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You want to make a point, violence is never the answer. as Steve_in_CNJ said, you can accomplish more thru peace. You become violent, your whole point is lost and you become an animal threatening everyone else. I don't care what your political point is, when you are threatening me and my families' well being.
protests in Seattle, I had a strong gut-feeling the primary source of violence were
INFILTRATORS, trying to discredit the Movement from within.
The strongest Anti-Globalization people I've met were very committed and passionate,
but ENTIRELY PEACEFUL PEOPLE who realized how an image of violence could HURT
their efforts.
Yes, that is what they were. The movement people had tried hard to advocate non-violence, but there was a group present at their planning meetings who advocated violence and destruction. They are the ones who did the damage and turned out to be agent provacateurs from the police.
In Los Angeles, now, the cops are simply identifying any who are educated in the Black community and gunning them down, trying to intimidate the Blacks not to try to better themselves. Two of the men gunned down in the last two weeks weren't even a part of the community anymore, were simply visiting their families but were college educated and well employed. In a third case, an elderly woman stepped out of her house to see the aggitation a block away, then turned around and went back into her home. Cops burst into her home, smashing down the door, roughed her up and dragged her off to the police station where they released her without charges. It is simply racist bullying and intimidation, the sort of thing you expect in the old South, but not in Los Angeles the same as the May Day police riots of a year ago. And, of course, the life of a Black or Hispanic is worth less than the life of a family pet.
The photo of the damn cop, carrying an assault rifle while better armored than our troops in Iraq told the entire story. They were just itching for an excuse to open up with their guns on full automatic at the crowds as they had done in New Orleans. The cops had planted snipers but the demonstration planners found them and removed them to prevent justification for the murderous violence the cops had planned.
As a result of the police response the police chief had to resign.
And the damage that was reported was not nearly as bad as the news made out... you'd have thought that the whole downtown was on fire and being looted... it wasn't. there were some broken windows, and a couple of cars that got torched.
Only if a society wishes to drop the claim to being civilized. This is why we create laws and law enforcement: to settle disputes and redress grievances. If violence is ever the answer then we are asking the wrong questions.
The question I have is...why was this 15 yr old killed? Did he threaten those 2 cops with a weapon by firing at them? Exactly what were the circumstances?
No, I don't condone the destruction by those hellbent on destroying property to vent their anger. But sometimes, as we have seen in our own country, previous acts of brutality by the police lead people to respond, and often with tragic results. Unfortunately, as the regime of Bush winds down, we are seeing more individualized crime rising as the frustration of people limits itself to personal solutions, not organized mass statements.
On the other hand, I see many potential downsides to this. Sometimes, the violence of protesters is provoked by the very officers trying to stop the mob with well, violence.
I can't speak to the Greek situation. But in the U.S. case, including Seattle, the violence and mayhem was overwhelmingly caused by the police.
The post by John was deeply misinformed and highly irresponsible, and frankly, is much in need of an update and a factual correction.
Look at the arrest of Amy Goodman at the Denver Convention. Very clear that she wasn't a terrorist, yet that is the charges that they used to justify her arrests. If she hadn't been a renowned journalist, she and her collegues would probably be sitting in cells in Guantanamo, Abu Gehrib or renditioned to some foreign nation for torture. Big brave cops roughing up a 5 foot woman who is crippled from previous official abuse and violence.
On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and around 78 male satyagraha set out, on foot, fort the coastal village of Dandi some 380 kms from their starting point in sabarmati, a journey which was to last 23 day. Virtually every resident of each city along this journey watched the great procession, which was at least two miles in length. On April 6th, he picked up a lump of mud and salt. Gandhi termed the march as the first implored his thousands of followers to begin to make salt wherever, along the seashore, “war” on the salt tax was to be continued during the National Week, that is, up to April 13.
The British government incarcerated over sixty thousand Indians by the end of March.
On the night of May 4, Gandhi was sleeping on a cot under a mango tree, at a village near Dandi. A little after midnight, the district magistrate of Surat drove up with two Indian Officers and thirty heavily –armed constables. He woke Gandhi by shinning a torch in his face, and arrested him.
The effect of the salt march was felt across India. Thousands of people made salt, or bought illegal salt. This period is considered the apex of Gandhi’s political appeal, as the march mobilized many new followers from all of Indian society and the march grabbed the world’s attention. Most historians see Dandi as a key turning point in India’s struggle for freedom.
No violence required.
