Let’s Run an NIC on Him

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A friend of mine who works for Human Rights Watch has a floor pass to tonight’s show at the convention. I pleaded with her to not get arrested. She emailed me back, unable to understand why everyone kept telling her that. So what is it like being in NYC at the convention right now? I don’t have any way of knowing since I am stuck on the wrong coast, but I am much more interested in what’s happening outside than inside the convention hall. That’s where the real stories are at. Rediff reporter Arun Venugopal gives a pretty interesting first-hand account of his “stupididty”:

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

That’s what I was thinking to myself, about myself, as I stood just inside the entrance of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention was taking place. In the space of a few footsteps I had gone from being just another reporter on the job to possible radical activist. Large men in suits, large men likely concealing large guns, hovered around me, asking me questions about my work, my family, my place of residence, recent trips I had made out of town and out of the country. Outside, nearly a thousand protesters had been arrested for civil disobedience and vague rumors of anarchist violence were floating about – I had quite clearly picked the wrong day and place to be carrying anti-war, anti-Bush literature. Dumb.

I almost don’t want to quote any more of this story because its a pretty good read but I will give you one more bit:

After passing effortlessly through the first few cordons of security, I arrived at a walk-through metal detector, and pulled out everything from my pockets – cell phone, wallet, keys – which I tossed into a little basket on the conveyor belt. The security guard picked up my notebook from the basket and saw the bright yellow anti-war sticker. Why do they have to make those stickers so visible?

“Woah, woah, what’s this?” he asked, alarmed. He motioned me over and brought me to his superior, who looked at the notebook and brought me to someone else. This man was polite, almost apologetic, but asked me for my social security number, so he could perform some background checks.

“Let’s do an NIC on him,” he said into the phone, before walking away.

Man. I hope nobody ever NIC’s my ass. Brown reporters seem to have a lot of first hand security stories nowadays.

21 thoughts on “Let’s Run an NIC on Him”

  1. Jyothi said she did. The official looked at her Time magazine credentials and asked if she could confirm that I was a journalist, which she did as well. And then, a few minutes after she’d left, my photographer showed up, or rather, walked by as fast as possible. I called after him and reluctantly, he came over, but seeing the situation, thought it best not to get involved and took off. This, I realized, is what had become of the foreign-born. Even as a recent citizen, I knew he lived in fear of what the state was capable of doing to him.

    Oh…my…god! There was tight security at an event that had the President of the United States. And…wait for it… they asked the man a few questions after more than a thousand people who’d threatened violence both in person and on bulletin boards had been arrested.

    It’s as if they had beaten him over the head with a truncheon! Amazing what the state is allowed to do these days.

    (btw, this “journalist” is example #1000279 of the leftist bias endemic among the media. I mean, he didn’t even have a notebook that wasn’t festooned with antiwar stickers to bring to report on the RNC)

    PSS: Al Qaeda has impersonated journalists. For example, they killed Ahmed Shah Massoud using suicide bombers posing as journalists.

  2. I agree – Arun & crew are trying pretty dang hard to make this sound like yet another “The Nazi’s are Running Amerika!” piece…. It’s hard to imagine a more bald-faced display of this “reporters” true feelings.

    He had to go through a metal detector. Big whoop. He worked for a pub the secret service agent had never heard of. His friend who did work at a well known American pub (TIME) walked right through. His anti-war bumpersticker invited more questions than someone without said bumpersticker. Big whoop – aren’t these all perfect examples of the non-racialprofiling techniques the left doesn’t believe the cops use?

    Given the stuff the anarchists et. al. had been threatening and the cop beat up earlier, this all seems pretty dang reasonable -scary reporting tone aside….. He was never in danger of being arrested and sent to Gitmo despite what he wants the reader to believe.

