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Sunday, April 5, 2009

The NATO protesters

Anti-war activists protesting the meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have expressed their displeasure by turning the area near Strasbourg into a.....war zone.

Approximately a thousand protesters threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police. They set a customs station on fire on a bridge linking France and Germany and torched several stores, winning over the hearts and minds of the locals.

Protesters also stormed a hotel and stole alcohol from its bar before setting the hotel afire.

(Stealing alcoholic beverages has long been an honorable way of demonstrating one's commitment to the cause of peace.)

The police responded with water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. No protesters were seriously injured.

NATO was formed sixty years ago as a mutual defense pact against the Soviet threat. What an interesting experiment it would have been to transport these protesters in time and place to the Moscow of, say, 1965 to see if the Soviet security apparatus would have reacted with such forbearance.

I'd even settle for seeing these protesters try their act in modern day Russia to see how Putin would react.

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