Via Firedoglake,, we learn that in America, evildoers cannot hide behind seemingly benign names like “Glass Bead Collective” — the forces of Homeland Security will find you, and will take your Sony Vaio!

Our colleagues at the Glass Bead Collective, a group of video artists and documentarians, are in the Twin Cities to prepare for the Republican National Convention. They were swarmed by three police cars, detained and had all of their electronic gear, including laptop computers, videocameras and personal items were taken from them by Minneapolis police. No one was arrested. The stop and seizure was explained by police officers as related to Homeland Security and the Republican Convention.

Well, you can see why the police and DHS and the Republicans are worried:

Glassbead Collective (GBC), based in New York City, brings together individuals from diverse academic and professional backgrounds including video art, film, theater, architecture, photography, music, mathematics, fine arts and philosophy to create works which re-contextualize culture and the world in which we find ourselves today. GBC was founded in 2002 with a multimedia theatrical performance of Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit.

That’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me bleed out the ears. I’m thrilled to see that our government has decided to deploy paramilitary forces against the powers of pretentiousness. But where were they when I was trying to get out of that relationship with the Comp Lit major?

[btw: Almost done with brief from Hell, hope to be blogging again late in the week.]

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