Minneapolis

The mainstream media would like you to believe that Sarah Palin’s daughter’s love-child is somehow important. They most certainly do not want you to realize that the Republican convention is beset by protesters and that the Minneapolis PD has been resorting to Gestapo like tactics to stifle the free expression of ideas. The mission of the media is to maintain the illusion that everything is fine out there in the heartland and that America isn’t beset by mounting internal tensions that threaten to overcome the social order. "Nothing Unusual Is Going On, protesters are demonstrating peacefully, no one is getting clubbed or gassed, there is no disturbance, continue shopping. That is all." Here is a video of an unarmed woman being tear-gassed by the police while trying to hand them a flower. Journalists are also being rounded up and arrested including Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and Democracy Now! TV and radio show host Amy Goodman. Rourke was since released. Police had been holding him on a (obviously false) gross misdemeanor riot charge. An AP spokesman said of the arrest: "covering news is constitutionally protected, and photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news." Well, we all know about how strong those Constitutional Protections are after eight years of proto-fascist rule. The media would be better off reporting on the real news than invoking the protections of a Constitution which they stood by and allowed to be eviscerated.

What was barely reported over the week-end was the fact that the federal government was the architect behind the heavy-handed policing at the convention as well as taking the lead in a number of illegal raids on protest groups in the days leading up to it. Minnesota Public Radio reported that "the searches (of the protester headquarters) were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The raids were executed after the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task force actively infiltrated dangerous groups of vegans who were supposedly plotting the overthrow of the government over their bowls of seitan stew. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the raids to me was not that they happened-after FISA and the Patriot Act there are no checks on the government’s ability to investigate and detain anyone they declare a “terrorist”-the real problem is that the rest of America doesn’t seem to give a shit. American’s talk a good game about freedom of speech, but when it comes to actually practicing tolerance and allowing dissenting viewpoints, we possess distinctly totalitarian inclinations. It defies explanation. Either we’re a nation of closet Nazis, or the government has us so cowed in fear that we have been paralyzed into a sort of dull witted complacency. As Glen Greenwald noted in Salon on Sunday, “After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest -- especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an unauthorized street march -- gets what they deserve.”