A Little Eichmann Train Wreck
August 31st, 2007
(New readers: I haven’t repeated all the backstory on this protest, but you can find all you like here.)
As I said yesterday, the Newmont Mining protest went swimmingly. It was good rough, lively fun. As long as you weren’t one of the Korbel Dinner guests, that is. From what I could tell, the guests were having no fucking fun at all, and my money is that the Marriott will never, and I mean never, host anything like this again.
Western Shoshone elder Carrie Dann received her award. Graduates of the University of Denver’s Graduate School in International Studies burned their degrees. Newmont Mining stockholders burned their stock certificates. And a gorgeous puppet of Wayne Murdy was given a citation.
(You can’t see the lady walking ahead of the puppet, but she’s wearing signs that read “Pimp that School!” and “Hey! We’re Talking $$$ Here!” and leading Mr. Murdy’s doppleganger with a carrot. An allusion to Tom Farer’s singularly stupid explanation for giving a serial human rights violator a humanitarian award.)
But the most effective tactic, as alluded to above, was the hectoring of the shindig’s attendees. They were ravaged, starting as they waited at a dead stop in a line of cars to unload, where protestors were assailing them through the car-windows with a litany of Newmon Mining abuses, and giving ’em holy hell for taking part in, as one commenter put it, “Eichmannalooza.” (Catchy, no?) Then, of course, they had to totter from their luxury cars into the Marriott. Over-dressed, incredibly-quaffed, pinch-mouthed, upper crust shitbirds, just begging for ridicule.
And, oh boy, did they get it.
There was the rather restrained, but always effective, “you should be ashamed of yourselves,” but there were also a few, shall we say, more vigorous folks. Some of the best lines I heard:
“Newmont Mining poisons people for money. Hey, do you think we could pay the Marriott to do the same?”
“How’s about we throw Wayne Murdy off a bridge? How’s about we throw Madeleine Albright off an even bigger bridge?”
“How’s about we feed a cyanide cocktail to your kids?”
“You guys should read Ward Churchill. He’d scare the hell out of you, because you’re,” then after a dramatic pause, in a wonderful game-show announcer’s voice, “little Eichmanns!”
And, my favorite, at a woman in a ridiculous hat that looked something like a very large rat eating a partridge, “holy shit, look at that hat! You look like a little Eichmann train wreck!”
If nothing else, the Marriott paid in spades for its Director of Event Planning, Joe Humerickhouse’s, cowardice and servility. I doubt there was a Marriott guest during the four-hour protest that wasn’t really, really wishing they’d stayed somewhere, anywhere else. (Nor, for that matter, a Marriott employee that wouldn’t rather have been working anywhere else.) It was an excellent example of the ways in which, with only a megaphone and a vicious sense of humor, non-corporate entities — meaning, people — can bring their own kind of pressure.
(The goon in the suit is, of course, Omar Jabara, Newmont Mining PR hack. The young man with the bullhorn is Nick Brown of the delightful Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement - Denver. Mr. Brown was responsible for the vast majority of the great one-liners hurled at the Eichmannalooza attendees.)
Needless to say, the $500-a-plate crowd entered the Marriott flustered, red-face and muttering to themselves. Just as funny was the contingent of Denver’s finest who just stood there fuming and purpling.
One enterprising businessman stalked over to make his outrage at being called a “little Eichmann” known. Unfortunately for him, he picked Glen Morris of Colorado AIM to vent on. Mr. Morris takes no shit, and didn’t take any from this gentleman. He laid into him, running down a whole litany of things he was rather outraged by. Like, say, a fucking butcher being awarded a humanitarian award. Needless to say, Mr. Morris had the gentlemen walking on his own tongue before their lively discourse ended.
Then, as if we weren’t having enough fun, Omar Jabara, Senior Director of Communications and Media Relations for Newmont Mining, came out and made a horseshit pretense of taking the concerns of the protestors seriously for the local media.
The highlight of that exchange came from the Ghanan WACAM representative Awon Atuire, who told Mr. Jabara in no uncertain terms that he’d like him to get out of his country and stop killing his people. Predictably, Mr. Jabara protested that Newmont Mining worked with many Ghanan leaders. To which Mr. Atuire responded, “And you know what those people are? They’re slave traders. And so are you.” That shut Mr. Jabara down fairly effectively.
All in all, it was a gas. Oh, and I didn’t get to meet Madeleine Albright, but Al Lewis of the Denver Post introduced himself. It happened while Carrie Dann was speaking. There were a group of protestors still hanging around Mr. Jabara, arguing with him. I’ve never thought much of the concept of trying to argue with little Eichmanns. You can’t educate them. They know what they’re doing, they just consider their own financial gain, how shall I put it, worth the cost. As such, it seemed to me that these folks might be better served listening to Carrie Dann. I walked over and told them as much. Al Lewis, who was following Mr. Jabara around dutifully all evening, kind of grinned and turned around, held out his hand and introduced himself.
