No, if an adult with the strength of a 3 year old started hitting a body builder, the body buider should still not hit back. Doesn't have to just take it, but hitting back isn't right either. Two wrongs don't make a right, and when you have the power to do a much greater wrong, than all the more so you shouldn't. Of course, in this case, the body builder hitting back isn't an analogy for the corporation stopping people from trespassing, that would be more like if the body builder restrained the wimpy adult at arms length. The hitting back is analogous to the corporation going farther than stopping trespassing, and infringing upon the person's life and livelihood.

My entire post is going into hypotheticals that DO exist, which is precisely the problem. I don't give a shit about Vera personally. It wasn't fracking or Vera that made me click on the thread, it was wondering what it meant by corporate dictatorship. I read it and determined that indeed there was corporate abuse of power happening. A lady can't go to various places that she needs to go, and has done nothing to deserve that. Yes, she trespassed, but not on those areas. That seems simple enough. I write one sentence you don't like, and you feel the need to bring me into the debate. You dodge everything I say by focusing on some small aspect of what I said and twisting my words.

Look, neither of us think that trespassing should be legal. Neither of us think what she did was legal. Neither of us think that protesting isn't a right under the constitution. Neither of us think that private property shouldn't be protected. Neither of us think that laws should apply unequally to certain people or entities. I presume that neither of us really like this particular protester. I don't, and I don't get the impression that you do. However neither of us think that how much we like a person or cause should affect how the law affects a person or entity. Hence, neither of us think that the company was wrong to kick Vera off the business sites she was causing a problem on. We agree on all of that.

What we don't seem to agree on are two things. First, you seem to think that the law doesn't say that Vera is barred from various places unrelated to fracking, and that it's a misinterpretation of the law, or that if it isn't, that the company won't bother Vera if she goes to the fracking unrelated places. I disagree, as the interpretation seems correct to me, and I don't trust the corporation not to abuse their power. Second, you seem to think that corporations wouldn't do this on purpose to stop protesters, and that the potential in a law to be abused shouldn't be corrected. I disagree, because I think it is only common sense as a corporation to try to shut up protesters without having to listen to their demands, and any corporation doing the opposite is an anomaly. I also think that if something can be abused, it will be, and it's better to take precautions against it's abuse than to wait for it to be abused. If a law can potentially be abused, it should be corrected, and this is an example of that. If you disagree with me on these things, then you'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm not changing my mind.

There is a third possibility that you might be disagreeing with me on, I'm not sure. At times you seem to suggest that if the company WERE to bar Vera from a hospital, supermarket, lake shore, etc., that they would not only be legally protected, but also would be doing the right thing. I agree that they are legally protected to do that, however I think it would be wrong to do that to her. Maybe they wouldn't do that to her, but the fact that the law allows for it, which I believe it does, is something that bothers me. If you do in fact think that the company not only legally CAN, but actually SHOULD bar her from those places, then...holy crap, I don't even know what to say to you. That's horrible. If you don't, but you think that a law allowing for something like that should be allowed to remain as it is, then again, that's horrible. If you don't think that either, but are just trying to say that company did nothing wrong, and this whole huge conversation was just to defend the company's right to file a restraining order in the first place then...huh...okay...I never said they couldn't, whatever. But maybe you're just mad that I don't trust them not to file charges if she goes on the sites unrelated to fracking, and you think they wouldn't and she should just stop trespassing on the drilling sites and still feel free to go to the supermarket. If you think that, you're just naive. I'm sorry.

Either way.  My point is, that if somebody is harming you, of their own free choice and volition, and you've warned them many times to stop.  You are fully within your rights to take legal means to stop them from doing so, even if the legal means are dispropotiantly damaging to them, because they are the ones inviting the problem in the first place by violating the law and refusing to leave you alone.

This is espeically true when you are taking the least damaging option, like Cabot did here.

1)  I don't know if the law says that or not.  All i do know is that Cabot did not ask her to be banned from those places.  Either she's making it up, or the judge made such a ruling.  Meaning either issue needs to be brought up with her,  the judge, or the government if it is impossible to have a more percise tool.