Protest has always been the last avenue of the disenfranchised, of which there is a geometrically growing contingent. Watching executive war criminals, many of whom participated in some of the most egregious criminal acts of Constitutional violation and murder, walk around free; making jokes and flaunting a smugness borne of twisting the system of justice into their own personal crony-fed network does indeed stir an urge to blood-boiling civil disobedient protest.
Watching apologist paper-tiger legislators make deals to "put the past behind us," i.e. excuse the unconscionable murder of close to 1 million people, detentions, rapes, without so much as an attempt at serious investigation also is motivation to civil disobedience. Notice, also lately how much funding has been devoted to 'non-lethal' methods of crowd-control (crowd 'dispersal' as the Pentagon terms it.) and discouragement such as auditory and electromagnetic heat sensation.
Of course, as stated, discrediting the protesters is the first line of defense, however correct their cause (which is not, I hasten to point out, an excuse for murderous protest behavior). The media is thoroughly complicit in the government's effort to report and/or withhold details that may damage the 'official position.' The administration never was interested in the truth, just maintaining control and getting the public to swallow the latest outrage.
Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Iraq, etc. And Rove is writing books. And bush is sitting for his portrait rather than his mugshot.
We, apparently, are too 'civilized' to violently protest these horrific monsters; grinding down our right and passion for justice for the sake of appearances. We're behaving ourselves into oblivion.
I was also at WTO and can say that the police caused the violence by beating people who weren't doing anything and firing tear gas into peaceful crowds. The only ones who I saw doing anything violent were the police. Granted, there were a few anarchists (who are notoriously infiltrated by the FBI so it may have been planted agents) who smashed a couple of windows at Niketown and Starbucks... the press made it out like a bunch of hooligans were tearing up Seattle (typical corporate media, don't express any anti globalization or anti corporate agenda or we'll make you look like thugs).
I'm not sure where you get these views that cops should be shooting protesters. Should the prob 8 protesters be shot because they are not willing to accept what the voters of California decided? I honestly don't understand anyone who feels that unarmed protesters should be shot just because they are protesting the police (or WTO or gay rights, or racial equality, etc). Using force to quell free speech is a slippery slope that leads to fascism. John I don't' understand how you can hold the expressed opinion, it was genuinely shocking for me to read those words on one of my favorite news blogs...
It would have been simple to get rid of the handful of troublemakers who smashed windows. After all, some very large Teamsters were picking them up and offering them to the cops, who refused to arrest them, preferring creating chaos to containing it.
This was not LA after Rodney King. This was Kent State, and the number of convictions against protesters vs. successful lawsuits against the city are fine evidence of that.
Then.. the aboslutely abysmal mayor at the time decided he needed to assert his authority and the police turned violent on a non-violent crowd. ANY peaceful demonstration even outside the newly induced curfew zone was met with pepper spray and rubber bullets and billy clubs. And then the curfew zone would be "expanded". People were kept on buses without food or water long beyond the time they should have been legally released.
Lots of civil rights were violated against innocents.
I was in LA for the Rodney King riots and know of accounts where otherwise upscale and educated people used the chaos to "help themselves" to looted merchandise. Some people openly sold looted electronics around my place of employment.
The most moving TV news item I remember seeing was a black teen girl who was very emotional, expressing both rage and shame crying, "people need to stop doing this because they're only burning down their own neighborhoods and making everyone else think we're *animals*!"
Cops regard all common people as N-----. News in Los Angeles showed a cop pulling a pretty white girl off a fence and then beating her unmercifully for the crime of trying to climb the fence and escape the police violence. During the testimony at the Rampart Scandal, was wheelchair bound white man who was beaten by the police who claimed he had pulled a gun on them.
Careful there. That's the kind of thinking that justified China's decision to kill dozens of protestors in Tiananmen Square. Or the murder of four college students at Kent State in the 1970s. You'd love to think that the cops are only going to shoot and kill some really violent, bad, murderous people -- but in fact they'd end up shooting journalists, angry but nonviolent protestors, bystanders, etc.
In other words -- really bad idea. USA is not a totalitarian state where we shoot unarmed protestors. Professional SWAT teams have procedures to shut down such riots and put those people in prison without killing anybody.
That's called rule of law. I was caught up in a protest outside the 2000 Democratic convention when some anarchists burned a flag and the LAPD started shooting tear gas into the crowd. Good thing the cops didn't use live ammunition (as John Aravosis would recommend) because then I might have been caught in some crossfire and killed. All of these riot/protest situations usually involve a small percentage of troublemakers and a bunch of bystanders/observers/journalists.
Adding lethal force to the situation is a very, very BAD idea.