  3. vinod – good catch. This is what these guys were planning:

    4) Throwing is a defensive act. It may not be wise to throw stuff at the best of times – that will only provoke them and make them want to hit you harder. If you want to throw, do it defensively, strategically, and en masse – a constant hail of debris will create a ‘sterile area’ where the police will not want to go. Remember: don’t throw to attack or cause injury. Throw from the front and then disappear into the crowd. Only jerks throw from the back. Gas canisters can be thrown or kicked away from the crowd before they explode. Be careful! Don’t pick up with your bare hands, as they can be very hot. They will explode… De-arresting: The best time to do this is as soon as the snatch has happened. You need a group of people to break the police’s grip and some people to act as blocks. An important and low risk role in the de-arrest involves simply placing your body between the police and there target. This is sometimes called the pick or pick and roll. Once you have your person back, all should link arms and disappear into the crowd. The police may try to snatch back or arrest one of the de-arresters. Bear in mind that the de-arrester may end up with heavier charges than the original arrestee if caught. Surrounding police vehicles containing arrestees and preventing them from moving has in the past led to them being released. Cars don’t move very well when they have flat tires, but keep in mind that when tires are punctured they can be loud… [The NYPD is] well aware of the kinds of tactical weaponry protesters have used in recent years: marbles and bolts spread out on the ground for cops to slip on….Particularly frightening in the current climate is the use of hoax devices�suitcases or backpacks or other items that look like bombs and are left at various locations around the city. Simply phoning in bomb threats is a commonly used variation of this.

    Hmmmm, seems to me that the anarchists and leftists are just a little more problematic than the cops. Funny how that doesn’t get much coverage, isn’t it? Some how I don’t think cops are going to be throwing exploding gas canisters at people.

    Oh, but wait…just talking about it and planning it and sending a cop to the hospital doesn’t count:

    Prosecutors drew up felony assault charges yesterday against a 20-year-old Manhattan man who the police said admitted to punching and kicking a plainclothes police detective…The official said that Mr. Holiday had admitted punching, kicking and stomping the detective, but said that at the time he did know that Detective Sample was a policeman.

    He didn’t know he was a policeman . In other words, these idiots are just thugs raging against any available machine, including the scooters and bodies of ostensible pedestrians. But wait! Only Bushitler and the evil security guards are bad…not the leftists, “pacifists”, and anarchists, with their good intentions.

  4. Do you guys ever wonder why the media is so liberal? If they weren’t I could even imagine how screwed our country would be. Chris Matthews of Hardball (who previous to this year I would never have considered anything but slightly to the right of center) almost got in a fight with that liar Zell Miller last night. Did any of you hear one single true statement come out of Miller or Cheney’s mouth last night? One single truth? I thank God that the media is liberal. If only the rest of America would pay more attention and actually read the news instead of allowing themselves to be manipulated by one-liners, and scared into becoming Republicans post 9/11 because they want someone to protect them from “evil”.

  6. Did any of you hear one single true statement come out of Miller or Cheney’s mouth last night? One single truth? I thank God that the media is liberal.

    Are you basically saying that the only Truths are Liberal ones?

  7. Contrary to popular opinion the media is NOT liberal. Some individual journalists may be liberal but most of the corporations they work for are not.

    FOX definitely has a conservative agenda, ABC’s parent company Disney is also not liberal — they wanted to shelve Farenhite 911, GE which owns NBC is also not a liberal company. Ted Turner was a liberal but since he sold CNN I’m not sure where they stand. For what I see they don’t seen to have a liberal tilt in their programming. PBS has a liberal slant, I admit but unfortunately the only people who watch or listen to it are liberal too.

    The NYT may lean a little to the left but no one can argue that NY Post (published at a loss of 40M a year by Rupert Murdoch) is anything other than conservative.

    Vinod: People who believe in a fair and tolerant society are more likely to tell the truth than peple who only believe in increasing their personal wealth (everything else is just eyewash).

  9. Vinod: People who believe in a fair and tolerant society are more likely to tell the truth than peple who only believe in increasing their personal wealth (everything else is just eyewash).

    This is the core of why political discourse is so difficult – even pretty intelligent liberals have completely warped ideas of what being “conservative” is actually about – in this case, the opposite of “Fair” and “Tolerant” and, eventually, “Truth.”

    Sad.

  10. I did say “a few”.

    The other stuff was the usual entertaining political rhetoric and a pretty darn good job of propoganda. Facts are consistently distorted by both sides to fit their needs. No surprise here.

