File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9912, message 123


Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 10:27:44 -0500
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: Fwd: COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN SEATTLE




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN SEATTLE
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 01:44:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Flint Jones  <flint-AT-mobtown.org>
Reply-To: dc-AT-lists.tao.ca
To: dc-AT-tao.ca


[From iww-news]

>COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN SEATTLE
>by Portland student/reporter Jim Desyllas
>
>Called-in from a pay phone outside Seattle. Wed., 7:30 pm Pacific time. 
>
>(Posted at www.emperors-clothes.com  12-2-99.  Feel free to distribute in 
>full including this note.)
>
>I just spent 4 days in Seattle. The "information" people are getting from the 
>mass media is false. This was not, as Pres. Clinton claims, a peaceful 
>protest marred by the actions of violent protesters. This was a massive, 
>strong but peaceful demonstration which was attacked repeatedly by the police 
>with the express purpose of provoking a violent response to provide photo 
>opportunities for the Western media. I know because I watched it happening. 
>I'll tell you how they did it.
>
>As Michel Chossudovsky says in his "Disarming the New World Order" (See Note 
># 1 at end for link to that article) - the government put a lot of effort 
>into making sure the protesters in Seattle were a "loyal opposition" who 
>wanted to reform the WTO, not get rid of it. But the people in Seattle - 
>American steel workers, Canadian postal workers, college kids from all over, 
>environmentalists from Australia - you name it - were not for reforming the 
>WTO. They were for getting rid of it. 
>
>And this wasn't just true of the protesters. I interviewed delegates. None of 
>them had anything favorable to say about the WTO. Two delegates from the 
>Caribbean were angry about job loss. One delegate from Peru took a bullhorn 
>and got up on a car and spoke to the protestors against the World Trade 
>Organization. He said it hurts the workers and farmers. I interviewed a 
>Norwegian guy from Greenpeace. Totally against it. Even a delegate from 
>Holland said it had hurt the farmers there. He said though it is supposedly 
>democratic, that's actually a lie: the US, England and Canada and a few 
>others get together and decide what they want to do. Then they ask the rest 
>of the countries to vote and if they vote wrong they threaten,"You won't get 
>loans," or whatever. They get them to do what they want by blackmailing them. 
>The Italians we interviewed were upset too. I couldn't find any delegates who 
>were in favor. 
>
>So the government instigated a "riot" to discredit the movement against the 
>WTO because they couldn't dilute it. I am not guessing about this. I was 
>there. I saw it happening. And I will tell you I am frankly shocked to see, 
>close up, just how little our leaders care what happens to ordinary people. 
>Clinton can pose and speak a lot of flowery stuff but the truth is - we are 
>nothing to them. I saw this with my own eyes.
>
>Sunday and Monday, there was no violence. None. The people were aggressively 
>non-violent; they were self-policing. Up until Tuesday at 4pm there was one 
>window broken in the whole city - a McDonalds window. This compares favorably 
>to the typical rock concert, let alone a demonstration of people who were 
>non-violently barring entry to the World Trade Center!
>
>At this point, a new group of police - tactical police - moved in and started 
>gassing people and shooting rubber bullets. Is it any surprise that people 
>got mad? Of course, the young kids hit back by breaking some windows in 
>retaliation for being gassed, sprayed with very painful pepper gas, and shot 
>with dangerous "rubber" bullets. The police instigated these kids, plain and 
>simple. 
>
>Sunday and Monday they had young cops, using them to block the streets. These 
>were trainees. But Tuesday they had the real cops; none of them were young. 
>They were trained to attack people. A small group, maybe 100 people total, 
>struck back. Then these cops herded that group around the city, making sure 
>there were plenty of photo ops of "violent protesters." 
>
>A number of times they had these 100 or so protesters caught between 
>buildings and walls of police. They could easily have arrested and detained 
>this small number of people and gotten it over with. Instead they would gas 
