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fodders

Freedom?

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ON the streets of New York we saw the kind of freedom George Bush has vowed to gift to Iraq - menacing squads of riot police.

In an attempt to sabotage this deafening chorus of disapproval, blue helmeted officers backed by horses confined pockets of protesters to Manhattan side streets. At the corner of 24th Street and Sixth Avenue, 30 blocks from the rallying point, people watched incredulous as around 200 baton wielding police set about a group of 100, feverishly tearing down their banners.

The provocation? Not staying on the pavement. Saddam Hussein's goons would have been proud!
Four days earlier a judge had banned the march, citing "security" anxieties. Curiously there were no such concerns for the Thanksgiving Parade in November or next month's St Patrick's Day march. Funny that.

The office phone system of United for Peace and Justice, one of the main co-ordinating groups, packed up half an hour before the rally began. Funny that.
First Avenue was the original rallying point but 10 minutes after the noon start time police chiefs gave the order to close First and Second Avenues to traffic. Tempers frayed as demonstrators wanting to join the rally, many having travelled hundreds of miles, were prevented for no good reason.

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Off the what? Are you talking about your telephone? Then hang it, before you miss an important call.

Or are you saying your fear of the authorites is very strong and very deep?

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Stealthy Ivan said:

Yea authorites suck...!


That's the whole point in going to the streets to protest against war.

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Bush and Powel live in their own fantasy world. Everyone who questions them or tries to bring in some of reality is mocked (germany) or silenced (the demonstraters).

This is part of a long american tradition...

America had demonstrated time and time again it doesn`t care about the rest of the world unless it has something to gain: Leaving the global warming prevention conference Kyoto; bombing of Kosovo without UN approval; vetoing all help towards Palestine, come to mind.

People will try to make themselves heard where there is injustice. But if you remove all the pacifists, all you`ll have left are the violent people. Take away the voice and the fists are left to protest. America has a long history of exploitation, suppresion and pollution of other countries and has systematically avoided paying for it. ...Until the 11th of september... One would think America would have learned its lesson, but no, instead it intrudes and destroys even more.

It is a sad situation to see it is now turning on its own population as well...
Soon the only ones left will be the violent and desperate extremists... and we will know who to blame...

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Things seem rather darkly ominous at the moment, but there's a lot of people mobilizing themselves in different (economic, activist, intellectual, etc.) ways in this present moment of unchecked show of imperialist action, so the last word has not been uttered. It's in the hands of both people in the USA and outside it to oppose this intelligently, and also in foreign governments in not supporting or fomenting this global attempt at hegemony and inequality.

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Heh, Adolf would've been proud of Georgie..

m0l0t0v said:

Soon the only ones left will be the violent and desperate extremists... and we will know who to blame...

I'm afraid a new Timothy McVeigh will step up soon.

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Disorder said:

Heh, Adolf would've been proud of Georgie..I'm afraid a new Timothy McVeigh will step up soon.

No problem, we've plenty of juice to electrocute the next one.

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<terrorist>I will fill you with fear, hopelessness, and take away your freedom. I will use your own government to do this for me.</terrorist>

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That's a toe-tally jammin' avatar you got there, Assmaster!

Being just one of the millions of every-day citizens who stroll the streets of America, I'd say the only way to fight terrorism is to just not be afraid. You have to treat it like lightning: You never know where it's going to strike, and spending time worrying about it is just going to be counterproductive. We know lightning is drawn to grounded metal just like terrorists are drawn to large, visible, symbolic objects that often contain people.

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"Some people call them terrorists, but these boys are simply...misguided"

A friend of mine was at the WTO protests in Seattle a few years back (you may have heard about the riots on the news). Like most of the other protesters there, he had just gone there for some peaceful civil disobedience. But because they didn't move, the cops began firing on the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas. Thus began the rioting. Many stores were looted incuding a Nike outlet, an Old Navy outlet, and a Starbucks. One lady was filmed throwing bags of coffee beans out of the coffee shop. She was later identified and as punishment is banned from all Starbucks for the rest of her life (teh horror!). I think over 400 people were rounded up and arrested that day just for being there. One man was pulled from his car and gassed. A woman who was fleeing the scene was pulled back by a police officer and beaten. After this, the entire place looked like a warzone.

