Ok, so then can we agree that both sides were probably being *#*#*#*#tards? Those protestors were not the innocent marchers you want them to be, and those cops probably did want to bust some skulls after the crowd got out of hand.
I don't want those protestors to be anything. Nor do I want the cops to be anything. I was just mocking Alex's silly comments about media bias and the way he automatically positions himself opposite some people who got brutalised by their police force whilst protesting against war.
You mean like PBS and NPR? Yes, I would shut them down. As far as the protesters go - this is the people's republic of Oakland! The only fascism going on there is the fascism of the left. And any member of a protest group with 'direct action' in their name is presumed to have provoked the mess.
That's my whole point. If they weren't demonstrating peacefully, but instead were attacking cops, smashing windows etc, then I wouldn't say they were "brutalized" by the cops.
But nothing suggests they were. That is just your default interpretation of the event. It was anti-war folks, ergo they were pinko anarchists, ergo they must have been smashing windows and attacking the police, ergo they got what they deserved, the bastards. I realise you'r enot one of the more cerebrally agile posters around here, but even you must be able to perceive some of the most obviously facile aspects of that thought process.
Guess what? There are some agitators and provocateurs on both sides. But just as surely as every cop isn't itching to bash someone's head in with a truncheon, not every - or even the vast, vast majority of the protestors - are Birkenstock-wearing, peasant-skirt wearing, dreadlocked, unwashed hippies, throwing down barricades and punching the horses of the mounted police. Not even close. Sure, there's people like that out there, like you'd expect them to be, but there's also a lot of grannies and grandpas, minorities, working-class folk, and most of all, people who look like your ordinary John Q. Abercrombie-Fitch. Like me. It doesn't so much bother me when conservatives rely on such inane stereotyping as it does amaze me. Because it only hurts your cause, if part of your cause is to be taken seriously, and I would think a 'serious' conservative would be interested in knowing who the people who comprise their political opposition actually are, instead of squinting until they all look like a pre-formed stereotype.
Stereotyping is one of their favorite stategies. Afterall, just listen to any of the right wing pundits on the radio or TV, and you will be greeted with a flood of assumptions, stereotypes, and knee-jerk emotional reactions. Of course, what I just typed was a bit of a stereotype as well , but one with some truth to it.
Oh, I've never been in an A & F. Or a Gap. Or an Old Navy. I haven't got a clue why anyone would do such a dumb thing. But I'm a middle class mid-20's suburban-born white guy with no visible piercings and my hair's colored the same as it was when i was born (mostly) - you know the sort.
No, that's not my default interpretation of the event--altho it's the interpretation I'd be more inclined to believe, knowing a great deal of anti-war demonstrators and several cops. However, your default interpretation of the event is; it was police, ergo they were jack-booted fascist thugs, ergo they must have decided to shoot rubber bullets at the anti-war folks simply for being anti-war, the bastards. I simply want to hear both sides of the story.
when they kick out your front door, how you gonna come? Wait wait wait... if NPR and PBS are federal propaganda machines shouldn't they be relaying all sorts of pro-bush and pro-war messages at this time. Now, I realize propaganda goes both ways but it seems to me if Public Broadcasting was a tool of government they would use it to broadcast a pro-government message. Thats just my take on it anyway. If you can find a way to blame it on Clinton I'll fedex you a naked lady holding money sacks.
You're oversimplifying here. I didn't say that we created it, more that we contribute to it. We add fuel to the fire. This is the problem with your arguments Karl, you fail to see that we may be able to change our actions to solve a problem, rather than use all out war to get rid of the problem. I agree that there are deep seated issues, so why isn't the Bush Administration seeking alternative solutions rather than running headlong into war?There are a myriad of ways to solve this problem in the Middle East, and I'm not sure that there is a right answer, but I know that the answer the Bush Administration has provided is the wrong one. Islamic fundamentalism is a huge problem, but it's not one that we are going to solve by bombing them to kingdom come. History is full of examples of persecuted people clinging all the more tightly to their beliefs and eventually prevailing as a result (Christians in Rome, birth of the United States, etc....) I'm not saying that eventually one day we'll all be Muslims because we will somehow recognize that they were right all along (or see the righteousness in their suffering) simply that bombing the hell out of them isn't going to solve anything. Each of the Muslims who dies has a brother, sister, wife, son, daughter, cousin.... whatever. Do you really think that they will suddenly change their minds about us because we killed their family members?? And by the way, I never voted for Clinton, so do us all a favor and quit bringing him up. I don't consider him a savior or foreign policy genius either, but he wouldn't have gotten us into this Iraq mess. That lies solely on the shoulders of Bush.
