Success!
A month ago we posted a thread about vigilante stalkers harassing Professor John Yoo at his private home. That post was widely circulated on the internet and generated a lot of publicity — and apparently also generated calls to the Berkeley Police Department about possible trespassing by the protesters.
Well, zomblog correspondent Chicken Kiev once again passed John Yoo’s house during a bike ride today, and took these new pictures of the Sundays-only weekly protest in front of Yoo’s house in Berkeley:
Chicken Kiev writes:
“Saw the Yoo protest again today, and snapped another picture from my bike. Amazingly, the police were now on hand monitoring the situation (you can see the police car and one of the cops on the left edge of the picture), and the protesters had been forced off of Yoo’s property! In contrast to that last time I went by, an official City of Berkeley police barrier had been set up across the front of John Yoo’s private driveway, forcing the protesters to stand out in the street. I think the police were there not only to make sure the protesters did not break the law again by trespassing, but also so they didn’t block the roadway, since that spot on the street is kind of a blind curve and cars and bikes zip along pretty fast, which might lead to an accident if the protesters wandered out into the driving lane. One of the signs, which is only barely visible in this picture (sorry — only had the opportunity to snap one picture as I went by) said ‘Yoo is Going to HELL.’ ”
“When I came back the other way after my ride, the protest was over, but I noticed that Yoo had added a new sign next to his driveway that said, ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY.’ ”
(Kudos to Chicken Kiev for getting the photos!)
And kudos to zomblog readers who contacted the Berkeley Police and alerted them to trespassing on John Yoo’s private property! And thanks to the Berkeley Police for enforcing the law equally for all.
(Note: This is not a photo of me, but rather
1Tony on Jul 5, 2009 at 7:03 pm:
im the first!!!
im shocked actually, the police didn’t remove the protestors from in front of the marine ocs recruiting station, why would they act here.
but regardless, its a good thing they did.
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2DooDooStick on Jul 5, 2009 at 8:29 pm:
The sidewalk in front of the Marine recruiting station is public property, Yoo’s driveway is private property.
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3CattusMagnus on Jul 5, 2009 at 8:30 pm:
I wonder how long they will keep this up for. It has to be getting to them just a bit that only about five people care enough to show up and protest.
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4Starless on Jul 6, 2009 at 4:34 am:
The “barricade” in pic #1 seems like a complicated way of moving the protesters, not to mention blocking access to a private driveway. If they’re in the driveway, they’re on private property and if they’re in the street, they’re a safety hazard — just tell them to leave. Weird.
Well done, Zombie. I hope those protesters are sufficiently pissed at you.
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5GWB on Jul 6, 2009 at 4:57 am:
#4
Then they’d bitch and moan about their right to protest being violated.
pardon my french
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6Starless on Jul 6, 2009 at 5:26 am:
#5 GWB
They’ll do that no matter what. I just wonder if the cops are trying to avoid enabling the protesters, or if Berkeley cops are either sympathetic or have been ordered to be sympathetic to protesters causes.
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7marcus on Jul 6, 2009 at 7:21 am:
The guy has been tried and convicted by a couple of people who decry the very sort of treatment they are now heaping on Yoo. They have attacked every aspect of his life, including trying to get his professional licenses revoked. He has no opportunity to present defenses, and these people have no interest in hearing them. We have a guy working for the government in a job that many of us practicing law would be loathe to turn down (at least we would have before this sort of thing killed the joy of having such a job), producing work product that at the time was at least legally supportable. His job was not to thwart his employers at every opportunity, which is apparently what the protestors expected him to do.
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8Tony on Jul 6, 2009 at 8:26 am:
“The sidewalk in front of the Marine recruiting station is public property, Yoo’s driveway is private property.”
Its still illegal for the protestors to deny access to anyone who wished to enter the marine recruiting station.
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9SFSkeptic on Jul 6, 2009 at 11:04 am:
Was the coverage to the protesters in front of Professor Yoo’s house what caused the police to take action, or was it Yoo himself filing a complaint? Rather than giving the protesters free publicity I would rather just have someone anonymously tip off the cops about their illegal activities and then post before and after shots of the police action. No need to give them any exposure that would help further their cause if they are unwilling to follow the law.
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10GWB on Jul 6, 2009 at 11:09 am:
#9 DooDooStick
what if they’re afraid to cross because they know they’d hurt those little old ladies?
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11Tony on Jul 6, 2009 at 7:55 pm:
lol zombie id bet 10$ that #12 is a moby.
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12average_guy on Jul 7, 2009 at 8:36 pm:
Hey ff I don’t think you can comment in html on this thread.