Back in the days of the Vietnam war, my uncle went to a college in DC. One day, as he was walking across the campus between classes, a large group of cops came sweeping across the campus herding everyone caught outside up. Apparently, there had been a small anti-war demonstration going on at the moment. Eventualy, everyon was forced into the gymnasium while police officers blocked the exits. Then they repetedly shot tear gas canisters into the building.

Oh, and have you heard of the new riot weapon that causes intense pain to whoever is hit by it? Sounds fun.

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It's always a couple of assholes that screw everything up for everybody else. Whether you're a protestor, a cop, an Arab, an American, a civilian, a soldier, or even an uninvolved European spectator, you get lumped in with the "bad guys" when some jerk decides it'd be fun to start a fight.

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the_Danarchist said:

"Some people call them terrorists, but these boys are simply...misguided"

A friend of mine was at the WTO protests in Seattle a few years back (you may have heard about the riots on the news). Like most of the other protesters there, he had just gone there for some peaceful civil disobedience. But because they didn't move, the cops began firing on the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas. Thus began the rioting. Many stores were looted incuding a Nike outlet, an Old Navy outlet, and a Starbucks. One lady was filmed throwing bags of coffee beans out of the coffee shop. She was later identified and as punishment is banned from all Starbucks for the rest of her life (teh horror!). I think over 400 people were rounded up and arrested that day just for being there. One man was pulled from his car and gassed. A woman who was fleeing the scene was pulled back by a police officer and beaten. After this, the entire place looked like a warzone.

Back in the days of the Vietnam war, my uncle went to a college in DC. One day, as he was walking across the campus between classes, a large group of cops came sweeping across the campus herding everyone caught outside up. Apparently, there had been a small anti-war demonstration going on at the moment. Eventualy, everyon was forced into the gymnasium while police officers blocked the exits. Then they repetedly shot tear gas canisters into the building.

Oh, and have you heard of the new riot weapon that causes intense pain to whoever is hit by it? Sounds fun.

More proof that freedom is dead like disco, and the government has hit an all time low.

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for one the reason they said it was a secuirty concern is the fact that it was on a sensitive issue and had the potential for violence. how many parades end in a riot.
a good number of protests in big cities end with riots. these tend not to be caused by the real protesters but by trouble makeing kids or extreamists. so most big cities will deal with it in a similar way. also war IS coming, this i know. so security is going to be real anal and even more so with that issue. that is the price the protestors must pay if they wish to protest in a big city like new york. Also people in the US tend to be more of the 'lost in the crowd' type of mentality. that is a very volital and dangerous situation compared to a group that is tied together and unified. the opposite would be civil rights activist made marches in the 60's and remained peacful, even when recieving a beating. when people are not unified and only thinking of the 'lost in the crowd' they think they cant get caught. so once one person tosses a stone many other fallow.

protests today tend to be heated, unorganized and chaotic compared to other past protests. protesters should forms better groups and holding them selves acountable. not "lets meet here and stuff" attitude. yes i know they are often groups but they also may just let an person in, even if that person is only there to cause trouble. until protests become more organized and unified in their goals they will have to deal with the guards, batons, dogs and gas

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Sephiroth said:

protests today tend to be heated, unorganized and chaotic compared to other past protests.

indeed...There's battle lines bein' drawn
nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind....There's battle lines bein' drawn
I think its time to stop, hey, what's that sound
Everyone look what's goin' down.
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the streets
singin' songs and a-carryin' signs
mostly saying,"Hooray for our side!"
I think its time to stop, hey, what's that sound
Everyone look what's goin' down.

Paranoia strikes deep
into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid--
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.
I think its time to stop, hey, what's that sound
Everyone look what's goin' down.


