Police State in Oakland? First Hand Report From Arrested Female Journo

I think the header should read Police State America, sans question mark.

The worrying thing about, not just Oakland, but demonstrations anywhere in the world, will be the readiness of states to put their agent provocateurs in place. No police force in the world is going to stand by when stuff starts going up in flames. It's all too easy and all too predictable.

But the story isn't all about what went down on the streets, the account by this female journo, one of twenty five women arrested, highlights the tactics of the cops, as they systematically belittle and humiliate the women in their charge.

It also mentions, although only briefly, something far more sinister, the issuing of press passes and the embedding of local journo's with the cops. And that is something to really worry about.

Police State in Oakland? One Reporter's Arrest Contradicts Official Story

Oakland has spent more than $1 million on Occupy policing, but nearly all of that overwhelming force has been used against innocent people.
By Susie Cagle
November 6, 2011

"Everybody on the ground, you're under arrest! Everybody on the ground, you're under arrest!" the officer yelled through his gas mask, gesturing with his baton.

As I slipped my camera in my pocket and dropped to the ground, I couldn't help but think: This wasn't part of the plan.

At least not my plan.

A series of escalations at Occupy Oakland following Wednesday, November 2nd's General Strike culminated in 101 arrests between 1 and 2 am on Thursday morning -- including my own.

Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan called the arrestees "generally anarchists and provocateurs" in a statement later Thursday. Despite Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's claims that the city would not be calling for mutual aid--a call for supporting forces from surrounding police agencies to reinforce OPD--in future engagements with Occupy Oakland demonstrators, Jordan called in the order around 4 p.m., following the vandalizing of several large banks, a Whole Foods and a few smaller businesses in the downtown area.

While police from around the Bay Area geared up for a confrontation, Occupy Oakland was shifting strategies. Shortly after 10 p.m., occupiers descended upon the foreclosed Traveler's Aid Society building at 520 16th Street. It was a calculated escalation, at least in theory: forcing the police to defend the rights of the property owners or the people, effectively choosing loyalty to the 1 or the 99 percent. The scene was joyous but chaotic, a dance party punctuated by calls to "reinforce the perimeters." Just before 11 p.m., as local agencies led by the Oakland Police Department drove south toward the plaza, a banner was unfurled from the top of the building, declaring it a community center and free school.

At the same time, barricades were built up at either end of 16th street. Garbage cans, tires, wooden palettes and furniture were piled in a vain but aggressive attempt to protect the occupied building. A police helicopter circled lower and lower overhead, drowning out the arguments between peaceful protestors and those looking for confrontation. At 11:33 p.m., I tweeted, "nearly run over by black bloc pushing dumpster into growing barricade."

At some point over the 15 minutes it took me to make my way north to document the police mobilization, those barricades were lit on fire. As I stood at 17th and Telegraph looking south from behind the police line -- first held by Oakland police, then less hardcore troops from San Leandro -- a column of black smoke snaked up between the office buildings. 12:01 a.m.: "three minutes to leave, police: 'mask up!!'"

As police blocked streets leading to the plaza and began firing tear gas down Telegraph, I was not the only one tweeting with urgency. Mayor Quan was also on the soapbox, urging protestors to get in touch in the midst of the melee.




12:06 a.m. Reports that tires are burning and barricades set up on 16th. Protestors need to call my office now.

12:09 a.m. OPD has not taken action. Smoke is from burning barricade. I'll say it again, protestors need to call now.

She hasn't updated since.

At 12:25 a.m., as the flames continued to grow, a dispersal order was made from an LRAD (long range acoustic device) at 17th and Telegraph calling for demonstrators to "disperse down Broadway and Telegraph" directly to the south.

The skirmish line one block to the west at 16th and San Pablo seemed comparatively peaceful. At 12:45 a.m., reporters were clustered behind two lines of police at the intersection, just north of the entrance to Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza.

On the other side of the line, occupier Scott Campbell was filming the police just a few minutes later when one of them shot him in the thigh with a "less lethal" projectile. "The dispersal order I heard said, go south down Broadway," Campbell told me later. Go to page two

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Occupy and the Militarisation of Policing Protest

I don't really know if this is worth posting, it's not as though it's previously unknown. But no matter, if nothing else, I shall go with it if for only this. The people have become the enemy.

USA Patriot Act. Section 802 expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include persons who engage in acts of civil disobedience to coerce or affect the conduct of government by intimidation of the civilian population.

And it's not as though we don't have some of the things mentioned in the article, happening here in Britain. Nothing on the scale of America of course; not yet.

Occupy and the Militarisation of Policing Protest

Why, when protesters are peaceably exercising first amendment rights, is the machinery of counter-terrorism being mobilised?

By Ayesha Kazmi
November 03, 2011
The Guardian

In our not-so-distant history, protest in the United States was handled by local law enforcement that treated demonstrations and marches as mere nuisance, mediating and directing as needed. Today, observing the interaction between Occupy movements and law enforcement suggests something different is afoot. Present Occupy protests are now being defined by a bewildering set of law enforcement strategies – and current practices display a worrying new trend.

While riot police are not necessarily an everyday feature at any given protest, the sheer frequency with which we are witnessing their presence on city streets throughout the United States is enough to give average citizens cause for concern; the excessive force being routinely deployed is alarming.

Within the first few days of Occupy Wall Street, protesters began to notice the presence of the NYPD's Counter Terrorism Unit at Liberty Plaza. Joanne Stocker, who has become a fixture since day one at Wall Street, recalls within the first few days waking up to a Counter Terrorism Unit van, parked on the fringes of Liberty Plaza, which was taking video of her and her friends while they slept.

Protesters at other Occupy encampments give similar accounts. Robin Jacks, a member of Occupy Boston's media team, relates being photographed multiple times by police. Dustin Slaughter, who has spent time both at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia, attests to the presence of the NYPD Counter Terrorism Unit at Liberty Plaza, saying that the Counter Terrorism Unit have been at Liberty Plaza filming on a regular basis. Slaughter also comments: "Philadelphia Police Homeland Security Units have had a regular presence at the Occupy Philadelphia encampment."

