Collateral Damage in Seattle


Report from Portland student Jim Desyllas (posted 12-2-99)


Called-in from a pay phone outside Seattle. Wed., 7:30 pm

Pacific time.


I just spent 4 days in Seattle. The "information" people are getting
from the mass media is false. This was not, as Pres. Clinton
claims, a peaceful protest marred by the actions of violent
protesters. This was a massive, strong but peaceful demonstration
which was attacked repeatedly by the police with the express
purpose of provoking a violent response to provide photo
opportunities for the Western media. I know because I watched it
happening. I'll tell you how they did it.


As Michel Chossudovsky says in his "Disarming the New World
Order" (See Note # 1 at end for link to that article) - the government
 put a lot of effort into making sure the protesters in Seattle were a
"loyal opposition" who wanted to reform the WTO, not get rid of it.
But the people in Seattle - American steel workers, Canadian
postal workers, college kids from all over, environmentalists from
Australia - you name it - were not for reforming the WTO. They
were for getting rid of it.


And this wasn't just true of the protesters. I interviewed delegates.
None of them had anything favorable to say about the WTO. Two
delegates from the Caribbean were angry about job loss. One
delegate from Peru took a bullhorn and got up on a car and spoke
to the protestors against the World Trade Organization. He said it
hurts the workers and farmers. I interviewed a Norwegian guy from
Greenpeace. Totally against it. Even a delegate from Holland said it
 had hurt the farmers there. He said though it is supposedly
democratic, that's actually a lie: the US, England and Canada and
a few others get together and decide what they want to do. Then
they ask the rest of the countries to vote and if they vote wrong
they threaten,"You won't get loans," or whatever. They get them to
do what they want by blackmailing them. The Italians we
interviewed were upset too. I couldn't find any delegates who were
in favor.


So the government instigated a "riot" to discredit the movement
against the WTO because they couldn't dilute it. I am not guessing
 about this. I was there. I saw it happening. And I will tell you I am
frankly shocked to see, close up, just how little our leaders care
what happens to ordinary people. Clinton can pose and speak a lot
 of flowery stuff but the truth is - we are nothing to them. I saw this
with my own eyes.


Sunday and Monday, there was no violence. None. The people
were aggressively non-violent; they were self-policing. Up until
Tuesday at 4pm there was one window broken in the whole city - a
McDonalds window. This compares favorably to the typical rock
concert, let alone a demonstration of people who were non-violently
 barring entry to the World Trade Center!


At this point, a new group of police - tactical police - moved in and
started gassing people and shooting rubber bullets. Is it any
surprise that people got mad? Of course, the young kids hit back
by breaking some windows in retaliation for being gassed, sprayed
with very painful pepper gas, and shot with dangerous "rubber"
bullets. The police instigated these kids, plain and simple.


Sunday and Monday they had young cops, using them to block the
 streets. These were trainees. But Tuesday they had the real cops;
 none of them were young. They were trained to attack people. A
small group, maybe 100 people total, struck back. Then these
cops herded that group around the city, making sure there were
plenty of photo ops of "violent protesters."


A number of times they had these 100 or so protesters caught
between buildings and walls of police. They could easily have
arrested and detained this small number of people and gotten it
over with. Instead they would gas them and let them go. Then trap
them again, gas them again, and again let them go. The cops
made no arrests that I know of until late Tuesday night though the
skirmishing was going on from three till 9:30. The cops would
blockade three or five blocks of an area, give the angry kids room
to operate, keep gassing them - when you gas a person, let me tell
 you, it gets them fighting mad.


Tuesday night the police gassed all of downtown. This was going
on from 3 PM, till 6 PM.. Gas everywhere. The kids broke a few
windows - McD's, Starbucks - small stuff - burned a few garbage
cans. The police were using these people as extras. It was staged.
 I believe also the police had their own people in there, encouraging
 people to break stuff - if people think I may be exaggerating, I saw
supposed protesters - they were screaming and so on - and then
later, when everything was over, the same people tackled other
protestors and put handcuffs on them.


At 6pm they issued a State of Emergency. At that point they had
pushed the 100 people outside the city limits, so the police went
outside the limits too, and they started gassing that area too,
gassing the neighborhoods where the regular people live. I am not
exaggerating. The police were relentless.


This was in an area from the city limits for about 10 blocks to the
Seattle Central Community College. If you were alive, the police
gassed you. People coming back from work, kids, women,
everyone. People would go out of their houses to see what was
happening because these tear gas guns sound like a cannon - and
they would get gassed. A block away there was a Texaco gas
station - they threw tear gas at gas pumps, believe it or not - they
were like vandals. They gassed a bus. I saw it with my own eyes.
A bus. The driver, the riders, the people just abandoned it .


I was sitting in a little coffee shop called Rauhaus, [Jim did not
spell this - the spelling may be wrong.] They were shooting
"rubber" bullets at the glass. I picked up a dozen of the things in a
few square feet. They were also shooting this paint that you can
only see with a florescent light. They would paint anyone and
everyone and then go hunting them.


Anyway, because they were gassing everybody, the local people
got mad too and they joined the 100 who had been herded out of
the city. So soon there were 500 including the neighborhood people
 and all very angry. Naturally. Because they had been gassed and
hit with pepper spray, that stuff does a number on you. And shot
with these damn bullets. Then people set up barricades at Seattle
Central Community College. The cops organized themselves for
about an hour and then moved in and gassed that area.