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13zombie on Jul 7, 2009 at 9:29 pm:
#24 average_guy
“ff” is a Turkish Islamist trying to hack this site. I was recently posted as a target on Turkish Islamist hacking forums, and they’ve been sending me threats and trying to hack zombietime these last few weeks. This happens a couple of times every year — it comes in waves. Sometimes Turkey, sometimes Pakistan, sometimes UAE, etc.
Anyway, I’ve deleted all his html “redirect” attempts, so by the time anyone reads this comment of mine, no one will have any idea what I’m talking about!
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14Starless on Jul 8, 2009 at 4:52 am:
#15 Zombie
IIRC, it looked like Javascript. Considering that your commenting app is going to reject all but a few simple HTML tags, unless they’re really, really smart, attacking your site through that door isn’t going to work. These guys obviously are not very smart.
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15Tony on Jul 8, 2009 at 9:15 am:
well they are a 7th century people starless, what do you expect
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16hous bin pharteen on Jul 8, 2009 at 11:03 am:
A hill. Blind curve. Passing traffic. Sounds like a good place to test the race car! Would any of you guys get made if I ran up the hill at 100+ mph? Is scaring the sh** out of them I bad Idea, or what?
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17Ken on Jul 8, 2009 at 3:25 pm:
1) Back from my trip to Israel. It was (unfortunately) cut short. Israel was a wonderful, wonderful place with many nice people. Anyone who says “Israel is an apartheid state” clearly has never been there before. An eye-opening experience, indeed. (Side note: The guy who’d been watching my house for me said that when he was using my computer sometimes he’d access this site because he liked the pictures even though he didn’t understand what he was reading.)
2) Good for Yoo to take action against the people harrassing him. Dialogue and conversation is one thing, stalking and character assassination is something else completely. I’m still laughing about that quote from the last Zombietime report about this: “I don’t feel safe living in the vicinity of someone who believes torture is legal” What’s he gonna do? Break into your house and waterboard you at night? Ridiculous.
3) “they’ve been sending me threats and trying to hack zombietime these last few weeks”
Be careful.
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18Ken on Jul 8, 2009 at 3:34 pm:
OT, but:
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-07-09/004118181612.shtml
This article mentions the actions of Uyghur activists protesting in DC. Zomb, have you seen any Uyghur protestors out in your area? If so, try to get some pics.
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19CattusMagnus on Jul 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm:
#15 Zombie,
I know what you’re talking about! I saw it and, since I’m not very computer/technologically literate, didn’t know what the heck was going on. It’s scary that you’re on their radar. Hopefully, your home is alarmed and you own a gun and a German Shepherd.
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20Starless on Jul 9, 2009 at 4:49 am:
#17 Tony
That may be so but it’s never wise to underestimate a hacker’s learning curve.
That being said…
#21 CattusMagnus
It doesn’t help to be overly cautious, either. We are all basically under constant attack. The only way to be really safe on the Internet is to unplug your network connection.
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21George Miller on Jul 10, 2009 at 2:41 am:
Nice to see you’re another one who conflates atheism with communism: http://www.zombietime.com/us_out_of_iraq_now_sf_3-18-2007/
What a naive fool I was to think there was somebody who hated the Islamic supremacists but not atheists! Well, worth a try.
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22Starless on Jul 10, 2009 at 3:54 am:
#23 George Miller
Yes, take a one-off joke caption and generalize a whole position out of it.
You should stick to making movies about the post-apocalypse and talking pigs.
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23George Miller on Jul 10, 2009 at 4:50 am:
Well I don’t know about you but continually been told you’re to blame for the deaths of 100 million innocent people because of something you don’t believe in looses it comedy value the millionth time you hear it. If the t-shirt had said Jew instead of atheist there’s few people who would still call it a joke to conflate the two. Maybe they would 60 years ago when Jews were still being scapegoated for the rise of communism, but not today. And kind of ironic that you should accuse ME of the one that makes generalizations.
You should stick to banana juggling and drawing happy faces using felt tip pens. And no, I have no fucking idea what that means.
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24Starless on Jul 10, 2009 at 5:59 am:
Hypersensitive militant atheists make other atheists look bad. Try taking some deep breaths and calm down.
BTW, I really liked Mad Max I and II, but frankly, Thunderdome just seemed too formulaic to me.
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25George Miller on Jul 10, 2009 at 11:02 am:
Just because I kill people on a daily basis doesn’t make me a militant. And yeah, not being able to find an article about atheists in anything from Townhall to the Guardian that can’t talk about atheists without damning them all as militant or claiming they’re all Nazis and communists can make you a bit “sensitive” over the years. Just like zombie seems “sensitive” about anti-Semitic bigots in his town who roll their banners around claiming that Jews rule the world. Or is that different?
