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posted by janrinok on Sunday March 08 2015, @12:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the "those-were-the-days-my-friend" dept.

Ingrid Burrington writes in The Atlantic about a little-remembered incident that occurred in 1992 when activists Keith Kjoller and Peter Lumsdaine snuck into a Rockwell International facility in Seal Beach, California and in what they called an "act of conscience" used wood-splitting axes to break into two clean rooms containing nine satellites being built for the US government. Lumsdaine took his axe to one of the satellites, hitting it over 60 times. The Brigade's target was the Navigation Satellite Timing And Ranging (NAVSTAR) Program and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Both men belonged to the Lockheed Action Collective, a protest group that staged demonstrations and blockaded the entrance at the Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. test base in Santa Cruz in 1990. They said they intentionally took axes to the $50-million Navstar Global Position System satellite to bring the public's attention to what they termed the government's attempt to control the world through modern technology. "I had to slow the deployment of this system (which) makes conventional warfare much more lethal and nuclear war winnable in the eyes of some," an emotional Kjoller told the judge before receiving an 18-month sentence. "It's something that I couldn't let go by. I tried to do what was right rather than what was convenient."

Burrington recently contacted Lumsdaine to learn more about the Brigade and Lumsdaine expresses no regrets for his actions. Even if the technology has more and more civilian uses, Lumsdaine says, GPS remains “military in its origins, military in its goals, military in its development and [is still] controlled by the military.” Today, Lumsdaine views the thread connecting GPS and drones as part of a longer-term movement by military powers toward automated systems and compared today’s conditions to the opening sequence of Terminator 2, where Sarah Connor laments that the survivors of Skynet’s nuclear apocalypse “lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.” "I think in a general way people need to look for those psychological, spiritual, cultural, logistical, technological weak points and leverage points and push hard there," says Lumsdaine. "It is so easy for all of us as human beings to take a deep breath and step aside and not face how very serious the situation is, because it's very unpleasant to look at the effort and potential consequences of challenging the powers that be. But the only thing higher than the cost of resistance is the cost of not resisting."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday March 09 2015, @01:08AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday March 09 2015, @01:08AM (#154703)

    Your argument is naively circular.

    No, it isn't. You just lack understanding of basic logic.

    You want to just declare that the people stop being apathetic but designing a system of government that encourages people to do just that is unacceptable.

    I want to encourage people to stop being apathetic through means other than violating their fundamental liberties and giving government powers it shouldn't have. That is not circular, and you are illogical for suggesting that it is.

    But let's assume there is no other way. Let's say if we don't draft people, they'll be apathetic, and you'll wind up with more unjust wars (despite us drafting people before and it not making much of a measurable difference). I still would oppose the draft, since it violates people's fundamental liberties in utterly unacceptable wars. Freedom is more important to me than safety from initiating unjust wars. I am not willing to let governments have such draconian powers.

    All government does is "violate people's fundamental liberties."

    Agreed. And I seek to stop that. You clearly do not know what I mean by "fundamental liberties." I want a government that actually respects the fourth amendment, for instance. You probably think that by "fundamental liberties" I mean no government at all, but I do not consider every action you can possibly take to be a fundamental liberty, so that's a silly misunderstanding of my position.

    The difference between good government and bad government is how much and under what circumstances.

    And to you, the government apparently should have the power to enslave people. I would say that's almost unlimited government. I wonder if you even have a problem with the TSA, mass surveillance, making drugs illegal, DUI checkpoints, or any number of the things the government is doing now that violate our fundamental liberties (and most also violate the constitution).

    Your fundamentalism blinds you to the way the world actually works.

    Your profound ignorance blinds you from understanding my arguments.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @02:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2015, @02:28PM (#154882)

    Dude, I can see the spittle spraying from your lips.