Hey guys. Snarlton's feeling lazy. All those absinthe vodka tonics I chug to deal with the colossal outrage I feel towards this country take their toll. Please enjoy this guest piece from Correspondent Miss S.
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Aren’t you glad we live in America where the Constitution protects us from this kind of treatment?
My name is John Wilkenson and I’m a husband, a father, and a member of Operation USA, a relief group offering aid to civilians in Iraq, whose mission the Iraqi government has been trying to shut down.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people in Baghdad. I was sitting in the communal area of our little tent city with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed Iraqi Officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 relief workers who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent, refusing to leave. The Iraqi Officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent”.
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of Iraqi Officers used knives to slice open every tent in the commune. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the commune. They then did the same with the communal property of Operation USA. For example, I watched as the Iraqi Officers destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Operation USA’s medical tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Operation USA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the Iraqi Officers sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the desert. …
When the Iraqi Officers finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the Officers to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an Iraqi officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the Iraqi officer would grab the aid worker’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent volunteer, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the Iraqi officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyper-extended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the Iraqi officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.
My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.
I was put on a van with other nonviolent relief workers and taken to a parking garage in downtown Baghdad. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The Iraqi officers watched and did nothing.
At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in our tent village after the police said not to…
They booked us into jail. Almost none of us could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and with the help of my family at home I could afford it, except the Iraqi Officers spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set…
I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Operation USA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Operation USA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The Iraqi Officers chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent relief workers in prison for two full days…”
Maybe the American Embassy should have intervened? Eh, who am I kidding. That shit happened here in the good old U-S-of-A and it was the actual account of a prominent white AMERICAN Occupy LA Protester. Suddenly the LAPD are treating white guys like they’ve treated black communities for so long. But at least they were only filthy hippie campers, right?
You can read his full and actual account here:
-Miss S.
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Disclaimer: In case you are either: a). stupid, or b). are translating the text, this is a piece of satire where all words referring to the Los Angeles Police Department's brutal treatment of American protester Patrick Meighan have been replaced to frame this arrest through the fictional lens of a war zone. Don't ever quote Snarlton on anything. We are assholes, not researchers. (PS. I am always amazed when I see excepts from The Onion in foreign press, or re-posted by Texans).
Commentary by Snarlton:
Miss S. has a point. Sometimes it's necessary to re-frame the habitual line-stepping of The Authority to understand how far down towards a Second-World conflict zone we've slid, a zone where any citizen can be detained on the street and searched, then violently arrested for no reason under the pretext of 'public safety'. We are entering an era where acts of The Authority, had they been perpetrated by an enemy government, would insight public outrage.
Wake up and welcome to a new era where upstanding US citizens can be snatch-grabbed. The post 9-11 era of crying eagle t-shirts and yellow ribbon SUV magnets is over. The "War on Terror" has come home to roost, and its eyes are on all who will not shut up and obey.
