Comments on: When Peace Protesters Attack!

By: NordicAngst

NordicAngst — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:19:13 +0000

As apparently the only person that has actually been to St. Paul this week (after my weekend at the state fair!) I just thought I would drop in to say that things are going pretty smoothly. There was a good piece on MPR the other day interviewing a lot of families out for the day and it basically conformed to my experience. Of course it seems the police arrested a bunch of journalists, notably Amy Goodman, for no apparent reason, but that's pretty par for the course these days.

The group shown here were a small and generally insignificant party of anarchists (traditionally considered right wing, though they don't really fit anywhere) and don't really represent even a fraction of a fraction of the actual weeks events. This video gives a better picture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovN2lsT5wE

By: mikkel

mikkel — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:27:49 +0000

I thought about saying something snarky but then I realized that you were implying that it was OK to arrest anyone regardless of whether they were doing anything because it's too hard otherwise. I think that's its own punchline. (BTW It's hardly a war zone, the AP report I read said one officer was punched in the back and one had heat exhaustion.)

Of course I've known many cops and while some of them had no problem treating criminals in ways that I thought were wrong and counterproductive, none of them ever claimed that it didn't really matter if someone was innocent or not…(OK they might have about a particular crime like “I know that so and so is a bad person and I'm not sure if he did this particular thing but he's done lots of stuff like it so it's OK to arrest him for this thing and charge him” but not like you implied)

By: casualobserver

casualobserver — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:03:36 +0000

“From my surfing on the internet and seeing that the police are arresting all sorts of journalists, lawyers”

Ok, next time when you are actually performing the policemen's job, instead of issuing your critique from behind your computer screen, we'll be watching how you stop and do a credentials check for each person.

By: AustinRoth

AustinRoth — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:52:05 +0000

Hmmm – any reason you didn't want to call them what they are? Leftist protesters?

By: Jazz

Jazz — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:45:47 +0000

Fair enough, mikkel. But from the reports we're getting live from the event, a significant number of them involved were protesting the Iraq War, so I guess I just sort of mentally lump them in with “peace protesters”

By: mikkel

mikkel — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:22:32 +0000

Jazz, it's not fair to call them peace protesters if they are anarchists.

From my surfing on the internet and seeing that the police are arresting all sorts of journalists, lawyers and threatening legitimate protesters, while stuff like what you linked is going on…it really underscores how incompetent the government becomes when it becomes fixated on high profile dissidents at the expense of actually policing. It's pretty much a perfect analogy for the war on terrorism.

By: sh0ter

sh0ter — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:50:10 +0000

527's make me want to puke….