Protesters are indeed correct to view the law enforcement they encounter at Occupy with a critical eye. The USA Patriot Act, which had its 10-year anniversary last week, gave the US government virtually unchecked powers to spy and track the activity of ordinary Americans without probable cause right after the 9/11 attacks. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that law enforcement agencies – thus empowered – have shown up at various Occupy protests armed with cameras, most certainly, to keep surveillance on protesters who are merely exercising their first amendment rights.

Reports of targeted arrests of informal "leaders" at Wall Street, Chicago and Boston indicate surveillance measures are operating. In Boston and Chicago, reports of extended and humiliating detentions of targeted occupy "leaders", typically from Direct Action, media, legal and medics groups, are disturbing. Dan Massoglia of the Occupy Chicago media team further reports that arrested individuals were deprived of their phone call, food and water, and that mattresses were removed from cells, while one woman was placed in solitary confinement.

Curfews placed on occupied city parks are equally perplexing. Legislative Plaza, the site for Occupy Nashville, was ordered to be shut down between 10pm and 6am, rendering its occupation impossible. The orders, however, did not follow standard procedure. Instead of being issued by Nashville municipality, the order came from the state of Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Nancy Murray, director of education at the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU, views the various signs of Department of Homeland Security involvement as important indicators that the federal government is orchestrating the policing of Occupy protests throughout the country.

"This would be a big concern because it would show that the federal government is possibly playing an active role in opposing people's rights to free speech and to peaceably assemble," says Murray.

Does this mean that protesters are being treated as terrorists? "It's too early to tell," says Murray. "But it's obvious the feds are watching and observing to get more information … It is possible that the Joint Terrorism Task Force is calling the shots."

"At the beginning of this movement, I could understand why there might have been a presence of Counter Terrorism Units operating at Liberty Plaza – because nobody knew who we were and what we represented," states Stocker. "Now, their presence is just overkill and antagonistic. What we stand for is clear and it is clear we are not terrorists."

Occupy protesters should make themselves familiar with the USA Patriot Act. Section 802 expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include persons who engage in acts of civil disobedience to coerce or affect the conduct of government by intimidation of the civilian population. Furthermore, the US Department of Defence training manuals, until an amendment in 2009, equated protest with "low-level terrorism". Although the DoD changed the wording two years ago, human rights lawyers and activists have lingering concerns about whether the sentiment and intent has caught up with the change.

Finally, there is the disquieting issue of excessive force at Occupy. In the autumn of 2008, the Army Times reported that for the first time, the US Army planned to station an active unit under the control of Northern Command serving as an on-call federal response in times of both natural and man-made emergencies, including terrorist attacks. Training included a non-lethal package, elements of which the US Army has been using in Iraq, designed to subdue unruly individuals. "The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets."

Despite the existence of the National Guard, whose raison d'etre is to augment civilian law enforcement when its capabilities are exceeded, this additional unit, according to the Army Times, may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The excessive force exhibited at some Occupy locations – the use of tear gas; alleged use of rubber bullets and reported presence of sonic weapons – is becoming a pattern. A protester in California, who wished to remain anonymous, recalls experience of a long range acoustic device (LRAD) in Oakland last week:

"I had been tear gassed three times, so when I first saw the sound cannon, I panicked. When the cannon went off, I felt it pulse through me and I instantly felt dizzy and nauseated. At one point, I fell over. I noticed others around me had fallen over as well and some vomited."

Such anti-riot technologies were characterised as inhumane by human rights observers when they were used to subdue unarmed, peaceful protesters during civil unrest in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2007. They have no place in a democratic country. They may be characterised by authorities as "non-lethal", but they can all too easily become lethal if misused by reckless law enforcement agents. The Occupy movement is explicitly a nonviolent exercise of first amendment rights, yet its policing bears all the hallmarks of a chilling militarisation of law enforcement in the United States. Guardian

Photo by Marc Vallée/marcvallee.co.uk

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A Definitive Article on Mississippi's Initiative 26

It was at this point that I intended to feature a Mother Jones article on what the implications of Initiative 26 would be in respect to birth control. However, thanks to a dear reader I can put before you a far more definitive source, not just on the subject of birth control, but of the implications as a whole that this bizarre and extreme proposal would conjure up.

Vote No on 26, Mississippi - Here is why

On November 8th, 2011 in the General Election for Mississippi, there will be three Ballot Initiatives to vote on. 26 - to redefine "person" in our constitution, 27 - to require voter ID (ie disenfranchise voters) and 31 - to restrict the use of eminent domain. The full, actual text of 26 is below. Vote No on 26, Mississippi!

I've put a lot of thought into this initiative. I've tried to keep this updated with the most recent developments. There is a lot of information, so please bear with me and read this through. Where I have supporting documentation, there are links within the text that are blue and underlined.

First, a video.

Rather than embed the video in question, a video I might add, that by its (simple) nature is reminiscent of another, simple message for simple people, that featured many years ago in the next door state of Alabama. But this is but a digression.

No, rather than the featured video, have a look at this one, again linked from the article, but one I would have thought that gives a far starker warning to just what 'Personhood' actually means in real terms in the States that have already enacted this legislation.

The intrusion, by hospitals, prosecutors and law enforcement is absolutely staggering, so much so that I had to replay the clip again to have it confirmed that such nightmare scenarios had indeed come to pass.

Of all the clips that I have ever watched that warn of the effects of religious extremism, nothing but nothing comes close to this one. And this I remind you, is in a country where having a social conscience (socialism) is seen as one step removed from the totalitarianism of a Stalinist state.

I don't know what analogy would best describe what is depicted in these few short minutes, but whatever anyone might choose, they would have to end in, totalitarian state.

The events that are happening in these states is truly frightening, so much so, viewing of this clip should be made mandatory.

The "Personhood" initiative only defines the word "person" in the Mississippi constitution as "every human being from the moment of fertilization." If you think this is an anti-abortion bill, think again. It says nothing about outlawing abortion. It says nothing about outlawing the morning after pill. It says nothing about anything else. All results of the bill will have to be figured out by the police arresting people and the courts deciding what the change to the definition of person means. It might not even outlaw abortion. It might have lots of other, perhaps unintended, consequences.