    Michael Moore has done the same, so has Karl Rove.

  11. Vinod, thank you. I’m tired of defending myself against the slander that I (or other economic conservatives) am only interested in money or increasing my personal wealth because I find free trade arguments persuasive and believe that economic freedom is an important component of liberty.

    And, btw, Zell Miller gave a speech in 1992 at the Democratic convention which was pretty harsh. What goes around comes around, I guess.

  13. I forgot. Protest even if it was unintentional, and yes even for journalists, was outlawed. Does anyone have an exact date for this?

    If Mr. Venugopal was credentialied, and gave the proper identification, there really was no need for him to be harrassed, even if he had an anti-Bush sticker, sign, or whatever on his person.

    I think Arun’s story was more of a “oh, look what hapenned to me,” rather than a, “look, I am brown, and therefore going to Gitmo,” kind of article. To think otherwise would be reading way too much into the article.

  14. People made more money during the Clinton years than under Bush 1, 2 or Raegan.

    The Democrats are not against people making money. However that needs to be balanced against other priorities in a society such as providing affordable health insurance for everyone, giving every worker the opportunity to earn a living wage, not sending kids out to die in a war except as a last resort, taking care of the environment, and providing social and community services that will benefit all people. That means people might have to pay a little more in taxes — which unless you’re making shit loads of money probably won’t affect you at all. And if you do pay a little more in taxes you’ll be able to see it make a difference in your community. Isn’t that worth it?

    And it’s a completely idiotic to believe that the Democrats are any less capable of protecting us from terrorists than the Republicans.

  15. Wait, wait Mani, can I quote you?

    Conservatives stand for liberty. Liberals stand for government tyranny.

    That is brilliant! Would you mind terribly if I used that as the quote at the bottom of my emails? Did you come up with that yourself or were you looking at a pendulum swinging from someone’s hands immediately before thinking of it. I dare say that until I read that phrase I didn’t think too highly of conservatives but now I have seen the light. Bless you my child. Liberals stand for government tyranny. Brilliant!

  16. You mean they tell all foreign journalists that they were about to kill them?

    “You were lucky,” he whispered. “They were ready to give you the chair.”

    Sure, it’s not meant literally, but it is meant to scare somebody, like pointing your finger at them and miming a gun going off.

  17. Sure, it’s not meant literally, but it is meant to scare somebody, like pointing your finger at them and miming a gun going off.

    Or like, I dunno, clapping your hands loudly? I think we should propose House Bill 109: End all loud clapping around people of color . They are fragile dears, and it can scare them and make them feel unwelcome.

    I think we should also prohibit the RACIST police from asking questions of someone when there is an event with the President of the United States present. Sure, there are security concerns…but racial profiling, or police work itself for that matter is essentially inegalitarian. After all, the police don’t pull over EVERYONE, right? See? They must be RACISTS.

    I am talking about FACTUAL statements that can be verified.

    What, are you telling me Kerry voted for all those programs? Kerry was a pretty far left, antiwar, anti-Reagan Senator until very recently.

    The Slate article itself is full of half truths: it has nothing on Kerry denouncing every military action taken by Reagan during the 80’s . Kerry denounced Grenada, he denounced the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and he even flew to Latin America to hobnob with Communists during the 80’s. Yes, mass murdering Communists. Zell Miller has pulled quite a U-turn in the last 3 years, but there is no doubt that the truth is that Kerry was strongly anti-military and anti-Cold War. Given what we’re now learning about the atrocities and mass slavery in the USSR, that is the equivalent of being an America Firster…in 1946.

    This wasn’t some isolated vote – Kerry has campaigned on his anti-defense system and anti-Reagan record. That got him elected in leftist Taxachusetts. But that’s why he’s trying his best to disavow that past.

  19. I see gc, do you usually associate the electric chair with clapping? Very interesting. Why don’t we go back to the topic of your childhood again. Would you say you had a happy childhood? How did you feel about your parents?

  20. I see gc, do you usually associate the electric chair with clapping?

    I dunno Ennis, do you usually associate fingers pointed like guns with real bullets?