I want to see people fired over this. Inexcusable. The police know they're breaking the law.

When did Glenn say anyone's actions were' cool or offer any judgment with to acts of vandalism?

Who has committed these acts? People with masks and police issue boots?

I got through to the jail. They didn't hang up. They offered phone numbers I could call to leave a comment and said their only role was to give the status of people in the jail. So I asked about Amy Goodman.

"She's been charged and releaseed."

"Charged with what?"

"Obstruction."

"Not conspiracy to riot?"

"It says obstruction here. Failure to obey police."

"Do you have access to youtube?"

"No sir, I'm at work right now."

"Well, I guess I just want to leave a comment. I'm in Portland, Oregon and I'm following the RNC, and I can't believe we're in the same country."

"Thank you, sir."

phone: 651-266-9350

By AMY FORLITI

(AP) Protesters smash the windows of a police car during an anti-war rally at the Republican National...Full Image

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Protesters smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday during an anti-war march to the site of the Republican National Convention. Police used pepper spray in confrontations with demonstrators and arrested five.

Instead of the single coherent march that organizers had hoped for, fringe groups of anarchists and others wrought havoc along the streets between the state Capitol and the Xcel Energy Center where the convention was taking place.

but then we have our very own apologist....

Maybe you didn't see everything that happened with your two eyes - did that thought ever occur to you? -- GlennGreenwald

Oh brother. You're going to snark someone for the grievous sin of reporting what didn't happen? Grow up, this is apparently a non-event with some adolescent vandals wearing masks. This is what happens when you actually go out into the field rather than sit around waiting for the opportunity to criticize someone else's efforts. Welcome to the real world.

What is all this 1968 stuff about if not to bring back 1968?

Have you seen any video of the ten or fifteen minutes (of Amy Goodman, I suppose) leading up to her arrest? I'd like to see some of that.

Otherwise, while you saw video of Amy Goodman actually being arrested (pretty tame, I'd say), you clearly wouldn't have any idea as to why she was arrested.

Right?

Click my name for a nice video.

I normally don't comment on the fatuous and imbecilic drivel posted by the resident reactionary trolls, but the latest reeking portion of Elephant meat served upon The Plate merits an observation.

"Surely no one expects us to believe that these police officers picked Amy Goodman out of a crowd to arrest her."

This is the usual mantra of credulous law and order true believers, a simple variation of the predjudice that if X wasn't doing something wrong in the first place, the nice policemen wouldn't bother them.

Moreover, it's a nice illustration of the troglodytic Amerikan complacency that made P.T. Barnum rich and famous.

To anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and even a modicum of experience of Amerikan life, it's entirely possible that "these police officers picked Amy Goodman out of a crowd to arrest her".

"Unlikely", perhaps-- but even that's just a guess.

It's just these sorts of pachydermic sheep, and observers like The Plate ready to authoritatively extrapolate and expound from his own limited observations, that allow agents of the Security State to perpetrate atrocities from rousting citizens to assassinations in plain sight, confident that even the most brazen and heinous ruthless lawlessness will be obscured by denial and cognitive dissonance.

Propaganda

Jackboots

Stormtroopers

Police State

Imperialist

Fascist

Nazi

Seeing Amy shuffled off by the unaccountable repression forces on the St Paul streets reminded me of an earlier occasion when Amy Goodman stood up to repressive police forces trying to silence dissidents -- when she and Allan Nairn and a lot of other civilians were attacked by the Indonesian armed forces and paramilitaries in Dili, East Timor (before independence had been achieved), in the Santa Cruz cemetary massacre of 1991.

From The Exception To The Rulers, by Amy Goodman

The troops marched slowly up the road, their U.S.-made M-16s in the ready position. It was November 12, 1991, a day that would forever be seared into my memory, and into history. I was in Dili, the capital of East Timor, a small island nation 300 miles north of Australia. East Timor had been brutally occupied by Indonesian troops for sixteen years, since they invaded in 1975. The Indonesian military had sealed off East Timor from the outside world and turned it into their private killing field. A third of the population -- 200,000 Timorese -- had died. It was one of the worst genocides of the late twentieth century.

I had just attended mass at the main church in Dili with Allan Nairn, journalist and activist, then writing for The New Yorker magazine. After the service, thousands marched toward the Santa Cruz cemetery to remember Sebastian Gomes, yet another young man killed by Indonesian soldiers. The people came from all over: workplaces, homes, villages, and farms. They traveled through a geography of pain: In almost every other building, Timorese had been held or tortured, disappeared or killed. Whether it was a police station or a military barracks, a hotel or an officer's house, no place was beyond reach of the terror. Not even the church was safe. It was about 8 a.m. when we reached the cemetery.

We had asked people along the way: "Why are you marching? Why are you risking your lives to do this?"

"I'm doing it for my mother," one replied. "I'm doing it for my father," said another. "I'm doing it for freedom."...

...A group of soldiers surrounded me. They started to shake my microphone in my face as if to say, This is what we don't want. Then they slammed me to the ground with their rifle butts and started to kick me with their boots. I gasped for breath. Allan threw himself on top of me to protect me from further injury.

The soldiers wielded their M-16s like baseball bats. They slammed them against Allan's head until they fractured his skull. For a moment, Allan lay in the road in spasm, covered in blood, unable to move. Suddenly, about a dozen soldiers lined up like a firing squad. They put the guns to our heads and screamed, "Politik! Politik!" They were accusing us of being involved in politics, a crime clearly punishable by death. They also demanded, "Australia? Australia?"...

...as Allan and I lay on the ground surrounded by Indonesian soldiers, we shouted, "No, we're from America!" They had stripped us of our possessions, but I still had my passport. I threw it at them. When I regained my breath, I said again, "We're from America! America!"

Finally, the soldiers lowered their guns from our heads. We think it was because we were from the same country their weapons were from. They would have to pay a price for killing us that they never had to pay for killing Timorese.

At least 271 Timorese died that day, in what became known as the Santa Cruz massacre. Indonesian troops went on killing for days. It was not even one of the larger massacres in East Timor, and it wouldn't be the last. It was simply the first to be witnessed by outsiders...

Amy's not one of these lightweight journalists afraid of losing her insider sources or frightened by today's Republican-accelerated but long-building police repression here at home.