POLITICS: RALPH PETERS

I kill children

In today's New York Post, Ralph Peters performs several logical backflips to accuse liberals of supporting the murders of children in the Moscow school siege.

Drawing a worldwide line in the sand, on one side of which are good people who love children — such as, for example, Bush supporters — and on the other side of which are freedom-hating terrorist murderers and Muslim leaders, he closes with this flourish:

"A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not."

That's right, liberals are on the side of child-killers. If not, they would spontaneously converge on New York in the hundreds of thousands every time there's a bad story in the newspaper. That's some fancy thinkin', Ralph. To paraphrase that noted liberal philosopher Jello Biafra, we kill children.

A final thought: Did Ralph Peters or any of the Republican conventioneers who came to Manhattan to celebrate our pre-emptive killing of tens of thousands of Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.

Related links:

September 4, 2004 | 2:04 p.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e43

NEW YORK: RNC CLOSING NIGHT

The accidental wisdom of corporate art

	(Click picture for larger view.)

Here's what you get when big corporations dabble in irony. Right outside Madison Square Garden, a luxury-car billboard cycles through a series of photographs on a video screen. Every five minutes, the screen screams, "LIES LIES LIES LIES." A subtle message for delegates at the Republican convention, or just a fortuitous piece of accidental art? Either way, this was the view of the president's acceptance speech from the police barricade at 35th Street and 7th Avenue.

The penned-in crowd on the street corner was a mix of good-humored protesters and cranky hoodies trying to get home across the blocked-off avenue. One tall, glib, long-haired guy entertained himself, the crowd and the cops with a constant schtick hectoring the delegates for their poor fashion sense. He had only friendly words for police, however. "Ma'am," he told the woman in the first picture below, "you are without a doubt the most attractive officer we have seen all night." Unluckily for all of us, the first few crews of cops were eventually replaced with beefier, more humorless ones. "This is going to be severe," one of the meanest-looking ones said under his breath.

Somewhere along the line, a Bible-toting, Bush-supporting woman started screaming a holy blue streak from the back of the crowd. ("Officer, let us through, someone just had a baby back there," said the comedian up front.) The woman steadily made her way up front, ranting about immorality and gay marriage.

"You weren't worried about my boyfriend when I was in Desert Storm!" said a man right behind me, starting an apocalyptic argument with the Bible-thumper. The guy was such a crackup, though, that before long the two were getting along fantastically. "Now the only thing you're just thinking is, 'How can I get this man for myself?'" he joked. At one point she leaned way up in his face and he did it right back. "Oh, I can lean too, honey, I can lean too," he said, pushing himself right into her.

"Oh my God," he screamed after that. "I touched boobies! I touched boobies!" Even the hard-ass cops couldn't help laughing at that one, in spite of orders.

Delegates streamed out of the Garden after the president's speech and were escorted up the protest-free east side of the avenue. Protesters offered them helpful post-convention advice, such as, "Go home." Which they did.

Additional pictures

September 3, 2004 | 9:29 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e42

NEW YORK: FOX NEWS PROTESTS

Agent provocateur

Crowds gathered twice this week outside our offices (which the Post shares with its big sister, Fox News) to protest the network's "fair and balanced coverage in what was called a "Shut-Up-athon."

A Post columnist sniffed about how the protesters wanted to stifle the network's freedom of speech (yeah, that's pretty likely), even while acknowledging that they were chanting "Shut up" in imitation of Bill O'Reilly.

Rumor has it that a former colleague of ours — decidedly one of the right-wing true-believers — opted for a less humorless approach. He went out to join the protesters with a sign saying: "Osama needs a hugging, not a mugging."

September 3, 2004 | 9:13 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e41

NEW YORK: REPUBLICAN CONVENTION PROTEST

More pictures

Across the street from Macy's a gaggle of right-wing loudmouths taunted the far anti-Bush protesters, which rankled some people. (I told somebody to get a grip when she yelled, "Fucking fascists!" in their direction. I understand the anger, but you only set yourself back if a few provocateurs can make you lose your cool.) Marc went over to start some kind of dialogue, but apparently the guy wasn't in the mood, saying, "I would, but I've been talking all day." I was one of a number of people taking their pictures, when a guy standing next to me said, "You're all missing the real picture," pointing out the the "Daffys" sign over the right-wingers' heads. Interesting call.

Of course, the slogan on this guy's sign ("Osama begs you: 'Vote Kerry in '04'") is 180-degrees wrong. Bush is Osama's ideal president. He thinks he's been a tough guy, but not only hasn't he caught Bin Laden — he's given Bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

That statement wouldn't make sense to the guy with the sign, because it feels viscerally like we've really socked it to Osama. We feel like we've taken out our anger on him. But not only did we let him and (apparently) almost all his people get away — we followed the Osama Agenda point-by-point.

Here's the question you have to ask yourself: Why did Al Qaeda bomb the World Trade Center? I think there's a simple reason and a complicated reason. Neither of these reasons is that they thought they could defeat America by blowing up some buildings. There's no strategy that allows Al Qaeda to make actual war on the U.S. That war would be over in a day. And yet, Sept. 11 is referred to all the time as an "act of war." It's actually something a little different. It's not part of a campaign to defeat us — it's part of a campaign to really piss us off.

The simple reason for Sept. 11 is that a group of radicals wanted to send a big, unmistakeable, very public "fuck you" to America. They did it to prove that they could do it and we couldn't stop them. And they also did it to show their colors, to add to their own glory among angry Islamists worldwide. It was an advertisement for themselves as the baddest boys in the America-hating universe. That mission was, to coin a phrase, accomplished.

