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by you
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 9:15 AM
Read this great article (from SF Chronicle?) on tactics and efficacy of affinity based group action. This is how to get it done, fer real.
by The Time is Now
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 9:47 AM
LA needs to see something of what San Francisco tasted today. We need to shut down business as usual and tell the people in power that we will not let them profit from this terrible war unopposed.
by MadMaxim
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 10:36 AM
>>LA needs to see something of what >> San Francisco tasted today
What you may end up "tasting" is martial law.
Go do a google search on "Watts Riots"
Try not to do anything TOO stupid, kids.
by Marcos
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 11:05 AM
L.A. needs to see this kind of action on FRIDAY MORNING! Go block to block, never stop for too long - keep it shut down! Block those freeways! Just check out what they did in Portland, shutting down the I-5 Freeway 4 or 5 times in one evening! Keep on the move, go go go!
by Brian
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 12:37 PM
vagrant@slumdance.com
 deputies.jpg, image/jpeg, 500x291
I heard a few people talking about this tactic late today, and wishing that we'd tried it in Westwood.
Also, some people were going around at about 8 pm, whispering, "We're moving to Westwood Blvd," but at that time I didn't understand what they were trying to communicate. Nobody really paid attention, and no cluster groups broke off that I saw.
Then again, we did hold Wilshire for hours. The crowd on the west side of the intersection didn't move until victory was declared and the demo broke up.
The strategy they used in SF sounds viable for here, though. LAPD/LASD are just like that--they'll use 50 cops to arrest four people. With the right organization, that means hundreds of us can rush to the next spot. Use their slowness against them.
If only we had aerial spotters, it could go on indefinitely..
by Nasrudin
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 4:57 PM
pdx
up in pdx there were people monitoring police radios and broadcasting info to cell phone mailing lists. it's not aeriel surveillance, but it's something.
by Rich
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 4:59 PM
You people for "peace" for the Iraqi people are morons. Here's is your proof. And it will ONLY GET BIGGER. Are you starting to feel stupid yet?
"No Saddam Hussein!" one young man in headscarf told Gurfein. "Bush!"
U.S. Marines Rip Down Saddam Portraits 1 hour, 5 minutes ago
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writer
Milling crowds of men and boys watched as the Marines attached ropes on the front of their Jeeps to one portrait and then backed up, peeling the Iraqi leader's black-and-white metal image off a frame. Some locals briefly joined Maj. David "Bull" Gurfein in a new cheer.
"Iraqis! Iraqis! Iraqis!" Gurfein yelled, pumping his fist in the air.
"We wanted to send a message that Saddam is done," said Gurfein, a New York native in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "People are scared to show a lot of emotion. That's why we wanted to show them this time we're here, and Saddam is done."
The Marines arrived in Safwan, just across the Kuwait border, after Cobra attack helicopters, attack jets, tanks, 155 mm howitzers and sharpshooters cleared the way along Route 80, the main road into Iraq (news - web sites).
Safwan, 375 miles south of Baghdad, is a poor, dirty, wrecked town pocked by shrapnel from the last Gulf war (news - web sites). Iraqi forces in the area sporadically fired mortars and guns for hours Thursday and Friday. Most townspeople hid, although residents brought forth a wounded little girl, her palm bleeding after the new fighting. Another man said his wife was shot in the leg by the Americans.
A few men and boys ventured out, putting makeshift white flags on their pickup trucks or waving white T-shirts out truck windows.
"Americans very good," Ali Khemy said. "Iraq wants to be free."
Some chanted, "Ameriki! Ameriki!"
Many others in the starving town just patted their stomachs and raised their hands, begging for food.
A man identifying himself only as Abdullah welcomed the arrival of the U.S. troops: "Saddam Hussein is no good. Saddam Hussein a butcher."
An old woman shrouded in black — one of the very few women outside — knelt toward the feet of Americans, embracing an American woman. A younger man with her pulled her away, giving her a warning sign by sliding his finger across his throat.
In 1991, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died after prematurely celebrating what they believed was their liberation from Saddam after the Gulf War. Some even pulled down a few pictures of Saddam then — only to be killed by Iraqi forces.