I actually asked him later why he was following the Newmont Mining flack around all night, and he protested that he was a journalist. So I asked him why he wasn’t getting the other side. He asked me if I’d read his first article. I said I had, and that it was pretty good. He said, “wait until you see the next one, dude.”
I have no idea what that means. Could be he’s decided to go hard pro-Newmont as we so offended him, or it could be that the next article’ll be much tougher on them. But I told him I’d reserve judgment, and I will.
Update: Vincent Carroll has weighed in on Wayne Murdy’s award, castigating Tom Rowe for his guest editorial in the Denver Post. It’s a shoddy piece of work by even Mr. Carroll’s usual standards. The predictable Indian hating whopper comes here:
“In North America,” Rowe writes, “Newmont operates on Western Shoshone lands without their permission, damaging the environment and paying no royalties to the tribe for taking their resources.”
Wouldn’t a scholar interested in fairness have mentioned that this mining land, while claimed by the Western Shoshones under a 19th century treaty, is in fact among holdings of the federal Bureau of Land Management, as Newmont has repeatedly pointed out? Isn’t it more than a tiny bit inflammatory to suggest to readers that Newmont is simply occupying tribal lands as a rogue multinational?
If Rowe sympathizes with the Western Shoshone and considers Newmont’s behavior atrocious, so be it. Make the case. But at least acknowledge that the mining property is, say, within “ancestral Western Shoshone lands,” as less biased activists do.
Speaking of playing fast and loose with the facts, these are “ancestral Western Shoshone lands,” sure, but they’re also lands guaranteed the Western Shoshone by the Treaty of Ruby Valley. It’s the only agreement ever signed by the US government and the Western Shoshone, and the land granted therein has never been ceded. The Bureau of Land Management can claim to own anything they like — hell, I can claim to own Vincent Carroll’s house, that doesn’t make it mine — but the Ruby Valley Treaty is the law. And, as we all know from Article VI of the US Constitution, them treaties are the supreme law of the land.
As always, I’m a little awestruck by Mr. Carroll’s casual contempt for the US Constitution, not to mention those principles of property rights he’s always on about. A little awestruck, but never surprised. As we all know from long experience, any pretense of principle goes out that Colfax window when Mr. Carroll gets an opportunity to express his pathological hatred of Indians.
Update II: RAIMD’s recap of events is up. They got to see Madeleine Albright. Motherfuckers. I’ve been hating Ms. Albright since they were playing cops and Assata with AK-47 squirt guns. (Yeah, I’m old.) Anyway, more good stuff from Mr. Brown and all those positively charming lads and lasses whom I hope and pray we shall be hearing from for a long time to come. Read it.
Update III: Slapstick Politics and The Legend of Pine Ridge are shocked and offended that I’ve endorsed Newmont Mining’s methods be applied to people who aren’t brown and poor. Being that they don’t seem like the quickest pair of guns in the right-wing blogosphere, I’ll point out the obvious: if poisoning people’s kids is terrorism when advocated by leftist cat-callers, then it’s sure as shit terrorism when actually fucking done by corporations. If you don’t like the logic, press for an end to terrorism. I’d start with, as the folks at RAIMD have so eloquently put it, tossing Wayne Murdy and Madeleine Albright off a bridge.
Update IV: Snapple’s been working overtime. All my life I’ve pined for some lunatic stalker, and I’ve finally found him (or her). Now if only he could find it within himself to manage an accidental lobotomy while chewing on his pencil.
Update V: Al Lewis’ promised article is up. It’s kind of revealing, in that Al Lewis indicates he considers Newmont Mining flack Omar Jabara a fucking liar, right before slobbering all over him and buying the poor dear a drink. It’s shit, of course. The kind of shit that would get any reporter in any respectable newspaper reassigned to suburban pie-baking contests. Luckily for Mr. Lewis, he doesn’t work for a respectable newspaper.
The only interesting tidbit comes in Mr. Lewis’ professed terror of the protesters. And that he didn’t even bother asking Carrie Dann for comment. I guess I’m one of the people with “menacing stares” who “hassled him” until he identified himself. I don’t believe I was rude to the tender soul, I just wanted to know why he was following a fucking Newmont Mining PR flack around, and entirely ignoring folks like Carrie Dann who have to live with the consequences of Newmont Mining’s actions.
The answer now seems obvious: he’s Omar Jabara’s media counterpart: a chickenshit flack, who, as he put it, didn’t dare “look her in the face.”
Which was probably a wise move.
September 1st, 2007 at 4:23 am
just to show my apprecsj of your good albeit a little too local perspective on ‘oakmanner’ i (tour-etc) (re)present:
http://www.mickeyz.net/news/mickeyz/comments/2810/
churchill and others quoted; 20 comments so far.
