My Own Side

The fifth anniversary of the Iraq War is coming up, and so the usual gaggle of communist front groups came down again to “shutdown” the Recruiting Center at the Tacoma Mall on March 15th, 2008, but this time they had a surprise waiting. The place was already packed with military families and supporters.

From this wide view, you can’t even see the protesters. They huddled in a group around to the right of the building. Fortunately, as this KIRO news video shows, the mismatch in numbers even became the story to the MSM, rather than any dramatic “shutdown” the protesters had hoped for. Here are some shots of the protesters.

Yes, that is a recycled Ron Paul sign.

This protester is shy a few stars, sorry to say. Maybe he burned all his other flags.

The college kids were well represented as usual, but always around are the older mentors who are helping to fill these kids brains with Marxist mush.

Orange armbands seem to be “in” nowadays. Note the updated World Can’t Wait fist logo above. I guess it is to show solidarity with terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay.

After the Times Square bombing, the police are taking threats against recruiting centers more seriously. This time, the police outnumbered the protesters. This first picture shows the first line of a double wall of police that separated the two groups, with many other officers off to the side.

Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and groups like Move America Forward have been tracking the rise in attacks against recruiting centers. Here are some pictures of people who get what the American military is all about.

What the protesters lack in solutions and reason, they compensate for with emotion and drama. Here is another one of their paper-mache projects.

They also had a cute skit. The evil Miss America pulls the puppet strings of poor, duped kid. Fortunately for peace and social justice, he rebels and throws off his strings, leaving a disgruntled Miss America behind as he skips off to upbeat music from a boombox. Kind of impressive how they managed to pack so many stereotypes into such a short skit.

They also brought in several containers of shoes, which they had tagged with names of Iraqis killed since the start of the war. Next to them were boots representing U.S. soldiers killed, in some cases actual ones donated by the families. As I was looking at the display, I wondered how much space you would need to show all of the shoes of Iraqis killed by Saddam and found in his numerous mass graves? You don’t hear much about them anymore, because they don’t fit the narrative, but it is typically disingenuous of the left to skip that part. If we had not invaded Iraq, would there be a Lancet study done on the thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam over the last five years?

But on the other side, one of the troop supporters had come ready with a little drama of her own. Introducing: 60’s Flower Child!

I think she was talking about this:

As always, the protesters had some catchy chants.

U.S., Imperialist!

Number One Terrorist!

What Are They Recruiting For?

Murder, Rape, Torture, War!

Fallujah, Haditha, Guantanamo Bay!

These Are The Lies (Words?) The Recruiters Don’t Say!

Rolling in to support the troops were numerous bikers. Some nice hogs.

The troop supporters were there before the protesters arrived, and they stayed there long after. Be very skeptical when they put up a report on their websites about what a successful action this was. Protesters are generally a dour lot, but I was almost feeling sorry for them, they looked so deflated at first.

Be sure to go here and check out the full gallery of pictures from this protest.

Also, I covered another protest a few months ago at this same recruiting station, the link is here. Below is my favorite picture from that day. Keep your chin up!

On December 3rd, 2007 a heavy rainstorm struck the Pacific Northwest. The coastal areas were hit hard with high winds, but many inland areas also had severe flooding problems from the swollen rivers. Surprisingly, my hometown of Woodinville was one that had flooded downtown streets.

Now, we’ve had rain before. A lot of rain. This is the Pacific Northwest. But our streets have never flooded like that. KOMO TV had a helicopter overhead, and they have dramatic footage of the water pouring across a parking lot and into an intersection, flooding several blocks of area businesses. Even after seeing the footage of the path of the water, I was still puzzled as to where it was coming from, so the day after I drove downtown to find the source and solve the mystery. I never suspected it would involve a salmon.

It turns out that behind the parking lot is a stream. Back in September, a windstorm blew down a tree across it. One of the tenants in the building repeatedly called the city to come out and deal with the tree. Eventually, he cut off some branches from it so that he could reach the creek and let his dog have some water. When the city employee finally came out, he chewed out the tenant for touching the tree!

“That’s our job!”

“Well, you weren’t doing it!”

“You can’t disturb this stream, it has salmon!”

Out came part of the tree, but they left the base of it there on the bank, all nice and natural. The tenant called the city back and said that they should take it all, that it wasn’t attached to anything and would float if the water rose. They never came back. Fast forward to December, and guess what. Wood floats. Right into a culvert where it became clogged with debris and flooded the town.

A tenant of a neighboring building saw the tree and debris blocking the culvert and called the city to come out and clear it from the stream. At this point, the stream was overflowing and flooding the parking lot. The answer he got?

“We can’t disturb the stream, it has salmon.”

By the time the city bureaucrat had gotten whatever waiver from the fish kissers they felt they needed it was too late, and the little backhoe they sent over couldn’t pull the jammed tree out. Here you can see the stream, culvert and tree (but not the salmon). Note the tear marks on the tree (lower right) from where the backhoe tried to grab it.

Thanks to this attitude, scores of businesses were damaged. At least two tenants I spoke to will probably have to move to survive, and scores of people had their homes and possessions wrecked. But the salmon are happy. At least I assume they are. They’ve been gone for months now from this stream.

This is the interior of the building next to the stream. I entered through an Army recruiting office (moonbats rejoice).

Here are some pictures of the flooding at the Waterford apartments a few blocks down the street. Note the water lines. Remember that this is what it still looked like the day after the flooding. Some people had to be evacuated by boat. The local fire department took two hours to find an inflatable raft to use. I know what’s going to be on their Christmas list.

If there was any justice in the world, this would be the welcome mat of a certain city bureaucrat.

Final score, Salmon 1, People 0. In light of this fiasco, I decided to go out this week to dinner. Izumi’s Restaurant has excellent salmon teriyaki. I’m going to do my part to even the score a little.

