Monday^           Tuesday>

Lets start with Monday. The Eastside Journal ran images of protests with actual messages. Keep in mind here that I am looking specifically at cover articles, because far more people read covers than do read the actual articles involved. We like to look at pictures. Tuesday the NYT ran images of protests and their message, but the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer began to incite fear. Now we must recognize that the 1st Amendment was not designed to scare young suburban youth into doing what they were told by telling them to shut up. 

WTO/ Media Report
What really happened in Seattle the week of November 29th thru December 4th?

Can we really know if we weren't there? No. Realistically, we can only know what we experienced, if we were there. If we were watching from the nearby news stand we would have gotton what the people who control the news and information resources, "Mainstream Media", gave to us.
It is absurd to think that the "Mainstream Media" gives us only the complete and unabridged truth. Thus, I may note that although the following essay is written to give you the opportunity to gauge for yourself, it is still written by me, according to my perception of the truth. In reality, the best truth we can hope for as individuals, is what we discern for ourselves.

It is a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT in America to gather and to protest. IN FACT, IT IS AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT IN A NORMAL DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. But it never fails that when someone wants to COMPLAIN about problems in our culture, the "Mainstream Media" paints them in a derogatory light. Well, maybe not always, but notice how YOU felt about my exageration, as we continue.
You could almost say that the media was preparing the enviroment for conflict. Now I'm not sure when the very first clash with police occured, but what your missing above is an accurate chronology of images. Because, indeed there were clashes with police early tuesday morning. Which if you look at this with the hindsight of a local Seattlite, considering the events of the last week, the press doesn't seem to selling the issues of the protest as much as it was selling the conflict. Bringing us back to the profit concept, which always reduces the credibility of mainstream media, as they prove time and time again that they are not a community service, they are profit driven entity's. A truth we often forget. If the press was more interested in covering the issues of the protest, why didn't we 
see pictures of deforested land, or perhaps applesfrom eastern Washington, threatened by imports from China? Both prevalent issues that relate to us locally in the NW, and the WTO. Well, here we are wednesday morning and the truth speaks for itself. The "Mainstream Media" is committed to violence. City officials "Regret" the protests turned violent. Incidentally, I work at a newspaper stand, NYT went first by about 9:45, and all the rest of our papers were gone by 11:30, all of them. As you can see, all the local papers, including some of the nationals continued to go for the violence sells papers concept. After the video extravaganza displayed to the world on the evening of November 30th, any hope of the message of this protest would be obscured for the violence it produced. It is exasperating to think that a majority of adults, when presented with the case of literally saving their planet, or being angry about some broken glass, chose to get angry about the glass. The excuse being, If it hadn't been for those damned anarchists, the protest could have been well received? Well its obvious that from the beginning, there was no intention of receiving the protests peacefully. In politics, there is such a thing as trying to upstage your opponent. You could say, the WTO/ protests were effectively upstaged. In my WTO/ Gallery you will find a fairer representation of what the protest looked like, and should have looked like in the mainstream press, if they were committed to the issues. It is clear in a visual sense, that the "Mainstream Media" had no intention of imaging the very issue of the attack on our constitution that the WTO/ is. This is not a matter for juevenile protestors, its is a matter for every person in the United States of America. The WTO/ compromises our personnal right of soveriegnty. This is a serious afront to the very union of this country. Well, the unions were here for it, why wasn't the press? Oh, that's right, they were selling newspapers like a good businessman should.

discussion has digressed into a plethora of small low profile discussions. It seems the WTO as distanced itself
from the incident in Seattle, perhaps hoping to lay low for a year or so. Spend some time cleaning up its image for the next meeting. Laying out a strategy to make sure there is no future resistence to its intent. The issues haven't gone away, but they were effectively overshadowed. Another point to those of you brave enough to seek the truth. These images paint an interesting light on the nature of change. One must remember that every single protestor
that decended upon Seattle, including the Anarchists, came for the express purpose of resisting an unjust cause. They came to resist the