… responding to a comment by http://faithisrisk.blogspot.com/ elsewhere:
veriejientrestieng
cynicism is selling alcohol to natives and not having any with them but by the by everything they own instead (which as 1830 riots ((yeah, socalled ‘porgroms’)) prove, feels worse once you are no longer officially a socalled slave.
truth in paradox
eichmann using the jewish method on jews. Hey social gradient is the only place where curves can fetch the fetchyest and match flames flavoured to feed the finest.
we no allowed alocohol, i mean land, our soupariers are ‘ginstit’.
wordy writs, bible, holy books, bibliographies …
Most, when not based on and taking leads from various materials and their conditions are an armchair lazy man’s way to hunt, set (dig) traps (valkuilgraverij)
which, wether meaning to or not, project, protect, transfer and ’space toga’;
the more sanctimonious this destructiveness gets dressed up, the darker the will intending it all in full view of the consequences and the deeper the distractions on display in hopes and attempts to direct dictate n delegate to anybody stupid enough to lend not only flaunt flutter and flourish that sent words flying in ancient times weight but stockpiled their dead bodies on top of that, never mind the irrescusitability of any relevant meaning.
Stars survive us and not the other way around, specially when we get too close, though if earth is a star rather than a ball of dust we seem to be up for a tug of war in a bid for massiveness.
September 1st, 2007 at 5:00 am
the longer version of that ‘elsewhere’ i mentioned:
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2007/08/distance-and-de.html#comments
Distance and Defense
I was thinking about forms of defense, particularly self defense. Irony, sarcasm, and citationality first came to mind.These seem to be mechanisms to establish distance. Zizek mentions something like this, “I love you,” as they say in the movies, or something like that. I defend myself by diffusing my feeling, making it less mine than ours. Everyone feels this way or, it’s hardly surprising that one would feel this way. I can always add–oh, I was joking or that was meant sarcastically.
http://faithisrisk.blogspot.com/ (cynic librarian, Kotsko combatant http://www.haloscan.com/comments/adamkotsko/116663628689713952/ nice looking but no good contentwise - http://faithisrisk.blogspot.com/2007/08/coming-xtian-takeover.html on theoconians - via whom i visit http://normtroubles.blogspot.com/ http://normtroubles.blogspot.com/2007/04/you-might-be-christian-zionist.html +8cs) posts a longer comment
pientere poeet
http://www.google.com/custom?q=peter+sloterdijk+cynicism+earthy&hl=en&cof=BIMG%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.roman-britain.org%2Fbgd.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.roman-britain.org%2F%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.roman-britain.org%2Fimages%2Frbo.gif%3BLH%3A64%3BLW%3A460%3BBGC%3A%23000000%3BT%3A%239acd32%3BLC%3A%2300bfff%3BVLC%3A%2300ff00%3BALC%3A%23ffff00%3BGALT%3A%2387ceeb%3BGFNT%3A%2320b2aa%3BGIMP%3A%23ffd700%3B&domains=roman-britain.org%3Bbham.ac.uk
9 results
veriejientrestieng
cynicism is selling alcohol to natives and not having any with them but by the by everything they own instead (which as 1830 riots ((yeah, socalled ‘pogroms’)) prove, feels worse once you are no longer a socalled slave.
there’s truth in paradox to the degree it is lent weight as much as alllowed to shine a light
the one that slowly attains benevolent predominance and gains organic weight fed by shining light led and leading eyeballs.
Eichmann using the jewish method on jews. Hey, they believe cause they prove cause they believe social gradient is the only place where curves can fetch the fetchyest and up to speed slope (hope, sloop) verschleppers that merit and match flames flavoured to feed the finest curves who can fetch … etcetera … .spin off theory (believing that jump on equals having practice will ripen to jump off subjects, subjectivity and all that peskily humble support stuff we can do without). Nitzan and Bichler bnarchive.york.ca show how israel thrives on opression tec, the new name for honesty. May i pass on that paradox please.
we no ‘llowed alocohol, i mean land, our soupariers are ‘ginstit’.
wordy writs, Bibles, Holy Books, bibliographies …
Most, when not based on and taking leads from various materials and their conditions but lacks thereofs and complaints thereabouts are an armchair lazy and cynical man’s way to (slightly shift an otherwise unbudgeable unbalance?) hunt, set (dig) traps (valkuilgraverij)
which, wether meaning to or not, project, protect, transfer and ’space toga’;
the more sanctimonious this destructiveness gets dressed up, the darker the will intending it all in full view of the consequences and the deeper the distractions on display in hopes and attempts to direct dictate n delegate to anybody stupid enough to lend not only flaunt flutter and flourish that sent words flying in ancient times weight but stockpiled their dead bodies on top of that, never mind the irrescusitability of any relevant meaning.
