There are at least half a dozen groups (probably many more) who are all being tied to RNC Welcoming Committee inappropriately and unfairly ... through these raids ... and, quite possibly, in the minds of the locals, even though the groups have VERY DIFFERENT focus and agendas... are they all going to be labeled as part of an "anarchist conspiracy"

Is this pretext to withdraw already issued permits? To keep more locals "safely" at home? Mute objections to the treatment of those raided and detained? Bread not Bombs need their stuff back! Everyone needs their laptops and phones back!

Is it, as was suggested over at Common Dreams, provocation to force a confrontation?

This, doubtless IS some sort of opening volley for what is to come TODAY, TOMORROW, the DAY AFTER.

Bush, Cheney and Schawtzeneggar have all canceled their appearances (storm related) and there is talk of shortening the convention by a day ...

Stay tuned.

And you and Che know this how, exactly?

Che Pasa is right: the coming lawsuits won't accomplish a damn thing.

Why not wait for the lawyers to sort it out? That's why God invented pro bono public interest attorneys.

Then this:

As I've said before

That's the truth folks. It really doesn't take anything at all for them to justify pulling a trigger.

-- Pedinska

This was actually pretty common up until the 60s. You can track the beginning of the expansion of these rights and protections from Weeks in 1914 up until Mapp in 61, and then the Republicans kept the WH, except for Carter, and got to stock the court with their judges who tend to think these "due process" concerns are too soft on crime. Here we are.

Ergo, the lawsuits have not made a difference.

And I can't recommend this book enough.

Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall

http://www.southendpress.org/2004/items/Agents

http://www.amazon.com/Agents-Repression-Against-American-Movement/dp/0896082938

If nothing else, Ward Churchill did one right thing and the book is an excellent history of the FBI from it's early beginning as the morals police and how it transformed into America's political police.

This is a must read as well:

Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's surveillance of activist anthropologists. (David H. Price, Duke University press, 2004)

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2004/SO/BR/gill.htm

This is Prof. Price's website

http://homepages.stmartin.edu/fac_staff/dprice/CW-PUB.htm

Now that RMP was kind enough to remind me of my advanced age, I notice my back is hurting and I think I will lay down.

It wasn't meant as a put down, I was just trying to encourage him to get a little perspective.

Anyone who is involved in any sort of protest should video and/or photograph as much as possible with their cell phone (assming it is capable, which a lot are) and immediately upload the images/videos to wherever. Such documentation is what caught the police agents provoacateur at a protest in Canada a couple of years ago. The police, faced with pictures of the agents provocatuer wearing the exact same boots as the police do, eventually had to admit they were involved in such a scurrilous enterprise.

Document, document, document.. The more camera angles you have the more accurately the events can be reconstructed in case that become necessary.

It's about you."

Barack Obama

Guess I should have provided my definition of a positive put down which is constructive criticism.

If you are supporting the Repug destruction of our nation and the world, it is about YOU!

The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History (see sig)

There was a TV ad for deodorant that said, "Never let them see you sweat." The John McCain campaign has just showed the world that it is drenched.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/the-worst-vice-presidenti_b_122491.html

It's the Feds...

"She and her husband were detained by police in St. Paul on Fri. 8/29/08 while attending an organizing meeting of activists protesting the RNC in the Twin Cities. They were not arrested, and eventually released. However, they returned home to find their garage and car had been burglarized. Nothing was taken, but documents and belongings had been searched. Interviewed at a gathering in Powderhorn Park on 8/30/08"

http://tiny.cc/1pUEG

Gee, it's amazing that the very crowd that would "never" assume that someone was guilty just because they plead the Fifth, assumes that adnoto is a hypocrite because he can't be in Denver and Minneapolis. For the record, things are quite turned around, with the usually not into protest Glenn Greenwald doing a first hand on police raids on "radicals" and adnoto reduced to watching from afar.

So now I, the anti-International A.N.S.W.E.R. guy who hates it when people hijack demonstrations will do my "Free Mummia" bit.

If people are in New York City, or thereabouts, on Wednesday September 3rd, there is a bail hearing for Aafia Siddiqui at the U.S. District Court at 500 Pearl St. in Manhattan. There is a very real need for American interest and support on this case to ensure a fair trial. The case has not aroused great public interest in the U.S. and much of the press reporting has been of her as an al Qaeda mastermind, so maybe that's why. People like the ACLU and other U.S. civil libertarians seem strangely silent. Perhaps abused accused terrorists are like Descartes -- more convenient as heroes once they are dead.

At any rate, there are more than enough violations of more than enough international laws* in her treatment just since July 17th to justify some attention, and if, as her lawyers contend, her health is indeed failing, time is a bit of the essence. Internationally, the protesters and the Pakistani government got less done in three weeks of street protests and official ambassadorial protests to the U.S. government than when one American human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, got involved with a very public plea to the Afghan government to release her son, who is due now to be released soon. So American protest over American treatment is very, very powerful.

Oh, LondonLad, there's a protest Friday September 12 6-8pm, outside the U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square. Don't have any idea where that is, but I'm sure you do.

*Fourth Geneva Convention, International Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention Against Torture, International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Vienna Convention... yeah, I know, nothing Constitutional except for that icky Law of Nations thingy.