Occupy

[Triple Zero]

Heh. I like the bike swarm.

Would never work in NL though. Even though everybody has a bike, riot police "mobile units" has big ass horses that don't afraid of anything, especially trampling stuff. When they decide they want to clear the streets, they clear the streets. 30 minutes tops. Way too organised. The more I read about them, the more I realize that the only way to affect change here is through official democratic processes (which thankfully aren't quite as hopelessly crooked as yours), cause the streets will be tolerated only if allowed.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The (relative) media silence on US protests yesterday is really interesting.

[hirley0]

NO it is NOT . B.O. Left. Right? at a COST of x$ ?/? Correct tbd

The (relative) media silence on US protests yesterday is really interesting.

[Doktor Howl]

The (relative) media silence on US protests yesterday is really interesting.

I wouldn't have known they were happening at all if it wasn't for this thread, and some whining teabaggers at CG.

[Don Coyote]

The (relative) media silence on US protests yesterday is really interesting.

I wouldn't have known they were happening at all if it wasn't for this thread, and some whining teabaggers at CG.

Same only in my case it's whinery on facebook. Making myself unpopular with someone I knew in high school now.

[Cain]

No comment needed

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I'll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"Oh, this?" she held it up. "I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast."

"Again?" someone said.

We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.

"Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, 'you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?' So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists."

Almost no march goes by without one or two protestors, at least, being hurled against vehicles or have their heads bashed against the ground while being arrested for straying off the sidewalk. The message here is clear. Law has nothing to do with it. Anyone who engages in Occupy Wall Street-related activity should know they can be arrested, for virtually any reason, at any time.

Many of these arrests are carried out in such a way to guarantee physical injury. The tone was set on that first night of March 17, when my friend Eileen's wrists were broken; others suffered broken fingers, concussions, and broken ribs. Again, this was on a night where OWS actions were confined to sitting in a park, playing music, raising one or two tents, and marching down the street. To give a sense of the level of violence protestors were subjected to, during the march north to Union Square, we saw the first major incident of window-breaking in New York. The window in question was broken not by protestors, but by police—using a protestor's head. The victim in this case was a street medic named José (owing to the likelihood of physical assault and injuries from police, OWSers in New York as elsewhere have come to carry out even the most peaceful protests accompanied by medics trained in basic first aid.) He offered no resistance.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I'm not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women's breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast.

For many, the thought of police officials ordering or condoning sexual assault—even if just through a nod or a wink—seems so shocking that absolute proof would be required. But is it really so out of character? As Naomi Wolf has recently reminded us, the US security apparatus has long "used sexual humiliation as a tool of control." Any experienced activist is aware of the delight police officers so often take in explaining just how certainly they will be raped if placed in prison. Strip searches—which the Supreme Court has recently ruled can be deployed against any citizen held for so much as a traffic violation—are often deployed as a tool of humiliation and punishment. And one need hardly remark on well-documented practices at Guantanamo, Bagram, or Abu Ghraib. Why target women in particular? No doubt it's partly simply the logic of the bully, to brutalize those you think are weak, and more easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors. I myself well remember a police tactic I observed more than once during the World Economic Forum demonstrations in New York in 2002: a plainclothes officer would tackle a young female marcher, without announcing of who they were, and when one or two men would gallantly try to come to her assistance, uniforms would rush in and arrest them for "assaulting an officer." The logic makes perfect sense to someone with military background. Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would not behave effectively in battle if women were present—that is, that they would become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so.

There's a good deal of anecdotal evidence that would tend to confirm that this is exactly what they are trying to do. One of the most peculiar incidents took place on a recent march in New York where police seem to have simulated such an assault, arresting a young women who most activists later concluded was probably an undercover officer (no one had seen her before or has seen her since), then ostentatiously groping her as she was handcuffed. Reportedly, several male protestors had to physically restrained (by other protestors) from charging in to help her.

[Doktor Howl]

"Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, 'you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?' So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists."

[/quote]

AMERICA, AMERRRRICA....

[Cain]

Yeah, that particular bit was....unpleasant to read.

[Doktor Howl]

Yeah, that particular bit was....unpleasant to read.

I just cross posted the whole thing to CG.  Klattu was jabbering about how "awesome" that was, then linked to a RWN blog about how JT Ready was an Occupy liberal.

[Cain]

Wat

[Freeky]

Wat

[Don Coyote]

Just fucking wow.

[Doktor Howl]

Wat

Go look at the last page of the occupy thread over there.   

[Doktor Howl]

http://www.capitolgrilling.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=685220&page=1&fpart=12

[Phox]

I. I'm trying so hard to comprehend what possible world could exist in which any of that is positive. I feel like more dopamine is necessary. there may not be enough dopamine in the collective brains of the present and past population of the human species to process this, though.