Gurfein playfully traded pats with a disabled man and turned down a dinner invitation from townspeople.
"Friend, friend," he told them in Arabic learned in the first Gulf War.
"We stopped in Kuwait that time," he said. "We were all ready to come up there then, and we never did."
The townspeople seemed grateful this time.
"No Saddam Hussein!" one young man in headscarf told Gurfein. "Bush!"
by Sam
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 5:02 PM
San Francisco Street Subversion By Brian Sayre FrontPageMagazine.com | March 21, 2003
Over five hundred were detained before eleven o'clock this morning; a television reporter declared 'truckloads more' had come in by mid-afternoon. Surrendering Iraqi soldiers? No, anti-American demonstrators, set loose on the streets of San Francisco.
Today, on the first day of America's campaign to liberate the Iraqi people, at a time when the threat of terrorist attack is elevated and the troops need our support, thousands of Bay Area radicals poured into the streets in a last-ditch effort to impose their lost argument undemocratically on the rest of San Francisco. The majority of the city's police force were tied up unblocking the streets. With at least one suspected Al Qaeda pilot being sought by the FBI on American soil, the citizens of San Francisco lost the use of manpower best used to spot terrorists.
The disruption began early, before the morning commute. Coalitions of radical activists had long planned to block over two dozen different intersections and workplaces - by the time they got organized, before eight o'clock, they'd successfully shut down at least ten, including several on the main arteries of Mission, Van Ness, and Market. A freeway ramp was also blocked, with over two hundred people occupying it. Other protestors used subterfuge to achieve their aims. After stealing equipment from construction workers, a pack of young men sealed other freeway off-ramps with traffic cones and men-at-work signs. All were being well organized - the coalition behind the chaos, Direct Action to Stop the War, had arranged in advance for a legal team to defend the arrested. Out of their command post in the Justin Herman Plaza, they directed new arrivals to where they could cause the most confusion.
Although the San Francisco police acted promptly, and began arresting those who refused to disperse, progress was slow as demonstrators locked their arms together within steel pipes. By half past eight, one intersection was shut down by people locked to large cement blocks; another group uprooted newspaper racks and strew them across the streets. There would be no business as usual for those San Franciscans who wanted to work and support their families.Will the protestors reimburse them for their lost pay? Their measure, designed to stop the war, hurts hardest the working poor they usually defend. While these protestors, many of them unemployed students, claim the safety of the Iraqi people is worth taking from the pockets of working Californians, President Bush and the majority of Americans know that only the liberation of Iraq from the dictator will truly make Iraqis safe, and are not about to listen to a small crowd of street rabble. At times like this, we must wonder - what exactly is their point?
As the day progressed, their point became more clear - to cause as much havoc as possible. Despite the best efforts of the San Francisco police force, they were unable to clear the streets, no doubt because of their refusal to lower themselves to the protestors' violent level. By mid-morning, at Post and Grant, people pushed cars out to blockade the street. By noon, crowds were roving up and down Market, blocking traffic - and just when the police had restrained a large number by the Federal Building, and were preparing for a mass arrest, a 'Black Bloc' of anarchist protestors assembled elsewhere and began their own march. Leading a march reportedly two thousand strong, this black-clad mob headed for the Financial District, opening a fire hydrant and breaking windows - windows of police cars, windows of the Federal Building.
When many of these Black Bloc protestors were arrested at the Federal Building, police made surprising discoveries - these practitioners of 'non-violent civil disobedience' were armed. Knives. Wrenches. Clubs. Hammers. In one case, a taser. Mercifully, no firearms - yet. At the time of writing, news is still sparse, and details uncertain; but two short words on their own radical website are enough to bring an uneasy sickness to the stomach: "Cop down."
The arrested are being taken to at least two processing stations - one set up on the length of one of the city's piers. There the protestors are documented, cited, and released. As one local television reporter announced mid-afternoon, the turnaround time was two to three hours.