2) Again, how do you think this can be abused?  Your assumption is that this will be applied to people who don't break any laws... when there is no way forthis to be the case.   Your arguement, if i've read it correctly is "If they use this on her they'll use it on protestors who are protesting legally."  Which doesn't make any sense as there is no way they could, since the whole point was that she's tresspassed on their sites dozens opon dozens of times.

3)   She tresspassed on their lands dozens and dozens of times and was constantly told this was a problem.  If a restraining order is the only thing they can do and they would ban her from those places, then yes they should do that.   She knew what she was doing, and she knows what the results would be and she sounds like she plans to continue doing it as she says she's done nothing wrong.

Now if she offered to sign a contract promising to not enter those sites under some financial penalty or jail time or something and they refused, then sure I think the company would be dicks not to take it... but right now, she's just a terrible harrassing human being getting punished for her own reactions.

Your considering them guilty of something they haven't done, simply because they could do it and are a big corporation, despite the fact that if they wanted her in jail, she'd already be in jail, for all the times she tresspassed on their property in the first place, since she was their illegally.

If the coproration wanted to harm her, legal action would of taken place WELL before now... and she'd be in jail.  She's been doing this for 5 years.  For 5 years they've tried to convince her to stop doing this.

5 years isn't a long enough time?

Coproations don't want protestors to go to jail, your basically creating a martyr at that point.

I would gurantee you if she offered to sign a contract stating under the penalty of huge financial loses or prison time or something similar that she will not enter their drilling areas or access roads that Cabot would happily get rid of the restraining order.

Now if they do so, yeah THEN they'll be a dick, if they do it.  Assuming that is, she isn't doing the same things on the other parts of their leased properties and harass people with protesting.

If she goes to her local hosptial and stands inside the lobby with a sign and starts annoying the waiting patients about the ills of fracking.  Then yeah.  They should arrest her.

You've stopped reading my responses, I think it's time I stopped reading yours.

Not sure where you got that from, since I keep directly responding to your points.

I mean, it seems pretty simple...

You are argueing that they might hypothetically abuse their power to do something that they could of done more eaisly and legally another way... which would be the case for any oil company.

Which is the point you seem to miss.    It would be like if you broke into my house, and then I let it go, and just filed a restraining order for my house and buisness so i could bust you for breaking an entering again.

Not exactly... a machivellian corporate dictatorship so much as a roundabout way to do something that you could of did in the first place, except now people hate you a lot more, since instead of arresting someone for tresspassing on to your land endagering their lives and your workers lives, your arresting them for being at a grocery store...  after they did all that stuff.

Except actually, the penalty for violating this order isn't jail.  Instead it's simply having to pay lawyer fee's and likely an an additional fine while being told not to do it again.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/197400716/Court-Order-10-22-13-New-Date-1-2-14-Next-Court-Day

So really, it'd be a machivellian plan to abuse something to cause less damage then they originally could have.   Not sure i get the real potential for abuse here as far as intimidation goes.

Hell, considering she's still doing this and they haven't arrested her yet... it makes "abuse" seem even less likely.

You have to love people ignorant of the actual issues at hand, who support the "rights" of corporations over the good of people and the environment. If "fracking" should be legal, so should oil spills, and dumping chemicals into people's drinking water sources. It's that bad. Yet people are ignorant and choose to be uninformed in situations where they really should know what they're talking about before they start talking.

This woman, or any protestor for that matter, may be "annoying", but I ask you, how else are issues like this supposed to be addressed? By "writing your congressmen", the people in DC who probably take money from these same corporations and vote in their best interests, not the peoples?

We live in the fucking 21st century, and yet mankind continues to value profits over people, and think of the immediate future, and not long term consequences. We are supposed to be so advanced and civilized, yet we act so absolutely retarded. There are individuals who are brilliant, wonderful human beings. But PEOPLE, en masse, in general, are fucking morons.

So it's your belief that laws shouldn't apply just so long as the people breaking them agree with you poltically?

Whether it's fracking, SOPA, Anti-War Protests, Anti Genocide protests,  Gay marriage, anti-gay marriage, Pro education, or hell Pro segregation... it doesn't matter.

Laws need to protect people evenly...  afterall, if the law bends your way one day, you can be sure it will bend agaisnt you another day... and quite honestly, more often the other way in most cases.