High Noon in Whistler: tooodleeeooooo......deee doooo dooooo

Well, I am writing this from the lobby of the DELTA Whistler Hotel in beautiful downtown Whistler.

It is about 2:00PM and it's sprinkling rain outside. It looks like the protests have had a rather poor turnout. I have counted about 50 to 60 protestors representing various factions in Vancouver - from NFTAA to WTO to a small group with anrchists symbol on their shirts to "remember Carlos" - meaning the young man who passed away in Genoa. They all look cold, hungry and a bit frustrated.

The police presence is minimal with a few armed mounties standing by the conference centre and they have a rather large area near the parking lot cordoned off for the protestors which looks rather big but mainly beacuse there are only a few protestors!

There was a small battle between some local citizens of Whistler who decided, I guess, that enough was enough and were a bit fed up with the protestors wandering in and out of the various hotels, restaurants and stores to use the washrooms and warm up. Some eggs were thrown from the balconies of the various hotels at the protestors who shouted obscenities and demanded the police take some action but the police didn't do a thing - as the protestors could not identify the balcony. One girl was hit in the neck by an egg that didn't break and collapsed on the pavement - but she got up prompty and ran towards the parking lot!

There was a also a scuffle between a few protestors and a police officer who was knocked down and then surrounded by 8 or 9 protestors who were kicking and throwing punches at the officer - they were quickly and promptly arrested and escorted to hotel side door.

Local Whistler ciitizens could be heard yelling: "Go back to Vancouver you weirdos!" and "You do not represent us....we didn't elect you!"

The local tourists - mainly Asian and American had a grand old time having their pictures taken with the protestors - as if the protestors were some wildlife or a piece of art. It was actually quite funny to see a smiley happy Asian woman dressed in a Calvin Klein top, Tommy Hilfiger Jeans and carrying a GAP handbag with her arm around a soke and wet, and clearly unhappy protestor!! I hope that picture makes the front page of the papers tomorrow as a Vancouver Sun reporter went up to talk with the picture taker afterwords.

So...that's it in a nutshell. Small turnout - perhaps because of the rain or the fireworks tonight or the LONG distance to travel to Whistler...but nothing eventful, just a very disorganised group of young people who I think would rather be enjoying doing something else.

Front the front lines,

I'm Mark Reisman

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The person posing as 'Mark Reisman' is the same poster that has been plaguing CMAQ (cmaq.net) with right-wing bile and disinfo for over two months. More lately at CMAQ, the person has become better known under the pseudonym Anne-Marie, although this is just one of dozens of pseudonyms used so far.

CMAQ is now in the process of reviewing moderation policy so as to counter the attacks of this infiltrator. Although this has already cut down the volume of virulent anti-protester posts at CMAQ, it appears that the infiltrator is now focussing on coordinated disinformation campaigns. This PNWER item is the second in the last week, the first being the false assertion that Carlo Guiliani was about to throw a propane tank (rather than a fire extinguisher) when shot. See: http://www.cmaq.net/board/YaBB.pl?board=general&action=display&num=196

for more details. In these disinformation campaigns, the infiltrator posts similar or identical material at many sites which allow free posting in order to self-corroborate his own lies.

Here is a more accurate version of events at Whistler from the mainstream media:

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/07/28/whistler_010728

There will be first hand reports coming in soon from *real* first hand witnesses over at vancouver.indymedia.org