Letters posted here are associated with the following Salon Premium Member:

joethomas

Published Letters: 1

Sunday, August 31, 2008 05:42 PM

Been going on

This has been going on for years, starting largely (though hardly entirely) after the Battle of Seattle in '99. Even little stuff gets it -- the World Agricultural Forum was going to be here in St. Louis a few years back (we're the headquarters of Monsanto), and a bunch of anarchist kids were arrested (largely on building code violations) and treated to having the police chief call them terrorists on the evening news using as "evidence" that they were going to make pipe bombs with PVC and nails.

Of course, they'd been rehabbing their house and putting a new roof on the garage, which requires PVC pipe and nails, and they didn't have any, oh, I don't know, explosives or history of violent behavior or plans for criminal activity or anything.

I'm glad you and Jane were there to give some broader exposure to these abuses; they always start with the people they think no one will pay attention to (radical left kids) and start moving it towards the more mainstream as they think they can get away with it. Like canaries in the mines.

Most Active Letters Threads

740

The commendably missing element from Obama's speech

There was no pretense that human rights is our goal, or the likely outcome, in escalating the war
374

America's regression

It's almost impossible to find a nation with as many torture advocates as the U.S. has.
358

Do Obama officials know what his Afghanistan plan is?

What explains the completely contradictory statements from key aides on a central plank of the war strategy?
287

Palin: Birthers have "fair question" about Obama

Of Obama birth, the ex-governor says, "the public is still, rightfully, making it an issue" (Updated)
211

The poster boy for progressive self-delusion

Read Hayden's 2008 Obama endorsement to remember the way the left sold our centrist president to itself

View all »

Letters Help

Currently in Salon