For instance :

Birth control pills and IUD pregnancy prevention methods would be outlawed by the 'personhood amendment' (because they prevent a fertilized egg - which would instantly become a fully legal 'person' - from attaching to the uterine wall as a rare third stage effect, but it still happens), further increasing these numbers. The "yes" group claims otherwise, even though their own board member, Dr. McMillan says, "I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions." (see the 'lies exposed' link further down for more details)

I have come to believe that the wording of i26 actually targets IVF to put it out of business.


Drinking and smoking during pregnancy would go from just being risky to becoming criminal negligence. Women who have miscarriages would have to endure investigation for possible criminal charges, from negligence up to and including murder. You think not? There is already legal precedent - 15 year old Rennie Gibbs was charged in Mississippi with Depraved Heart Murder in December, 2006 after a miscarriage. (see pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

A commitment to pre-embryonic personhood would require us to investigate these miscarriages to ensure that no foul play was involved in the loss of these persons. This does not necessarily mean that all women experiencing miscarriages would be prosecuted; however, our legal framework requires an investigation when there has been a loss of life.

26 leaves no exception for rape. more

Jesus and Mo.

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Beware The Bogey Man The Disingenuous and The Back Door

We witnessed it with the Patriot Act, although in the case of Bush, even that wasn't enough, Bushco and the American state going on to engage in all kinds of illegal domestic activities, from.... well you name it.

But what we did witness, was the wheeling out the terrorism bogey man and subsequently the enactment of the Patriot act, that did for privacy and civil rights in one fell swoop, what the Taliban did for cultural appreciation. Guardian, video below.

There is another bogey man I want to make mention of, and although not directly related to the main body of this post, it is important that I mention it for reasons manifold.

Voter disenfranchisement has been around in the US for long enough, but is seemingly ever on the increase in the red states of America. And shamelessly so I have to say; well it would be wouldn't it? Shame and Republican, being two words that don't belong in the same sentence.

I'm not going to explain the nuts and bolts of it all, but do Google it for yourselves. It's quite an eye-opener, even if you are somewhat au fait with the US voting system, even more so if you are not.

But it is under the guise of voter fraud, albeit so minuscule that it could, and should be ignored, nevertheless, this is the bogey man that Republican held states and districts offer, quite transparently and shamelessly, as the excuse to enact restrictions, usually in the form of voter ID, on that section of the public that would normally be associated with voting Democrat.

Update: The Guardian has a piece on this.

The Republican 'voter fraud' fraud

All over the US, GOP lawmakers have engineered schemes to make voting more difficult. Well, if you can't win elections fairly… Guardian

More recently and closer to home however, we have witnessed the use of, and not always for reasons noble, that most emotive of bogey men, the paedophile.

And what better example do we need of seeing the paedo bogey man being run out, and for sure without a noble reason in sight, than that of Jim Gamble, recently of the CEOP.

In chronological order I reference three previous posts, all featuring the use of emotive bogey man to further someone's agenda, an agenda I have to say, where the protection of children slips down the ladder of priorities. We only need to recall Jim Gambles attempts to whitewash the McCanns to have that observation confirmed.

The first up then: CEOP: More Toys Out Of The Pram Our bogey man, this time under the guise of cartoon porn, starts proper at the, A comment from the web mark. But please, don't miss out on the comments, they say as much, if not more than the article itself.

That's The Trouble With Hysteria follows next, and it is this post that is the meat and potatoes of it all. Referencing the toys out of the pram article at the outset, it delves a little deeper into the use of the bogey man as tool, but does moves on to cover one or two other points.

Now I know Why is pure Jim Gamble, well it is if you ignore, Ed Smart, Isabel Duarte and Keith Vaz that is. But for the main, it is Gamble, his methods and his empire building.

So to the article in question, two actually, there was something else that caught my eye on the same site.

Here again we see the same bogey man employed, he does get around doesn't he? But what this fellow is proposing, in the name of the bogey man of course, is nothing more than data gathering on a grand scale, and not least shall we say, a tad intrusive?

Details of all internet traffic should be logged, MEP says

A member of the European Parliament wants users' "traffic data", rather than the specific content of online communications, to be logged under expanded EU laws on data storage. This is according to a statement from the European People's Party (EPP) at the European Parliament.

Tiziano Motti, an Italian MEP, wants to extend the EU's Data Retention Directive "to content providers (social networks etc) in order to identify more easily those who commit crimes, including paedophilia through sexual harassment on the net," the EPP said.

"This is a request which does not refer specifically the online content, which falls under the Regulation of Wiretapping, but to the traffic data developed by the person uploading material of any kind on the net: comments, pictures, videos," it said.

The Data Retention Directive was established in 2006 to make it a requirement for telecoms companies to retain personal data for a period – determined by national governments – of between six months and two years. The Commission decided to regulate following terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

Under the Directive, telecoms firms are required to retain identifying details of phone calls and emails, such as the traffic and location, to help the police detect and investigate serious crimes. The details exclude the content of those communications.

Motti's proposals, developed with the help of Italian computer expert Fabio Ghioni (author of Hacker Republic), would involve the data being stored in an internet "black box" enabling the "truth of what happened on the web" to be recorded, according to an automated translation of a report on Ghioni's website (in Italian).

Ghioni's "Logbox" system would involve encrypting the traffic data and giving the "key" to access it to the user, an "authority" and a lawyer, according to an automated translation of a report (in Italian) by Italian Christian magazine, Famiglia Cristiana.

Ghioni said his "precise mechanism" would need the "collaboration" of operating system manufacturers such as Microsoft and Apple to log all activities on their systems, according to the automated translation of the report. That data would be "digitally signed in order to be traced to a specific computer and its user", allowing paedophiles to be identified "regardless of any trick [they may use] to anonymise any illegal activity", and would be inexpensive to operate, Ghioni said, according to the automated translation of the report.