However, the protests are set to continue all night. Already, protestors have announced 're-convergences' every two hours until midnight - at these re-convergences, they assemble enough bodies until they can set off through the city with relative impunity, able to be subdued only by a large force of riot cops. They plan to stay out all night; many have expressed enthusiasm for continuing their unlawful activity indefinitely. Again - just what is the point? Mayor Willie Brown, despite being personally against a war on Iraq, provided the answer for the San Francisco Chronicle: "I've got to assume that these people are so misguided that they are actually aiding the enemy by doing what they are doing."
Exactly, Mayor Brown. The protestors are indeed aiding the enemy, by making it easier for him to strike us at home.
There is room in civil society for a wide range of opinions on the war in Iraq, although now that the government has decided, we all have an obligation to support our troops and respect the sacrifices they make. Those against a war still have plenty of opportunity to dissent - by writing to the newspapers, by calling their politicians, and by participating in legal protest, planned for by the police.
Yet no one has a right to break the law. No one has the right to jeopardize others by keeping our police from their job. At times like this, we all must speak out against the 'revolving door' system of arrests taking place in San Francisco and other cities across America. Our police do their job well, putting themselves in danger to ensure our cities run, but when they can only take a radical out of action for two to three hours at a time, the laws they enforce are failing them. But there are steps we can take to correct this situation.
We can start by encouraging our politicians and prosecutors to press for harsher penalties and higher bails, keeping a protestor from being arrested multiple times in a single action, allowing the police to clear the streets of lawbreakers rather than simply shifting them around. A much better solution – give teeth to the existing laws with mandatory, harsher penalties in time of increased terrorist threat, penalties that would keep these lawbreakers from weakening our defenses against terrorism for the duration of the conflict.
America is at war in Iraq. God bless our troops. Regrettably, a few have chosen to wage war at home. May God also bless our police.
by huh?
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 5:07 PM
God? There is no God. Humans invented the idea of God and now use that idea to herd the sheep around.
by The New X
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 5:22 PM
The New X by The New X • Thursday March 20, 2003 Thut 04:33 PM
the fear that Saddam will attack the US with WMD shows how PARANOID americans are.
they don't really know why he will attack they just know he will
"we don't know what a nigger is, but we're just gonna hate 'em anyway"
AMERICAN HYPOCRISY
TO ANY PRO-WAR ADVOCATE I DARE YOU TO REPLY TO THIS:
The US government supported Saddam during his most murderous years. They supplied him with WMD and the technology to make his own WMD. EVEN THOUGH HE WAS A KNOWN TYRANT. Why? So that he would use them on the Iranians. Even after Halabja in 1988, the US government CONTINUED to support him.
Now in the year 2003 (whether it is morally just or not), Saddam no longer wishes to play into US global strategy. So he is ALL OF A SUDDEN branded a TYRANT ------ EVEN THOUGH HE WAS A MURDEROUS TYRANT ALL THE YEARS THE US SUPPORTED HIM!
Isn't it hypocritical that although he was even more murderous back then, he was considered an ALLY and FRIEND OF AMERICA simply because he was killing Iranians (if 5,000 kurds happened to be gassed in a single attack thats no big deal). Now he's still murderous but now the US actually acknowledges that he is a tyrant. Imagine if he was still following US wishes by fighting with Iraq, would the US be calling him a TYRANT? I DON'T THINK SO.
HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY HYPOCRISY.
Until the US apologizes to the victims of Saddam terror DURING THE YEARS THAT THEY SUPPORTED HIM, this war will only be about US PARANOIA and its attempts at gaining a FALSE sense of security.
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war advocates only want to see sand nigger blood being spilled. they try to improve the body count 2,500 Americans (WTC) < 100,000 Sand Niggers.
So they can feel better about themselves and feel as if they "won" the overall battle. Their oh so precious American pride was hurt on 9/11 and now they seek to get it back by killing sand niggers left rite and center
(basically this is the whole starship troopers scenario)
by MollyHawk
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 at 5:30 PM
God Bless USA, the land of the free. America just tries to help the oppressed. Iran was opressing and helping Iraq was helping the people of Iran. I don't believe any of the stories about oil or our good president only being interested in spreading Capitalism to the mid east and helping his loyal friends make lots of money selling arms and space weapons. No way God loves the USA that is why we are so strong.
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