Stars survive us and not the other way around, specially when we get too close, though if earth is a star rather than a ball of dust we seem to be up for a tug of war in a bid for massiveness.
September 1st, 2007 at 10:28 am
Hear him! Hear him!
Recall that Marconi was the first vegetable engine.
September 1st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6765741
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:16 am
“C.U. Boulder’s Professor of Ethnic Cleansing “Wansee” Whitmer Celebrates “Cyanide Cocktails” for Kids”
“How’s about we feed a cyanide cocktail to your kids?”
–Reportedly overheard by C.U. Boulder’s Professor of Ethnic Cleansing “Wansee” Whitmer at the Newmont Mining protest in Denver
Ward Churchill and his crew claim that he was the target of an assassination but that the law enforcement authorities didn’t warn him.
For some reason, this alleged assassination never came off, even though Ward Churchill claims that “at least 342 AIM members and supporters were killed by roving death squads aligned with and supported by the FBI…This was between 1973 and 1976 alone.”
This article from Spring 2004 claims that the Tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill was “a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) security team at the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota in the early 1970’s.”
If there really were FBI-sponsored death squads, one wonders why they didn’t murder Ward Churchill, since he claims that he was a member of an AIM security team.
I think the truth is that there never were any FBI-sponsored death squads. I think Ward Churchill invented FBI-backed death squads because that got him published in a peer-reviewed professional journal, that KGB mouthpiece, Covert Action Information Bulletin. [See also here.]
Ward Churchill and his supporters have a double standard: they openly advocate and celebrate the murder of their fellow citizens, yet they expect to be protected from killers.
On August 31, 2007, the University of Colorado’s Professor of Ethnic Cleansing “Wansee” Whitmer celebrated and disseminated these “overheard” terroristic threats against Americans deemed “Little Eichmanns”—a mine operator, a former government official, and children.
Why didn’t Wardo’s Quisling, Professor of Ethnic Cleansing “Wansee” Whitmer, report the people whom he reportedly overheard making these death threats to the police instead of celebrating their threats on his blog?
Attention Denver Police and FBI! Here are three death threats that the C.U. Professor of Ethnic Cleansing Benjamin Whitmer claims he overheard at the demonstration against Newmont Mining:
“How’s about we throw Wayne Murdy off a bridge?”
“How’s about we throw Madeleine Albright off an even bigger bridge?”
“How’s about we feed a cyanide cocktail to your kids?”
That last threat reminded me that the Nazi Aldolf Eichmann, who coined the term “final solution,” used the cyanide compound Zyclon-B to exterminate the Jews. Here is an article about how children were fed the “cyanide cocktail” Zyclon-B at Auschwitz-Birkenau, in case the Professor of Ethnic Cleansing “Wansee” Whitmer and his crew want to do it right like the Big Eichmann and extract gold without going through that dirty business of mining:
“Eichmann helped Heydrich organize the Wannsee Conference in Berlin during which Heydrich and Eichmann along with 15 Nazi bureaucrats planned the extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe and the Soviet Union…Eichmann took a keen interest in Auschwitz from its founding and visited there on numerous occasions. He helped Höss select the site for the gas chambers, approved the use of Zyklon-B, and witnessed the extermination process. [full text]
Links here:
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2007/09/cu-boulders-professor-of-ethnic.html
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:37 am
i said 1830 but meant 1881 - confused data from ‘200 years together’ (not available in english, i am using a german version) with those in ‘forest rites’ (a very good read also).
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:23 am
Wow, I just stumbled upon this blog. Who are these tryworks.org people? They are so obsessed with the past and with historical grievances that have long since passed, particularly grievances that have nothing to do with them.
The world is one big historical grievance. Everyone has persecuted everyone at every opportunity. Thank God we live in the present in America, the greatest force for good in the history of the world.
Hey, people, let’s try to be realistic. There is no Utopia, there never will be a Utopia, deal with it instead of focusing your identity on being a victim who will never accomplish anything in life. Be a winner, move on bravely, not whining and crying everyday on your knees. Free yourself from your pathetic life. Don’t wallow in mediocrity and cowardice. Be brave, go forward.
September 4th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Old? I’m certain I read that Benjamin is just 35.
So Ben says if Newmont Mining can poison children, so can anyone. He says Snaps and EP only object because his band of anti-imperialists are talking about poisoning White children. Of course, the question is did Newmont Mining poison anyone or is this propaganda. The Ugandan courts say its not true. Of course the Ugandan courts are as corrupt as the Denver court that is soon to laugh David Lane and Ward Churchill all the way back to Boulder.
By the way, is there a court date yet? I want to go listen to the drums.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Ben,
You often ask very personal questions here and I have one for you. Where is your family? Did you marry the mother of your child or is she just “common law”, as the hero of your short story, “Treed” (and Ward Churchill) so condescendingly put it? Do they live with you?