As for what's going on in Greece, setting fire to apartment buildings is obviously, WRONG (if not deranged or evil)! The people who did so should be jailed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow (provocateurs)
http://nadiacavalera.blogspot.com/2008/10/inter... ( former Italian president admits how to use provocateurs )
Brief translation here:
http://www.911blogger.com/node/18328
On the other hand, there are all sorts of weapons that can be used in place of deadly force: from fire hoses to rubber bullets to tazers.
I'd have to see what weapons are available for the cops there before I passed judgement.
(In general, tho, I'd say anybody who's attempting to set fire to an occupied apartment block is attempting to commit murder and should be subject to deadly force.)
What all of the protest you mentioned had it common was nobody was willing to take it that far, and by your calculations I tend to think they should aim for using the least necessiary to quell the rebellion but if it comes damned necessiary to shoot, then do so.
I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots. It was scary. But the city survived,
Has Greece declared that a state of martial law exists? If so, there is usually less justification needed.
Not just good enough, but the justification says that it the job for which the cops were hired to perform. Indiscriminately gun down civilians to keep them terrorized and afraid to speak up for the Constitution, Bill of Rights and laws of this nation. Even worse, they are now targeting not only community leaders but simply those who have had the initiative to go to college and get an eduction. This is why we elected Obama, to change the direction of our authorities, but more and more, Obama is showing signs that he intends to give us more of the same.
In Poland the intelligent, the teachers, the politicians and many other "dissidents" who could cause the Nazis trouble, were rounded up and many killed. In this present police action using heavy handed force against anyone who protests or questions the authority, we witness a variation of it in that they haven't started overtly killing people, yet but, the potential threat is always implied. The more one can convince the citizenry that it is appropriate to kill protesters that the police decide are "dangerous" only to them actually, it makes it easier to eliminate "bothersome" people. Certainly, if McCain had won, the police actions would, in my opinion, have gone farther in making sure everyone "towed the line" in the name of maintaining "peaceful assembly in the specially designated areas away from where an effective peaceful protest should be. Obama hasn't begun his tenure yet, so I have a problem labeling him for something he hasn't done as a president. There will be plenty of time for that during the 4 or 8 years of his tenure to see where his vision of change leads us. I know, what the consequences surely would have been if McCain had won the election and we do not need to see the FEMA concentration camps put in action to know that they are there and waiting for us, in the event we question authority too strongly. To question the authority that now has its foot on our necks is something the police do not want see..
We still do not know who the people were who trashed the streets at this convention and disturbed an otherwise peaceful protest.. Why not? Why did they not get arrested? Very fishy. The authorities called them 'anarchists'.
There are problems when you have large numbers of the youth in any country who have no jobs, no hope and no realistic ambition for a future. The same thing happened in France, and the same root cause breeds terrorism. Having a positive path for the youth of all nations is going to be one the big challenges in the 21st century.
Remember how the cops did nothing -- as long as the protestors were destroying East LA? But when they started to move to Beverly Hills, or some other rich area, THEN they stopped it. The cops didn't care one bit about businesses or cars or trash cans until they moved.
I can't understand why this isn't obvious to more.
We are all going to see alot more of it in the near future as the world economy goes off the rails.
If you want proof, look to the Civil Rights Act.
Yep! Right. Like tasering them dozens of times until their hearts fail. Shooting them between the eyes or in the temple with rubber bullets or tear gas canisters. Tearing apart a 9 year old girl with the stream from a fire hose. Yep! Those non-lethal methods are very effective. If you watch the tapes of the police killing that 9 year old girl, it was very obvious that they knew they were using killing force on her. Her crime was being Black. But as I posted above, if we aren't part of the billionaire establishment, we are all N-----s to the cops.
Thank you
And you mention "turning over cars, looting stores, and more generally setting the city on fire." Are you kidding me? You would be FOR harming humans because they turned over a car? Looted a store? Set "the city" on fire? Yes, I realize that by mentioning the people (the children!) above the building, you are trying to tug at heartstrings, but come on. You are really worried about the above-mentioned things?
And if it is between a human, and someone's car or business? Guess which one I pick? (And yes, even if most Americans think the human is "scum" -- I see him/her as a life. And it isn't even a fetus!)
The cars, the businesses -- insurance will replace them. A human life? No.
This police behavior is shameful -- no matter what country it is in. I usually agree with you, but in this case, I see the AGE difference coming out. It seems that those who remember the 60s think differently. I agree with your mom.
