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shani: dont worry about it. if you dont see what i am asking you at this point, then there's no reason to continue.
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frosstbyte: you do see what i am asking you, though: i was clear about what you said, i think, and understood my previous question to simply state the conclusion that followed from it. which i think you basically confirm, though it also seems that you dont like that conclusion. which i understand.
say that the logic behind the greenpeace action is to protest the flows of coal as much as the vendors and end-users. say they make no particular distinction between these 3 terms. you would effectively restrict their right to protest to shadowing and yelling things. stopping the flows--even for a short time--would not be illegal, but would subject them to prohibitive costs.
what i dont know from your posts is if you would recognize a right to protest counter to any legal claims like the one you appear to think legitimate, and whether the court case (hypothetical court case) would turn on this same issue.
for the sake of this argument, i'll simplify my position somewhat and say that the ability to inflict these costs of a protest group erases the right to protest in all meaningful senses. so it comes down to a matter of which you find more important: the rights of the polity to protest or the ability of corporate entities to generate profit.
i outlined the logic behind my position in no. 69 above--the quick restate: property relations are legal relations--law is an extension of state power--the legitimacy of law then rests on the consent of the governed--so it follows then that relations inscribed within a legal system have only limited purchase on protest actions because these actions indicate problems at the level of consent.
based on that, i dont think that corporate entities have any claims that should restrict the right to protest and that any transfer of costs engendered by protest would be obviated by the priority of the right to protest.
this is a simplification of my actual position because there are obviously limits that i would accept on what a political action can and cannot do or be--but i also support the right to revolt, so the matter becomes more complicated--but also runs off the edge of what is being discussed here. so for present purposes, that's the argument.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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