The complicated reason is this: They do have a strategy, but it isn't a strategy to bomb America into submission, which they can't do — it's a strategy to activate rage in both the Arab world and the West. The planes were the thin end of the anti-American wedge.

The result Osama would like to see from Sept. 11 is for the U.S. to declare a "crusade" against the Islamic world, drop some bombs, terrorize some civilians, and occupy some countries. That mission, too, has been accomplished. The team of Bush and Bin Laden is determinedly eliminating the middle. You're either for us or against us, both of them might well say in their parallel rhetoric. If Bin Laden really wants a war against the West, he can only do it by polarizing Muslims — or letting us blunder into doing it for him. Which we've obliged in doing. Bush has been playing bin Laden's game for the last three years.

Additional pictures

August 30, 2004 | 9:15 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e40

NEW YORK: REPUBLICAN CONVENTION PROTESTS

More pictures

No matter how fast or slow we walked, we always wound up right back in the middle of a Filipino group protesting U.S. bases in the Philippines. They trotted out the old chant, "The people united will never be divided," which sounds increasingly tired (and undoubtedly untrue) to my ears, but it was refreshing to hear it in three languages — English, Spanish and Tagalog. Anyway, every time we bumped into them, it gave me another opportunity to take pictures of my personal nominee for Most Photogenic Protester.

Additional pictures

August 30, 2004 | 9:05 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e39

NEW YORK: REPUBLICAN CONVENTION PROTESTS

Pictures from the Republican convention

These pictures fail to capture the lack of turnout at Sunday's half-million-person march. Getting home from the massive demonstration, in which hundreds of thousands of anti-war citizens packed Seventh Avenue and paid their respects to Republican-occupied Madison Square Garden, we turned on the Channel 4 (NBC) news to see what they had to say. Their first segment was from Central Park, where there were only a few hundred placid sign-carriers relaxing on the lawn. The reporter pronounced the protest a huge disappointment, failing to note that there was no protest scheduled for Central Park because the Republican mayor had prohibited it, which makes it kind of stupid to lead your report from there — especially when the biggest protest in decades was actually taking place 30 blocks away.

The second item was about a papier-machŽ dragon being set on fire and bad people being arrested. Not until the third of four items did we actually see what had happened — and that almost didn't even happen. The reporter was standing inside the arena saying something like, "We're inside here because of what was happening out there." There's an intrepid journalist for you, taking cover from the story. Finally, there was some tape of thousands of entirely peaceful marchers — apparently the least interesting part of the story to the geniuses at Channel 4. Finally, old-timer Gabe Pressman wrapped up the package by noting that it wasn't Chicago '68. Duh. It was bigger.

I don't have any exceptional insight to add about the protest, but, unlike the sheltered young pretty boys at Channel 4, at least I was out in it. As I mentioned to my friend Marc, who came down from Providence for the event, sometimes you just need to show up and be a statistic. Here are some of the sights from Seventh Avenue.

Additional pictures

August 30, 2004 | 8:03 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e38

NEW YORK: REPUBLICAN CONVENTION PROTESTS

Reality bikes

	(Photo borrowed from indymedia.org

I'm hoping to get out and see what's happening around the Republican convention tomorrow, maybe take some pictures to put up in this space, but today all I have to go on is the news. The group Critical Mass — militant bicycle riders who go on mass outings to seize the streets away from cars — had many of their members arrested in a protest. I don't know if there was anything improper about their arrest or they were within their rights, but there are two things that turn me off about this action.

1. I don't like Critical Mass. And I have a good reason — because they almost killed me. I was walking past Union Square during one of their outings, and they were so thick and moving so fast that nobody could cross 14th Street. They weren't seizing the streets away from cars — they were seizing the crosswalks away from pedestrians. And in the battle between bikes and pedestrians (which is a real, deadly one in New York), I'll choose the pedestrians.

I eventually had to choose a momentary thin spot in the bicycle caravan and push my way through. By the time I had dashed through the bikes — with several near accidents along the way, which I would have had the worst of — I wound up a few inches away from running right into the front a fast-moving truck. I narrowly managed to plaster myself into the foot-wide margin between the bikes and the truck or I would have been dead in the name of these people's little pedal-power trip. It's the closest I've come to death since moving to New York — not from muggers, not from terrorists, but from bicyclists. So I am no fan of theirs at all.

2. Their tactics remind me of what I saw in San Francisco in March 2003 the day the Iraq bombing started. I attended one of the protests to see what was going on, and it was a pretty interesting experience. Despite some misguided crowd-control maneuvers, the police mostly just tried to keep people on the sidewalks and keep auto traffic moving, which was fine.

Over the course of the day, the protesters — practicing a sort of leaderless flash-mob operation — came to focus their efforts on blocking traffic at bridges and major intersections. That was just stupid. In a city where practically everybody shared the same opinion of the war, it alienated drivers from the cause; it also gave police a legitimate cause to haul some people away and pen the rest in. If those people thought that the White House was losing sleep over slow traffic in San Francisco, they were wrong. In fact, I doubt they "thought" anything — it just seemed like the only focal point available at the time. Later, people blockaded the headquarters of some defense contractors, which made a little more sense. If you're going to piss off somebody, at least piss off The Man.

August 29, 2004 | 12:03 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20040829.php#e37