Motti believes that establishing a system for storing "traffic data" would make it possible to enforce suggestions he previously made regarding data retention laws last year, according to the EPP.

In June 2010, the European Parliament backed proposals outlined in a "written declaration" by Motti and fellow MEP Anna Záborská to set up a system to act as an "early warning" system to identify paedophiles and other sex offenders. A written declaration has no legislative effect on its own, but is formally communicated by the Parliament to the European Commission in a bid to influence its policy if adopted.

The adopted declaration also called for the scope of the Directive to cover "data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks" and be extended "to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively".

In April this year, the European Commission said it would update the Data Retention Directive after conceding that it does not always adequately protect privacy or personal data.

The Commission was responding to a critical report that it had commissioned to provide feedback on the impact the Directive was having on businesses and consumers, and how it was being implemented in EU countries.

At the time the Commission said that it would consider strengthening regulations of the storage, access to and use of retained data to improve the protection of personal data.

In May, UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said that the Commission's plans to revise the Directive should be viewed "with caution" after he listed examples of how stored communications data had been used to thwart terrorism and serious crime during a speech at the British Chamber of Commerce in Brussels. Out-Law.com

This is the other article that caught my eye, but don't be mislead by the header, it goes deeper than that.

YouTube asked to remove 135 videos over 'national security issues', Google says

The UK Government asked Google to remove 135 YouTube videos for national security reasons in the first half of this year, the internet search giant has said.

In total UK content removal requests increased by 71% compared to the previous six-month period, Google said in its twice-yearly transparency report.

The Government raised no national security concerns between July and December 2010.

Google fully or partially complied with 82% of the Government's requests, the report said.

In total the UK Government requested the removal of 333 items including web search results, images and videos according to the figures.

It also asked for 61 videos to be removed for 'privacy and security' reasons, three for violence and one for hate speech. 20 videos were removed for 'other' reasons, according to the figures.

Google started publishing its Transparency Report last year. It outlines traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services, as well as providing details of content removal requests and requests for user data received from governments around the world.

Removal requests ask for the removal of content from Google search results or another one of the company's products, including YouTube, it said. Data requests ask for information about Google user accounts or products.

The company said it received 1,273 user data requests relating to 1,443 individual users. It fully or partially complied with 64% of those requests, it said.

A Home Office spokesperson told Out-Law.com that where unlawful online content was hosted in the UK, the police have the power to seek its removal. Where the content is hosted overseas, the Government works with its international partners to have the content removed.

"The government takes the threat of online extremist or hate content very seriously," the spokesperson said.

National governments asked Google to remove content for many different reasons including defamation allegations and breaches of local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography, it said.

Google said that it did not comply with government requests which were not specific enough for the company to know what should be removed, or allegations of defamation through informal letters from government agencies.

"We generally rely on courts to decide is a statement is defamatory according to local law," it said.

Brazil made the most content removal requests, the report said. China only made three removal requests, each covering a large amount of data. Google was unable to disclose the details of one of those requests as it "had reason to believe" the Chinese government had prohibited disclosure, it said.

The search engine received a request from police in the US to remove videos it was alleged depicted acts of police brutality, it revealed.

"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove," it said.

"Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorised in this Report as defamation requests."

Content removal requests from authorities in the US increased by 70% compared to the previous six-month period, it said. In addition, the US authorities made more than 11,000 requests for user data - a higher figure than any other country, the report said. Out-Law.com

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“We don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE”

ICE Agent During Search: "The Warrant is Coming Out of My Balls"
By Jorge Rivas
October 29, 2011

The ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit this week in federal court on behalf of fifteen residents of an apartment complex in Nashville, TN who say they were targets of an unlawful immigration raid. The defendants allege that ICE agents and Metro Nashville police officers forced their way into their homes without warrants. When residents asked the officers to show a warrant, one agentreportedly said, “We don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE.” Then, gesturing to his genitals, the officer reportedly said “the warrant is coming out of my balls.”

The ACLU notes on its website that the Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits warrantless intrusions into private homes — and it applies to both citizens and non-citizens. “In the absence of a judicially authorized warrant, there must be voluntary and knowing consent; ICE officers forcing themselves into someone’s home does not constitute consent.”

“Looking Latino and speaking Spanish is not enough to justify probable cause for questioning and arresting a person” Lindsay Kee, from the ACLU of Tennessee writes in a blog post.

The ACLU’s “Blog of Rights” provides more details of the events:

On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Escobar and Jorge Sarmiento were in bed in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. The doors and windows were all shut and locked. Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting “Police!” and “Policia!” When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, Jesus hid in a closet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to their heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, “We don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE,” and, gesturing to his genitals, “the warrant is coming out of my balls.”

The raids in Nashville aren’t isolated incidents. Similar claims have been filed in recent years following raids on immigrant homes in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Georgia and Northern California.

In 2008, a lawsuit brought by lawyers at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School in Newark found ICE agents systematically entered homes and made arrests without proper warrants during raids to round up “immigration fugitives” in New Jersey.

In both the Nashville and Newark cases, U.S. citizens were detained. In the Newark case, one plaintiff in the lawsuit, Maria Argueta — who’s been a legal immigrant since 2001 — was detained and held for 36 hours, according to the New York Times. ICE agents entered her home by telling her they were police officers searching for a “wanted criminal.” Alternet

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Amy Goodman Democracy Now: Colleagues of Slain Kansas Abortion Doctor George Tiller Continue His Fight for Reproductive Rights

If you ever wondered why I take such an interest in this issue, well first and foremost, I honestly believe that it should be every woman's right to choose whether she carries a foetus to term or not.

I consider the social/economic implications of a woman or girl being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. And those social/economic consequences are by no means trivial, but I'm sure I don't have elaborate on those.

Lastly, and least it must be said, (for now) is the imposition of a biblical morality that has no place in a modern society. There are rich and powerful factions that are working to such ends, the ultimate goal of these extremists being the establishment of the Theocratic States of America, or some such, who want to rule America under biblical law.