What’s annoying is not that atheists were conflated with communism, again, if I let it get to me every time I noted that occurring I would have committed suicide long ago, what’s annoying is that I thought I’d found a website that damned the far left and the Islamists that was run by someone who claimed to be non-religious and could even talk about Christopher Hitchens without preceding his name with an adjective like, hmmmm, militant.
And stop trying to be funny, it’s frightening.
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26hjg on Jul 10, 2009 at 11:44 pm:
Sorry I have absolutely no sympathy for Yoo. He sold his brilliant legal mind without regard to the constitution or due process. The Bush administration had plenty of opportunity to work within the system (with all of it’s inconvenient checks and balances) Sorry John Yoo- history will not treat you well, you served your purpose, signed the needed opinions- now suffer the consequences of your notoriety.
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27Starless on Jul 11, 2009 at 8:10 am:
#27 George Miller
I don’t think Zombie is anti-atheist and I don’t think he or she has ever made the calculation: atheist = Communist, therefore atheist = evil. What I got from the caption was: Communism loves atheism so it’s only natural that Chairman Mao would make googly eyes at the atheism t-shirt.
You’re jumping to conclusions based on your own sensitivities. It would have been better, before making an accusation, to ask what Zombie meant by the caption.
I’m an atheist and I find that people who flip out over this kind of stuff just make things harder for me. I also find it very hypocritical to see someone who makes a claim to atheism become outraged in the same way that religious believers do whenever someone pokes at their belief. You give credence to the argument that atheism is really just another religion.
Some day maybe you will realize that the vast majority of the people in the world believe in some sort of higher power and afterlife, that they are philosophically incapable of understanding how someone else doesn’t believe what they do, and that this situation is not going to change any time in the foreseeable future. Maybe if you realize these things you will realize that blowing your top over every slight is not only useless, it just gives your ideological opponents more ammunition.
And I don’t have to try to be funny, I’m a laugh riot by nature.
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28George Miller on Jul 11, 2009 at 9:04 am:
So equating a (non)-belief with communism is the same as “pok[ing] at their [non-] belief”. It is all so clear now! And I’ll say it one more time in the hope you might actually read beyond the first sentence this time: I’ve read articles from every news outlet from as far right as Townhall to as far left as the Guardian trying to equate atheism with all the world’s problems and I’m not bothered because I hate all the people at those shitty non-news and I understand why they use militant (?) atheists like Richard Dawkins as universal scapegoats: it’s because they’re too cowardly to damn the REAL militants, you know, the people who blow up busses full of children and jam knives in people’s chests when people draw cartoons, what’s frustrating is that I thought I’d actually found a website and a person that shared my views.
And the comedic value of taking a photograph from such an angle as to help equate atheism with communism, or whatever, is still lost on me.
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29George Miller on Jul 11, 2009 at 9:08 am:
Is jam a verb by the way? Whatever. Stick, push, force knives into people’s chests. I certainly hope Al-Qaeda turns to writing books such as The Infidel Delusion and The Filthy Kafir is Not Great instead of hijacking airplanes and trying to establish a global caliphate. Then again Islam is the Religion of Peace ™ I don’t think they’re militant enough to write books.
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30Starless on Jul 11, 2009 at 11:31 am:
#30 George Miller
And I’ll say it one more time in the hope you might actually read beyond the first sentence this time
Never fear, I read all of your whining before responding.
And the comedic value of taking a photograph from such an angle as to help equate atheism with communism
It doesn’t.
is still lost on me.
Precisely.
Seriously, man, you’re righteous anger is self-defeating.
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31George Miller on Jul 11, 2009 at 5:42 pm:
The photo doesn’t equate atheism with communism? Well why didn’t you say that to begin with? I fell soooo much better all my, hah hum, “righteous anger”
has floated out that window! I have to pay more attention to the images and the captions in future! Just out of interest what did the photo mean? Was it saying that atheists and Chinese people only wear comfy jumpers (to hell with shirts!) and like to play Peek-a-boo?
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32zombie on Jul 12, 2009 at 2:00 pm:
#33 George Miller
I have absolutely no idea what you’re going on about. In what way does that photo condemn atheists or equate communism with atheism? I just thought it was funny the way Chairman Mao was peeking out under the arm of the other shirt. It was just a funny observation, and really had nothing whatsoever to do with atheism.
Where did you ever get the idea I was anti-atheist? Please search the entirety of zombietime, thousands of pages and captions and millions of words, and show me the place where I have ever said anything about atheism one way or the other. Go ahead.
