Monday Night Links: Riot Gear Edition

-Chris Hedges contends that the shocking brutality of the corporate police state outside the RNC was the real (and chilling) national story to emerge from last week's nationalist convention. What difference is there between the crowds of flag-waving Republicans and the apparatchiks I covered as a reporter in the old East German Communist Party? These Republican delegates, like the fat and compromised party functionaries in East Berlin, all fawned on cue over an inept and corrupt party hierarchy. They all purported to champion workers’ rights and freedom while they systematically fleeced, disempowered and impoverished the workers they lauded. They all celebrated the virtue of a state that was morally bankrupt. And while they played this con game, one that gave them special privileges, power and wealth, they unleashed their goons and thugs on all who dared to challenge them. -TheUptake.com, referenced in Hedges' piece, has video, photos, and personal accounts of the police violence unleashed on protesters. There are also petitions to free those still imprisoned for asserting their First Amendment rights. -Remember the images of children writhing on the ground, sobbing, and speaking in tongues in the documentary Jesus Camp? Alternet reprints a piece on the Wasilla Assembly of God, the Pentecostal church formerly attended by Sarah Palin and strikingly similar to the church in that film. -Sirota is back from vacation and hasn't lost a moment before tearing into his blog. Don't miss his recent post in which he reflects on Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle. -My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the play adapted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from the journals and emails of a young American peace activist crushed to death by Israeli bulldozers, opens in Chicago this Friday, September 12th. That performance will be followed by a discussion with Rachel Corrie's father, Craig. For those unfamiliar with the play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie was post-poned by the New York Theatre Workshop when it proved too controversial to stage. Read Christopher Shinn's essay on the issues surrounding the decision to postpone.