Today they started mass arrests. That was because Clinton - the
Greeks call him the Planitarchis, Ruler of the World - was coming.
Weeping crocodile tears about how he just LOVES peaceful
protest, which of course you'd have to be two years old to believe
he had nothing to do with the police action. This whole thing, this
police attack, this was US foreign policy, not some action decided
by some bureaucrat in Seattle. This was the State Department.
They wanted to discredit the people.


When things started on Sunday,  there was a protest rally of
solidarity involving people from different walks of life. Monday it got
even bigger. Tuesday there was a big sort of carnival where people
were doing different things, a band was playing music and people
were blocking the World Trade Center. And about 3 PM the cops
started throwing tear gas.


The thing that drove Clinton crazy was that on Tuesday the
protesters had succeeded in making nonviolent human chains and
had therefore stopped everyone from going into the World Trade
Center. Only maybe 27 delegates got through, mostly US and
British. There were what seemed like tens of thousands of
protesters involved. So the police did their gassing number against
these nonviolent people to break up the human chains and make
the protesters look violent.


Today (Wednesday) I followed the union protest put together by the
 Longshoremen's Union. They went down to the docks and had a
rally then marched to Third Avenue. As soon as they got there the
cops started gassing them. There was an old lady there. She had
gone downtown by bus to buy something. This lady was in her 70's
 and I saw her trying to run, but she couldn't breathe. She was in
shock. I carried her to a building entryway. She was gasping,
terrified. She had been in Germany, and it was like she was having
flashbacks. The tear gas sounds like gunfire and there were
helicopters overhead, sirens, cops on horses, everything.


They had clearly made a decision to destroy this movement.


So anyway there I was with her in this building and she wanted to
go to the hospital but there was tear gas everywhere and I was
afraid if I tried to move her she'd be gassed again. I went to this line
 of cops and begged - I mean begged - these riot police to help her.
 They ignored me. A girl told me later that a one year old had been
gassed. And I myself saw a girl no more than 18 - a cop had
busted her lip wide open - she was bleeding - and then they
gassed everyone including her. After that she was kneeling on the
ground crying like a baby and praying for 15 minutes, Hail Mary,
Hail Mary. Over and over. She was in a state of shock. They just
gassed these people who were sitting down non-violently and doing
 nothing. Nothing.


At one point the Seattle Mayor said his boys were not using rubber
 bullets. Miraculously, by then I had ten in my pocket. I could open
 a little market, sell the things. They are everywhere. I and other
people started giving them to delegates and stuff. "See what they're
 doing? They're shooting "rubber" bullets and lying about it." We
showed them to the media. I guess enough people and the media
got the information because the Mayor made a new statement then
 that they were using them. As if he hadn't known.


They shot rubber bullets from four feet away into the face of a guy
next to me, broke all his front teeth. When that happened I lost it. I
forgot I was supposed to be getting the news for all of you and I
started yelling at the cops, "What the hell is wrong with you? Are
you sick, man?" So this cop aimed his gun right at me. That was
his answer. So I first put my hands in front of my face because I
didn't want to lose my teeth. And then I thought, to hell with it. I
was wearing my target shirt that said "Collateral Damage", you
know? With a bullseye target, like they wore during the bombing in
Yugoslavia. And I told this guy, "Go ahead, shoot! Here! Here's the
target!" He didn't shoot me.


I want to emphasize, these protesters were NOT violent people.
They were the most non-violent people I have ever seen. Even when
 I was screaming at the cop, this girl came up to me and said, "Do
not scream. This is non-violent." These people were too much to
believe. They must meditate all the time, I don't know.


Clinton said he supports nonviolent protest. That is baloney. Today
(Wed.) the protesters were causing absolutely no "trouble". In
downtown the cops had people running who weren't even protesters
 - like that old lady or just people going to work or shopping -
everyone was getting gassed. The busses weren't running because
 of the gas. I was lucky to catch one with a driver who could still
see. I begged him to drive the old lady home - the driver changed
his route especially for her. If you want to find human decency,
stay away from the Planitarchis. Go to the to regular people. They
have some. The Planitarchis lost all his years ago. Now he wouldn't
 know human decency if it came up and bit him.


So now I have made personal acquaintance with the people who
run this country, and they are quite simply scum. There were
people at work, people with babies, they were all getting gassed
because the government would not allow an assembly of people
speaking their minds. It is the same as what happened in Athens.
Clinton's requirements on the Greek government created the riot
and he did the same thing here. And then he says he supports
nonviolent protest? How? By shooting rubber bullets? And today
they outlawed gas masks. They want to make sure everyone gets
his money's worth.


Today, just like yesterday night, the police were in the residential
neighborhoods. People in cafÚs were getting gassed and shot at,
you could hear it on the windows, bang, bang, bang. A guy trying
to cross the street to go to his house got gassed. First a drunk guy
 outside a bar yelled at the cops "Get out of here!" so they gassed
him. And then this other guys was just crossing the street to go
home so the cops figured, might as well gas him too. People got
gassed for coming out of restaruants and bars and coffeee shops.
I'm amazed that nobody died who had asthma or something.


Or maybe somebody did die and they didn't talk about it. I mean
after all, it's just collateral damage..


***


Note # 1 - For a critical look at the World Trade Organization, click
on SEATTLE AND BEYOND: DISARMING THE NEW WORLD
ORDER or go to http://www.emperors-
clothes.com/articles/chuss/seattle.htm

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