More pictures are here.

Yesterday was another dreary, rainy day in Olympia, but the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance group had called a rally down to the port to protest the war, and you could feel the excitement building. The local paper, The Olympian, estimated that there were about 350 in attendance, which might be generous but seems roughly right to me. They had drums, Che and even a Truther, so they were off to an official start.

Here’s a few of the things that kids make in art class nowadays.

This young man’s sign said “Class Struggle Against the Imperialist War Machine!”

If you wonder where he’s dredging up rhetoric like that, you might not need to look any further than the local school, Evergreen State College. This was one of the speakers.

He was introduced as Larry Mosqueda, a professor at Evergreen State College. This quarter he is teaching Marxist Theory. From the course description:

If one believes the current mass media, one would believe that Marxism is dead and that the “end of history” is upon us. As Mark Twain is reported to have said upon news accounts of his demise, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” The same, of course, is true for Marxist Theory.

Of course. Who could possibly look back at the 20th Century and get the silly notion that Marxism was an utterly failed ideology? From his personal web page at the college:

A little quiz (answers below)
…
3. What is the qualitative and quantitative difference between a “terrorist” who bombs a building and an “officer and a gentleman” who bombs a building?

Answers: … 3) What is the difference? You tell me.

From his speech at the protest:

We’ve had two weeks of protests here, and more importantly, two weeks of resistance. It’s five years after the war started, almost five years. It’s not even a question anymore whether the war is illegal and immoral. It is.

Which makes what’s going on in Olympia, and the port, complicit in war crimes.

We are not afraid of the police, and we have gone from protest to resistance. And it’s not just a moral statement but our goal is to no longer just to protest the war, to make a moral statement, our goal is to STOP the war.

And I put the emphasis on resistance, and stopping the war. It’s no longer enough just to write letters. They don’t pay attention.

He goes on to quote the discredited Lancet study on Iraqi casualties, and then talks about numerous inquiries that they have received from activists in other cities about starting their own direct action groups at their ports. Look for more sabotage in the months ahead.

Here are a few other speakers.

Ok, just kidding on that last one. By the way, perhaps someone with more experience in such matters can tell me if that is really a double hemp rope bra strap on the first speaker above? Good grief. Don’t they get TLC in Olympia?

A major topic at this rally was police brutality. They were repeatedly pushing the message that they were victims of the Olympia Police Department (OPD), in signs, press releases and speeches.

These two Olympia students are Patricia and Kathleen Hutchison, the twins that were arrested at one of the more violent protests. They are mentioned in the protest group’s press release above.

One of them launched into quite a profanity laced tirade against the police on the stage.

And speaking of the police, I would have gotten pictures of them, only they weren’t there. At all. The entire time. Not even a bicycle cop or a parked cruiser on the side. The march started, moved in front of cars on the street, and travelled down all lanes of one of the main streets in downtown Olympia, shutting down traffic. The protesters ruled the streets. Here is the start, and the tail end.

Note the cars behind trying to get past. Here is one car that got caught in the middle.

The “peace activist” in front lost his cool and started pounding on the cars hood. Hard. Some other protesters were finally able to get him to chill out and walk away. Remember that the women in this car were simply driving down the road when they were swarmed by these peace zombies. For a bit of irony, note the cap the guy was wearing. It says “National Lawyers Guild: LEGAL OBSERVER.”

The only other real tense point came when a counter-protester tried to get up on the back of the stage to take pictures and he didn’t leave his sign behind. Tempers flared briefly, but they were tamped down as quickly as possible by the organizers.

The guy in the second picture is one of the counter-protesters who went over to try and calm things down and get the other guy off the stage in one piece. As I was going through the pictures at home later I finally noticed his cap. The logo is for Caterpillar. This is the company that sold the bulldozer to Israel that crushed Rachel Corrie. It was unsuccessfully sued by her parents in that incident. Remember that Rachel was a product of the same Evergreen State College that many of the protesters attend. The guy’s got guts, that’s all I can say, going to the protest with that cap.

Despite these two incidents, I got the distinct impression from their comments at the beginning that they intended this march to be for the cameras and public consumption and that they didn’t want any incidents of violence or property damage to hurt their cause. It was challenging for some of them to change gears that way, and I heard one of them yell “Enough of this non-violence crap!” However the Stryker equipment has nearly all been moved, so for now there is not much incentive to attack the port facilities, at least in daylight.

This is one of the organizers, Phan Nguyen. He was also involved in the Ehren Watada press conference when that officer announced his plans for resistance.

Speaking of Ehren Watada, here is one telling endorsement for him. From the “Freedom Socialist Party.”

Earlier I mentioned that there were no police. Actually, there was one that showed up.

There were a few troop supporters waiting for them at the end of the march. Including an eagle.

Anti-war protesters lined up in front of them with a “Warning: Fascism!” sign, and an upside down American flag.

Even the doggies and children were brought along. I really wish they would just leave the kids home on these things.

An interesting take on this sign. By this logic it is just fine to commit perjury provided you don’t shoot someone afterwards.

Well that wraps up this protest. Just enough time left for one big group hug.

Click here for the full gallery of pictures.

Also check out this protest a couple days earlier at the Tacoma Mall against a recruiting station.

Finally, here is a message to the community from the President of Evergreen State College about the incidents. Apparently there has been property damage to the campus. I can’t help but think about chickens (moonbats?) coming home to roost. He calls on the adult organizers to get a message across to the youth they are stirring up. When you commit civil disobedience, you can expect a police response.

Hmm. Just maybe those kids will learn one useful thing in college.

UPDATE: Welcome, many readers! My bandwidth got exceeded. By double. Had to offload pics to another server and pay the piper. Not that I’m complaining, mind you