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Sephiroth said:

protests today tend to be heated, unorganized and chaotic compared to other past protests. protesters should forms better groups and holding them selves acountable. not "lets meet here and stuff" attitude. yes i know they are often groups but they also may just let an person in, even if that person is only there to cause trouble. until protests become more organized and unified in their goals they will have to deal with the guards, batons, dogs and gas


Yeah, over here there's a lot of protesting, and rioting, by a few people, has often happened at night after the main mass of the masses (if you'll excuse the redundant sounding expression) have departed... and on occasion, during the middle of the day. But lately (since last year) it's been becoming evident that many of the troublemakers are organized or at least baited or nudged by political (and/or economic) groups that are against the protesters, to make them look bad, and to make an excuse for the use of police violence. And because of this the protesters (known as "piqueteros" because they cut street or road traffic as a way of protest) keep close vigilance of their members and expel and denounce strangers that are suspect (of infiltrating to cause chaos or damages.)

The truth is that, the cops are not there just for security measures, but also to scare off and deter the protesters, and on occasion they are there to beat them up outright (and they will look for an excuse to do this... or even make one up, materially.)

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Haven't been here in a month, probably be another before I stumble this way again.

Something happened a bit ago that changed me forever. I read an article in a local music fanzine by an organization with many chapters known as 'Anti-Racist Action'. They became an evening point of conversation because they printed the home address of a KKK member who owns a Pizza Hut and he fired a black guy.

Naturally they assumed the only reason he would ever fire a black guy was because he was black, not even attempting to look into the employment records of the place. That would ruin the fun.

My curiosity was piqued. I found their website and their 'message' which I'll paraphrase right now. Everyone that isn't white is a victim and everyone that is white is automatically guilty, and if they don't spend all their free time and money helping non-whites then they are racists and should be abused and harassed.

Just another meaningless little white-guilt group, I thought. Then I started following their links out of further curiosity.

One of their biggest things is that they proudly support Mumia and everything he's done and they love speaking out about what an injustice it is that such a fine, upstanding black man is in jail.

A fine, upstanding black man that was driving on the wrong side of the street with his lights off in the middle of the night and when he was pulled over he opened fire on a cop, then hovered over him and shot him in the face from within a foot away.

I can't blame him though, that cop was WHITE! THE BASTARD!

The whole fucking point of this post is simple. Every pro-copkiller err pro-Mumia website had ready-2-print banners and posters and everything you need to PROTEST BUSH'S INAUGURATION (smoked too much weed, my spelling is pretty bad now).

No one is 'politically unbiased'. Anyone who is willing to follow politics is therefor willing to take ANYTHING and twist it to their side to further their own political goals. Such as hopping on the Mumia bandwagon just to enforce anti-republican semantics.

Or trying to paint Bush as Hilter two point oh because of terrorism. That's funny, why didn't Clinton take Osama the COUPLE of times he was OFFERED to him (Wasn't one of those times even after Osama bombed the WTC towers the first time around?)? Why did Clinton pardon 4 known terrorists as one of his last acts as president (A lot of money is the answer to this one.)? Why wasn't Gore investigated and charged for illegal fund raising shenanigans WHILE HE WAS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT yet Bush doing coke 20 years ago was headline news for weeks.

It sickens me.

Hasn't anyone mentioned that in EVERY protest there are anarchists and fuckheads with the sole purpose of destroying property and causing trouble? All it takes is one moron to huck a rock and next thing you know everyone will do it. It probably takes 30 minutes at the very least, more logically at least an hour or more to assemble a proper riot control team, so naturally you'd want to have it ready.

That means 100's of nervous cops in heavy armor with loaded weapons standing in front of 1000's of screaming assholes, and any one of them could be one of those freaks that WANTS a riot.

I can't think of a more prime example of just WAITING for shit to happen.

And if the Republicans are supernazis then why is it that during the election the Chicago republican deal was wide open to the public but the democrat one was blocked off with fences and razorwire?

There were plenty of protests over the Vietnam war, too. The US Military still holds the opinion that we could've won that one if we just had 1% of the fucking country supporting us. Don't protesters have jobs?

