licentious radio

Sunday, March 23, 2003
[7:22:52 PM]

There were no black-flag marchers on Saturday -- that I saw or heard of.

That's welcome.

But their absence explains why hundreds of cops were free to harrass peaceful protesters.

I saw one point where there were a hundred or so marchers on the sidewalk, and at least twice as many cops marching alongside. When I left, cops at 4th and Market outnumbered protesters and tourists by three or four or five to one.

[6:43:15 PM]
One good thing about wars and outrageous attacks: the spam dies down.

I'd rather have spam.

[6:06:12 PM]
Dogs of war: 'Abizaid said Iraqi troops were using "ruses" against U.S. troops, on one occasion dressing as civilians to ambush them, on another pretending to surrender before opening fire.'

Let's be CAREFUL out there!

[5:56:58 PM]
Everybody I talk to assumes Bush will *plant* so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was happy to forge the evidence that they exist, why would anyone believe he wouldn't plant the actual weapons.

There's an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice -- don't be fooled again. [sic]

This is a group of lying bastards with no credibility. They're also evil, murdering bastards who will do anything to keep power.

Watch them destroy the WMD that they find -- before anyone can test it to see whether it really came from Iraqi labs... or labs in the US or Israel.

Ha ha. Yet Another Conspiracy Nut. Yeah, and Jeb Bush didn't mean to prevent eligible blacks from voting in the 2000 election.

Then again, Iraq might have these weapons and ways to produce more. That would save the Bush folks some work.

[5:49:29 PM]
Protesters think stopping traffic in SF will prevent the conquest of Iraq? Are you NUTS?

Now, I'm sure you could find a few who really think that. This country is full of morons. Not *all* of them are Republicans. Evidence: somewhere near half of the American people think Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. (HE WASN'T!!! Funding and support mainly came from Saudis, Afghans, and Pakistanis. Saddam was NOT INVOLVED!)

Freaking use your freaking brain! Is there any reason to protest, even if it won't stop the butchery of Baghdad?

Past: Protests collapsed at the start of Bush War I. The 100% war-hype by the media gave the Bush gang a free pass on their war crimes, and let them cover up the whole story of the war -- like they quick covered the thousands and thousands of dead Iraqi teenagers with sand before photographers could come by to show the slaughter of draftees to the world. The media completely ignored Bush's double-cross -- telling Saddam to go ahead and attack Kuwait, then attacking Saddam and giving Bush's buddies contracts to repair Kuwait and pump the oil.

Present: protests appear to have made a huge difference in France and Germany's opposition in the UN Security Council. Eventually, even some Democrats in Congress started to criticize the rush to war. *That* was an *amazing* feat. The protests Thursday made it clear that opposition wasn't going away. Do you think as many people would have shown up for marches on Saturday if there hadn't been protests Thursday? I don't. I think the large marches in New York and San Francisco Saturday completely justify the direct action in SF on Thursday.

Future: We are not fighting only against war in Iraq. We are fighting against the whole Bush agenda, especially the pre-emptive conquest doctrine. This doctrine was developed by the same lunatics that completely mis-understood the Soviet Union. Now they purposefully seek to make the world a vastly more dangerous place, with constant terrorism as the price of total world domination by the US. That's not the kind of *peace* we want. We want a real peace, based on justice, giving rise to generations of prosperity for all, not maniacal wealth for a few Bush cronies and destitution for everyone else. It's pretty clear that the answer is the complete renunciation of the entire Bush agenda. Probably dozens of top Bush officials would do hard time. In a democracy, Bush and a few more would swing from the gallows. Stealing the presidential election is the highest possible crime. If Scalia were hanged in public, I'd fly to DC to attend. (Fortunately, we're not that sort of country.)

What if: What if we had opposed Bush's coup d'etat with the same fervor and success that we showed here? The coup was a narrow victory. Even a little more pressure might have persuaded one dirty Supreme Court judge to come clean.

[5:12:36 PM]
The chorus in Bushland sings: Saddam is losing control of his country.

Meanwhile, 120 Iraqis are holding out for days in a village of 4,000 within sight of the Kuwaiti border.

Is Saddam scared by Bush/Rumsfeld's remarks? Are the "Iraqi people" taking heart?

This is mostly propaganda for Americans. We're likely to be hearing this for weeks.

Well, it would be nice if the Iraqis fold, and everything is blue skies and daisies.

But you know, I don't like Bush one bit. Not one bit. I think he's a thief. I think the 2000 election aftermath was a blatant coup d'etat, for which the lot of them should be hanged.

But if Canada and China had overwhelming military superiority and invaded the US to rid the world of this vicious, dangerous menace? I would not welcome them. I would resist. We would all resist.

