The Study Ken Cites about Berkeley Protesters

Hi Schalk,

I'm glad you liked that link. I enjoyed it, too.

I was living in Seattle during the WTO riots, as you probably remember. My recollection of it is this: peaceful demonstration; then anarchists from Oregon start breaking things; police come in and overreact a little; a lot of previously peaceful protestors join the anarchists in protesting the police.

Does that sound about right? Then, the police had the protesters marched half way up Capitol Hill and drew a line. Calm until about midnight, when the police, for some unknown reason, decided to push the protesters all the way Capitol Hill and then up Broadway to about Mercer, which was where I lived.

Then the riot lasted all week. Is that how you remember it? And then during the Mardi Gras celebration the police wouldn't even intervene even though there was a real riot there. Do you remember? Some kid got killed and a lot of others beaten up.

So the Bainbridge, of all ships, confronts the pirates. Is your island named after the same guy? I hear he made a name for himself fighting pirates way back when. They must have these ships in the proper areas for their name, don't you think? You probably know.

Yes, I have wondered about the sequence of events reported in the news, whether it was really necessary. Every place it was written or spoken about you heard that sequence repeated. Of course it could be true, but it's hard to know what happened exactly.

In any case, those pirates have something like 200 hostages already, so I can't say they were wrong to shoot them rather than let another person be taken hostage. Some people may say that is disproportionate force (killing for the crime of kidnapping), but I don't think so. They might die or be killed in captivity, for one thing.

I think we would probably need some Violet or so skillful means to talk people out of situations like that. The FBI was at Waco, too. It's just a hard thing. How often are they talked out of it?

That would actually be an excellent subject for integral research and something only integral could really do--speak the language of the pirate, the Amber fanatic. Maybe Turquoise would be enough in some cases.

The FBI on the scene could have been Turquoise--or they could have been Orange, who knows. But from what I heard the negotiations were perhaps a little Orange sounding--apparently the tribal elders on the mainland balked at the deal because the U.S. negotiators were insisting that the pirates "be brought to justice."

That wouldn't be likely to bring a peaceful end, but at the same time if they let them go without punishment the pirates might not have enough of a deterrent.

Best,

David