Far Beyond Proto-Fascist

Lindsay Beyerstein:

"About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house," Whelan said. "One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained."

"Are they still outside?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, they're still outside," Whelan replied cheerfully, "The streets are blocked off."

"How you did figure out there was a raid going on?" I asked.

"It sounded like people were falling down on my porch," he said, "Cops were running up both sides of the house onto the porch.

Whelan says his roommate, Erin Stalmaker, went out to talk to talk to the police. She asked the officers why they were there. The officers asked why people were running away from them. Erin reportedly told the officers that their drawn automatic weapons probably had something to do with it. She was detained after asking to see a warrant.

"Are you scared," I asked."

"No, I'm a veteran," he said, "I was in the army. I was a military police officer. I wouldn't have done this."

Whelan said it was especially perplexing that the police would target his home.

"There's nothing here," he said, "These are the "checking" people. They're not even going to be in the demonstration. Some are lawyers."

1,000 miles away, and in the path of a hurricane, I can honestly say the hurricane is less dangerous than our government.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Dangerous

The raids in St. Paul are much more disturbing than I thought. Maybe I am slow on the news. I only found out about this at 1 a.m. last night, and it happened Friday night. Massive preemptive raids on peaceful protesters were conducted by local police in St. Paul, Minneosta, the only city where fire violations have become punishable by death in the event of resistance.

...members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying. Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly.

Video:


Watch yourselves, Jane and Glenn. The people in charge have no problems hurting innocent intellectuals. Be careful, and we will all hope for the best.
I won't miss things like this when I am gone.
I have found a lot more video and details, but it may be an hour or so (evac dial-up cpmmection).

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(I wrote this before I found Glenn's article)
Meanwhile, in suxville,
Reuters:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the city's more than 239,000 residents to evacuate on Sunday in the face of powerful Hurricane Gustav, which he called "the mother of all storms."

Actually, it's just a hurricane, but Mayor Nagin is the drag queen mother of all hypocrites.

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In unrelated news, a British criminal justice professor wrote a paper about cybercrime being exaggerated. He says it's all the doing of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. You see, Cory Doctorow, I told you there's nothing to worry about. People are just goosed over cyber/steam punk.