🚀 go-pugleaf

Rafael Block wrote:

> Charles Packer wrote:
> > "Robert McClelland" <robert.mcclelland@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<bVlka.3634$N94.299783@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> >
> >>OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - Oakland police fired rubber bullets to
> >>disperse about 750 anti-war demonstrators on Monday in what was
> >>believed to be the first use of the projectiles against U.S.
> >>protesters since the American-led war on Iraq began.
> >
> >
> >
> > Historical question: Have U.S. police _ever_ used projectiles against
> > protest demonstrators before? The most likely recent instance would
> > have been in Seattle against the anti-globalist demonstrators in 1999.
> > Does anybody recall? What about Chicago, 1968?
>
> No rubber bullets to my recollection, but they did use [Geneva
> convention banned] tear gas.

The police did, indeed, use rubber bullets. There was a great hue and cry when those little "souveniers" began popping up on
E-bay along with the spent tear gas canisters (the printing on which proved that they were military grade munitions that had come
from a National Guard arsenal.) There was a great hue and cry, not reported by the mainstream media, when E-bay invoked their "no
weapons" policy and forbade such "souveniers" from being sold on their system.

As for the Geneva Conventions, there is a loophole. The Convention -- specifically, the First Convention (link below), prohibits
the use of chemical weapons *as a weapon of war.* Subsequent treaties regarding chemical weapons limit the use of poison and
noxious agents on the battlefield but explicitly permit their use by a government on its own people. Just as a recent example,
the Chemical Weapons Convention (http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/nndi-agency/cwc_1-en.asp) states in Article II (Definitions and
Criteria), Section 9 (Purposes Not Prohibited Under this Convention): "(d) Law enforcement including domestic riot control
purposes." This treaty was signed although it apparently has not yet been ratified as US law by the Senate.

* Geneva Convention 1(Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating Gas, and of Bacteriological Methods of
Warfare 8 February 1928)
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva01.htm
--
Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net
http://www.serv.net/~techbear

If it is the act of a traitor to speak out against the
unConstitional acts of my government, to excercise my
rights guaranteed by that Constitution -- the right to
publish my opinions and speak my thoughts, the right
to petition for a redress of grievances, the right to
be secure in my person and property against search and
seizure without due process of law -- then I am a traitor.
And God grant us many, many more traitors, for we are in
dire need of them.