How long is the trip from ignored to protester to disenfranchised to terrorist?

Once again, my friends, a story ignored by the U.S. media: Finally a judge has ordered the immediate release of anti-Bush protesters arrested and held without charges by the New York City Police ... and fined the city for its failure to comply, "These people have already been the victims of a process," State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo told the city. "I can no longer accept your [the city's] statement that you are trying to comply."



Some other items under-reported by mainstream media:

Near 2,000 protesters have been arrested in New York since Sunday, almost four times as many as were arrested during the police riots of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.



Some 1,200 in one arrest alone makes it the largest single mass arrest in memory (where police used the novel tactic of simply surrounding everyone with an orange plastic snow fence and yelling "you're under arrest!").



The prisoners are taken to a makeshift jail in an abandoned bus warehouse where they are put into pens assembled of dog kennel chain link panels (think: Guantanamo Bay).



The media has been refused media access to the site and so no one really knows what conditions are like inside.



Most of the prisoners will have been held for the duration of the Republican convention, and most of them will never be charged with a crime.

So here's the picture: While the Republicans are inside telling stories, thrilling to an expertly produced entertainment extravaganza and hearing speeches about how Americans love freedom, outside those who feel powerless over the direction taken by their leaders and those who have been denied any voice whatsoever are fighting back the best way they can, and being arrested in record numbers and detained in dog kennels for as long as the Republican show runs, while the rest of us focus on whether or not the Bush twins are for real and wonder if Zell Miller has lost his mind.



Remember the opening scene David Lean's film version of Dr. Zhivago? You know, where the camera cuts back and forth between the elegant party going on in the red velvet curtained ballroom and the mob of angry protesters looking for jobs and food who are coming up the street. You will recall that it ends when the Russian police move in and brutally crush the unarmed protesters in one of the opening skirmishes of the Russian Revolution.



Or, for that matter, do you remember the looks on the faces of the Iraqi citizens when they finally got the chance to extract some measure of retribution on the bodies of dead invaders?



During the next two months bear this in mind: only about half of Americans will even bother to vote and the number of Americans who are doubtful that their votes will ever be accurately counted is at an all time high.



The Star (Toronto): New York fined for detentions