Iraq was under the Ottoman Empire, then a colony of the British, then a new-style colony of the US -- 'client state with leaders installed through CIA coups at the whim of the US president' -- right up until Poppy Bush's double-cross of Saddam in 1991. Poppy told the Shiites in the south to rebel. They did. Poppy then let Saddam go ahead and slaughter them Stalin-style -- general genocide, then complete destruction of their local ecology and way of life, then forced relocation. How 'special' to have Poppy mentally defective runt occupy their country now! The Shiites, remember, are fairly close to Iran. The US occupiers will never let them have freedom, because they would use it to align with Iran, not the US.

Ug. I start out to make one snide remark, and it turns into a big fat rant. I want my country back.

[11:27:21 AM]
Comments about the cops at San Francisco protests....

First, they seem like great people, for the most part. It's got to be frustrating, and they're mostly keeping their cool. Good job, people! Thanks.

(I have a wicked crush on the woman under riot helmet number 321.)

But I'm mostly a complainer, although you *could* say it's negative feedback for the purpose of improvement....

At 1:25 yesterday, the cops had the street blocked off at the Civic Center. In a dazzlingly childish display, a couple dozen motorcycle cops rode straight through the crowd. I'm sure it's frustrating, guys, but find a way to vent that doesn't involve moving vehicles and pedestrians. Somebody could get hurt.

The only police casualty I've heard of was a motorcycle cop who crashed and broke a leg -- supposedly when someone threw something at him. Don't throw things at cops! But cops need us to be peaceful, and should avoid childishly provocative displays.

People are complaining about overtime pay for cops. Suggestion: send them home. The story of Friday evening was that overwhelming numbers of cops trapped people on sidewalks, and arrested them all -- 600. The arrests were a bad idea. Instead of arresting them all, the cops could have let two-thirds of their riot squad go home. Just let people settle down, and the protests will become smaller and smaller. Every time the cops get heavy handed, they'll find more people protesting the next time. Cool things down!

At one point yesterday, cops lined Market for blocks, and let traffic drive along between the rows. Traffic was secured. Except, the traffic couldn't turn, because cops were blocking the intersections. And traffic couldn't go straight, because cops were blocking Market a few blocks down. At the very end -- the highest concentration of cops -- cars had to turn right. That was all silly, and dangerous, and pointless. Why keep a road open if the cars can't go where they want to go? It's like children in some out-of-control game -- they've lost sight of the point. (The first point is *safety*.)

Cops would be better off letting people march. Whenever they confront demonstraters and seize an intersection, the *cops* block traffic for an hour or more, while the demonstraters stand around watching. Left alone, the demonstraters would be long-gone. Instead, more and more demonstraters show up, the more cops show up.

The chant of the evening wasn't "Whose streets? OUR streets!". The chant of the evening was "Thanks! Police! For blocking off our streets!"

Tens of thousands marched in the early afternoon. No riot cops were needed. A few thousand eventually came back to Market in the late afternoon and evening. There were *hundreds* of cops. It was like a scene from Star Wars. You'd think they were just animated extras, if it were a movie.

Meanwhile, the cops lost sight of traffic control. They would block off one intersection completely, but not block traffic at the next intersection. Cars kept driving up to the police blockade and having to u-turn in the street. It's actually dangerous, as well as comical. Eventually I went over to a motorcycle cop and did a "Hello?" number. He radioed away, and then went down to block Market at Fourth.

When cops 'secure' an intersection, they should block traffic at the other end of the blocks. For safety. It would be better to use the unarmed traffic control people.

[10:41:02 AM]
Cry 'havoc'. let slip the dogs of war.

Anti-war protests in Yemen are a little different than in San Francisco. In Yemen, they shoot the cops.

US closes embassy in Pakistan. "Run away! Run away!" Wise to run. But the necessity of running away should tell us something.

Yahoo's got a wire photo of two dead Iraqis in a foxhole -- with a white flag.

US bombers attacked the Islamic-militia in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. The militia doesn't happen to have B2 bombers, but they know a thing or two about car bombs. Two journalists were killed, and one wounded at a Kurd checkpoint by a car bomb.

Will the Iraqis fight? Answer: yes.

British troops "took control" of the oil port Friday. But "control" doesn't mean they don't still need artillery bombing the "controlled" Iraqi soldiers. Apparently they've called in tanks to 'maintain' control.

Reports of dead and missing reporters.... One wounded reporter turned up, he and several others had been blasted by US tanks while leaving some Iraqi soldiers.

The first land battle was at an Iraqi observation post. Our brave "let's roll" artillery snuffed them good. Dead bodies everywhere.

When some oil wells were ignited, the US moved up the invasion by several hours. Got that? We changed our invasion plan to protect King George's oil.