>them and let them go. Then trap them again, gas them again, and again let 
>them go. The cops made no arrests that I know of until late Tuesday night 
>though the skirmishing was going on from three till 9:30. The cops would 
>blockade three or five blocks of an area, give the angry kids room to 
>operate, keep gassing them - when you gas a person, let me tell you, it gets 
>them fighting mad.
>
>Tuesday night the police gassed all of downtown. This was going on from 3 PM, 
>till 6 PM.. Gas everywhere. The kids broke a few windows - McD's, Starbucks - 
>small stuff - burned a few garbage cans. The police were using these people 
>as extras. It was staged. I believe also the police had their own people in 
>there, encouraging people to break stuff - if people think I may be 
>exaggerating, I saw supposed protesters - they were screaming and so on - and 
>then later, when everything was over, the same people tackled other 
>protestors and put handcuffs on them.
>
>At 6pm they issued a State of Emergency. At that point they had pushed the 
>100 people outside the city limits, so the police went outside the limits 
>too, and they started gassing that area too, gassing the neighborhoods where 
>the regular people live. I am not exaggerating. The police were relentless.
>
>This was in an area from the city limits for about 10 blocks to the Seattle 
>Central Community College. If you were alive, the police gassed you. People 
>coming back from work, kids, women, everyone. People would go out of their 
>houses to see what was happening because these tear gas guns sound like a 
>cannon - and they would get gassed. A block away there was a Texaco gas 
>station - they threw tear gas at gas pumps, believe it or not - they were 
>like vandals. They gassed a bus. I saw it with my own eyes. A bus. The 
>driver, the riders, the people just abandoned it .
>
>I was sitting in a little coffee shop called Rauhaus, [Jim did not spell this 
>- the spelling may be wrong.] They were shooting "rubber" bullets at the 
>glass. I picked up a dozen of the things in a few square feet. They were also 
>shooting this paint that you can only see with a florescent light. They would 
>paint anyone and everyone and then go hunting them.
>
>Anyway, because they were gassing everybody, the local people got mad too and 
>they joined the 100 who had been herded out of the city. So soon there were 
>500 including the neighborhood people and all very angry. Naturally. Because 
>they had been gassed and hit with pepper spray, that stuff does a number on 
>you. And shot with these damn bullets. Then people set up barricades at 
>Seattle Central Community College. The cops organized themselves for about an 
>hour and then moved in and gassed that area. 
>
>Today they started mass arrests. That was because Clinton - the Greeks call 
>him the Planitarchis, Ruler of the World - was coming. Weeping crocodile 
>tears about how he just LOVES peaceful protest, which of course you'd have to 
>be two years old to believe he had nothing to do with the police action. This 
>whole thing, this police attack, this was US foreign policy, not some action 
>decided by some bureaucrat in Seattle. This was the State Department. They 
>wanted to discredit the people.
>
>When things started on Sunday,  there was a protest rally of solidarity 
>involving people from different walks of life. Monday it got even bigger. 
>Tuesday there was a big sort of carnival where people were doing different 
>things, a band was playing music and people were blocking the World Trade 
>Center. And about 3 PM the cops started throwing tear gas. 
>
>The thing that drove Clinton crazy was that on Tuesday the protesters had 
>succeeded in making nonviolent human chains and had therefore stopped 
>everyone from going into the World Trade Center. Only maybe 27 delegates got 
>through, mostly US and British. There were what seemed like tens of thousands 
>of protesters involved. So the police did their gassing number against these 
>nonviolent people to break up the human chains and make the protesters look 
>violent. 
>
>Today (Wednesday) I followed the union protest put together by the 
>Longshoremen's Union. They went down to the docks and had a rally then 
>marched to Third Avenue. As soon as they got there the cops started gassing 
>them. There was an old lady there. She had gone downtown by bus to buy 
>something. This lady was in her 70's and I saw her trying to run, but she 
>couldn't breathe. She was in shock. I carried her to a building entryway. She 
>was gasping, terrified. She had been in Germany, and it was like she was 