THINGS = worth anything, even a human life
Human lives -- if not rich = no biggie
Just look at the "criminal justice system" -- Dick Cheney? Mass murderer. No arrest. A marijuana user? 10 years in prison. George Bush? Mass murderer. No arrest. Someone who steals a car? 10 years.
America is all F-ed up. Has it always been this way?
That's basically how it went down for me. I intentionally joined the peaceful protesters the next day. Something I never would've imagined doing before. I've had a very strong distrust of authority and our government ever since. I woke up.
And I was just trying to get home from work.
The cops: Each cop by himself seems reasonable. But in a group, they play off each other and get violent. (Read: Guns, killing, or at least tear gas, or TAZing someone, maybe to death)
The protestors: Same thing, in that they are boldened by being in a group. BUT they don't have the lethal weapons the cops do.
HUGE difference.
Seattle was an actual police riot, where 99.9% of the demonstrators were peaceful and were assaulted by police on foot and horseback. The tiny amount of property damage wasn't even begun until well AFTER the trampling and beating of the peaceful demonstrators.
And to be even more clear about Seattle, my son witnessed (and videotaped) police standing idly very nearby, totally apart from the main demonstration, while a handful of black-clad masked men broke a Gap window and slightly damaged a few other corporate franchise buildings. These people in black were obviously police provocateurs trying to give the demonstrators a bad name, as has been shown to be the case at every national political convention since Seattle.
The Seattle-Athens distinction is a very important one to realize, and it's also vital to realize that the police state is working night and day to upturn a citizen's constitutional right to protest and even petition the government.
Fast forward to the present. I play hockey still in a city beer league and a couple of cops play in the league. At the bar over beers after the game, I related to them the experiences I had in college with the future law enforcement candidates at college. I asked them if it was still as high as 60% of the cops liked beating the shit out of people. At first, they said the people getting into law enforcement in the 70's were ex-Viet Nam vets who had mental and post traumatic stress syndrome. After further questioning, they said the percentage today was around 40% in their opinion. In my opinion it is still 60% or higher.
They also said the future looks bleak since a lot of the Iraq veterans will come back from that hell hole and apply to be in law enforcement. They say police violence will only get worse when the Iraq vets get on the force and apply their interpretation of enforcing laws on the populace.
By the way, the only time you can get into a fight with a cop and not get arrested is playing in recreational hockey. You will get thrown out of the game and also the next game but at least the playing field is level. Most of them are assholes and deserve a good whoopin'. And I am a peaceful hippie, albeit an old one! (a lot of current and ex-hippies play ice hockey!)
If none of the above, don't demand comments. Start your own popular blog. Until you do, you have no right.
End of story. And, by the way, grow up!
I don't know who is in the right in the current situation. But I was appalled to hear people calling in to the television stations (both private and state-run) saying that they were witnesses and giving their statements. There is NO attempt to check to see if these folks are on the up and up. But to allow them to inflame the populace is nothing short of criminal in my mind.
The main difference between Greece and most of the West, including the United States, is the rule of the Junta from 1967 through 1974. When the Colonels ordered the police to break up student demonstrations, many students were killed at the Polytechnic University in downtown Athens. Months later, the Junta was overthrown. One of the remnants of that time, is the rule that universities, all universities are off limits to the police unless the students and faculty approve their presence. What this has meant in reality is that violent demonstrators and self-styled (and named) anarchists set fires, destroy property and cars, and attack banks, political offices, and police stations and then run to the universities. The police are powerless to stop them (except by using violence, and getting a violent reaction in return) or even to arrest the ring leaders. Often times, the universities themselves are targets as are the faculty and the administration.
In my small town on the Peloponnese, the students took off from school, marched through town and worked themselves into a lather, lighting fireworks and flares, before heading to the police station. At that point, I decided I would return home.
Just today the LA Times had an article relating to this:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asecti...
The whole Bush crime family's fraud, lies and too numerous to count illegal acts during the past eight years are another example.
At some point the people have had enough and the only thing left for them to do is riot, which is like a pressure valve releasing the pent up rage inside themselves. Especially now in these hard economic times when the have mores are getting more and the have nots are getting nothing. Things look bleak for domestic tranquility in the future. People are pissed off and some of them aren't going to take it anymore. Duck and cover...
Now setting fire to someone's home is most definitely an unlawful act, and the police have the right and duty to prevent bloodshed (even in an extreme fashion: shooting to kill) such as would be caused by such actions. So what's the question again? Oh year, how do you get the Government, and it's Supreme Court to listen to your grievances when they clearly show no intention of doing so? If that's not your question, John, then maybe, let me try, was the Civil War justified? The burning of Atlanta by the Union forces?