[p2p-research] Fwd: Petition against police violence to migrants and activists in Greece

[Paul D. Fernhout]

In the long term, we need structural reform more than we need to ask the 
police to be nicer to individuals.

As I suggested before, in ten or twenty years, policing will just be done 
with robots, who will have even less humanity than the human officers. :-(

Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=police+robots

Examples:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/10/18/1320259/MIT-Researchers-Develop-Autonomous-Indoor-Robocopter
"Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic
helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other
GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that
maps the local environment. The video talks about search-and-rescue and
civil engineering applications, but it also brings somewhat scary reminders
of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me
down a dark alley? The team's website has more videos showing earlier stages
of the project."

An apparent robocop mock up, but likely within twenty years:
   "Humanoid Automonous Police Robot"
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLbla1IJ6oc

As depicted here in text fiction:
   http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

For reference:
   "Latest Humanoid Robot (to help disabled and older people)"
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CETUmThm8Rg&feature=related

But one for real with treads available right now:
  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/08/armed-robots-so/
"Armed robots — similar to the ones now on patrol in Iraq — are being 
marketed to domestic police forces, according to the machines’ manufacturer 
and law enforcement officers.  None of the gun-toting ‘bots appear to have 
been deployed domestically,  yet.  Both cops and company officials say it’s 
only a matter of time, however. ... Other than some R&D with the shotgun 
mount, we haven’t used it operationally,"  Massachusetts State Police 
Trooper Mike Rogowski tells DANGER ROOM.  "But they’re on the way.  They’re 
coming," "

And this one in Korea is it seems currently in use (previously mentioned):
   "South Korea's Machine Gun Sentry Robot"
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ

And already there is use of Predator drones in my home state (previously 
mentioned):
"Predator Drone Patrolling New York Border "
http://www.infowars.com/predator-drone-patrolling-new-york-border/

We have so few years to turn this culture around as we continue to build our 
values and an assumption of scarcity instead of abundance into 
infrastructure of advanced technology.

If we have the amazing technology we need to build police robots, we 
ironically should not need them (at least for what they are planned to be 
used for.)
   "Jacque Fresco on Research & Development versus Law & making the world 
work for everybody"
   http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/2/pbtbGcKiLiM

Or, from 1940 and Charlie Chaplin:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthegreatdictator.html
"Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has 
goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we 
have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. 
Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think 
too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More 
than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, 
life will be violent and all will be lost."

It is amazing now how fast a couple buttons can get pushed to permanently 
shut someone out of a digital world (banning from some digital forum). Soon, 
it may not be that hard to do the same physically.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
"In addition to being used for security systems, authorities have found a 
number of other applications for facial recognition systems. While earlier 
post 9/11 deployments were well publicized trials, more recent deployments 
are rarely written about due to their covert nature."

The same metal we can use to build spaceships and seasteads and skyscrapers 
can also be used to forge chains.

But, once police robots are in place, they will be unlikely to listen to 
Chaplin's plea from that movie: "Soldiers: Don't give yourselves to brutes, 
men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to 
do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like 
cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural 
men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not 
machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in 
your hearts. You don't hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the 
unnatural."

Still, eventually the robots may become more compassionate than the people 
who build them or deploy them? One can hope.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

But until then, we need structural reforms, IMHO.
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international 
consortium"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/b918d271f9bb701d

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/


Michel Bauwens wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: akis gavriilidis <cr33396 at telenet.be>
> Date: Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:43 AM
> Subject: Petition against police violence to migrants and activists in
> Greece
> 
> 
> Feel free to sign and/or diffuse further on
> 
> Twitter petition  http://act.ly/pq
> 
> Sign here http://www.petitiononline.com/nomadic1/petition.html
> 
> 
> To:  The Greek Minister of Citizen Protection
> 
> Following the December revolts in Greece, police violence against
> migrants and activists in Greece is becoming more and more intense. The
> xenophobic turn of the mainstream media combined with the electoral rise
> of the extreme right wing party LAOS have played a vital role in
> legitimizing police violence against both foreigners and citizens who
> dare to protest. Ironically these tactics are part of an overall plan to
> "protect the citizen" by openly demonstrating the ability of the state
> to control those who participated in the December revolts. While “scoop”
> operations and deportations take place daily all over the country
> subjecting migrants to different forms of physical and psychological
> violence, activists who react against it are also becoming subject to
> the arbitrary violent and terrorizing tactics of the police. Recently
> Mohamed Kamran Atif, a migrant from Pakistan, has died after being
> tortured in detention at the police station of Nikaia. During the
> protest march organized in response, several activists were arrested and
> imprisoned. Few days later Dimitris Parsanoglou, a sociologist and
> anti-racist activist, has been arrested and detained without a legal
> representative for three days because he protested against the arbitrary
> arrest and beating by the police of a migrant in a central spot of Athens.
> 
> We ask from the Greek government to
> 
> - stop police violence against migrants and activists
> - stop “scoop” operations and arbitrary deportations of migrants
> - stop arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of activists of all nationalities
\