>having flashbacks. The tear gas sounds like gunfire and there were 
>helicopters overhead, sirens, cops on horses, everything. 
>
>They had clearly made a decision to destroy this movement. 
>
>So anyway there I was with her in this building and she wanted to go to the 
>hospital but there was tear gas everywhere and I was afraid if I tried to 
>move her she'd be gassed again. I went to this line of cops and begged - I 
>mean begged - these riot police to help her. They ignored me. A girl told me 
>later that a one year old had been gassed. And I myself saw a girl no more 
>than 18 - a cop had busted her lip wide open - she was bleeding - and then 
>they gassed everyone including her. After that she was kneeling on the ground 
>crying like a baby and praying for 15 minutes, Hail Mary, Hail Mary. Over and 
>over. She was in a state of shock. They just gassed these people who were 
>sitting down non-violently and doing nothing. Nothing. 
>
>At one point the Seattle Mayor said his boys were not using rubber bullets. 
>Miraculously, by then I had ten in my pocket. I could open a little market, 
>sell the things. They are everywhere. I and other people started giving them 
>to delegates and stuff. "See what they're doing? They're shooting "rubber" 
>bullets and lying about it." We showed them to the media. I guess enough 
>people and the media got the information because the Mayor made a new 
>statement then that they were using them. As if he hadn't known. 
>
>They shot rubber bullets from four feet away into the face of a guy next to 
>me, broke all his front teeth. When that happened I lost it. I forgot I was 
>supposed to be getting the news for all of you and I started yelling at the 
>cops, "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick, man?" So this cop aimed 
>his gun right at me. That was his answer. So I first put my hands in front of 
>my face because I didn't want to lose my teeth. And then I thought, to hell 
>with it. I was wearing my target shirt that said "Collateral Damage", you 
>know? With a bullseye target, like they wore during the bombing in 
>Yugoslavia. And I told this guy, "Go ahead, shoot! Here! Here's the target!" 
>He didn't shoot me.
>
>I want to emphasize, these protesters were NOT violent people. They were the 
>most non-violent people I have ever seen. Even when I was screaming at the 
>cop, this girl came up to me and said, "Do not scream. This is non-violent." 
>These people were too much to believe. They must meditate all the time, I 
>don't know. 
>
>Clinton said he supports nonviolent protest. That is baloney. Today (Wed.) 
>the protesters were causing absolutely no "trouble". In downtown the cops had 
>people running who weren't even protesters - like that old lady or just 
>people going to work or shopping - everyone was getting gassed. The busses 
>weren't running because of the gas. I was lucky to catch one with a driver 
>who could still see. I begged him to drive the old lady home - the driver 
>changed his route especially for her. If you want to find human decency, stay 
>away from the Planitarchis. Go to the to regular people. They have some. The 
>Planitarchis lost all his years ago. Now he wouldn't know human decency if it 
>came up and bit him.
>
>So now I have made personal acquaintance with the people who run this 
>country, and they are quite simply scum. There were people at work, people 
>with babies, they were all getting gassed because the government would not 
>allow an assembly of people speaking their minds. It is the same as what 
>happened in Athens. Clinton's requirements on the Greek government created 
>the riot and he did the same thing here. And then he says he supports 
>nonviolent protest? How? By shooting rubber bullets? And today they outlawed 
>gas masks. They want to make sure everyone gets his money's worth.
>
>Today, just like yesterday night, the police were in the residential 
>neighborhoods. People in cafés were getting gassed and shot at, you could 
>hear it on the windows, bang, bang, bang. A guy trying to cross the street to 
>go to his house got gassed. First a drunk guy outside a bar yelled at the 
>cops "Get out of here!" so they gassed him. And then this other guys was just 
>crossing the street to go home so the cops figured, might as well gas him 
>too. People got gassed for coming out of restaruants and bars and coffeee 
>shops. I'm amazed that nobody died who had asthma or something. 
>
>Or maybe somebody did die and they didn't talk about it. I mean after all, 
>it's just collateral damage.. 
>
>***
>

   

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