Speaking of “Treed”, your hero is pretty much an immature character with no survival skills isn’t he? Why would a grown man jump out a window to escape down a tree rather than to tell Dad “Thanks for all of your help but I can’t live this way. I’ll be off to make a life of my own now. I’ll try not to fuck everyone over this time and be worthy of some loyalty.” and then just walk out the front door? What a sick little story!
September 4th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Whitmer, in view of Update IV, why’d you pooh-pooh my suggestion about the bicycle-powered electric generator?
September 5th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Hey, people, let’s try to be realistic. There is no Utopia, there never will be a Utopia, deal with it instead of focusing your identity on being a victim who will never accomplish anything in life. Be a winner, move on bravely, not whining and crying everyday on your knees. Free yourself from your pathetic life. Don’t wallow in mediocrity and cowardice. Be brave, go forward.
May I be the first to say, “Shut up, you pontificating moron”?
Jingoism is the first resort of the venal and the cowardly. They are happy saying Rah! Rah! America! as long as they don’t have to see the shattered bodies and bombed-out cities that they enable by their truly brainless support of government policies. We’re not talking about merely historical injustices here. The Indian Wars never ended, the government just switched to making war on Natives through proxy corporations like Newmont Mining. And then instead of medals for “valour” they give out awards at ritzy dinners to the ones that do their bidding. Ritzy dinners to which, if you’re like the vast majority of Americans, you would never be admitted.
The protestors at this event, as the protestors who laid themselves on the line at the WTO in Seattle, the DNC in Los Angeles, the RNC in Philadelphia and New York, and at the FTAA in Miami have more mad courage than a toady like you will ever know. Especially now that the stakes have been raised. I personally saw a man with his jaw shattered by a plastic bullet in Seattle, and on Wednesday the pigs had AR-15 assault rifles with live ammunition. I spent the next few days thinking someone was going to be shot. I was wrong, but it was a matter of time. That time game in the G8 protests in Genoa, when Carlo Giuliani was shot dead. Other protestors were taken and driven outside of Genoa by police who sang old fascist songs while giving them a beat down. His death didn’t stop this global movement, so you think your petty psychologizing might do better? Fuck that noise.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Giuliani
As usual, there is more to the story:
He was killed on July 20, 2001, during a violent clash between protesters and Italian Carabinieri in Piazza Alimonda, in the Genoa downtown. A Carabinieri vehicle became stuck and some protesters (wielding metal poles and wooden boards) attacked the car. In the midst of this clash, Carlo Giuliani, who was wearing a black ski mask, picked up a fire extinguisher and, apparently intending to throw it at the officers inside the police Land Rover Defender, was shot in the face at point blank range by one of the officers.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Ben–
Miners are men who do hard work that we all benefit from. They aren’t poor. They make a lot more money than you probably do. They are often white.
They have dangerous jobs like policemen, firemen, truckers, construction workers, fishermen, farmers, and soldiers.
Some men have difficult dangerous jobs, Ben. And they are proud of their jobs.
You act like miners are pathetic losers. They are hard-working, skilled men.
You don’t know what caused this accident. That investigation is only beginning, and you don’t know how to investigate a mine accident.
Most mining accidents aren’t cave-ins. They are human-error—accidents with the moving equipment.
I read that last year less than 50 coal miners were killed on the job in America. Sometimes these are caused mistakes the miners made. People make mistakes with the heavy machines.
In China, where they don’t have good worker protections about 5000 die a year. There is a lot of corruption and the mine operators pay off the politicians.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
“Miners are men who do hard work that we all benefit from. They aren’t poor.”
I don’t consider it a benefit when it is at the expense of the health and safety of others. I don’t have a problem with miners because I believe everyone has a right to feed their families. I have numerous family members that are coal miners, and they do not live extravagant lives. I have uncles with black lung and my grandfather died of lung cancer well before his time. However, having said that, miners are aware of the devastating effects coal mining has on a community. People have a right to protect themselves and their family from those harms.
Peoples’ wells are poisoned by dozens of volatile organic contaminants, acid mine water spills over into their creeks, and they are left with unreclaimed land because coal companies forfeit their bonds (rather than spend more money to reclaim the land). People are left with cracked foundations, buried streams make them subject to flash floods, steep slopes threatening them with landslides, and coal trucks regularly run illegally overweight. When your community is polluted, other industries don’t locate there, which keeps wages low. Eastern Kentucky’s poverty rate is approximately 31 percent.
When you take all of this into consideration, and when you remove the natural wealth of a region without giving anything back to it, I would certainly consider them poor.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
“In the midst of this clash, Carlo Giuliani, who was wearing a black ski mask, picked up a fire extinguisher and, apparently intending to throw it at the officers inside the police Land Rover Defender, was shot in the face at point blank range by one of the officers.”