If the liberal crybabies want their own propaganda machine, we up here would be more than happy to give them the CBC.
Yeeeers. As I have repeatedly stated, right? I don't have default interpretation. I don't care enough about this to bother. I just find your atempts to square the circle of an inclination toward one interpretation AND a desire to 'see both sides of the story' quite interesting. I'm wondering - if the story was Several Cops get injured at Anti-war protest!!!', would you be on here going 'I love how that article has no quotes from the anti-war protestors, let's hear what they have to say. The police may have been very provocative or indeed actively violent towards them'. No you would not, because you are 'inclined to believe' the purile fantasy that people who protest against war are beardy little Commie scrotes who think nothing of brutalising the forces of law and whose ultimate aim is to destroy western society. Like I said - being party to your acts of mental agility can be a fretful experience.
Oh well, I know many of you won't like this link but photos are photos. http://sf.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=13
Videos. Police attack peacful protestors at Oakland docks. Protestors were there in solidarity with the Longshoreman's strike to protest Bush's illegal war on Iraq http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/oaklanddocks_april7.mov Video shows various back, leg, chest injuries to protesters. Police shot wooden bullets and bean bags along with concussion grenades and tear gas canisters http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/injuries-oakland.mov Video shows Oakland police shooting at protesters as they leave the protest site. The cameraman is shot as he flees. http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/policeshoot_protestersflee.mov 10 min video ranges from peaceful pickets to police attacks. http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/oak4703.rm
Gosh, that last one sure blows up the idea of the police over-zealously responding to ... well, to nothing.
Obviously this image of the American flag was deliberately used. Some would call this evidence of an International islamofascist cabal that through petrodollars controls all the media. (sarcasm alert)
Matt, It's not like the political function (as opposed to the legitimate public safety function) of police violence is anything new here. The trouble is that kids like Alex and manny have no clue about the history of their own people as experienced by most of those people throughout our history. Sure, they have a tenuous grasp of American military history, although even that grasp is shot through with and incredibly warped by their usual wishful thinking and mythologizing as proven in the various "America won VietNam" threads that have erupted in Politics. But they have no knowledge of America's economic and social history, mostly because books written about those aspects: a) tend to contradict many of their cherished beliefs about "America" b) tend not have to have rawkin' pictures of way cool tanks and guns and shit getting blowed up. So you'll ask manny and Alex and their like in vain for accounts of the many atrocities committed against unarmed Americans, including women and children, by their "fellow Americans" in the police and armed forces. Watch their eyes glaze over in ignorance when you refer to the Ludlow Massacre, the Palmer Raids, Homestead, Centralia, the framing and assassination of Joe Hill, the Republic Steel Massacre (there's even film of the cops shooting into the backs of the fleeing crowd), not to mention Kent State, the Chicago police riot of '68, the assassination of Fred Hampton or any of the hundreds if not thousands of lesser known instances of deadly violence against union organizers. Not that they've displayed any committment to proactively thinking for themselves in any case, but even if they suddenly did, they don't know these unsavory chapters in U.S. history and therefore have no context in which into put current events outside what is spoonfed to them by the conservative media they consume. Instead of learning about the continuing history of violent political repression here and asking themselves tough questions about real freedom and its limits here, they'll just stay ignorant and keep spouting the usual, tired rationalizations, spoonfed excuses and lame bumper sticker slogans that represent the limit of their intellectual capacities.