I was struck by the irony in these two reports from a single recent broadcast of Pacifica Radio (extracts only below):
FTAA Protest: The Free Trade Area of the Americas, (FTAA) meetings in Miami were marked by unprecedented police mobilization and violence, when as many as 125 peaceful protesters were injured, while around 200 were arrested. The police security arrangements, which used 2,500 members of 40 departments, cost as much as $50,000 in new equipment alone and took six months to arrange, according to newspaper reports. Meanwhile, American civil liberties groups yesterday denounced the FBI for using new counter-terrorist powers to spy on anti-war demonstrations. The FBI claims that this use of surveillance of the anti-war movement was necessary to prevent protests being used as a cover by ëextremist elementsí of by terrorist organizations to mount an attack. The civil liberties groups were quick to point to an FBI memorandum on anti-war demonstrations distributed last month to local police forces which suggests that federal agents have also been monitoring mobilization techniques used by opponents of the war in Iraq.
SOA/WHINSEC Protest: This weekend close to 10,000 people gathered outside the gates to Fort. Benning, Georgia to call for the closing of the Army School of the Americas. Recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the school trains Latin American military personnel in Counter-insurgency tactics – which demonstrators say are responsible for human rights abuses across Latin America. Many of the demonstrators present at the annual march on the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation had also participated in the protests held against the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Miami, FL and drew connections between the violence of the United States military and that of US economic policies. So let me see if I have this straight: The US government, fearing that there are ‘terrorists’ in every public demonstration, is using sophisticated anti-terrorist measures to deal with public demonstrations, including new weapons and what were (until Patriot Act) illegal surveillance of civilians. But when people protest the US government military ‘school’ that has a long history of training terrorists, it’s the demonstrators, not the people in the high-security military establishment inside, who are presumed to represent a danger to America, and who are arrested and added to the government’s blacklist. In other words, peaceful protest = treason & terrorism, and training Noriega-types how to torture and overthrow governments = making the world safe for democracy. Any chance the local police departments will catch on to this madness and refuse to act as patsies for these government goons? |
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This is info from the link you provided regarding the peaceful protestors…”Anti-FTAA protests had turned sporadically violent Thursday, with some demonstrators throwing objects and hurling liquids, and smoke bombs with slingshots at officers, some of whom responded by hitting protesters with sticks, zapping them with stun guns and dispersing them with gas.” No doubt the protestors got the worst of the encounters but it would appear in this report that some of the police were reacting (over reacting) to provocation. ‘Liquids’ could be acid, urine, bodily fluids possibly containing HIV; this isn’t non-violence in any sense that I understand it.I have taken part in protests where we were dedicated to non violent protest and no such encounters were experienced. Even in these non-violent groups there were individuals who insisted on disrupting traffic by marching outside the protest area. When police tried to herd them back into the area designated for protest (15 blocks of downtown Portland was set aside for our Peace rally with over a mile of downtown streets blocked off for the march) some protesters kept pushing back until they were arrested. Even with the best of intentions such large gatherings will almost always have individuals whose passion takes over their reason, These are large diverse groups with no strong central organization or control over the participants.I don’t know what happened in Miami I wasn’t there I can only relate my own experience with protests in Portland. What happened in Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal?
Yes, Philip, there are always a few violent people in every crowd, but the essence of crowd control in a democratic country is to isolate the troublemakers, not to injure the crowd and to provoke violence through attacks on the crowd at large, as happened in Miami, and has been the ‘normal’ behaviour of authorities in recent years. Whereas in the 60s & 70s, with some very notable exceptions, police learned how to manage large demonstrations, and ‘kept the peace’ (which is after all their job), the attitude today, and not just in the US (we saw the same thing in Quebec City and in Italy), is that protesters exercising their constitutional right of dissent are dangerous, violent anti-social criminals, extremists and traitors who need to be rounded up, bullied and discouraged from further protest by confrontation, prohibiting the right of assembly, and indiscriminate use of weaponry like rubber bullets (with the effect shown in the picture). But as disconcerting as this lack of appreciation of the need for, value of and management of public demonstrations is, that wasn’t the point of my post. The point was that people who disagree with the government are now all being lumped into the ‘terrorist’ category by the extremists in Washington (and by some extreme law-and-order factions in other countries, including CSIS in Canada) who are using dangerous and undemocratic new powers to subvert public dissent and arrest and prosecute people arbitrarily. The point was also the irony of such behaviour when the protest was against a US Government sponsored terrorist (though they use the newspeak euphemism ‘counter-insurgency’ instead) training camp in Georgia.
There is zero chance the local police will “catch on” and refuse to co-operate. Playing on the Ashcroft’s side on this means they get a lot of new toys to play with. Too many of the people who go into law enforcement are of the power makes right mindset, they will always back the government. Consider how the forfeiture laws in the US are abused in order to augment the budgets of small police forces (by selling off forfeited property) and to justify the purchasde of ever greater amounts of high tech “toys” for small departnents.
I agree with Doug. The local police WILL not “catch on” and refuse to co-operate (my change of emphasis). The Bush Admin have become the world’s bullies. Sad but true.
An interesting example of the phenomenon seen in the corporate world all the time, and I guess (as I reflect on that combined with Dave’s post on integrity, why I can’t be a “management consultant” in the conventional sense any more).Local police everywhere are just adoptimg “Best Practices”, just like scads of companies do…and with little critical thinking about when, why and how to use which techniques and processes.So many decisions get taken with the aim and in the hopes of controlling, extinguishing…. voices …. this is where things have gotten to.Where’s the “tipping point”, the defining moment that history will look back on, and notice as the moment that people everywhere recognized that fascism, at government and corporate levels of society, was the rule of the day. the primary “Best Practices” framework ?Will that be obvious, in history ?
Jon, you ask some very important questions. What was that moment in the 1960s, the moment when protesting the Vietnam War and the ‘military-industrial complex’ went from being an activity of a squirrely minority to a massive uprising that ended the war and transformed the consciousness of a nation? And how can we have forgotten this so quickly?