Not only that, the social/economic class that wants to impose this morality, is invariably so far removed and above those, who would have the will of the sanctimonious imposed on it. Which as you can well imagine, is about as far away from a democracy as you can get. An occidental Iran if you will. Women's reproductive rights only being the thin end and start of this particular brand of totalitarianism.

Plenty more in the sidebar under the various tags.

Update and an endorsement I guess, of what I've just been rattling on about.

Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All - and What We Can Do About It

Advance copies now available

Also available for Kindle at Amazon and Nook at Barnes&Noble

Publication Date: February 15, 2012
At no time in American history has the United States had such a high percentage of theocratic members of Congress-those who expressly endorse religious bias in law. Just as ominously, at no other time have religious fundamentalists effectively had veto power over one of the country's two major political parties. As Sean Faircloth argues, this has led to the crumbling of the country's most cherished founding principle-the wall separating church and state-and presages yet even more crumbling. Faircloth, a former politician and current executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, moves beyond the symbolism to explore the many ways federal and state legal codes privilege religion in law. He goes on to demonstrate how religious bias in law harms all Americans-financially, militarily, physically, socially, and educationally. Sounding a much-needed alarm for all who care about the future direction of the country, Faircloth offers an inspiring vision for returning America to its secular roots Reviews RDF

Colleagues of Slain Kansas Abortion Doctor George Tiller Continue His Fight for Reproductive Rights

A federal judge has blocked the impact of one of the laws aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, ordering Kansas to restore federal family planning funds to a clinic that claims it suffered "collateral damage" from the law because it would be forced to close, leaving 650 mostly low-income patients without access to reproductive healthcare services. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, and the unaffiliated Dodge City clinic, are challenging a law requiring the state to first allocate Title X funds to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics. This is just the latest development in Kansas, which saw the murder of one of its staunchest supporters of women’s access to abortion: Dr. George Tiller. For more, we are joined by Julie Burkhart, who worked for eight years with Tiller before he was killed in 2009. She is the founder and director of the Trust Women Foundation and PAC, which focuses on protecting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, as well as the rights of the physicians who provide these services.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Kansas City, right on the border between Kansas and Missouri, an area that is ground zero in the push to reduce women’s access to reproductive services, and specifically abortion.

The music you just heard was from Kansas City native, by the way, Charlie Parker.

After the passage of Roe v. Wade, Kansas had 27 abortion providers. Now it has three. All three of those clinics were targeted by a barrage of bills that passed during the last legislative session in Kansas. This was the session that saw the rise of Republican Governor Sam Brownback after Democrat Kathleen Sebelius left to become President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Well, just yesterday, a federal judge blocked the impact of one of the laws aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood. He ordered Kansas to restore federal family planning funds to a clinic that claims it suffered "collateral damage" from the law because it would be forced to close, leaving 650 mostly low-income patients without access to reproductive healthcare services. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and the unaffiliated Dodge City clinic are challenging a law requiring the state to first allocate Title X funds to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics. They argue that under the Supremacy Clause, Kansas cannot impose further restrictions on a federal program. Congress created Title X of the Public Health Services Act to promote family planning services to low-income patients, because it found the lack of access to birth control services exacerbates poverty.

This is just the latest development in Kansas, which saw the assassination in 2009 of one of its staunchest supporters of women’s access to abortion: Dr. George Tiller. The 67-year-old doctor was shot as he attended services at his Wichita, Kansas, church. In a related development, an ethics panel recommended last week that former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline have his state law license suspended over his conduct during criminal investigations of abortion providers, including Dr. Tiller, saying he was "motivated by dishonesty and selfishness."

For more, we’re joined by Julie Burkhart. She worked for eight years with Dr. George Tiller before he was killed in 2009. She’s founder and director of the Trust Women Foundation and PAC, which focuses on protecting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, as well as the rights of the physicians who provide these services.

Even today, our condolences on losing your friend, Dr. Tiller. You were with him days before he was killed in 2009? Transcript

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Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?

Dedicated to all the uniformed lackeys of the global establishment.

Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?




Originally part of this post: Occupy Wall Street Protest: Democracy Now Video

Screenshot

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Martin Luther King: A Time to Break Silence

A fine speech in seven parts one part.

A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

James Russell Lowell

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence

h/t ICH and transcript h/t zzahier for the uploads.

It's not hard to appreciate, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, that this, along with others I imagine, was an extremely dangerous speech, contributing no doubt to King's subsequent assassination one year later. I thought to look into King's assassination and see if there was any light shed on who ordered his execution. Although too late for me to take in the details tonight, I shall leave this link to more or less the first sight I dropped on that might elucidate things a little.

Unread then. http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/king.htm

Update: Democracy Now Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words Includes a good proportion of this and other speeches.

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John Pilger on The 'Getting' of Assange The Guardian and The US Justice System

''much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt if not lawless''

As John Pilger wades into the Guardian and New York Times, rightly giving them all the stick they deserve, reminding us along the way that both papers are in essence little better than the redtops. Both being so much a part of the established order and champions of the status quo as befits any organisation whose days of glory are past.

Given then that a good deal, though far from all of Pilger's article is taken up on these two papers, some might not consider that the one liner I have chosen above, as being the essential part of his essay.

But it is, it is the very essence, the vital part in fact, if your name is Julian Assange, because it is fundamental to what should now be our greatest concern. That the United States of America should never be allowed to get into its rancid clutches, the person of Julian Assange.

It must never come to pass, never ever. Because should such an occasion arise, Assange will disappear into the US prison system as quickly as the past disappeared down Winston's memory hole. Assange, just like the past, quite literally will never to see the light of day again. (Article to follow)

We have witnessed the treatment dished out to Bradley Manning by the ever vindictive mother and father of all hypocrisy, a country gone rogue, or should I say Nation, Nation under God. One Nation under God where the rule of law counts for absolutely nothing. One Nation under God where civil and human rights are valued just as equally. Yes we have all been witness to the treatment that God's Nation has dished out to Bradley Manning; what on earth might Julian Assange expect? More's the point, what kind of treatment might Assange expect if the US categorise him as ''Terrorist?'' (Again, article to follow)

But it is that very same treatment of Bradley Manning that may yet be the saviour of Julian Assange. Whereas I don't hold much hope out for Assange at the hands of the crimson robed, bewigged relics of the past that represent the head of our own judicial serpent, he might, as Pilger points out, fair better with the European Court of Human Rights, because I think it is inevitable that this is where Assange will ultimately end up. Because again as John Pilger notes:

Should Assange win his High Court appeal in London, he could face extradition direct to the United States. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like its predatory military, American jurisdiction recognises few boundaries.

