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Free speech and the anarchic convergence of irony | Twin...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 3 reviews • liberties, minnesota, anarchists, rnc protests • tcdailyplanet.net

Please Please Please go to the page and read this for a really satisfying and IRONIC outcome.
From the page: "But the raid on the Smith Avenue "Convergence Center" was for this West Sider also an ironic flashback to an event that happened during those now sometimes nostalgic Clinton years when democracy, or at least Democrats, ruled the land.

I refer to another much less publicized mini-riot that occurred at the same location in 1997 when it was the anarchists on the giving side of free speech abuse. Specifically, then they were the ones trying to crash in doors in the name of protecting us all.

Their direct foes then were a group of neo-Nazis who had surreptitiously procured the Smith Avenue Rental Hall to host a birthday party. That it was to be Hitler's birthday party escaped most everyone's understanding." [...]
"But the paranoia level and what all-consuming self-righteousness can lead to behalf of any political cause was becoming all too evident.

That lesson was all too real on the day of the event, an otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon in August, when I went first to the Mounds Park location rumored to be the Nazi's initial meeting place. Getting out of my automobile, pen and notebook in hand, and walking over to a picnic pavilion I found out how fast free speech can become a secondary concern for saviors of democracy., ..."   Now, run and finish this story, you won't be disappointed.        AND I promise that THIS is my LAST Discovery for the Day! 

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Where is the Color in the Twin Cities?: Looking for...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 1 review • crime, rnc protest, minnesota • tcdailyplanet.net

Thought-provoking article about why it's mostly whites involved in this RNC protest... I wonder if she went to the Poor People's March , or Unconvention Headquarters over at Intermedia Arts. "I wonder when we, white people, are going to pay attention. What is happening here happens everyday in communities of color all over the U.S. It also happens in communities of color in the Twin Cities everyday. Is this how we, white folks, are thinking we are going to change the world? This is white privilege at its most visible, but it just doesn’t seem visible to my white brothers and sisters here."
Just a little something to think about though...

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Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. & Coleman...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 1 review • rnc • minnesotaindependent.com

The Grand Old Party... as in, Alzheimer's.  There is just nothing more for me to say.
From the Page:
Sen. Norm Coleman finally got around to aping the latest big Republican talking point on July 3. Like Dick Cheney, John Boehner, Roy Blunt and others, he's saying that Chinese firms, via leasing agreements with Cuba, can drill for oil closer to the United States than we can. "The Chinese are able to begin operating 90 miles off shore by working with the Cubans," Coleman said, arguing for new offshore oil exploration.

Thing is, it's just not true. FactCheck.org says Cheney got it wrong, Cheney's office agreed, and Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, states unequivocally, "China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period." (While China is working with Cuba on oil projects, they're all on-shore.) Even conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, whose June 5 column mentioned such drilling, later recanted, running a correction that "no Chinese company has been involved in Cuba's oil exploration that close to the United States."

While the GOP has shown its trademark unity in getting this factually challenged meme out, one thing Republicans can't seem to agree on is exactly how far from our fair shores the Chinese are supposedly drilling:

Rep. Sam Graves, May 30: 40 miles

Roy Blunt, Minority Whip, June 11: 45 miles

Rep. George Radanovich: 50 miles

Minority Leader John Boehner, June 11: 60 miles

Dick Cheney, June 11: 60 miles

Rudy Giuliani, July 3: 80 miles

Sen. Norm Coleman: 90 miles

Some variations: Nancy Pfotenhauer, John McCain's domestic policy advisor, upped the ante on June 17 and 18 TV appearances: She added Russia to the list of scary past or present Communist countries that she says are drilling closer to U.S. shores than Americans can; again, according to FactCheck.org, no country is drilling there, although it is being explored. John Sununu took to the airwaves on July 1 to say that the Cubans (no mention of China) were drilling 60 miles off the American coast.

