"Don Firth considers you a knuckle-dragger if you believe in freedom of speech and the right to assemble, or if you're against wrongful arrest."

GUEST, you are a liar. You are deliberately trying to misrepresent what I said.

First, I repeat, for your enlightenment and edification, what I actually did say:

In what started out as a peaceful demonstration involving some 40,000 people, there were about 200 goons who tried to turn the demonstration into a riot and ran amok downtown, setting fires and smashing store windows. Others got involved, mostly kids being stupid. Since major property damage was being done and some people were being physically assaulted, the Seattle Police Department rounded up about 500 people. The King County jail couldn't hold them all, so they were bused out to Magnuson Park. The former Navy brig (eight cells—no longer there, by the way) was obviously inadequate, so the rioters were kept on the buses, booked, and released. The whole thing took about six hours altogether. Most of the people rounded up were teenagers who were released to their parents.

So much for Magnuson Park being a "concentration camp." It wasn't even adequate to hold 500 knuckle-draggers and teenagers.

The vast majority of the peaceful marchers and demonstrators—some 40,000 people—left when the self-styled "anarchists" started their rampage, smashing store windows and setting fires in Dumpsters and pushing them up against buildings in hopes that the buildings would catch fire. The peaceful demonstrators, mostly union members, had made their point, and they wisely got out of there when the riots started. There were a number of people who were not involved in the protest who just hung around to rubberneck. When the Seattle Police ordered the crowd to disperse, the rioters, of course, did not. Nor did a lot of people who were there to rubberneck. And it was these latter who got rounded up along with the rioters since many of them were among the rioters and were indistinguishable from them.

In a highly questionable case, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled that these folks were arrested without probable cause. The city maintained that if they were at the scene of the rioting at all after being ordered to disperse, there was indeed probable cause to arrest them. Courts of law do not always make correct decisions!

When and where these 157 people were arrested, there was not a peaceful protest in progress. It was a riot.

I have participated in peace marches, demonstrations, and protests. To try to claim that I am in any way opposed to freedom of speech or the right to assemble is a scurrilous lie.

It's obvious that GUEST is not interested in the truth, he just wants to spread his fear and hatred, and wind people up. Look at the number of threads he's started, all about the same kinds of things—taking what might be construed as a few elements of truth and building them into elaborate conspiracy theories. He gets his jollies that way.

And considering that, after having been challenged numerous times to offer suggestions or solutions to the problems he raises, all he comes up with is "Buy guns and ammo!" This person is not interested in freedom of speech or peaceful protest. He is a bomb-thrower. Only he doesn't have the guts to throw his own bombs. He wants us to do it for him.

Don Firth

P. S.   Okay, GUEST, here's a conspiracy theory for you to play with:   There are those who believe that the approximately 200 goons who turned the peaceful demonstration into a riot were sent there by the backers of the WTO to turn the peaceful protest into a riot in order to discredit the entire demonstration.

Along with a number of others who were witnesses to the "Battle in Seattle" up close, I tend to believe that this idea is not just a "theory." It gave the WTO organizers an excuse to severely restrict any future demonstrations at WTO conferences.