...would be that if you don't believe enough to have your march in the face of a police presence like that, you don't believe enough. I've marched in protests with and without significant police presence and I much preferred the ones where the cops were there in significant number and visible. I've marched with tens of thousands and I've marched with hundreds, and when the cops are there and visible, things stayed under control and nobody got hurt. The very few demos that I've been at (or witnessed) where things got sideways were, with one exception, when the police presence wasn't visibly overwhelming. The one exception to this was the Ontario Legislature protest, and on that one OCAP was bound and determined that they were going to have a confrontation (when you charge police lines trying to enter the Leg, you're damned well trying for a confrontation). I wasn't there when it started, but I've seen the unedited footage, and it's definitive.

For the record, I don't wonder why it is that at least some of the folks behind much of this legitimate political dissent don't care much for the coppers or the military - they're not the guys left holding the bag when things go bad. They spend some time in the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" shoes and I'd have more time for them, but a big part of the reason that I stopped going to protests is because of the stupid buggers that thought deliberately provoking a reaction from the coppers was an acceptable strategy for dissent.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

Measuring one's conviction against police presence is a red herring. The point is that government may be attempting to quell dissent with the threat of force, a clear violation of constitutional freedom.

Does the riot squad turn out for every other march and assembly?

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. --Napoleon Bonaparte

...that the riot squad turns out at the assemblies where there's reason to believe that some participants could use violence. Where they err is, in my experience, when they overestimate the potential for violence. That having been said, given the possible consequences, I'm happy they tend to have a low threshold. I've heard a lot more talk about how intimidated folks were by the police presence than I ever felt - and a lot of it seemed to me to be people talking up their own importance in the greater scheme of things. The whole key to a lot of this stuff is making sure that you've got good control over your people - a bunch of professional, polite coppers monitoring the crowd frequently have a more calming effect than ostentatious display of anti-riot hardware, though their presence should be known.

I've seen the police presence rachetted up and down quite situationally - a few summers ago there was a lot of tension around something as harmless as the monthly Critical Mass ride. As the tension (and confrontations with motorists and, by extension, the police) escalated over a period of months, so too did the police presence - as tension de-escalated and folks started re-focussing on what the point of the ride was, the police presence rachetted down.

Yes there's bias in which assemblies/groups are targetted (e.g., the Raging Grannies making a "groups of note" list), but it's more due to ignorance of the phenomenon than the specific political suasion of the groups involved, near as I can tell (and if you really want to make them uncomfortable, tell them that there's no leadership at a demo; then they really get nervous). To be sure, I suspect that the left groups get more attention than they warrant (i.e. political suasion's not irrelevant), and part of that's the political composition of your average service, but there are other equally potent factors that frequently get overlooked, like simply being low hanging fruit.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

...measure, unambiguously. The Census bureau estimates that there's about 29.5 million in the adult American population that identify themselves as "no religion" - about 2 million of them specify athiest / agonostic / humanist, with the balance simply responding "no religion". My guess is that a significant proportion of the "no religion" are actually folks with a religion who are simply declining (passively) to answer the question. Total adult American population is approx 208 million, so the upper bound is, what, 14%? [Note, all figures from the 2001 census.]

As to deception on the part of the respondents, yeah, I think there's a good deal of lying going on - as in, I don't think that much of the population even managed to pray.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

CIA World Factbook people with no religion in the US are listed as 10% of the population. The same source lists Finns having no religion at 13.5%. Does that seem accurate?

A survey many years ago showed that 96 percent of Americans believe in God. Could one believe in God and not have a religion?

Just like all war veterans are not members of a vet's club.

Don't fall into the U.S. Religious Right's echo chamber. They have their own "with us or against us" mindset.

- Rick

_{"Free your mind, and your ass will follow" - George Clinton}