Will the President Escape from New York?

[LSU_Subversive]

Will the President Escape From New York?
By Nick Turse

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1574

.......
Today, as in the movie, many New Yorkers 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 -- 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.

......

The President, who continually tells us that our world is safer due to him, aims to arrive in an alien "New York City" out of some lock-down sci-fi movie -- a place specially prepared to make him the safest man on Earth. And yet New York isn't a stage set and the best laid plans of frightened and controlling officials do have a way of coming undone, just as they did last February in New York when, having been prohibited from marching, hundreds of thousands of protesters, directed toward police "pens" snarled traffic and literally took over large portions of the city. Who knows in what strange ways life will burst into New York despite official efforts to empty the city and lock down Madison Square Garden? For as the folks at the RNCNotWelcome.org Collective note:


"If we are diffused throughout the city, we will have a much better advantage. After all, the real target is not Madison Square Garden, the stage of the spectacle, but the various events where deals are made - where the lobbyists wine, dine, and bribe Bush & Co. he RNC has promised to stage events and photo ops in every borough of the city, not just in Manhattan. If we are truly everywhere in this very big city, the police cannot be concentrated in one area…"

In John Carpenter's vision of the future New Yorkers had lost their war against an American police state. In our present, it's up to the rest of us to make sure that doesn't happen. Only we can burst Bush's bubble!

[JSJ]

1. this 'snake' is heading to ny,ny to 'unrescue' the prez... n/t

[blackcat77]

2. I heard you were dead...

:)

[JSJ]

4. reports were premature, my friend (to the apple!) n/t

[struggle4progress]

3. NYC is gonna get a preview of what Bush's "ownership society" ...

... will look like. Hope the folks there take plenty of photos and post 'em, cause none of the helicopter gunship stuff is gonna hit the networks.


That until that day
The dream of lasting peace, world citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion
To be pursued, but never attained
Now everywhere is war, war

[no_hypocrisy]

5. I think the question will be will * be able to leave his hotel for MSQ.

Given the opportunity with so many unorganized, disenfranchised protestors roaming the streets, there is an opportunity for an impromptu "traffic jam". The RNC better order some cots.

[newyorkdork]

6. I wish he'd go back to Texas

I work in midtown and I have to be completely inconvenienced for a bbunch of idiots!

[enki23]

7. hell, i hope bushie himself gets too scared to go

it would be beautiful if the RNC had to settle for a conference call.

anyway, let 'em have their fortress. new yorkers will know which side of the walls they're on. so, i hope, will the rest of the nation. and the world.