Where are the "LEAVE THE BUTCHER OF BAGHDAD ALONE!" banners?

We're not trying to TAKE Iraq. The head military dude has clearly stated that after we win we'll just help set up a government there. So we can keep buying oil off of them. If it was about the oil we'd just kill everyone there and take it.

You know, Hussein killed 20,000 of his own people just to see if his chemical weapons worked (they did) and we have proof that he has funded terrorist organizations (including Al-Quada). It's also a fact that he has violated the UN weapons mandate, and that ALONE calls for further military action.

God forbid we actually do what we say we're gonna do.

And God forbid we try to do anything anywhere on the fucking planet without it being twisted into some kind of malicious terrorist act.

You'd think that if some madman built himself castles out of gold while MOST of his people starved and killed THOUSANDS of his own people just because of their religion the world wouldn't have any regrets burying him.

But God forbid the USA lift a finger to help.

You sure as hell can't expect Europe to have the balls to try to follow something through. How many Jews have been murdered in Europe in the last 50 years? How many Muslims have starved under horrible, self-serving governments? It doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

No one can do anything.

Let's all just sit with our thumbs up our ass while the whole world goes spiralling down into a flaming piece of shit.

The world will gladly take that over supporting a republican with ANY reasoning.

Would we be singing a different tune if Gore was president? Sure. He wouldn't've had the balls to take the war to Afghanistan. He probably would've stolen another $50,000 from us on 9/12, and without guided missiles going into the back window of head Al-Quada operatives we'd probably have more WTC and Cole situations.


I enjoy being different. I, for one, enjoy having a gun happy cokehead in the white house. At least he has some fucking ideals and morals. Well, at least 20% of the ideals and morals that most of the world's population has. Still better than 2%.


You can all sit around and talk about how evil EVERYONE in power in the world is and how SICK AND TWISTED every single political motive is and how chaotic everything is.


How many people that YOU love were killed by the US Military? How many people that YOU love were killed by terrorist factions? Probably none.


But so long as you have to sit down and watch live updates from some war in BFE then we all can't be watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond, and that's basically the most important thing of all here.


Sure we can all sit down and argue all of these ideals with all of our own twisted perspectives on everything and all of our own silly little ideas of how the world should work (if the 90% of the world that would tell you to go fuck yourself and go back to mass murder and mayhem would actually listen to you) but at least we're all living in a fair society?


Aww shit. 5% of the world still has 95% of the wealth. What have we been doing the last 4000 years? Oh yeah, making bigger and badder bombs and plastering children with napalm and killing everyone with a slightly different skin tone or a different imaginary friend.


This is funny as hell because most of you probably think that your voice on world wide issues will ever matter. =)

Oh go stand in a copkiller loving anti-republican protest with a bunch of filthy hippies and unemployed tv-brainwashed morons, preferably right next to the guy with the rock so you get hit in the head with a can of tear gas too.

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Except that some people are actually decent, and not just fat hateful nerds that rant and flame on IRC forums.

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Hey mewse, everybody else gets to troll with no fear of repercussion, why not deadnail too eh? :P

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myk said:

IRC


Err... and I'm not drunk or anything. Like "IRC" is the internet.

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i agree with much that deadnail said. the only reason bush is your president is because you as a nation voted him in. i must agree, despite my tiny brit opinion, that he is a bit of a dick, and does closely resemble a chimp. but then are any other politicians any better? not really - they all have their problems. but look at this way: what kind of president would you make? hmm. interesting point - if you were leader of the worlds most powerful country right now, what would you do? bomb a country full of innocent people to set them free? or leave saddam to do it himself and build an arsenal of, well whatever it is he's making there? tricky hmm?

i must admit, it is a little hypocritical that america [and england, and...] are allowed to have a big pile of weapons of all colours and sizes and flavours, but no one else is. then again, we aren't likely to start setting them loose on anyone who doesn't agree with us, i guess. whatever.

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