It's Starting

Holy Shit. Bond set at 1.5 million dollars each. Official press release.

This is the weekend prior to the start of the Nato Summit in Chicago. The terrorists were charged under the ridiculous Illinois terrorism statutes. They were accused of making molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices. Trumped up charges to create fear among the citizen protesters? But it looks like an FBI sting operation. Could very well be another Reichstag. There's no way to know, for sure.

But one thing we do know for sure. They are lucky..............once the NDAA is in effect there'll be no bond, no habeas corpus rights, no nada. But, the so called Patriot Act took care of most of their Constitutional rights already. Why do you think 9/11 occurred?

LOCAL: CITY COUNCIL LEADERSHIP CHILDISHNESS AND HYPOCRISY

John Odum writes a remarkably astute - and not very benign - diary on Green Mountain Daily concerning the continuing discussions surrounding the contrariness of last week's Burlington City Council meeting:-- In any event, it should be plain that ten minutes of Roberts-rules-neener-neenerisms before an incompetent Chair do not merit that Chair compounding his failure by calling the police. Such a decision was not simply ridiculous, it was unethical. So why are so many self-identifying lefties on the internet so eagerly defending the action (and, in the process - or as part of the process - so badly mischaracterizing the supposed transgressions of a few City Councilors)?

It's all Partisan Derangement Syndrome. Otherwise sensible people getting caught up in the mass hysteria of partisan groupthink. What we've got is a few lefties who identify with the Progressive Party - as well as some die-hard Republicans - absolutely losing their shit because of their contempt for Democrats (or their personal animosity towards Ed Adrian). Honestly, after looking at that video, its all I can figure, and its all very childish.

I'll tell you one thing, though. This whole embarrassing dustup is another reminder that Burlington City Politics is in serious need of an enema. Some Progs & Repubs would do well to take a lesson from folks like Rama and see it for what it is and not for the mass indictment of the Democratic Party they'd desperately like it to be.

Predictions on what's in store at the next City Council meeting (from a commenter on the Odum piece):-- So here is my prediction -- Some of the same folks who supported the use of police force over the use of democracy & the rule of law will start singing the "victim song" when Wright's "Height Vote" is repeated.

Prepare to hear them say "they [insert random (Adrian/Brezniak etc.) Democrat here] made us screw up the meeting and now they are making us take the vote all over;" or some variation on that theme.

Here is the collateral problem for the citizens of Burlington who need to live with Kurt Wright's antics. Wright poisoned Thursday's vote to the point where no developer, landowner, lender, residential or commercial builder will rely on the new zoning law. It's now too expensive a proposition becuase of the risk of ending up in court on a permit appeal. Who wants to go to court and waste months or years on a screwed up law? Developers know they will end up with an appeal before they find themselves on a new top floor with a view of the lake. Savory, huh?

Still, do not expect Wright to take responsibility for poisoning the change in building heights. Instead he will say "they made me do it" and wimp out of acknowledging his own failure when the re-vote occurs. Similarly, some of the folks who advocated the use of dictatorial conduct and police force instead of respecting lawful, orderly (or even disorderly) parliamentary process, will also blame council members other than Mr. Wright.

Hypocrisy watch will be looking for those blaming council members who were following our established civic traditions and who were advocating within the established rules (Adrian, Brezniack et al.) rather than looking to Wright and his enablers who abandoned bedrock rule of law & order principles over a zoning amendment.

COMMENT: I've lead public meetings and can say from experience using Robert's Rules effectively can be unwieldy. Ed Adrian and David Berezniak - elected councilors for their respective wards - were representing the interests of their constituents and used proper means to question procedures at the meeting. Kurt Wright's decision to call the police on them was just plain pathetic and unethical.

Having read a lot of the comments about what happened, I'm convinced that Burlington's citizenry is ignorant about government. And when you factor in that only 28% of registered voters participated in the last city election, they really don't give a shit about electing our democratic representatives. Easy to complain and name-call, but when it comes to active civic engagement: fagetaboutit!