I’m waiting…
I myself am an agnostic, not an atheist. I simply don’t know, and don’t think I have the capacity to know, whether or not something supernatural exists. Nor do I particularly care, actually, one way or the other. I’m completely non-religious, and follow no dogmas. Most of the people I know are atheists (including my own father), and I don’t blame them for the world’s ills.
Calm down, take a chill pill, and stop hyperventilating over a perceived slight that is totally in your imagination. This site is not anti-atheist — nor is it pro-atheist. It’s simply not about atheism at all, and one trivial jokey throwaway caption about a Chairman Mao shirt peeking at an atheism shirt does not indicate a bias on my part.
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33George Miller on Jul 12, 2009 at 8:44 pm:
It was just a funny observation, and really had nothing whatsoever to do with atheism.
Yes, silly me, it was all in my imagination! And in the caption. And on the t-shirt. But apart from that just in my imagination! I think I’ll postpone that suicide bombing I was planning now I’m no longer, err, hyperventilating?
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34George Miller on Jul 12, 2009 at 8:52 pm:
Wow, my “imagination pills” really did the trick! Now all I see on the page is an approving smile and a yellow smudge.
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35Shii on Jul 17, 2009 at 2:34 pm:
I hope John Yoo gets what he deserves.
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36Anonymous on Aug 10, 2009 at 12:29 pm:
Stalk the rat until he leaves the country!
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37Not George Miller on Aug 20, 2009 at 3:08 pm:
George , see a dermatologist mate , your skin seems a bit thin .
Zombie was right when He said “you should have just asked me about it first” .
You spat the dummy like Shane Warne when a reporter pointed out His waxworks dummy was thinner than He was {that man really needs ego management classes} .
It was ONE silly crack that mentioned commies and Athiests in the same gag . Way to leap to a judgement and generallise {basically what you’re accusing Zombie of doing !} .
I’ve bloody Pagan and I don’t jump to unsupported conclusions if someone does a carricature in the papers drawing some wanker politician as a witch , even though I’ve got plenty of friends that actually are witches .
Given that there actually are some nutjob Christians {and Moslems , Jews , probably the odd Hindu …} that not only want to kill pagans but actually try to {some friends had the cops catch one planting a bomb in their home in the 80s’ for example} and that barking mad “devil worshiping pagan human sacrifice” mass histeria rubbish they trundled out in the 80s , I could almost be excused for being touchy , but I make myself think it through before I reach for a blamethrower .
Relax , sometimes a joke is just a joke {though I still think Freud had a penis fixation} and offense isn’t being given even if it is taken .
Hell , I just made a Monty Python jab at a Catholic on another forum not 15 minutes ago and He got it , and you know how Catholic feel about their sperm !!111!
On the subject of Athiest whilst we’re at it : are you sure your an athiest ?
What I mean is :
Given there is no evidence there is NOT a God {just as there is no evidence there is} , to definitivly state “There is NO God” is an much an act of faith as saying “there IS a God” .
From what most proclaimed Athiest had told me of why they identify as Athiests {namely , they can’t prove it either way , but the invisible man in the sky theory sounds really silly so they’re going to George Carlins’ house} really sounds more like an Agnostic viewpoint than Athiest to me {namely : there is no sound evidence to support either theory so it makes no sense to hold to a definitive conclusion but George Carlin is really funny so they’re also going to His house} .
When you think about it , you have no more proof God doesn’t Exist than Mel has that the Pope really does have to wear that funny hat to save His soul , thereby the Agnostic stance {namely : mabey ? is it really important ?} sounds more logical and I get the impression you want to base your decisions on some sort of logic {when you’re not feeling overly offended by a joke involving an Athiest :p} .
Just to play it safe : I’m not trying to tell you what you believe George my ol’ china .
Odds are , you probably won’t read this now I look at the dat , but what Hell , I’ll post it anyway .
Hopefully you’re narssasistic enough to still be checking back for relipies … relax , just joking mate
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38George Miller on Aug 26, 2009 at 2:43 am:
“Hopefully you’re narssasistic enough to still be checking back for relipies”
Alas I am! Although the word is actually spelt narcissistic. And yes I love relipies, relipies are delicious! Although I actually came here wondering if anybody had left replies.
Thanks for reminding me though; I’ll make sure I buy some of the delicious relipies when I go shopping today! Chocolate flavored relipies are the nicest, as we all know. What’s your favorite relipie flavor? Banana flavored relipies? Strawberry flavored relipies?
Nice to know that I’ve riled so many calm people up with my one off comment though. You guys could sure teach me a lesson about ignoring the trivial!
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