Kissinger in Grand Rapids

Well, as many of you have already noticed, my ugly mug was on the news last night (Click here to watch Video) in connection with Henry Kissinger's visit to Grand Rapids.

Henry Kissinger, who worked as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under the Nixon and Ford administrations, is one of the greatest war criminals in the 20th century.

But you don't have to take my work for it. The case against Kissinger is thorough and well documented. You can start by checking out this media mouse article which summarizes Kissinger's atrocities. And you'll notice the media mouse account is filled with hypertext links to various other sources which you can also check out.

Also of interest is this Henry Kissinger page which contains many articles and books on Henry Kissinger, including large excerpts from "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens, "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House" by Seymour M. Hersh and "Sideshow
Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia" by William Shawcross. All of these books can probably also be found at the library if you want a hard copy in your hands. (Regular readers of this blog may remember I linked to these books 2 years ago as well).

If you don't like reading, you could watch the documentary "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" (based on the book of the same name). The movie should really be watched in its entirety to fully grasp its implications, but parts of it are avaliable on Youtube. This short clip near the end summarizes some of the movies main points. And this longer clip shows Kissinger's complicity in the Genocide in East Timor.

Some people from media mouse tried to get tickets for the talk in an attempt to raise these issues with Kissinger in person, but there was some confusion (perhaps intentional) about the reservations, and so we could only protest outside the Amway Grand Hotel where Kissinger was speaking.

We met a couple times before hand to plan and make signs. Not being an artistic person, sign making has never been my forte. My signs always end up looking like they were made by kindergartners. So I hung back and waited for other people to make the signs. But, as sometimes happens in these kind of meetings, everyone was hanging back and waiting for someone else to start. So, since we needed good signs, I decided to give it a try. I tried to make a sign that said, “We Remember Cambodia”, but the spacing and lettering turned out all wrong. Fortunately an art student jumped in and saved me by redoing most of it.

I felt slightly guilty afterwards because I personally was too young to remember the bombing of Cambodia. But I figure we as a people remember it. I think it works.

I didn’t end up carrying that sign anyway. I figured (rightly) that extra people would show up and we would need extra signs, so I made another one that said “Genocide in East Timor”, and let someone else take the Cambodia sign.

We had about 30 people turn out maybe. Some of our number went “undercover” by dressing in nice clothes and handing out pamphlets that mentioned some of the highlights of Kissinger’s career. This went pretty well. They were able to talk their way past security guards, and many of the guests thought they were actually part of the Kissinger event instead of protesting it. Hopefully once they read the information in the pamphlet they’ll get a different idea.

The rest of us walked around and around the Amway. We chanted (partly at my suggestion), “Hey Kissinger, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” (I didn’t invent the chant obviously, just suggested it as one we could use.) Everyone got pretty sick of it after a while, but unfortunately no one had any new ones, and “Kissinger” doesn’t rhyme with too much. We tried, “Kissinger out of Grand Rapids! U.S. out of Iraq!” But that proved to be such a mouthful that we soon gave up.

I thought the cops were pretty professional. They did their best to be friendly, and I understood they were only doing their job. They kept a pretty close eye on us, but they didn’t interfere with us too much. Their rule was we couldn’t stand and block the side walks, but as long as we kept moving we could march around the Amway Grand as many times as we wanted.

The only thing I would criticize was once when we were stopped to discuss our next move, they came over to tell us we had to keep moving. Jeff from media mouse asked, “Hey, we’ve got a question for you.”
“Sure thing,” said the cop.
“You’re job is to enforce the law, right?” Jeff asked.
“Right,” said the cop.
“So if you knew that there was a mass murderer somewhere, would you go arrest him?”

Perhaps seeing where this was going, the cop responded, “First I’ve got a question for you guys. And you can’t answer,” he said pointing to Jeff. He then turned to one of the girls holding a sign. “Can you tell me what position Kissinger held in the government?”

“He was secretary of state,” the girl answered.

“Okay, just checking,” the cop said.

“Do you think I would come all the way down here to protest if I didn’t even know who he was?” the girl asked.

“I think a lot of people would probably think that,” the cop answered.

Most of this was done in a friendly tone and was a lot more civil than the banter you usually see between protesters and cops. Still, I thought it was funny that the cop assumed the girl wouldn't know who she was protesting. I wonder if he would have asked the same question to one of us guys there.

Media Mouse also has an article here recounting the protest, as well as an analysis of the media coverage.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
When the Scarecrow receives his diploma from the Wizard, he immediately exhibits his "knowledge" by reciting a mangled version of the Pythagorean theorem: "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh, joy, oh, rapture. I've got a brain!" It is convincing but totally inaccurate. Perhaps a joke by the script-writers, this is the only statement by Scarecrow that is not true in its context

This is parodied in the Simpsons episode where Homer finds Kissinger's glasses in the toilet and recites the same thing. He is corrected by the person in the next stall.

Link of the Day
Some one has uploaded to Youtube the entire documentary "Manufacturing Consent" about Noam Chomsky and the media. If you have the time and interest, the whole thing is well worth watching. But of particular relevance to Henry Kissinger and the genocide in Indonesia (and the Media response) are parts 4 and 5.