Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC

[babsbunny]

http://www.truthout.org/article/pre-emptive-strikes-against-protest-rnc

Tuesday 02 September 2008

by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Report

Marcus Washington, a producer from Tennessee who was documenting the antiwar protest, grimaced in pain after he was hit with pepper spray. (Photo: Jim Gehrz / Minneapolis Star Tribune)

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to pre-empt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protesters by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

[Bob Dobbs]

1. Criminalization of exercising Constitutional rights

ain't Constitutional.

[Greyhound]

2. But it's not fascism, we can still post on the tubes. n/t

:sarcasm:

:kick: & R

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. You took the words out of my typing fingers

[Greyhound]

5. The number of fools defending this conduct is deeply worrisome to me. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Not that it helps, at all, but this was the way it was also with Nazi Germany

and other police states... they will finally get it, when they have no choice

It will be too late

[SpiralHawk]

3. Republicon Homelander Fascism is the Order of the Day

Woe unto America and Americans.