The French are rioting again. In the one headline I saw it has something to do with education in the country. Probably rebelling AI teachers or banning books or, I have no idea actually. I only read the headline. As well as watch the accompanying footage of the rioters ‘sparring’ with police. ‘Sparring’ is quite the word when all I saw was tail tucked police vans trying to escape brick hurling protestors. What struck me is the difference in attitude across the political and national spectrum.

The Hong Kong protests a while back were I think a true representation of a contemporary “peaceful” protest. Identity coverings, marching tactics, anti-smoke and gas techniques, use of lasers, etc. I was impressed. However, the response of their police was controlled and as organized as the protesters. I don’t know what the protests were even for, can’t recall if they got what they wanted, I just remember noting their seeming professionalism on both “sides”.

Completely different looking video coming from France today. Running, screaming, looting, what I think is fair to call a riot, despite the political misuse of the word. To both I compare the US. And although I don’t think genuine peaceful protest has ever existed or been effectual in this country, that is just a historical reflection [and in no way an advocation for non-peaceful protest]. Especially in a truly militarized police force, which is often backed up by whatever state or national guard, I do not think either the Hong Kong or French style protest would be tolerated in America.

With advances in technology the chance for peaceful or otherwise protest to be supported ever again is rapidly dimishing. Below is a list of some things they could do to you, uh, in the dark alternate future that one can imagine based on, well, trends of today.

1. Launch disinformation campaigns about protest goal, location, time, etc on social media
2. Create deepfaked media discrediting protest leadership
3. Use infarred lasers to permanently blind “protestors”
4. Use sound guns to disperse crowds
5. Utilize undercover agents to incite violence and nullify peaceful protest claims
6. Expose protesters to planted radiation doses to encourage cancer development years dissociated from the event to slowly route out dissenters from the population
7. Heat or cold rays to disperse crowds
8. Chemical weapons use
9. Hand out water or snacks laced with psychoactive compounds to drive the planned activity into true delirium
10. Displace oxygen in an area with an inert gas
11. Use AI to track and log all participants for individualized attacks online using social media
12. Use AI agents to organize highly targeted identity theft or financial cyber fraud against key “rioters”
13. Viralize the social media accounts of protestors to encourage real or otherwise cyber harassment from the broader community
14. Add dissenters to a medical database that recommends health care actions (I mean once AI begins to assist in doctor decision making) that have high likelihoods of complications
15. Target individuals prone to protesting for ads for self destructive behaviors like drinking, gambling, drug use, etc
16. Fire non-lethal ammunition
17. Invisible fume gas leak at below knee level suddenly ignited
18. Pathological agent release at mass participation events leading to the sickness of protestors and shift in broader view that group gatherings are inherently dangerous
19. Chemical/hormonal castration of protesters
20. Economic restructuring in areas with concentrated protestor populations to price out those individuals or flip side price in new comers to the area
21. They can take your picture, and have your picture, dated and verified and just, hang onto it.
22. Put identified individuals on lists that harm their credit scores
23. Encourage increased prison sentencing and harsher legal penalties for previously identified protestors
24. Make fun of you from their bunkers and towers
25. Influence the political attitude of the protest prone populations/groups to be anti-2nd amendment, uninterested in self defense
26. Create a national education system that promotes peaceful protest as the only effective way to enact social change against a perceived tyrannical government
27. Show family members footage of protestors to alienate them from their support structures
28. Take away the social security eligibility of convicted individuals
29. Turn off the utilities to areas experiencing riots
30. Some kind of space laser that vaporizes you to dust wave by wave
31. Tanks, planes, and submarines
32. Release ticks to the area and give everyone lime disease
33. Induce a heat wave or other natural disaster

But probably the cops in the US would hit you with clubs or shoot you. So, no European work culture and social safety nets for us quite yet. Although in the age of the internet maybe there is room for non-personal attending forms of peaceful gathering. Ha, good one.