Donnie-Boy Rumsfeld's big strategy is to race to Baghdad -- don't waste time making the country-side secure. Al Jazeera has video of a supply truck that was shot up, and the dead driver. Iraqi TV has video of US prisoners -- apparently from a maintenance group. It's kind of bad news when your behind-the-lines people are taken prisoner and tortured on world-wide TV. All Donald-the-war-criminal can say is that broadcasting video of prisoners is against the Geneva Convention.

Geneva Convention! Did the US Congress declare war, and I missed it? Did the Geneva Convention apply in our conquest of Afghanistan? Does it apply to the prisoners taken in the conquest? Seems to me the US is a rogue nation, operating outside the bounds of international law -- whining about the Geneva Convention is the next best thing to a Saturday Night Live skit. Except of course that people are dying.

The new, improved Patriot missiles are so good, they shoot down British fighters, not just Iraqi Scuds. Oh. The Iraqis aren't using Scuds. But we did get one British fighter. The Carlyle Group says: "Ka-ching!"

By the way, it looks like the Republican Guard has already killed more Americans and British soldiers than they did in Bush War I. The biggest tank battles in Poppy's war resulted in no US deaths at all. A handful of Americans and British have been killed in combat so far. Less than have been killed in helicopter crashes. I don't know whether we should be glad of *that* exactly. We'll just hope for the fewest possible casualties.

Newspapers report Iraqi civilians are waving to American soldiers. The American soldiers report feeling like 'liberators'. Maybe. In North Africa during WW II, people kept two sets of flags. As soon as they were sure which army was marching in, they put up that army's flags. People don't like it when invading soldiers kill them. What's up with that?

US military was negotiating with officers of the Republican Guard, to get them to surrender. Oddly, the Iraqis gave up on the talks after the first night of Shock and Awe. Hmm. Were they pissed? Or maybe they were shocked that it wasn't aweful.

Reich's Feld Marshall Tommy-Boy Franks had said the bombing would be on a never-before-seen scale. WtF? Is that just PR? Surely he's heard of, say, DRESDEN!!!!! All shock and awe (note lower case) did was blow up some empty office buildings. Yes, it started fires that swept through some neighborhoods of people who were too poor to leave Baghdad, but that's not at all the same as what we (English-speakers) did to Dresden. Of course we Americans topped that with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that's a slightly different story.

The point is that shock and awe wasn't much. The kids were playing in the streets the next day. Unlike Dresden.

Maybe it gave hope to the Republican Guard that they could actually survive the air strikes? Maybe they think they can punish the US in Baghdad enough to keep power? Maybe they're mad?

Hey! Pentagon sources blab that our Special Forces are operating in Baghdad. Treasonous leak? No. Just playing with the Iraqis. And with the media. "Look how great we're doing." Yes, ten more US soldiers just got killed, but we have Special Forces in Baghdad.

The ten soldiers were killed when their vehicle was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). The scary urban warfare scenario is that thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqis would fight house-to-house, armed with RPGs.

"The newspaper cited Bush administration sources as saying one Russian company was helping the Iraqi military to deploy electronic jamming equipment against US planes and bombs and two others have sold antitank missiles and thousands of night-vision goggles in violation of UN sanctions."

Russia is a strange mix of high-quality weapons, poverty, and chaos. Bushes like it that way, but sometimes it comes back to haunt. The Battle of Baghdad could be a lot bloodier if the Republican Guard gets good equipment.

The US airlines -- already victims of Bush's campaign to terrorize the American people after September 11 -- are suffering another crushing blow as Bush ups the terror with warnings and war -- timed to get his budget, tax cuts, and other domestic agenda items through an other-wise reluctant Congress. In the wings, the Orwellian-titled PATRIOT has a sequel ready to be rubber-stamped as soon as a terrorist strike sets the proper mood. Although everybody's on high alert, there is some hope that the Homeland Security reorganization will create enough confusion to get the new law passed -- whole departments have quit (taken internal transfer) in order to avoid being transferred to a different agency.

A bit of good news! Belgium warns that Turkey won't get into the EU if they invade the Kurd territory in Iraq. Germany warns it will withdraw its crews from AWACS planes protecting Turkish airspace (if Turkey invades). It's not clear how much Turkish generals want to be in the EU. Let's hope Turkish democracy holds the generals in check.

[12:20:38 AM]
Notice that Tommy-Boy Franks is in Qatar, not at the super-dooper command center built with so many of our tax dollars in Saudi Arabia.

Is that a clue as to the quality of Bush diplomacy, and the true need for that super-dooper center? Or do we need the command center, and Bush's arrogance is reducing our general's ability to process information -- putting American soldiers at risk.