I consider Chip Berlet one of my mentors. He's been doing this (infiltrating the left) a very long time (before most of you were born). He is a former vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild.

-paranthetical remarks mine-

He's also named after John Foster Dulles, and from an American empire family, takes Chicago School of Economics backed foundation money (and maybe Scaife money) and publishes a rumor-mongering, scare-the-sheep rag called Public Eye that is purely designed to get people to refrain from any disagreement with or criticisms of the "line".

His favorite tactics are guilt-by-association, and twisting the facts.

Now I get why you sound like such a fascist.

I spent most of the day monitoring twitter.

http://twitter.com/coldsnaplegal

Coldsnap Legal's twitter and other twitter channel's of those involved in the direct actions. If the cops weren't doing so I'm smarter than they are. No surprise there. So I had a pretty good picture of what this was all about. All one needs to do is read the website.

Indeed.

From the above website:

"Sweatshirts and blankets are needed at the jail! If you can help organize this or have stuff to offer, please call us or head on down there!"

"Numerous reports from people being released of people inside being denied medical treatment, those needing it being separated from others"

"Many arrestees are being held without booking in the Ramsey Cty jail. Not in the system yet, told no info & they won't see judges until Wed."

Pretty seditious stuff.

One could, of course, compare this to your own advice:

If you want to negotiate with a policeman...

Take a hostage. Otherwise, shut up and follow the "lawful order".

Anything else and you are guilty of "contempt of cop".

Oh, look. A false dilemma. Either follow the "lawful order", or else be a hostage taker.

Polish those jack boots. You're outed.

I just saw a rather interesting comment at antiwar.com.

Grossman and Woolsey are selling weapons. James was part of the Mossad mailing Anthrax with Hanan Serfaty and Legum Yochai IIBR etc. You know who worked against the Israeli group in South Africa? Steven Hatfill. He was AWB and also Selous Scouts in Rhodesia. And so who did they try to set up by following his where abouts with anthrax hoax letters? Hatfill. And no it was Ivins following him around it was Mossad and Sayins.

Check the link at my sig for context and more URLs. (I am assuming Glenn is up to his ears in other issues, so maybe some regulars here can help follow this up? Or let me know if it's nothing new?)

@Glennzilla

Glenn, it is kind of frustrating how you are really setting the pace now on multiple fronts (FISA, anthrax, and now these protests, just for starters) and yet this Salon blog format force everybody to trawl through hundreds of comments just to stay abreast (and despite all the trolls and wankers, there are some high quality contributors here IMHO). And then after a certain time the comments close down, not that anyone reads them any more (I know, it's a curse of the short-term-memory blogosphere).

Also, I very much appreciate that you are not so aloof from your readers as other bloggers, and happily wade into the comments every day. So...

Would Salon maybe look at a different format, where there are threads staying alive for various topics under discussion? Or could you just post blank threads every day for major "live" topics, so people wanting to contribute info don't have to keep going off-topic?

Finally, do you have a P.A.? Maybe you need a team of interns, like Josh?

:-)

i started out making fun of older guys like you and now i end up quoting you with all my heart -

'I had considered myself a member of this "community" a long time after Glenn moved to Salon. Perhaps I choose to remain more distant than some as that is my nature. And it enable me to keep my objectivity and see things like this exchange with you (and these people I used to think I knew) more clearly. These people, many of whom probably considered me a fool - have finally jumped the shark. It has been interesting, if not somewhat sad, to watch it happen. To watch them become more and more like the very people they now openly hate has been a little unsettling. I think I've seen enough but like any slow motion train wreck, I may be tempted to keep watching it unfold.

Nietzsche hopefully never is right.

and perhaps they will someday understand by fighting monsters, you do everything not to become a monster.”

Chip Berlet's been discussed now in two posts (the most recent mentioning his own name as if it were possibly some sort of questionable factor about him), but there is more recent material related to the topic at hand from Berlet's organizations.

From Berlet's website PublicEye.org:

In New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, police violated the rights of thousands of protestors. The violations included roundups of demonstrators, spying on non-violent political activists, the use of agent provocateurs, and the faking of evidence.

On this edition, in a collaboration with Abby Scher of Public Eye Magazine, we talk with New Yorkers who exposed the police abuses, and lawyers in the cities where the Democratic and Republican conventions will be held this summer, as they fight to prevent similar tactics.

http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2008/1908.html

In the program, as in the rest of the website's guides for protecting civil liberties or fighting back against government spying, citizens are heavily encouraged to aim to document their and the police's actions.

Other analyses take a closer look at the growth of these pre-emptive policing policies, often associated with the real or perceived (or claimed) expansion of police powers under the Patriot Act.

Amy Goodman claimed in her post-release interview that she was "handcuffed, pushed to the ground" by police.

The video of her arrest shows no such thing.

Was Amy Goodman lying, trying to inflate her claims to make the St. Paul police look bad?

And, as I have aksed about ten times already in this letters thread, does anyone have any evidence other than Amy Goodman's own version, as to what happened leading up to her arrest? (I presume that the police officers will have their own statement of what happened.)

Uh, Glenn?