Shot in the face for “apparently intending” to throw a fire extinguisher at an armored vehicle. Well, shucks, Nullifidian, looks like she’s got you dead to rights. How could “apparently intending” to dent an armored vehicle not warrant a death sentence?
September 6th, 2007 at 9:01 am
There is absolutely nothing brave about protesting in America. You have a better chance getting hurt sipping your Cappucino. Get off your knees Nullfidian and be a man. If you want to be brave, go sign up for the insurgency in Iraq and get yourself shot. Otherwise, you are just another middle-upper class blowhard whining about how tough your life is in America. The chances of you getting hurt protesting anything are nil. It’s more like a party or a social club for the spineless types like you. Keeping talking tough softie.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:04 am
“…picked up a fire extinguisher and, apparently intending to throw it at the officers inside the police Land Rover Defender…” is not the same as “…to throw a fire extinguisher at an armored vehicle.”
Look at the pictures. The protesters are all over that vehicle with pipes and boards and the extinguisher is in line with an open vehicle just a few feet away from the unprotected occupants. Your characterization of the incident is a lie and anyone can see it for themselves. This is the kind of dishonesty that makes me doubt everything you say.
Using your dishonest tactics to recruit young people to commit violent acts while you stand aside and watch is exactly what you accuse the US military of doing. The difference is that we can’t vote you out of your terrorist job when your lies are uncovered.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Laurie, are you shitting me?! “Dishonesty”??
Do you think this was honestly self defense?
Here is Carlo either getting ready to throw the extinguisher or is using it as a shield when he sees the police officer point the gun at his face.
Close-up of previous photo moments before police put 2 bullets in Carlo’s head.
Land Rover begins to back over Carlo’s body.
The Land Rover now proceeds forward, again over Carlo’s body.
A month after the summit, the head of the Italian police admitted that officers used excessive force in dealing with demonstrators.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Oh, yes, you’re right MK. And the protester shoving the 2X4 through the other window is also defending himself. And the fellow with the 4″ in diameter metal pipe will use it to ward off bullets too. These people were attacking the vehicle.
http://www.apolitical.info/carlo/index.php?a=3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3002469.stm
“An Italian court has dismissed a case against a policeman who shot dead a protester during anti-globalisation riots in Genoa two years ago.”
“The judge ruled that the paramilitary police officer Mario Placanica had acted in legitimate self defence.”
September 6th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Nazis built up the “global Jewish conspiracy” into a massive straw man before claiming that in order to defeat the Jews, the “Aryans” needed to become like them. It is the same way with modern corporate rule targeting indigenous peoples and anarchists: they hold up this phony specter of how evil, dangerous, savage and sinister protesters are while committing the very same acts of theft, brutality and murder that they claim to eschew.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
As usual, there is more to the story:
Of course, there’s always more to the story, when it the story happens to be police brutality. There will always be more, even if they have to make it up.
Carlo Giuliani, who was wearing a black ski mask, picked up a fire extinguisher and, apparently intending to throw it at the officers inside the police Land Rover Defender, was shot in the face at point blank range by one of the officers.
Yup, he was about to commit property damage. That’s certainly a justifiable reason for summary execution.
There is absolutely nothing brave about protesting in America. You have a better chance getting hurt sipping your Cappucino. Get off your knees Nullfidian and be a man. If you want to be brave, go sign up for the insurgency in Iraq and get yourself shot.
Said by the man who is telling the rest of us to “be brave” while sitting behind a computer? Is that the road to bravery, or are you just trying to justify your craveness to yourself?
Otherwise, you are just another middle-upper class blowhard
At my last job, I earned $10.10 per hour in a part-time position, only worked nine months a year, and was not allowed any unemployment because I the company I was driving for was contracted to drive for the city, even though it was a private corporation. So that’s $7,272 per year gross. Is that upper-middle class these days?
Now that I’m back in California, I’ll be starting a full-time job which pays $25,000 a year, but the cost of living has trebled as well. Calling this upper-middle class would get a bitter laugh from anyone I know.
whining about how tough your life is in America. The chances of you getting hurt protesting anything are nil.
Wow, so I suppose the seperated shoulder I got when a pig put his full body weight on my right shoulder in an effort to get me to submit via what is called “pain compliance” never happened. Nor did the broken wrist I got from a whack with a baton in Miami. To say nothing of the small scars I have from rubber bullets and flex cuffs/conventional handcuffs bound so tightly that the skin started to bleed.
Not to mention, nobody else has ever been harmed in a political protest. Carlo Giuliani is alive and well. The Carabinieri were not taking protestors, journalists, etc. out to the outskirts of Genoa and giving them a beat down while singing fascist songs. The guy I saw with his jaw shattered by a plastic bullet at the WTO was a hallucination. And indeed every complaint of police brutality from mainstream civil liberties organizations is all a big misunderstanding.
