My Own Side

The World Can’t Wait activist group, always eager to take the side of America’s enemies, tried unsuccessfully last weekend to shut down the Tacoma Mall Recruiting Station. I found their report on this “action”. I would urge you to take a look at it, especially if you were there. I’m not going to bother and “Fisk” it line by line. I fully expected them to try and praise it up as successful and effective, and distort events accordingly. However, the primary value to me in the report is not so much whether each occurrence was accurately and objectively reported, but rather how it gives a window into the mindset of these people who are becoming increasingly violent and confrontational.

The report is here.

Arriving at the recruitment center, at first, all we saw were American flags and a lot of grizzly old farts with beer bellies. They had come early and were set up in front of the recruitment center. Shit. Then we saw orange, more orange, our signs and, holy crap!, our side was there.

I guess those “grizzly old farts with beer bellies” would be the many veterans who showed up to keep a bunch of pierced punks with bandannas from shutting down a U.S. Government office.

Also notice the reflexive disgust at the American flag. The following comment was revealing.

We pulled out our orange bandanas and signs and said, “Who needs orange?”  A guy came up to us and said, “Give me a bandana. They have their flag to unite them; we have orange to unite us.”

Their flag? That is telling. Orange of course is the color of the prison uniforms used at Guantanamo. In essence, the left is showing solidarity with and uniting under the flag of terrorists.

At one point a PW woman pointed at me and said, “My son is over there you B*itch! I’m proud of my son!” I held up my picture: a dead Iraqi child with his brains spilling out over a road somewhere in Baghdad and said, “Oh, did he do this? You proud of this?” She ran toward me, screaming “I’ll kill you!”

I didn’t witness the above exchange, but I have to ask any objective observer how these protesters can claim to be “supporting the troops” and make a reprehensible statement like that to the mother of an American soldier and be proud of it.

It appears from some statements in the report that the movement is divided internally between two camps. One group wants to calm down the rhetoric somewhat and retain the higher moral ground of saying that they support the troops. The other group is more radical, and is rejecting the mental gymnastics necessary to run around accusing the troops of raping, baby-killing and committing war crimes on the one hand, while saying they support them on the other. My unfortunate prediction is that as they get increasingly frustrated and angry, more will reject the internal conflict and settle into raw hatred for the troops as well as everything else in life they despise.

This observation will not come as a surprise. They do NOT like experiencing a backlash against their radicalism.

We remained firm in our goal: Shut it down!  But the attacks from the pro-war groups were starting to rattle the organizers in Tacoma.

Hmm, and who would those groups be? (The hyperlinks below were added by me.)

Two days earlier we heard that a local right-wing radio station was calling its listeners to come down and confront our “Shut it Down” demo.  The response? Bloggers like “Gathering of Eagles” and Michelle Malkin threatened to attack protesters, saying they were going to “bash heads in”, etc.

It is ironic that they try to claim the victim card. They are the ones coming down to attack the mall! As far as who was the most likely to become violent, it is telling that the double police line that separated the two groups had bicycle cops on the pro-troop side, and riot police facing the bandanna brigade. Maybe the Tacoma PD has some experience in these matters.
The report ends with tips on how to conduct protests in the future. Notice this one.

* Talk to people who come to the event, get their contact info right away. Make sure you have a meeting planned a few days after the demo or night of so you can sum up the day. Make sure you communicate that to people.

It reminds me of the controlled fashion that cults operate in. You always want to control the processing in peoples minds after an event so that their final thoughts of it conform to your ideology. These movements have many impressionable young people in them, and it is important that their belief in the cause is not shaken by any encounters with people on the opposite side. Surrounding them shortly afterwards with other believers to soothe any doubts and reaffirm your values is an important step to take.

To worldwide dismay, but not surprise, the Communist government in China has engaged in another bloody crackdown on the nation of Tibet. The local Tibetan community held a candlelight vigil on March 19th, 2008 at Westlake Mall in Seattle.

Across the street at the same time was a left-wing protest against the Iraq War, as well as the usual laundry list of grievances. It was angry, loud, crude and whiny. The complete opposite of the many people who came out and stood in the rain to show their support for their friends and relatives in Tibet.

The people in Tibet are not allowed to display their flag. The Tibetan flag was being worn here as a show of support. Across the street the U.S. flag, when it was present, was being denigrated.

The sign this woman was holding got my attention. It is common at left-wing protests to encounter signs calling for the release of political prisoners. But the difference between what she is talking about and what the typical left-wing protester means is stark. Tibet sees true political oppression, not something out of the fevered imaginations of Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers, or members of convicted criminal fan clubs.

A few more pictures are in the full gallery here.

There is local newspaper coverage here.

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, the World Can’t Wait activist group and the other usual suspects protested at Westlake Mall in the middle of Seattle.

Here’s a wide shot. I got roughly half the crowd in this one.

All of the great warm and fuzzy feelings toward their country were on display here as always.

The flag in the picture above has a bomb in the stars, and across the stripes it says “United We Sit and Watch.”

These guys were ready. Not just bandannas, but plexiglass riot shields, complete with “Viva La Revolucion!” printed across one.

But the scariest part is yet to come. Don’t even try messing with The Raging Grannies!

Here’s a Palestinian supporter, complete with keffiyeh, Palestinian flag and Israel bashing sign. Apparently no outrage at all about the daily rocket barrages into the Israeli town of Sderot.

Across the street were a few troop supporters, carrying the flags of the different armed services.

I take it this guy is not a Bush fan. His sign says “I Hated Bush Before It Became Cool.”

No surprise what you find on the book tables at these events. This book is titled “The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels - A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document.” “Indispensable” says Howard Zinn. What is it with these people? If there was only one thing we learned from the 20th century, other than Disco being dead, it is that Marxism is an utterly failed ideology. It is a wonderful sounding idea that miserably fails to deliver anything but death, abject poverty and an occasional train that runs on time.

There were a few young kids getting involved in the fun. I hope they find something else to do after school before they become completely radicalized.

Speaking of becoming radicalized, below is a picture of Emma Kaplan from the failed shutdown of the Tacoma Mall Recruiting Station. She was also at todays protest, causing trouble again. Take a look at this link for a great picture of her in the Seattle P.I. that really says it all.

This is a picture of an angry Palestinian-American from the protest here last year.

She was back again this year, and her rhetoric has only gotten worse.

From Palestine to Iraq, people everywhere are rising up in resistance. Stand up to the worlds superpower. Turning the superpower’s dreams of empires into nightmares. Let us join them!

Our circumstances are not harsher than the circumstances of the Palestinians and the Iraqis, and if they can stand up to powers, if they can turn the superpower’s dreams of empire into nightmares, then so can we!

For the full gallery of pictures, go here.

Click here for last year’s protest.