History was written by the victors in record time on Monday night and Tuesday morning, as an official timeline was worked out whereby unidentified "anarchists" began pelting innocent peace officers with rocks and (plastic?) bottles, prompting the LAPD to disperse the crowd with the utmost caution, decency, and regard for civil rights. CNN and the nightly nework news shows are the harbingers of this gospel to the world, citing a few video clips of scattered inividuals throwing vague rock-sized objects, bottles of ambiguous materials, and (gasp!) climbing fences and raising flags. Not a shred of proof was forthcoming from either the police or their media comrades as to whether the protesters' agressive acts preceded or followed being ridden down by heavy horse (which, as in Braveheart, "shake the very ground") and peppered with noxious chemicals and high-speed projectiles aimed at their shins, backs, and faces. Neither has there been any evidence that a single cop was harmed by this alleged swarm of missiles, in stark contrast to the welts and bruises displayed on television and this web site by a number of injured protesters.

Numerous LAPD representatives and corporate pundits have had the gall to suggest that the police and the city were merely executing their fervent wish that individuals have the ability to fully exercise their First Amendment rights. This from the same city that spent thousands if not millions in court seeking to confine free speech to a small ghetto surrounded by electrified fences and located somewhere between Bakersfield and Frenso. Before the courts rejected this scheme, Mayor Riordan was aghast at the suggestion that youth and immigrants living in LA should be permitted in Pershing Square or within two miles of Staples Center. Not one media commentator has bothered to connect the dots between this attempted wholesale censorship and the obviously well-planned action against the protesters executed at the precise hour that the first day of the Convention was to wrap up - and tipsy delegates thus be forced to wade through yard after yard of the "diversity" that they so eloquently champion and secretly dread.

I move that we declare August 14 "Mike Davis Day," in honor of the author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear, two works that trace the conspiracy between city government, large downtown corporations and the LAPD to thoroughly militarize and racially and economically segregate the city. Having lost in the courts, the city fathers' long-range plan to confine youth to the shopping malls and immigrants and the poor to the far eastern and southern portions of the city was enacted on the streets and underneath the heavy trod of officers on horseback. The "shining city on a hill" of Reagan's dreams was thus restored, and the path cleared of riff-raff for the glorious trek from the fairy-tale factory of Staples to the caviar and bribery parties of Hollywood.

All for now...

D2KLA007

For truly arrogant coverage, no one topped the Faux News Channel, which featured a gaggle of talking heads, including android Britt Hume, and the vicious and obnoxious Mara Liasson, bragging about how "irrelevant" the protests are, how the protestors are simply here to "party," and how there is "no coherent messsage." In an aerial shot of the RATM concert (that was as close as they got), Liasson remarked that she didn't see any evidence of political involvement by the concert goers! (Despite the fact that the concert was loaded with signs and banners, and the musical lyrics themselves were more "political" than the meaningless fluff being muttered inside the corporate convention.) Of course Faux News would never consider letting people like Medea Benjamin, Vandana Shiva or Ralph Nader participate in their corporate commentary circle. Faux News Channel truly hits rock bottom in the cesspool of corporate reporting.