 Wednesday

The next question one might want to ask, is was there a hidden message in the presentation of the media displayed here? If you'll notice, the people without the guns are AMERICAN CITIZEN'S, most of them. Exercising their right of free speech. Was this "Mainstream Media's" pitch to show how the IMPERIAL STORMTROOPERS, were violating the rights of taxpaying citizens. Or how much effort the police had to make to control the unruly rable. Because, obviously, if these people weren't breaking the law, the police wouldn't have responded so, would they? As you can see, the perception of truth must weave through a large field of possibilities to arrive at the correct truth. Take for instince the "Regret" of the city officials that the protests turned violent. Were they using that phrase to state that they apoligized for making the protests violent? Because it was the actions of the police that turned the protests violent. Or were they saying that the regreted that the protestors resorted to vandalism? One truth that is easily recognizable from these pictures is that the protestors, even after violence had been instigated against them, did not instigate violence against the police. Maybe, there were a few isolated incidents. It is conceiveable that a person could lose control when presented with a situation they've never experienced before. Like being gased and beaten with a stick, and respond in a violent fashion. I know I would. The point I'm making here is if the protestors were violent, there would have been 250 DEAD COPS the first night. You can see from the pictures that the protestors outnumbered the police at least 100 to 1. Yet, there were no major reports of police injury. There were also no mention of civilian injuries. So, no police injuries, no civilian injuries, and yet the protests are frequently referred to as "violent".  The truth you must seek here is not whether the police were right in their actions, but were their actions instigated to produce just the very reaction they did. The fallout of the WTO in Seattle will continue for sometime. So far the primary "Mainstream" focus has been on the use of force and the psychological impact it had on the people of Seattle who were not directly effected, but were merely home watching it on TV while the city "Quaked". The Seattle city council has not been given any rest in responding to the outrage of citizens over the use of force and chemical weapons. But what happened to the issues of the WTO/ meeting? That 

Thursday

 WTO/ because they felt strongly about its policies and the effect of those policies on you. If you want to shift your perspective for just a moment here, consider the fact that other human beings came here to resist violence and chemical weapons, peacefully. To bring to your attention the fact that YOU ARE BEING SCREWED by someone you think is your friend. OUR planet is in dire need of our maturity and support. Who do you think Bill is really supporting here? For the past few years, his state department has been busier than all get out battling the EU over is enviromental standards for food, mainly US beef. The Clinton adminsirtration has been actively assaulting the soveriegn people the world over for Monsanto Corp. The producer of EVIL agricultural products designed to destroy the ecology on this entire planet and leave us all subject to the people who will own the only seeds that will grow in an enviroment they helped destroy. Against this threat, farmers the world over have been battling. While the American consumer lives in the bliss of complete ignorance. The perfect test market. Never an ounce of resistence. RESIST, hecky no, we abhor resistence in America. I think If our founding fathers, and the men who stood beside them to form our proud country, could rise up from the grave, they'd cut the throats of every baby boomer in this country. That generation got so excited to have toasters and electric light, that they forgot their responsibility to protect the integrity of the constitution for their children. Now they can't understand why their children are willing to suck a lung full of chemical weapons, to resist the illusion their parents created. It should be recognized as a truth that we have have one resposibility to those coming after us. Business aside, we should make sure our lifestyles are sustainable. Leaving a habitable planet behind us for future generations. A decade ago, scientists tried to sell the idea, that global warming was a reactionist illusion, that the planet periodically goes through warming fazes, it was natural. Now real scientists are busy trying to come up with scenarios of what we can expect from the destruction of the biosphere. There's a growing hole in the ozone layer, we don't know how to stop it, and we don't know the full repurcussions loosing this layer will have on the planet. Are you concerned? So, where was the "Mainstream Media" when 
these issues should have been broadcast. Probably scaring the death out of a lazy populace, selling the hype of violence. It should be noted that history is repleat with protests and strikes and riots. And in every case where violence with "authority's" has erupted, it is because the "Authority's" were trying to quell insurection. THis is not the actions of a democratic government. This is a truth. For too long our culture has lived chained mercilessly to the shackle of classism. The rich and the poor. The invention of the term "middle-class", was nothing more than an ideological diversion created to make poor dogs feel like they were further "Up" the ladder than the poor dog standing next to them. If we seek truth, we must not fail to recognize that the issue here wasn't us fighting the police, and as such, every honest law abiding citizen in America. It was about us, the People, fighting yet another battle in at least a two thousand year war of oppresion. There will be more battles, this war is far from over!