Update: Rep. Michele Bachmann did her part in spreading the false story: In mid-June she put the Chinese drilling at 45 miles off the American coast.

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MinnPost - RNC 9 wanted more reflective, solemn protest...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 1 review • activism, rnc protest • minnpost.com

For a different arresting experience:
From the page: "As plans began to be announced for protest marches and rallies against the ongoing Iraq war and "against the Republican agenda," a few of us in the local peace community in the Twin Cities grew uncomfortable with the style and tenor of some of the protests.
My friend Dr. David Harris, an active member of Veterans for Peace, shared these concerns and generated the idea of a silent march carrying symbolic tombstones with the photos and names of dead U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in the war. Our mutual friend and peacemaker, Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi-American and founder of the Muslim Peacemaker Team, provided photos he had taken during the war of some of the enormous numbers of Iraqi casualties that he has witnessed firsthand.
After what seemed to be 15-20 minutes, a police commander came to say, "You know you are under arrest?" Actually, other police must have been a little lax in their training as that was the first we were notified that we were "arrested." We had a pleasant conversation with him, informing him of our commitment to nonviolence and our intent to deliver the letter and documents to the convention site. He said that wasn't going to happen and asked if we would "cooperate" with the arrest procedure. David, ever the diplomat, responded "of course," but then quickly added, "Actually, we might not cooperate but we are certainly nonviolent."

In an act of supreme irony, David was the first to be shackled with a set of pink handcuffs! I told him how proud Media Benjamin and her Code Pink group would be if they could see him now. (Media and Code Pink members had marched with us before we veered off-route.) I had to settle for black handcuffs and the officer cooperated with my request to not make them too tight because I suffer from carpal tunnel. He was very respectful, and all of the officers responded to our peaceableness in a professional and respectful manner. A number of the officers responded positively to David's ready identity as a military vet since he proudly had worn his Veterans for Peace T-shirt."

Although we are as strongly opposed to the war as many other groups, some of us wished to have a more reflective and solemn protest against the loss of life and physical and psychological destruction of both soldiers and civilians this war has wrought. This war had been supported by both major political parties and is not just a "Republican" issue."

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Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. & Alcohol,...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 6 reviews • alternative news, rnc protests • minnesotaindependent.com

LUDICROUS! What happens when the State goes looking for trouble. An embarrassment.

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Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. & Rage in...

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 0 reviews • alternative news • minnesotaindependent.com

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On Faith: Bad Moon Waning - Starhawk

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 1 review • liberal politics, spirituality, wicca, pagan • washingtonpost.com

Newsweek now has an e-section about religion and spirituality. YEA ... better late than never. Starhawk is one of the columnists. Here is her article about politics and religion. And the start of an internet rumor about McCain being Pagan. Funny and serious. (not McCain, her article.)

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kare11.com | Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN | Video Player

Rated Sep 04 2008 • 1 review • politics, rnc protest • kare11.com

kare11.com/video/player.aspx [kare11.com/video/player.aspx]
Video of protesters, specifically one guy who was doing pacifist civil disobedience, apparently the cops wanted to make a lesson of him.
from Starhawk's email: "Just after that, there’s a disturbance in one corner of the park. We run over, and someone runs toward us and tells us that Jason and Riyanna, two of our cluster, have been arrested. They were scouting, roaming the edges of the crowd, when an undercover cop grabbed Jason and threw him on the ground. Later we get the full story: he was tasered seven times with several different devices. Barbs from one of the tasers were left in his hip until he reached the jail, much later, and today, a day later, he’s still removing pieces of copper. He has a deep gash on his leg which has only now, after twenty-four hours, stopped bleeding. He was beaten up—we have a cell phone recording of it, and his face is bruised, he has a black eye and his mouth is hurt. Video of his arrest is at:

kare11.com/video/player.aspx [kare11.com/video/player.aspx]
 He was NOT Resisting arrest.  There was NO NEED for that violence.  Watch it.

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