np Stuttgart 21

[Ian Livingston]

Of course irony is blank if there is no truth in it. Yes, I think
police attacking peaceful protesters is barbarous. It is entirely
appropriate that non-violent protesters disrupt the normal flow of
business and activity. That's the whole point. Ghandi did not lead
India to liberation from the British overlords by staging protests in
secret, out of the way places. People stood in the streets and chanted
and went places the government didn't want them to go.  If you want to
make changes, you must defy the bosses. That's how the unions started,
back before the plutes bought them out. And the bosses' dupes broke
heads then, too. When the state brutally enforces submission, it
behaves barbarously, in my not always humble opinion. I do not suggest
this is solely American, just typical of the American state's response
to non-violent civil disobedience. I remember too well the day we
heard the National Guard had opened fire on peaceful American citizens
in Kent, Ohio. America is, yes, barbarous. And cops are not garbage
men, they are thugs. Just two years ago I was stopped, searched and
cited for jay-walking on a side street at 10 a.m. where no cars were
passing. Backup cruisers passed four times, lest I become
unmanageable. I was on my way to talk to the mechanic who was working
on my car. He needed a piece of paperwork to smog the vehicle. That is
not the work of garbage collectors, it is the work of pigs. You won't
find much honest depiction in movies or on t.v., you have to be on the
street to see how the pigs work. They don't often pursue criminals.
They team up with powerful weapons to bully the unarmed. Don't
romanticize them.


On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:34 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> guess i'm just splitting hairs
> at times I would say police/military commit acts that are barbarous everywhere
> not sure why this is stated as a typically American conceit
>
> i would also quibble with that designation barbarous to the events you
> listed. i don't condone police hubris by any means but there is a
> question of scale
>
> brings to mind that line from the movie Homicide where the Joe
> Montegna character is talking to an old black woman trying to get her
> to tell him/them (cops) where her criminal son is hiding out. in
> essence, cops are garbagemen, that's all they are
>
> rich
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:36 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> is this a dig on Germany?
>>> are u being straight on about that barbarous America?
>>>
>>
>> I'm really not sure about the German part of it.
>>
>> But US police rampages against anti-globalization protests, strikes,
>> protests at political conventions, and so forth, are indeed fairly
>> notorious.  Aren't they?
>>
>>
>> --
>> - "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
>>  a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
>> Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."