XPost: alt.politics.larouche, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.polit   
   cs.india.communist   
   From: rosaphilia@webtv.net   
      
    Subject: [noRNC] Fortress Big Apple   
      
   Fortress Big Apple   
   By Nicholas Turse, tomdispatch.com.   
      
   Posted July 21, 2004.   
      
   From August 30 through September 2, when the Republican National   
   Convention invades New York, the GOP wants to see a Manhattan emptied of   
   life and the entire event 'bubble-ized.' Story Tip-Toeing on the   
   Platform The tagline for John Carpenter's 1981 cult sci-fi classic   
   Escape From New York went "New York City is now a maximum security   
   prison.   
      
   Breaking out is impossible.   
   Breaking in is insane."   
      
    In that movie set in a then-unimaginable, futuristic "1997" Gotham,   
   criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) was charged with rescuing the   
   President of the United States, whose plane had been downed in the   
   walled-in, armed and angry prison island that Manhattan had become.   
      
   With his life and freedom riding on saving a man he holds in contempt,   
   Snake eventually fights an epic battle in world famous Madison Square   
   Garden in his bid to save the president.   
      
   Today, as in the movie, many NewYorkers are angry at the president, and   
   as in Carpenter's grim vision of the future, at least parts of New York   
   City will be in a state of lockdown for the President's arrival †  
      
   " with a major showdown due to take place somewhere in the vicinity of   
   Madison Square Garden (MSG). In Carpenter's future, Manhattan was a   
   walled-in fortress island under high-tech government surveillance,   
   guarded by heavily armed security forces, with helicopters perpetually   
   overhead â€"   
      
   a futuristic Alcatraz Island of epic proportions.   
      
   In our 2004, the authorities have an eerily similar vision of how the   
   city should be. Madison Square Garden will be walled in by a fence or   
   "other physical barrier" with additional "movable barricades," complete   
   with checkpoints reinforced with heavy weapons.   
      
   A new "closed-circuit surveillance video system" will be introduced;   
   armed federal agents and police officers will be keeping watch; and   
   plenty of helicopters will be circling overhead.   
      
   In Carpenter's future, however, the government was in control and New   
   Yorkers were locked down. In our present, the Bush administration and   
   the Republican Party are the ones retreating into a fortified bunker.   
      
   Once upon a time in a past not so long ago, New York City was viewed by   
   many in the Republican Party as an enemy outpost in an alien land.   
      
   Then came the 9/11 attacks and Manhattan became the Bush   
   administration's ground zero in its war against terrorism. On January   
   31, 2003, with a supposed easy victory in the up- coming war with Iraq   
   looming, it seemed the perfect place for the President to begin an   
   inevitable march to a second term.   
      
   But like the president's flight in Escape From New York, things have   
   gone awry.   
      
   New York once again looks like a threatening, alien land and the party   
   of the President whose greatest claim to fame is that he's made   
   Americans "safer" is about to treat the city as if it were Baghdad.   
      
   The free-speech limiting, life-disrupting, artificial-reality-inducing   
   security "bubbles" that empty the globe's central cities as George Bush   
   and Dick Cheney travel through them, are already well known.   
      
   From August 30 through September 2, when the Republican National   
   Convention invades New York, the GOP wants to see the same †  
      
   " a Manhattan emptied of life and the entire event "bubble-ized."   
      
    The estimated 48,000 people who will attend the Convention including   
   2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternate delegates, their hotels, their   
   outings, their travels around the city, the massive media presence   
   (sequestered away in the Farley Post Office Building, connected to MSG   
   via an enclosed, climate-controlled pedestrian bridge to be built across   
   Eighth Avenue); along with the RNC's convention headquarters at Madison   
   Square Garden will all be locked inside that bubble †  
      
   " and kept from the sight of the feared hundreds of thousands of   
   citizens heading for the Garden to tell the President he's "not   
   welcome.""   
      
   To contain protesters and "protect" GOP'ers and fellow travelers, New   
   York City is engaging in some of the same sorts of permit games that   
   typified the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Mayor Richard J.   
   Daley's Chicago.   
      
   For example, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office has, with a   
   helping hand from the city's parks department, thwarted efforts of the   
   national coalition, United for Peace and Justice, to secure a permit for   
   a march ending in a large-scale demonstration in Central Park.   
      
   Officials have cited fears that the park's grass, home in the past to   
   large demo- nstrations and huge concerts, would take a beating. Just   
   recently, Police Com- missioner Raymond Kelly decreed that the Park   
   would be off-limits, as would Times Square.   
      
   Instead, UFPJ was told it could utilize the sure-to-be-sweltering,   
   distant West Side Highway. Even in Snake Plissken's Man- hattan, Central   
   Park was open!   
      
   Bloomberg and his associates clearly hoped that a lot of tough talk,   
   terrorist alerts, and traditional New York City Police Department   
   tactics †  
      
   " interlocking metal barriers (if not closed pens), horses, street   
   closures, mis- information (telling protesters they can't enter a   
   certain area or sending them on wild odysseys to non-existent protest   
   entry-points), and a conspicuous show of uniformed and riot-gear clad   
   force â€"   
      
   would contain protestors inside a police-imposed bubble, if not simply   
   scare them off.   
      
   The NYPD is, of course, a mas- sive army unto itself; a force of about   
   40,000, approximately 6,500 of whom are slated to "patrol the Garden,   
   hotels, bridges and tunnels, protest sites and points of interest for   
   delegates"   
      
   while another 5,500 have been assigned to patrol the subway system,   
   commuter trains and the railroad and bus stations. Roughly one-third of   
   the department, armed with handguns, batons, and tear gas canisters   
   â€   
      
   " and some, apparently inside a new state-of-the-art SWAT vehicle †  
      
   " are to be deployed in support of the convention.   
      
   Back in February, this was considered more than enough manpower for   
   whatever was coming and tough-talking NYPD spokesman Paul Browne simply   
   stated that the city's police did "not anticipate the need for federal   
   troops" to augment their forces.   
      
   Since then, however, fears of the size of the coming protest â€"   
   given growing dissatisfaction with the Bush ad- ministration and   
   possible uncontrolled, autonomous protest actions across all five   
   boroughs †  
      
   " led New York officials to take another tack. Raymond Kelly, the city's   
   pistol- packing Police Commissioner (he carries a .38 in an ankle   
   holster), soon flip-flopped on his department's position, noting, "If   
   people want to give us help, we'll take it."   
      
   With the chief moving in reverse, and fearing the NYPD might be   
   outnumbered and overwhelmed, New York governor George Pataki made the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)