I don't know. Do you? They might have been in an area that they were not spposed to be. They might have been diong something that they were not supposed to be doing. They might have been merely detained, and were being questioned, and Amy Goodman interfered with that. Again, I don't know. But you seem to know. How long, exactly, have you been there in St. Paul?

I swear to God, this is like the ninth grade, with all sorts of rumors and innuendo flying all about. The crazier, the more accusatory and conspiratorial, the better.

It ordinarily wouldn't be worth my time to try to counter-attack with nothing more than modest common-sense. Except that I know that Amy Goodman will be on about 600 NPR stations tomorrow, falsley accusing Republicans of creating a police state. And the notion that public media is being used for that purpose, unrebutted, will be almost too much to bear.

Well, I was up on St. Peter Street (right by Mickey's Diner), watching the main parade - which by the way was pretty amazing - Heart Of The Beast Theatre's puppets were really beautiful, and a great piece of Demonstration As Art (versus destructiveness and idiocy). At any rate, the Stormtroopers were there, blocking access to anyone who wanted to join the march (those are the rules - agreed to by the march organizers btw). The troopers decided the crowd was too close, and very politely asked us to back off onto the sidewalk. The deputy's words were "Okay folks, can't have you on our backs like this, please move over to the sidewalk, thanks" and then they moved us to the sidewalk. It was pretty damn professional and pretty damned polite, and I give them credit for it.

One reason there might have been such a heavy presence is because of past protest history in the TC and the fact that up until less than a day ago we were gonna have Bush, Cheney, the first lady, probably the second, and the veep nomination all here on the same day, and they were simply executing the security plan they had in place. Nobody likes these people, especially around here, the GOP is in the crapper. Opinion is lowwww, so security is high. Just my theory.

BTW Elephantman, it very quickly became apparent to me -first from Greenwald's temperamental and absurd reply - that you can't argue around here intelligently until you've beat on a few reactionary, singleminded lockstep heads. You have to use brute force. Here, I'll show you in my next post:

go back to the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. I wasn't there during the action, but I was on the phone with people who were witnessing the marches and the violence as it was happening. The people I was talking to were on high floor of a building right in the middle of much of the protest action, and they were reporting what was going on down below. Peaceful -- though loud! -- marches, sudden disruption by sounds of breaking glass, masked people in black running, more glass breaking, teargas, police wading into crowds, people running, screaming, more teargas, on and on. At no time did anyone I was talking to believe the protesters were responsible for the vandalism. They thought then, and they think now, that it was provocateurs, police plants, hired goons, and the whole point was to have an excuse to wail on

the protesters, break up the marches, and most importantly, discredit the whole idea of popular mass protest.

I was in Seattle the following year during the anniversary marches and protests. During those actions, there was no doubt at all what was happening. The police were quite blatant in violating the rights of citizens, endangering them, driving them out of Downtown with clubs and teargas.

Similar actions have been conducted in Portland periodically, just to break some DFHs heads, and the "Progressive" Mayor was all in favor of it.

There have been many large scale protest marches without this kind of violence. You probably remember the ones in San Francisco in October 2002 and February 2003; huge protests, perhaps a hundred thousand -- including "anarchists", nothing more than very minor incidents that I recall. But then, they were organized by Communists; what do you expect? They know how to keep the masses in line.

What's been happening in St Paul and Minneapolis is deeply disturbing to me in part because of the disproportionality of it all. The Authorities appear to outnumber everyone else, they are armed to the teeth, and they are most definitely utilizing Fear as their primary weapon against citizens, DFHs or not, despite their denials. The Mayor and various law enforcement spokespeople justify this by the highly amateurish "criminality" of the "anarchists" they are running to earth through their raids and their pre-emptive arrests and their massive presence on the streets. It's beyond overkill.

And most people are terrified by it. That's the point.

Glenn,

I greatly admire your courage and honesty. But, PLEASE learn the correct usage of "lay" and "lie."

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Hey, you don't have to tell me to be pissed at the IDF. But when I do get mad, I make sure I know why I'm getting mad. I'm getting mad because they shouldn't be there--they have no legal or moral right to be ruling over Palestines. Force is their only mandate. I don't get mad because they violated our civil rights. We don't have any there.

We have a social contract here, such as it is. Our discussion about this should occur within that framework. Given that Minneapolis has a responsibility to respect the right to assemble and to protest, how does it execute its responsibility to protect the citizens of its city?

That's not to say that I wouldn't dance a jig on a hog's teat if somehow some super-human anarchist crashed the gates and smashed a bottle of two day old piss across the bow of USS McCain.

Its time you read a book about the conflict.