want on private property without the owners consent you do not, under today's laws have the right to do whatever you want on 'public property' without the consent of government.

If you believe this then you truly are a fool of the greatest proportions.

Excuse me but this piece of human filth is an accomplice to the murder of thousands. Every single man in that Camp (in any of the camps) knew exactly what was going on in them and was there because he could be trusted to go along with the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

Soldiers (although I'm loathe to apply that word to this class of vermin) have not been able to claim that they were "just following orders" or "just doing their duty" for a long long time now, and that is as it should be. Men do not surrender their morality or their humanity when they don a uniform, and they MUST be held to account for their actions.

I'm disgusted that the sentence for this waste of skin wasn't life, or better yet, a one way trip to the shower.

Excuse me but this piece of human filth is an accomplice to the murder of thousands. Every single man in that Camp (in any of the camps) knew exactly what was going on in them and was there because he could be trusted to go along with the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

Soldiers (although I'm loathe to apply that word to this class of vermin) have not been able to claim that they were "just following orders" or "just doing their duty" for a long long time now, and that is as it should be. Men do not surrender their morality or their humanity when they don a uniform, and they MUST be held to account for their actions.

I'm disgusted that the sentence for this waste of skin wasn't life, or better yet, a one way trip to the shower.

Excuse me but this piece of human filth is an accomplice to the murder of thousands. Every single man in that Camp (in any of the camps) knew exactly what was going on in them and was there because he could be trusted to go along with the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

Soldiers (although I'm loathe to apply that word to this class of vermin) have not been able to claim that they were "just following orders" or "just doing their duty" for a long long time now, and that is as it should be. Men do not surrender their morality or their humanity when they don a uniform, and they MUST be held to account for their actions.

I'm disgusted that the sentence for this waste of skin wasn't life, or better yet, a one way trip to the shower.

Excuse me but this piece of human filth is an accomplice to the murder of thousands. Every single man in that Camp (in any of the camps) knew exactly what was going on in them and was there because he could be trusted to go along with the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

Soldiers (although I'm loathe to apply that word to this class of vermin) have not been able to claim that they were "just following orders" or "just doing their duty" for a long long time now, and that is as it should be. Men do not surrender their morality or their humanity when they don a uniform, and they MUST be held to account for their actions.

I'm disgusted that the sentence for this waste of skin wasn't life, or better yet, a one way trip to the shower.

You might as well have framed the question this way... If you invite a guest to your home and he becomes rude and obnoxious do you get to shoot him?

You see it isn't the location, or even the fact that you own the house, plane, boat or whatever it is the action.

Being bothered is not a threat to your life and limb and therefore you do not have any right under any circumstances to violate the real, actual right to life of anyone for being rude and or bothersome.

I may vote NDP just to hasten the end times...

JayR assuming the incident with the 14 year old boy did in fact occur I would not be surprised in the least. That is not an excuse or any sort of equivocation it is just a fact of war. Saying "war is hell" is really easy but understanding what that means is another thing all together.

Ever talk to a Vet, I mean get right down into their most vivid and disturbing memories? About how they would get hungry on the battlefield because of the smell of burning human flesh, or about how some of them went through firefights with huge hard on’s in spite of (because of actually) their fear? Ever talk about how when a human body has been very close to the site of a large explosion when the bones have been pulverized by the shock wave that picking up your friend is like picking up a flesh coloured bag of jello with bits and chunks of other stuff inside of it?

The brutal fact is that war is barbarity in its purest form.

One commander I know, the first kill that his troops made in Afghanistan was dragged kilometres back to their strongpoint so that everyone in the company could see a real live dead body. Call it cruel, call it abusing the dead but he swore he's do it again because from that act he was able to gauge how his men would react when the time came for them to be on the trigger. He also discovered which of them he could task with picking up the body parts of children after an IED attack and which, if he tasked them, would probably not be of use to anyone for some time later.

I’m the one who isn’t making any excuses. You want these men, when confronted with what is to most civilized human beings the most terrifying and disturbing events and actions to behave like you do sitting in front of your playstation playing Call Of Duty. Well that just isn’t going to happen.

