in what context?
mbs: you clip the part of my post that emphasizes the importance of context, then you raise it as some kind of neglected factor.
>>>>>>
. . . this is kind of disingenuous as a hypothetical and brings
to mind some of the discussion of israeli politics and repression that have
had the attention of this list recently.
mbs: there is no way to respond to your free-associations.
>>>>>>>>>>>
. . . questions begged by yor hypothetical: why do you have a gun?
mbs: duh. cause I'm the police.
why do yor opponents not?
mbs: cause they're not the police.
what is the significance of the disparity in how you are all armed (or not armed)?
mbs: no significance. police are armed, protestors are not, unless they are nuts.
why are they throwing rocks?
mbs: don't know. I wasn't there. But you have the question the wisdom of a group assaulting a jeep with a handful of armed cops, no matter what the context. This isn't the revolution, after all.
>>>>>>
. . . why are they throwing
them *at you*?
mbs: don't know, as above.
why are you there in the first place?
mbs: cause it's my job; i'm the cops. whether my job entailed illegal action in this *specific* instance or not, I don't know. I wasn't there.
who really is threatening whom?
mbs: don't know; I wasn't there, but I suspect it was the police who felt threatened at that point.
how could rock-throwing be avoided?
mbs: too easy to bother answering.
how could the guards be avoided? what are all the things you can do besides shooting at people?
mbs: can't avoid guards at a summit. one could avoid committing crimes, like backing a car over a mortally wounded civilian, or assaulting police officers.
In one sense, official policy these days is driving a mandate for police to violate the law, since non- violent civil disobedience is routinely responded to with police violence and other crimes, like abrogating the right to assemble. This unjust mandate is invoked to prevent any disruption of official meetings.
Perhaps things started entirely legally and peacefully in the streets, and police aggression provoked what followed. Or perhaps a minority of anarchists, once again, encroached on a non-violent demonstration and turned it into a two-sided riot (police and anarchists). I don't know; I wasn't there. But there is some point where prudence and politics dictate restraint on the demonstrators' part. So far there is nothing to indicate that this line wasn't crossed by the anarchists, with logical results.
There is no political profit in memorializing someone who assaults police officers. This does not look like self-defense. If it can legitimately be construed as self-defense, then I'm wrong.
mbs
> Backing the car over the victim supports
> the presumption that the shooting itself
> was uncalled for, and in any case it
> was gratuitious & vicious.
this is much more to the point. the phrase that comes to mind is, "out of control."
>The politics
> of this are not as clear-cut as some
> people seem to think.
>
the politics of police/military shooting rock-throwing civilians dead *is* pretty clear cut, in my opinion.