I’m so glad I have you around to clarify these things, because otherwise I might have gone around mistakenly thinking that political protest is potentially dangerous!
It’s more like a party or a social club for the spineless types like you. Keeping talking tough softie.
As opposed to you, who’s so hard that your prescription for living in this world is to do…exactly what the authoritarians in power would have you do. Forgive me if I’m less than impressed with that.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
“The judge ruled that the paramilitary police officer Mario Placanica had acted in legitimate self defence.”
Oh, well, that settles it all, doesn’t it? Who could possibly doubt that the various arms of ‘law enforcement’ would mutually whitewash each other’s crimes in a country where it was officially accepted wisdom that Giuseppe Pinelli “fell” from a fourth-floor window by accident?
I mean, if the Pinelli case doesn’t just scream that the Italian police are just and caring arbiters of power and the judiciary is entirely independent of political pressure, I don’t know what does.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Well done, Nullifidian, Dylan, Ms. Knitter. I always wonder how these right-wing nuts reconcile claiming we’re violent extremists courting danger on the one hand, and yet we’re cowards because protesting is just a tea party on the other.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:15 am
oh no, not another pott and ketle blame gaim in play?
all my lessons# (rare and every bit as once in a 40 million livestimes as that aloha net johnboy claims the most famous david star ((aspect config, traced the most perfectly possible though with all different lenght vertex extensions .. .and probably a bit bent …. what do you and i know unless realism flows into the toy inDUSTrees)) gone to waste here too?
# you know, why no vullers to go along with the legers, whz deny night equal its equal rights and times with day, why not tear it apart and pretend only half is good enough and will eventually win and we must already fight the other etcetera. Try counting beyond 2, it works.
deeply depressed now
but i will relaunch my site (grew twice as large ‘in the (relative) dark’ in a while).
September 7th, 2007 at 4:40 am
having started on large time lapse boundaries bonded to leaping looplaps i offer this:
The 260 Postulates of the Dynamics of Time
17.6. The Galactic Federation of hyperdimensional mind is the future order and organization of all conscious intelligently ramified in degrees and ranks, stored according to a comprehensive knowledge of all phases of the evolutionary spectrum constituting the galactic brain. The only purpose of the Galactic Federation is to increase awareness of God and the divine order, which can only be effected through subliminal feedback to input from the lower orders of time.
talking to these guyz was near enough if not just as totally in vain as the years i sunk into being a commentarier on indymainwire broaching these matters were.
check http://poetpiet.googlepages.com/index
oh by the way, ‘leger’ is army in dutch, but also means emptyer (servicing the compost-plumbery complex ((preferably alongside and in close not to saz intimate cooperation with the ‘vullers’ (((responsible for the pure puste boost blowblast remedial rockdust refreshment rigorization))))) since day one).
September 7th, 2007 at 4:57 am
so far that arguelles is my best bet (guy i quoted, from his lawoftime.org site) since at least he is consistently pacific but that causes euphemization problems (lofty, symbolic, heady abstract, formulaic and yes, big bugbear, from violence distracting religion (cause mystifyingly deep ’sublimations’ are called for).
“subliminal feedback to input from the lower orders of time.”
if ‘lower orders of time’ (can, as i do, be said to) stand for primal vitality and we direct some of such vigor and energy toward its lower, precursoring ‘orders’ (= borders, the vertical/radial ones), this force can play volcano/glacier in a modest and dosable way.
does picturing these loooooong ciculs (planetaria gyrations as well as exceedingly slow rock grinding) have to include a costly (sweaty, costly, exciting and spectacular) mimick before you can truly call it a subliminal form of the actual thing (replenishment of trace elements ‘by’ ice ages)
September 8th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Nullfidian, maybe if you did not spend all your time flying around the country and whining like a baby, you might be able to get a better job, huh? All that whining about how much your life sucks and crawling on your knees may be getting in the way of employment opportunities? Capitalism is the greatest force for liberty in the world and the fact that you can’t get a job paying a decent wage while constantely flying around the country to participate in childish protests is more a tribute to your poor role models, your emotional and intellectual immaturity, and your desperate attempts to become a professional victim than to any flaw in capitalism. It takes a lot of effort to be a complete fuck-up in the richest country in the world.
Nice job in your career goals. I think you are about 90% of the way to a life of complete meaninglessness.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Nullfidian, maybe if you did not spend all your time flying around the country and whining like a baby, you might be able to get a better job, huh?
Well, since I haven’t been spending all of my time doing either, the answer to your question is “no”.
All that whining about how much your life sucks and crawling on your knees may be getting in the way of employment opportunities?
Again, having done neither, the answer is “no”.