We are not about to start nailing babies to telephone poles like the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia were fond of doing. We western soldiers are for the most part the most professional soldiers in history. We do our best, but there are times when manipulating some dead scumbags jawbone to make him say “Allah sucks big hairy donkey dicks” is the best thing for you, your sanity and the sanity of the troops around you, Geneva convention, regulations and everyday run of the mill civility be damned.

JayR assuming the incident with the 14 year old boy did in fact occur I would not be surprised in the least. That is not an excuse or any sort of equivocation it is just a fact of war. Saying "war is hell" is really easy but understanding what that means is another thing all together.

Ever talk to a Vet, I mean get right down into their most vivid and disturbing memories? About how they would get hungry on the battlefield because of the smell of burning human flesh, or about how some of them went through firefights with huge hard on’s in spite of (because of actually) their fear? Ever talk about how when a human body has been very close to the site of a large explosion when the bones have been pulverized by the shock wave that picking up your friend is like picking up a flesh coloured bag of jello with bits and chunks of other stuff inside of it?

The brutal fact is that war is barbarity in its purest form.

One commander I know, the first kill that his troops made in Afghanistan was dragged kilometres back to their strongpoint so that everyone in the company could see a real live dead body. Call it cruel, call it abusing the dead but he swore he's do it again because from that act he was able to gauge how his men would react when the time came for them to be on the trigger. He also discovered which of them he could task with picking up the body parts of children after an IED attack and which, if he tasked them, would probably not be of use to anyone for some time later.

I’m the one who isn’t making any excuses. You want these men, when confronted with what is to most civilized human beings the most terrifying and disturbing events and actions to behave like you do sitting in front of your playstation playing Call Of Duty. Well that just isn’t going to happen.

We are not about to start nailing babies to telephone poles like the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia were fond of doing. We western soldiers are for the most part the most professional soldiers in history. We do our best, but there are times when manipulating some dead scumbags jawbone to make him say “Allah sucks big hairy donkey dicks” is the best thing for you, your sanity and the sanity of the troops around you, Geneva convention, regulations and everyday run of the mill civility be damned.

JayR assuming the incident with the 14 year old boy did in fact occur I would not be surprised in the least. That is not an excuse or any sort of equivocation it is just a fact of war. Saying "war is hell" is really easy but understanding what that means is another thing all together.

Ever talk to a Vet, I mean get right down into their most vivid and disturbing memories? About how they would get hungry on the battlefield because of the smell of burning human flesh, or about how some of them went through firefights with huge hard on’s in spite of (because of actually) their fear? Ever talk about how when a human body has been very close to the site of a large explosion when the bones have been pulverized by the shock wave that picking up your friend is like picking up a flesh coloured bag of jello with bits and chunks of other stuff inside of it?

The brutal fact is that war is barbarity in its purest form.

One commander I know, the first kill that his troops made in Afghanistan was dragged kilometres back to their strongpoint so that everyone in the company could see a real live dead body. Call it cruel, call it abusing the dead but he swore he's do it again because from that act he was able to gauge how his men would react when the time came for them to be on the trigger. He also discovered which of them he could task with picking up the body parts of children after an IED attack and which, if he tasked them, would probably not be of use to anyone for some time later.

I’m the one who isn’t making any excuses. You want these men, when confronted with what is to most civilized human beings the most terrifying and disturbing events and actions to behave like you do sitting in front of your playstation playing Call Of Duty. Well that just isn’t going to happen.

We are not about to start nailing babies to telephone poles like the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia were fond of doing. We western soldiers are for the most part the most professional soldiers in history. We do our best, but there are times when manipulating some dead scumbags jawbone to make him say “Allah sucks big hairy donkey dicks” is the best thing for you, your sanity and the sanity of the troops around you, Geneva convention, regulations and everyday run of the mill civility be damned.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Self esteem

Hi there,

Sorry for cross-posting, but I wasn't sure how many of you read the Activism area. If you have a few minutes, you may enjoy my entry for the ARI's "Atlas Shrugged" video contest:

http://tinyurl.com/29l2u38

Please vote if you like it, and share it with your friends. Thanks!