By Steve Rhodes
A continuing look at the nonsense that surrounded NATO.
1. Eric Zorn says it so I don’t have to. Lou Raizin, you are Today’s Most Ridiculous Person In Chicago.
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Raizin, and just about everybody else it seems, apparently has also forgotten that it was the G8 conference that was expected to draw loads of protesters. NATO was almost an afterthought.
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And don’t forget, it was that hippie organization called Crain’s Chicago Business that blamed Rahm Emanuel himself for a summit plan that “reinforces the very stereotypes that Chicago is trying to shed” and creating a crisis atmosphere.
2. “Now that moment, which once seemed so fortuitous, has been marginalized,” I wrote in March.
“The Occupy movement may still hold its Chicago Spring, but it won’t be the same. The fact that the world’s leaders must hold a meeting in isolation far away from the people they govern – and whose lives they their economic power rules over – is poignant to say the least. I would have preferred it otherwise at this particular moment in time, so a moment could have been had. A moment that might have lasted a month, and whose impact might have lasted far beyond that.
“Instead we get NATO, still a target as the military arm of the G8’s agenda, but not the G8. If only they had taken NATO from us instead. But they knew better.”
3. I mean, the Beachwood regulars could have kept the (relative) peace with the kind of machinery that was brought in.
The city’s low bar for the CPD: Thanks for not embarrassing us!
— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) May 23, 2012
4. “[T]he hundreds of downtown companies – particularly retailers – that lost days of warm-weather business deserve more than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s thanks,” Greg Hinz writes. “They deserve compensation.”
From who, taxpayers? The downtown business community not only got behind Rahm’s summit, they ponied up nearly $40 million to help pay for it. Is that really proper? Who will compensate employees, customers and shareholders? It’s not like that money is coming out of the pockets of executives.
Finally, when it comes to compensation, what about these folks? Among others.
5. “Top Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers went to Chicago this week to take notes on how that city’s force handled large protests at the NATO summit. CMPD Deputy Chief Harold Medlock expects demonstrations of similar size and tone during the Democratic National Convention in September,” WFAE public radio in Charlotte reports.
“CMPD will have expanded abilities to search protesters and prohibit potentially dangerous items because of the city’s new ‘extraordinary event’ ordinance. Medlock says the police response he witnessed in Chicago this week demonstrated the need for that kind of an ordinance.”
In other words, we’ll protect your rights when you don’t need them, but when you do it’s an extraordinary event and you lose them. Which means you never really had them at all.
6. “The White House has ruled out an apology to Islamabad for the NATO air strike in November in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed,” the Indo-Asian News Service reports.
7. “Yesterday May 23, 2012, Moscow staged the first successful test-launch of a new ICBM designed to pierce the missile shield defence system now being deployed by NATO. The launch came just two days after the NATO summit in Chicago that widely focused on the European missile shield,” Avionews reports.
8. “[E]ven though [Sebastian] Senakiewicz boasted about how he could hide explosives in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book and had a car full of explosives and weapons, none were found in the Chicago home where he was staying,” the Sun-Times reports.
“After Senakiewicz appeared before Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. on Wednesday, the 24-year-old man’s lawyers suggested he might have made the statements while he was intoxicated and possibly goaded by undercover officers.
“‘We don’t want people who maybe had a little bit too much to drink in the city of Chicago to be arrested for something that may be said and, maybe people say stupid things when they’re drunk, but that is not a basis to arrest,’ Melinda Power told reporters.”
9. The NATO-Industrial Complex.
10. NATO Watch.
11. “A day after the end of the NATO summit in Chicago, Rick Bayless and several other Chicago restaurant owners said the event brought no economic lift to their businesses,” Crain’s reports.
In fact, NATO killed their business. Examples:
* Xoco, Topolobampo and Frontera Grill were down 15 to 20 percent.
* The Slurping Turtle restaurant in River North was down 65 percent.
* “We had a grand total of nine people join us for lunch, about 5 percent of what we normally do at Trattoria No. 10,” said Dan Rosenthal.
And so on.
We’re a long way from $128 million. Good job, Deloitte Consulting!
12. “I can’t tell you how many times world leaders mentioned how kind the people of the city of Chicago are, how beautiful the city was and how clean our city was,” Rahm said Monday.
No, seriously, he can’t tell us.
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By “our city” world leaders meant O’Hare, McCormick Place and their hotel.
13. “Riot control refers to the measures used by police, military, or other security forces to control, disperse, and arrest civilians who are involved in a riot, demonstration, or protest.”
Because a demonstration protest is the same thing as a riot. And because we wouldn’t want people expressing their political beliefs in a democracy. Some things never change.
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Previously:
* NATO Notebook I
* NATO Notebook II
* NATO Notebook III
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 24, 2012