And the European Court reference:

The "paranoia" is shared by the European Court of Human Rights which has frozen "national security" extraditions from the UK to the US because the extreme isolation and long sentences defendants can expect amounts to torture and inhuman treatment.

Skulduggery abounds here, and from many quarters.

The ‘getting’ of Assange and the smearing of a revolution
By John Pilger
6th October 2011

The High Court in London will soon to decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson QC, counsel for the defence, described the whole saga as "crazy". Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer. Both the women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed in Britain.

However, it is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a "grave danger" to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a Temporary Surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. The founder and editor of WikiLeaks, who published the greatest leak of official documents in history, providing a unique insight into rapacious wars and the lies told by governments, is likely to find himself in a hell hole not dissimilar to the "torturous" dungeon that held Private Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower. Manning has not been tried, let alone convicted, yet on 21 April, President Barack Obama declared him guilty with a dismissive "He broke the law".




This Kafka-style justice awaits Assange whether or not Sweden decides to prosecute him. Last December, the Independent disclosed that the US and Sweden had already started talks on Assange's extradition. At the same time, a secret grand jury - a relic of the 18th century long abandoned in this country - has convened just across the river from Washington, in a corner of Virginia that is home to the CIA and most of America's national security establishment. The grand jury is a "fix", a leading legal expert told me: reminiscent of the all-white juries in the South that convicted blacks by rote. A sealed indictment is believed to exist.

Under the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, Assange should be protected, in theory. When he was running for president, Obama, himself a constitutional lawyer, said, "Whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal". His embrace of George W. Bush's "war on terror" has changed all that. Obama has pursued more whistleblowers than any US president. The problem for his administration in "getting" Assange and crushing WikiLeaks is that military investigators have found no collusion or contact between him and Manning, reports NBC. There is no crime, so one has to be concocted, probably in line with Vice President Joe Biden's absurd description of Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

Should Assange win his High Court appeal in London, he could face extradition direct to the United States. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like its predatory military, American jurisdiction recognises few boundaries. As the suffering of Bradley Manning demonstrates, together with the recently executed Troy Davis and the forgotten inmates of Guantanamo, much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt if not lawless.




In a letter addressed to the Australian government, Britain's most distinguished human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who now acts for Assange, wrote, "Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions... it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged."

These facts, and the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice, have been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, perfidious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet held isolated, tagged and under house arrest - conditions not even meted out to a defendant presently facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife.

Books have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the assumption that he is fair game and too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. On 16 June, the publisher of Canongate Books, Jamie Byng, when asked by Assange for an assurance that the rumoured unauthorised publication of his autobiography was not true, said, "No, absolutely not. That is not the position ... Julian, do not worry. My absolute number one desire is to publish a great book which you are happy with." On 22 September, Canongate released what it called Assange's "unauthorised autobiography" without the author's permission or knowledge. It was a first draft of an incomplete, uncorrected manuscript. "They thought I was going to prison and that would have inconvenienced them," he told me. "It's as if I am now a commodity that presents an incentive to any opportunist."

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has called the WikiLeaks disclosures "one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years". Indeed, this is part of his current marketing promotion to justify raising the Guardian's cover price. But the scoop belongs to Assange not the Guardian. Compare the paper's attitude towards Assange with its bold support for the reporter threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for revealing the iniquities of Hackgate. Editorials and front pages have carried stirring messages of solidarity from even Murdoch's Sunday Times. On 29 September, Carl Bernstein was flown to London to compare all this with his Watergate triumph. Alas, the iconic fellow was not entirely on message. "It's important not to be unfair to Murdoch," he said, because "he's the most far seeing media entrepreneur of our time" who "put The Simpsons on air" and thereby "showed he could understand the information consumer".

The contrast with the treatment of a genuine pioneer of a revolution in journalism, who dared take on rampant America, providing truth about how great power works, is telling. A drip-feed of hostility runs through the Guardian, making it difficult for readers to interpret the WikiLeaks phenomenon and to assume other than the worst about its founder. David Leigh, the Guardian's "investigations editor", told journalism students at City University that Assange was a "Frankenstein monster" who "didn't use to wash very often" and was "quite deranged". When a puzzled student asked why he said that, Leigh replied, "Because he doesn't understand the parameters of conventional journalism. He and his circle have a profound contempt for what they call the mainstream media". According to Leigh, these "parameters" were exemplified by Bill Keller when, as editor of the New York Times, he co-published the WikiLeaks disclosures with the Guardian. Keller, said Leigh, was "a seriously thoughtful person in journalism" who had to deal with "some sort of dirty, flaky hacker from Melbourne".




Last November, the "seriously thoughtful" Keller boasted to the BBC that he had taken all WikiLeaks' war logs to the White House so the government could approve and edit them. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the New York Times published a series of now notorious CIA-inspired claims claiming weapons of mass destruction existed. Such are the "parameters" that have made so many people cynical about the so-called mainstream media.

Leigh went as far as to mock the danger that, once extradited to America, Assange would end up wearing "an orange jump suit". These were things "he and his lawyer are saying in order to feed his paranoia". The "paranoia" is shared by the European Court of Human Rights which has frozen "national security" extraditions from the UK to the US because the extreme isolation and long sentences defendants can expect amounts to torture and inhuman treatment.

I asked Leigh why he and the Guardian had adopted a consistently hostile towards Assange since they had parted company. He replied, "Where you, tendentiously, claim to detect a 'hostile toe', others might merely see well-informed objectivity."

