right there in River City

A throng of media members and interested observers crowd together in a yard next to a house on Iglehart Ave. that was raided by police Saturday afternoon.[Minneapolis Star Tribune caption]

UPDATE: Before going off to a restless sleep, I will note that up to this moment (it's Sunday, 2:30 am EDT) I can find absolutely nothing about these raids on any of the popular alternative political blogs. As usual, they're all totally distracted by the agenda laid out for them by the criminal establishment they are supposed to at least critique and creatively resist. I mean, come on, Sarah Palin? Right now she's just a zero operating as a smoke screen.

I thought New York in 2004 was pretty horrible, but I can't keep up with and can't begin to cover here all the developing stories about the police state tactics employed this year in both Denver and the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

It's not just the nausea induced by these increasingly appalling reports. They already exceed even the expectations of my cynical imagination, and now I'm sure there will be much more, since there is nothing in place to stop the successful progress of our special brand of American authoritarianism. What's happening at the sites of the two political sales conventions is part of a system designed to secure not us, but the reactionary corporate state which has succeeded in turning relatively-free citizens into medicated subjects meaningful to it only as consumers.

If you can still take it, I suggest searching online for news using the key words "police" "arrests" or "Convention". You're going to be shocked.

Ah hah! Barry is sitting just across from me as I'm writing this and he's invited me to look at two posts he's just completed. He's put it all together better and more quickly than I could imagine any one writer could. Look at Bloggy's "It's all ultimately one big (political) party" and "Crackdowns on protestors and press in Denver and Twin Cities".

The second post begins:

[at the homes of activists in the Twin Cities] They are knocking down doors and coming in with semi-automatic weapons to arrest people and confiscate belongings, including computers, journals, and political pamphlets. They have also arrested National Lawyer Guild lawyers trying to find out more information.

This is me again now: I thought a moment about finishing my last post two days ago with the hope that no one tries to burn down the Capitol building in Washington. Now I'm thinking it absolutely wouldn't be necessary this time.

[image by David Joles from StarTribune, where there are more photos and a story]