Capitalism is the greatest force for liberty in the world
Tell that to the Ghanians, who are being shot when they protest Newmont Mining, poisoned by its cyanide extraction process, and suffering under an IMF-imposed privatization plan which includes their water. It’s substantially the same one imposed by the IMF on Colombia, where prices quadrupled and people were not allowed to even have a rainwater catchment without extremely expensive permits. Some liberty: you get the ‘freedom’ to pay sky-high prices for poisoned water, and if you don’t like it you get shot for your efforts to register your discontent.
and the fact that you can’t get a job paying a decent wage while constantely flying around the country
Again, false.
is more a tribute to your poor role models,
On the contrary, many of my role models were rather well-to-do. Pyotr Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, etc. Of course, since I don’t have the good fortune to be a hereditary prince of Russia, my money has to be made in other ways.
your emotional and intellectual immaturity,
Pardon me? Who refuses to address the substance of what the other says, instead hewing closely to a system of petty psychologizing and immature, macho bullshit insults?
and your desperate attempts to become a professional victim
Well, it’s kind of hard to be a professional victim when one’s analysis is that capitalism victimizes nearly everyone, even you. Perhaps especially you, since at least my victimization by the system of wage slavery didn’t include brainwashing and systemic ignorance as part of the package.
than to any flaw in capitalism.
I never argued that my life was an example of a flaw in capitalism any more than anyone else’s. It’s certainly a flaw of capitalism that it needs to protect itself in shows of force against the ones it’s dispossessed, but that’s hardly unique (or uniquely bad) to me. Do you need me here for this discussion, or are you content to have arguments with the mental object in your head?
It takes a lot of effort to be a complete fuck-up in the richest country in the world.
Perhaps so, despite your incorrect characterization of people who are working-class as “fuck-ups”, but that’s because Norway has a fairly functional social and economic safety net.
Did you think you were talking about the US?
Nice job in your career goals.
Uh…did I mention what my career goals were to you? If you want to know, you can get the skinny from this comment.
I think you are about 90% of the way to a life of complete meaninglessness.
Dear me! What ever can I do to regain my stature in the eyes on an anonymous arsehole? Maybe I need to start posting snide and personal comments on blogs which are ideologically opposed my views, calling everyone who doesn’t accept my political views a “fuck-up”.
Nah, that would just be trolling.
September 8th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Hey “Rest of the Country“-
How’s tricks?
September 8th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Obviously Sullivan decided to combine all his nicknames into one, and that’s why he calls himself “The Rest of the Country”. I know towns with less people than the number of his aliases.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
(1) Since the collapse of communism in the 1980s and the spread of free trade and capitalism, world poverty is collapsing at a rate unrivaled in history. Every year more and more people are lifted out of poverty by the rejection of socialism and communism. Check with the UN for the numbers.
(2) Norway is basically a welfare state in which a very small population sits around and counts all the money they make from sitting on one of the biggest per capita oil fields in the world — nice example for your socialist ideal.
(3) After the disastrous legacy of communism and socialism, only morons and bad people recommend it as a system for solving the world’s problems. Only people who want everyone to be poor and and starve support communism and socialism. Europe’s little socialist experiment was enabled by the U.S. providing all defense spending, and, even now, it is collapsing everywhere.
You are basically a total idiot, and you are wasting your life.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Hey, Mad Knitter, you sure you got the right guy. You have been known to post the wrong name and totally fuck up before.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Anti-Semite!!!
September 8th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
(1) Since the collapse of communism in the 1980s and the spread of free trade and capitalism, world poverty is collapsing at a rate unrivaled in history. Every year more and more people are lifted out of poverty by the rejection of socialism and communism. Check with the UN for the numbers.
Goldsmith, E. “Why Development Creates Poverty” Pacific Ecologist Issue 11, pgs. 43-47.
(2) Norway is basically a welfare state in which a very small population sits around and counts all the money they make from sitting on one of the biggest per capita oil fields in the world — nice example for your socialist ideal.
It also happens to be the richest nation in the world, in terms of per capita GDP, not the U.S.
(3) After the disastrous legacy of communism and socialism, only morons and bad people recommend it as a system for solving the world’s problems.
Seriously, you don’t know that global poverty is actually up in the post-Communist era, you don’t know that Norway is actually the per capita richest nation in the world, so who should really give a damn about your assessment of the types of people who argue for Socialism and Communism? Especially since it’s a moot point. I’ve not argued for Socialism or Communism here or anywhere else.
You are basically a total idiot, and you are wasting your life.
Says the man who once posted fifteen times to the same thread all under different aliases and whose blog was practically non-stop commentary on American Idol. If I ever feel the need to seek advice about whether or not I’m wasting my life, I can assure you that I won’t be asking you.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:44 am
You are living in a fantasy world.
September 10th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Since you’ve been wrong about everything else, I take that statement above for the unintentional compliment it is.