On Wednesday 23 July 2003 09:18, Tyler Durden wrote:

But it sounds like a rehash of the mall incident

You don't know what you're talking about. This happened just a few miles from me, so perhaps I've paid closer attention than you have. T-shirt man wasn't merely minding his own business while wearing an offensive shirt. He was stepping in front of people and haranguing them in front of a large anchor store in the mall. After a while he was asked to leave by a store employee, so he took himself to the food court and repeated the procedure. After complaints from several mall patrons, a security guard asked T-shirt man to either knock it off or leave. T-shirt man refused, growing more and more aggressive, and eventually the local cops came along and arrested him. (I may have fudged some details, as I'm working from memory, but I don't think I screwed up anything important.) OK, so far it could be the spontaneous actions of one guy. But, even though the story wasn't reported until the late news that evening, there was a large (hundreds, IIRC) crowd of protesters when the mall opened the next morning. This might not sound like much to someone used to NYC crowds, but by the standards of this area that was a huge crowd. I guess it _could_ have been a spontaneous rising of a populace fed up with jack-booted thug harrassment of dissenting opinion. But the more I hear about it, the more this sounds like a planned operation. -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel "If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all!" -- Rep. Henry Waxman

The rights of property owners, especially commercial property, are not as absolute as sometimes argued. Due to the public services provided by governmental authorities, tax perqs not the least, property owners are required to abide a diverse range of laws and regulations to provide assurance that people on the property are safe. These people include the property owner, family members, employees, customers and others who may not be capable of judging what is safe. Similarly, retail property owners are obliged to provide assurances to customers that they are safe as prescribed by zoning, building and health codes. To be sure there is a lucrative industry of professionals who advise property owners how to skirt these requirements -- public relations mongers, lobbyists, lawyers, zoning consultants, architects, engineers, planners, politicians, so-called public interest groups, bribers, liars, cheaters, the mob, whores, pimps, and so on. Most of these are lightly or unregulated, even those ostensibly licensed to protect the public interest are happy to front for those whose only interest is criminal profit. Keep this in mind: whenever someone argues for the right to do what they want on their property they are blowing shit in your face while picking your pocket and placing you and your beloved mongrels in danger through a smart-ass range of distancing, exculpatory mechanisms, not least several of the constitutional amendments which were set up for just that purpose by the original continental landscape thieves and which are forever being updated to keep the our-screw-you-laws-are-fair-laws racket running smoothly. Thanks to two centuries of warping law and culture to bias stolen property owners, no property owner takes full risk these days, but some will have you killed if you question that, that's what the justice and national security mob is paid handsomely to enforce. Department of Homeland Security looks to be the greatest ever privacy and property expropriation since the national security apparatus was set up after WW2, stolen from the public in the name of protecting it, given over to the homesec contractors, mediated by the homesec slicksters. "Homeland" is the false positive, as was "national defense."

I happen to agree with those who said that since he was on private property the property owners had every right to boot him off. I just think you should do a little more fact-checking before you post.

Jack