It is difficult to find well-informed objectivity in the Guardian's book on Assange, sold lucratively to Hollywood, in which Assange is described gratuitously as a "damaged personality" and "callous". In the book, Leigh revealed the secret password Assange had given the paper. Designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables, its disclosure set off a chain of events that led to the release of all the files. The Guardian denies "utterly" it was responsible for the release. What, then, was the point of publishing the password?

The Guardian's Hackgate exposures were a journalistic tour de force; the Murdoch empire may disintegrate as a result. But, with or without Murdoch, a media consensus that echoes, from the BBC to the Sun, a corrupt political, war-mongering establishment. Assange's crime has been to threaten this consensus: those who fix the "parameters" of news and political ideas and whose authority as media commissars is challenged by the revolution of the internet.




The prize-winning former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook has experience in both worlds."The media, at least the supposedly left-wing component of it," he writes, "should be cheering on this revolution... And yet, mostly they are trying to co-opt, tame or subvert it [even] to discredit and ridicule the harbingers of the new age... Some of [campaign against Assange] clearly reflects a clash of personalities and egos, but it also looks suspiciously like the feud derives from a more profound ideological struggle [about] how information should be controlled a generation hence [and] the gatekeepers maintaining their control." johnpilger.com

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Police Tactic ''Trap and Detain'' Multi-Million Dollar Payouts in The Past

Occupy Wall Street Mass Arrest Resembles Infamous, Costly Police Tactic, Critics Say

WASHINGTON -- Ben Becker, 27, sat in the back of a police-commandeered transit bus on Saturday night, his hands placed tightly behind his back in plastic cuffs. He'd been marching on the Brooklyn Bridge as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. And like hundreds of other activists railing against the inequities of the financial system, he had been swept up in a mass arrest by the New York Police Department.

Becker was one of the first placed in custody. His bus filled up fast. They waited, tied up for hours, and did not know their charges, Becker said. For many, this was new: the march, the chanting, the arrest.

"Some of the teenagers on the bus were extremely nervous," Becker said.

But this was a scenario Becker knew well. He was the named plaintiff in the Partnership for Civil Justice's 2001 federal class-action lawsuit against the District of Columbia, known as Becker v. D.C. That case stemmed from the D.C. police department's mass arrest of anti-IMF/World Bank demonstrators on April 15, 2000. Becker was one of nearly 700 people arrested during that march. He was 16 at the time.

On Tuesday, the Partnership for Civil Justice filed yet another class-action lawsuit -- this one again on behalf of Becker and others arrested on the bridge.

"I was telling the young people -- the teenagers -- the people who had been protesting for the first time, when we were sitting on the bus for hours, I was telling them the similarities to April 2000," said Becker, who is currently an adjunct professor at City College of New York and a graduate student studying history.

The mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge resemble a clear, premeditated police tactic that has come to be known as "trap and detain," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice. The tactic goes something like this, she said: the police permit and escort marchers to proceed with their activities before suddenly corralling them into a closed off area and arresting everyone in one sweep.

The police will use a side street, a park, or, in the case of Occupy Wall Street, a bridge -- usually an area where the people trapped cannot disperse, and where they end up having to beg the police to leave, Verheyden-Hilliard said. Journalists, tourists and legal observers are often caught up in these dragnets. A reason for the arrests is crafted after the fact, she said.

The NYPD says its officers warned the activists not to take the motorway. “There were claims police had not issued warnings,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the police, stated in an email to The New York Times. “In fact, warnings were issued and captured on video.”

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

Verheyden-Hilliard said the fact that the so-called warnings were videotaped shows premeditation. She added that the warnings were bad theater -- police were speaking inaudibly into a bullhorn; they were for show only, she said.

Police departments may have popularized the tactic of snuffing out and intimidating protests during the anti-globalization movement a decade ago that criticized corporate capitalism. But Verheyden-Hilliard said the method has gone international in the last couple of years.

"It's been used in London and in Toronto. They call it 'kettling' there in Toronto," she said. “It's a particular tactic, a refined police tactic -- you get boxed by police on all sides or, even easier, when there are buildings or a bridge and you block the front and the back."

The tactic has been deployed by police in Oakland and other cities as well, according to Verheyden-Hilliard. But it was D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department that made "trap and detain" infamous.

On April 15, 2000, according to court records, demonstrators had gathered in front of the Department of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue NW and marched to a spot close to the International Monetary Fund on 19th Street NW. Police were very much a presence during the march. As the crowd headed toward Dupont Circle, where it was set to disperse, the activists were suddenly penned in on a side street by the police, according to Becker and court records.

The department at the time justified the arrests by arguing that the officers were trying to prevent chaos in the streets. "I apologize for nothing we did," the then-Police Chief Charles Ramsey said at the time. "They have the right to sue us just like they had the right to protest."

Along with the mass arrest, several plaintiffs in the Becker case alleged that they were beaten by D.C. cops. The court case produced a video that showed a police unit charging a group of demonstrators and beating them in the face with batons. The officers had obscured their badge numbers. Another plaintiff said he had been injured with pepper spray and alleged that the cop's attack had been unprovoked.

"There was a police line in riot gear," Becker remembered. "They refused to let us go. We turned around and the police line blocked. We were chanting for almost an hour, 'let us go!'"

Becker said he heard the same chants on the Brooklyn Bridge this past weekend. People were chanting their lungs out when the march started at 3 p.m. Saturday at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, he said. It soon passed City Hall. Only 15 minutes in, thousands of demonstrators had picked out a few favorites.

"Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" they chanted.

"We are the 99 percent!"

And in honor of the recent execution of a Georgia inmate: "We are all Troy Davis!"

Throughout the march, the throngs stayed on sidewalks. If people spilled onto the streets, police were there within seconds to admonish them to get off the roadway, Becker said. Becker and Joshua Stephens, another demonstrator interviewed by HuffPost, said everyone complied without hassle. "It was a very closely-monitored and marshaled protest up to the Brooklyn Bridge," Becker recalled.

