Songwriter's Notebook: John Timoney's Journey from Miami to Manama

[Via APNS editor Viola Wilkins]

Songwriter's Notebook: John Timoney's Journey from Miami to Manama: John Timoney, until recently chief of police of Miami and before that Philadelphia, formerly of New York City, where he also was a high-ranking cop, is heading to Bahrain to train the cops there, according to the Associated Press. If you happen to know anybody from Bahrain who might be thinking that hiring this New Yorker could be a step in the direction of less massacre-oriented policing policies, this might be a good time to relieve them of any such illusions.

John Timoney is a deceitful thug. Here's the background in a nutshell, for all who might be interested. In 1999 tens of thousands of peaceful protesters shut down the streets of Seattle and more or less shut down the big meeting of the World Trade Organization. Because they were peacefully blocking roads they were violently attacked by thousands of cops with massive amounts of tear gas and other weapons. In another part of town (Nike Town) a couple hundred people destroyed corporate property, were declared to be violent anarchists, and got massive amounts of media attention. The police chased them around but could never seem to catch them. Nobody got hurt in Nike Town other than the violent anarchists.