Sunday, August 31, 2008

Hitler Would Be Proud

Has Minneapolis become a police state? This is incredible.

Minneapolis "police" raiding homes in advance of the GOP Convention looking for possible protesters, denying the right to see a warrant before the raid takes place, entering the premises with machine guns drawn. The last time I checked, protesting was still legal, right?


Glenn Greenwald: There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with machine-gun-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

...We spoke with the people who were staying at the house about the raid in the video above, and they were really sweet and inspirational, interested in “food not bombs.” Coming off the Denver DNC where most young people were blackberry-wielding Young Democrats hustling tickets to bigger and better parties, they were extremely refreshing and a much needed part of our political landscape. The idea that they were a serious threat to security is rendered rather ludicrous by watching the video...




Yes, there were protesters arrested in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, but they were arrested while protesting. I don't remember hearing about a massive sweep of houses looking for possible organized protesters. And I'm sure no one else will hear about this from the McCainstream Media either. I haven't seen anything on the local news... have you?

Behold, the look of our country under a Republican administration.

(H/T Crooks & Liars)

1 comment:

chris said...

Greenwald continued it today.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html
Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people's homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.

It is truly frightening, not only that this is going on, but that there is so little coverage of it by MSM. It's supposed to be their job to be a public check on gov't power, not be complicit in controlling the citizenry by keeping silent about gov't abuses. I'm disgusted.

 
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