Signs Of The Gathering Storm

The not so sublte hints from the anarkids just keep coming. Just take a look at today's sumbission: "Learning from the 'Battle In Seattle' - If protests had started earlier, it may have been possible to stop the WTO"

On Wednesday, in Room 205 of Blegen Hall, the yeast gathered to discuss protest
and possible "direct action" strategy far in advance of the Republican National Convention.
They are the Students for a Democratic Society, which took its name and inspiration from the 1960s activist group which helped organize massive protest and resistance to the Vietnam War.
On Wednesday in Blegen Hall, these SDS "usual suspects" gathered with their shiny-eyed idealism, their colorful scarves and their love of granola to watch a movie called "This Is What Democracy Looks Like," which tells the story of the massive 1999 protests at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.
I'd never seen the movie before, but I was there in 1999 so it made me teary-eyed and it almost gave me flashbacks as gas canisters were fired in the direction of the camera person's lens.

Oh the nostalgia.....seriously - I worked very closely with some folks who put up with the WTO protests in Seattle. Their memories of the time are probably less than fond ones....

What gets me is that the author of this opinion piece was a student in 1999 and is STILL a student. NINE YEARS LATER!

For years I've thought, "How could it have been done differently?" My conclusion: if one of the participants had tossed a few fliers into the Starbucks store explaining why this was a radical political action targeting a particular corporation, and not just some stupid, ugly, inarticulate act of vandalism and looting, then the media "spin" would have been totally different.
I don't support window- smashing except, perhaps, to exit a burning building. But I am particularly opposed to window-smashing lacking any articulated political argument. So to all the bandana-masked anarchists out there I say: this time around, be slightly less stupid.
(Oh, yeah, I'd also like to point out Minneapolis-St. Paul is full of vacant houses abandoned by folks involved in mortgage fraud. Hint, hint.)

Emphasis mine. won't hold my breath waiting for Coleen Rowley's swift condemnation of THIS implied threat of violence.....after all, the author is not Chris Baker or some other "right-winger"...Maybe David Mindemann can mention it....after all he is sooooo concerned about accuracy and all.

Second, we made a grave tactical error by starting the big protests on the first day of the WTO events and ending most of the street demonstrations around the time the conference collapsed. If massive protests had kicked off a week early, it may have been possible to stop the WTO conference from ever happening.

We failed, big time.

Take note Minnesota.....the troublemakers (I refuse to call them anarchists because you can't organize anarchy) are organizing and they are getting ready. It is time for responsible citizens to stand up to these losers and tell them that their "actions" are not representative of Minnesota and they are NOT WELCOME HERE!