The Silencing of America: Americans Are Afraid of Bush’s Violent Regime

George W. Bush has done more to scare Americans into silent complicity, and rip free speech from the American fabric, than any president I have seen this lifetime. Creating “no protest zones” patrolled by American riot squads, aiming high-powered weaponry on unarmed American people TRYING to exercise free speech, it is clear Bush’s regime is NOT supportive of free speech rights, no matter what babble comes out of his mouth. Bush supports free speech as long as that speech supports everything he does blindly, like the “pro-war” protesters. As a matter of fact, Seattle Police Chief Kerlikowski even said on public radio that he and his force treat the pro-war protesters differently than the anti-war protesters (without the riot gear and intimidation factors) because the police perceived the pro-war protesters to not be hostile to the police. What would be a reason for that Kerlikowski? Perhaps aiming machine guns at unarmed children in permitted protest zones, and shooting off concussion grenades and pepper spray from canisters the size of fire extinguishers at their moms, sort of soured the mood between the anti-war protesters and police? Ya think?
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So let us see how free speech works in America. You are a citizen like me. You think this war is sick, so you go out to the public square when the war is declared and decide to USE FREE SPEECH to hold a big NO WAR sign. And you are met with a thousand riot police dressed like Darth Vader with baseball bat-sized clubs in their hands, thumping their palms anxiously in a row, drooling, so to speak. These riot police have hidden all identifiers and refuse to speak or follow the law, as per Seattle Muni Code 3.28, and identify themselves when asked. People are scared and leave with their children. Chaos and fear is present due to these riot police. A climate of fear, anxiety and terror surround the permitted protest zone. A group of protesters decide to march. They leave on the sidewalks, following all traffic lights, crossing with the lights. All of a sudden, riot police start blocking them off and forcing them to block sidewalks and into the streets. Unarmed people, 300-500 people, are then falsely imprisoned for breaking no laws, and contained and abused by this mob of non-talking, violent Robocop Darth Vaders. We are not allowed to leave, we are never warned we will be contained. We are not told what the Robocops wanted, they hit people until they bled, they have no organization, they are like terrorists, is all I can say. This exact scene happened on March 22, 2003 in Seattle, Wa. Those American cops embodied FEAR, FIRST AND FOREMOST, TO THE AMERICANS THEY WERE UNLEASHED UPON, myself included. That was what those Robocops were there for, TO STRIKE FEAR INTO ANY AMERICAN WATCHING, OR PARTICIPATING IN, ANTI-WAR ACTIVITIES. The police and government committed crimes against anti-war protesters on March 22, 2003, whether or not they broke any laws. And it made me ANGRY, not AFRAID.

And due to this violent, oppressive police behavior, a bunch of self-appointed peace police emerged from within the Seattle protest community. Paternalistic “peace police” who basically coerce the protesters into doing whatever police say, out of fear of violence from the police. There will be no militancy at ANY U.S. protests and the police almost have the peace community trained now to keep its own people silenced and subdued…I am called an “instigator” when I go to Seattle protests, for example, for merely trying to get police on the scene to identify themselves as required by law. So I do not go to protests in Seattle anymore, as they are more a show of complacency and submissiveness to the state, than any protest of state policy. The same people keep usurping the security positions at these Seattle protests, the same security people who led us into the bloody batons of the riot police on March 22, and also June 2, 2003 at the LEIU protests. I will not let those “Peace Police” lead me like a lamb to the slaughter for Seattle Police to abuse and assault anymore. The situation has gotten to one of police say who they will or will not attack at protests, and they have effectively caused a chasm between the protest community because the self-appointed peace police have let them. So now, the Seattle Police, at least, have a coalition of Judeo-Christian home-owning SUV-driving people calling themselves “peace protesters” who basically refuse to “protest” and condemn and squelch anyone who does “protest,” while running all “security” for the protests, as if they were appointed by someone to keep peace with police, not protest for peace for the world.
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http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=16880

Too true.

it's fiction but very good and centers around the WTO riots in Seattle called, "The Fountain at the Center of the World" by Robert Newman, put out by Soft Skull Press. Check it out.

Roscoe P. Coltrane is in charge of the US Government. Cheney is Boss Hogg.

I'm serious. At the prewar demos here I went around trying to break police barricades (there were 100s of thousands of us that were herded this way and that). Nothing dramatic, just leading "Whose Streets, Our Street" chants, sometimes getting the crowd to outflank a line of cops. Anyway I noticed that often a kindly couple would suddenly show up, telling me how easy I could get through several blocks up and no need to bother this corner. I finally realized they were working with the cops.

If you look at con game strategies, there is often the role of the friendly bystander who is sympathetic, but actually advises acquiesence or defeat.

I finally stopped being even polite to them, telling them to get out of my face and leave me alone.

Whose THEM? The police, the War Party, the Power Control Group, the CIA, the Repukelican Party -- take your pick.

...of people like you, Vincenzo. Then we'd march to DC and citizen-arrest ALL the kleptocrats in the WH and Congress. I'm serious.

we have squandered countless lives and limbs and spent hundreds of billions of dollars, ostensibly just to secure their freedom? Oh, the humanity of it all.