There had been a demonstration the previous day at One Police Plaza over a pepper-spray incident. A white-shirt cop had indiscriminately sprayed several women in the face; it had been caught on tape and gone viral. Becker said a thousand people showed up and said their piece without getting hassled by police.

The march became a bottleneck at the bridge, Becker said. The demonstrators first had to cross a street and then pass a narrow entranceway. Becker said he saw no cops as he passed on to the bridge.

When Marcel Cartier, 27, started marching on the bridge's motorway, he said the police only insisted on keeping one lane open for cars. "We began marching on the street with police right next to us not saying anything," he told HuffPost. "The most that was said -- 'Excuse me brother, could you move over?' They kept one lane open for cars. It was fine. It was perfectly okay for us to be on that street on the bridge."

After about 15 minutes on the bridge, the march came to a halt as the police formed a line and stopped the marchers, Becker said. Cartier and Becker both moved up to the front.

A police official took out a piece of paper and read from it into a bullhorn. "It was inaudible," Becker said. "I couldn't hear."

Cartier didn't get the message either. "I heard absolutely nothing," he said. "No announcement that they were going to arrest people." He didn't know he was in trouble until three others were hauled away. Then a cop pointed at him and a few officers pulled him out and cuffed him, he said. He was the fourth activist arrested that day.

Becker, before he was arrested, asked an officer: "Why are you doing this?" He pressed that the police were the ones blocking traffic. Another cop grabbed him and escorted him to the police bus, he said. It would be the second arrest in his life, the first being in April 2000.

"I certainly was not expecting or wanting to be having a repeat encounter," Becker said. "The arrests in 2000 were horrible for the people that went through them...There is still a lot of legal work to be done to correct that. This movement that's developing has to take this on as a major issue."

The April 2000 lawsuit resulted in record settlement with the District of Columbia in 2009 agreeing to pay $13.7 million to those arrested. The litigation also resulted in a ban on the "trap and detain" tactic. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman wrote that it reminded him of the old discredited police responses to anti-Vietnam War protesters -- "when thousands of demonstrators were arrested on a theory of 'group' probable cause on the steps of the Capitol, in West Potomac Park, and on the streets of the District of Columbia."

A subsequent case was brought against the Metropolitan Police Department over the arrest of 400 individuals in Pershing Park in September 2002 for, once again, demonstrations involving anti-globalization activists.

Like the other "trap and detain" cases, the police surrounded the downtown-D.C. park and hauled away everyone inside -- including tourists and nurses who weren’t necessarily involved but were merely taking a break from a nearby convention. That case, also filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice, was settled with the city in late 2009 for $8.25 million. A second lawsuit stemming from Pershing Park has yet to reach a settlement.

The NYPD, Verheyden-Hilliard said, should expect a similar fight. "I think people have to recognize the police are acting deliberately and intentionally," she said. "It's not that they're reacting to some protest or misconduct or that they're overreaching or maybe they had probable cause to arrest someone. They did not have probable cause to arrest anyone. They have been engaged in a pattern and practice to suppress dissent for years."

"They ordered the arrest buses from Rikers," she added. "When you are ordering arrest buses, you are intending to make mass arrests." huffpo

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More Stormtrooper Tales From The Streets of New York (Video)

Update: The Revolution Begins at Home AlterNet

Lawrence O'Donnell on Police Brutality at Occupy Wall Street
27 September 2011
by: Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC | Video Report

This weekend a few troublemakers turned a peaceful protest against Wall Street greed into a violent burst of chaos. The troublemakers carried pepper spray and guns and were wearing badges. Truthout

It was only Monday evening as it happens, that a friend was relating the story of her friend who was taking his first vacation somewhere in Florida. Having just arrived at the apartment that he was staying in, he wandered down to the grocery store to buy milk etc.

Taking a tourist's interest in things novel, he looked at two cops sat in a cruiser, the next thing he knew, he was slammed against a wall with a gun to to his head to the accompanying shouts of ''What the fuck are you looking at?'' Nice Huh?

Below is a post that was in progress, but now I shall post it as is. It was going to be, and still is for that matter, dedicated to all the men and woman around the world that find themselves behind the wire.

It's not designed to be Irish political specifically, the application of the songs is universal.

The Men Behind The Wire

Previous:

Occupy Wall Street Protest: Democracy Now Video

Don't Flush The Loo In Oceania

This Is What A Police State Looks Like

Indiana Official Police State

Tyranny In The Heartland. Amerika's Stormtrooper Police

There's plenty more under the Fascism tag, but I think you get the idea.

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Occupy Wall Street Protest: Democracy Now Video

Perhaps it's because I don't live in the land of self delusion, or America for that matter, although in reality they are one and the same, but for everything I have ever read, or everything I have ever watched pertaining to protest and civil disobedience during the last hundred years, is but one thing common.

That in this home of the brave, land of the free, how in an instant, do America's finest, strip away any pretence of being impartial representatives of law and order, and show themselves for what the truly are; stormtroopers of both the establishment and the rich and powerful.

Which side are you on boys, which side are you on?

The same Natalie Merchant rendition only different graphics. The first being solely US related.

Harlan County USA

Occupy Wall Street Protest Enters Second Week; 80 Arrested at Peaceful March

It is day 10 of the "Occupy Wall Street" campaign. On Saturday, more than 80 protesters were arrested as hundreds took part in yet another march to Wall Street. Many of them were committing civil disobedience by walking in the street, but some say they were on the sidewalk when officers with the New York City Police Department used nets and physical force to break up the crowd. Videos uploaded to YouTube show officers pepper-spraying protesters in the face from close range, punching demonstrators and dragging people through the street. Since Sept. 17, thousands have gathered near in New York City’s financial district near Wall Street to decry corporate greed. Many have said they have been inspired by other popular uprisings from Spain to the Arab Spring. On Sunday, protesters issued a communiqué calling for the resignation of the NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly and for a dialogue with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Thanks to Democracy Now!’s Ryan Devereaux and Jon Gerberg for this report. Transcript

Related:
The Holy Ghost People, Taking Up Serpants and Tales From Stump Holler

Youtube search: Which side are you on

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