A HUGE STEP BACKWARD

TALK LEFT: New FBI Rules Make It Easier to Spy on Innocent Americans

CALL 651-266-8989

DEMOCRACY NOW!

More than 280 people were arrested here in St. Paul Monday, the opening day of the Republican National Convention. Among them were several journalists covering the protests in the streets, including three of us at Democracy Now! Amy was detained trying to question police officers about the arrests of Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar

Please call Ramsey County Jail in Minnesota and demand the release of Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar who were illegally arrested at the RNC protests. (Goodman was released.)

CALL 651-266-8989 to log a complaint against the bogus charges.

OTHER BLOGGERS PLEASE COPY AND POST THIS COMPLAINT LINE NUMBER. THANKS.

BE PERSISTENT

That is the only number for complaints that is working. A friend phoned and was rudely cut off twice by the receptionist taking his call. On his third attempt, he was able to have his complaint logged in.

BE PERSISTENT

I just phoned this afternoon and was able to get my complaint logged in successfully. The receptionist was polite, as well she should be.

TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME

SOLZHENITZYN

LENIN'S TOMB [Solzhenitsyn and the right.]

But his usefulness to the American empire was limited, and definitively reached its sell-by date by 1990. Neoconservatives might have appreciated his critic of the degeneracy of the West and its failure to defend itself by being more God-fearing, but he was a Russian nationalist and this stance made him unpopular with some of Reagan's advisors, who presumably hoped to turn the country into an IMF basket-case. In fact, his argument against communism was by no means a defense of liberal universalism. Instead, he appealled to Americans to understand the 'West' as a distinct cultural entity which, while it had to be defended both against its communist opponents and its internal decadence, had little applicability to other societies. He wrote to Reagan to explain that once the putative threat from the USSR had gone, the US should pull out of every country it was involved in, from Central America to Africa to South-East Asia, and leave the world to its own devices. Once he was able to return to Russia in 1990, his austere conservative criticisms of the decadence of Western society, long articulated but generally glossed over by his supporters, came to the fore. He became rather unfashionable at this point. By the time he was castigating US military interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and defending the Putin administration, the American right had no more use for him.

BURLINGTON: SURVEILLANCE CITY

VIA BurlingtonPol, there's a new blog in town, which tells us

On top of the 4 large poles at the intersections of Church Street and each of its cross-streets are 4-8 security cameras. Many people love this, I'm sure, as it probably makes them feel safe. It is seen only as more eyes for the cops.

It's really worse than that. At a recent Neighborhood Planning Assembly in my ward, the local Burlington Police officer assigned to our area gave a run down of the usual summer house and car break ins ("keep your doors and windows locked") and encouraged the law abiding citizenry to report to BPD any questionable activity on our streets and in our neighborhood parks. Even if it turns out harmless, he told the Assembly, the police would find out what's up. It's the same old shitty fear mongering argument in this post 9/11 Amerika. If the person is not doing anything wrong, he continued (I'm paraphrasing), a good citizen won't mind being asked a few questions by the officer. What's next? Block Wardens? And I ain't talking about the Civil Defense block leaders from WWII; as you walk around the corner, could your activites soon be reported by your Blockleiter? Let's be real, the cop was encouraging the same sort of importunate and dangerous snooping prevalent in Nazi-occupied countries during the same WWII era. In 2008-Burlington, this kind of behaviour can be called an expanded Neighborhood Watch.

SCARY THOUGHTS

TALK LEFT -- House Passes Thought Crimes Bill and No One Notices?

On the same day last week that the House passed the Ammonium Nitrate bill, it also passed HR 1955, titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. The vote on this bill was 404 to 6. Meaning even progressive Democrats voted for it.

This is a thought-crimes bill, aimed at preventing domestic terrorism by judging the thoughts, including those expressed on the Internet, of American citizens.