Egypt in the Throes of Another Revolution

To defeat cruel leaders and a country with a tiny elite is very hard. You can kill the monster who officially runs things, but quickly a new monster grabs the reins of power and re-imposes the cruel regime. That is exactly what is happening in Egypt.

Here is a bit from an excellent article by Ahdaf Soueif in the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Since Friday the military has openly engaged with civilian protesters in the heart of the capital. The protesters have been peacefully conducting a sit-in in Ministries' Street to signal their rejection of the military's appointment of Kamal Ganzouri as prime minister.

Ganzouri announced that no violence would be used to break up the Cabinet Office sit-in. Moments later the military took on the protesters. For a week Military Police and paratroopers had kidnapped activists from the streets, driven them off in unmarked vehicles, interrogated them and beaten them. On Friday they kidnapped Aboudi – one of the "Ultras" of the Ahli Football Club. They gave him back with his face so beaten and burned that you couldn't see features – and started the street war that's been raging round Ministries' Street for the last three days.

The protesters have thrown rocks at the military. The military has shot protesters, and thrown rocks, Molotov cocktails, china embossed with official parliament insignia, chairs, cupboards, filing-cabinets, glass panes and fireworks. They've dragged people into parliament and into the Cabinet Office and beaten and electrocuted them – my two nieces were beaten like this.

They beat up a newly elected young member of parliament, jeering: "Let parliament protect you, you son of … ". They took a distinguished older lady who's become known for giving food to the protesters and slapped her repeatedly about the face till she had to beg and apologise. They killed 10 people, injured more than 200, and they dragged the unconscious young woman in the blue jeans – with her upper half stripped – through the streets.

The message is: everything you rose up against is here, is worse. Don't put your hopes in the revolution or parliament. We are the regime and we're back.

Politics in America

The US is one of the few countries in the world where legal fictions have the rights of citizens and human being have "rights" only insofar they they don't try to exercise them. It is an Alice In Wonderland country.

Here is Robert Reich:

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.

First things first. The Supreme Court’s rulings that money is speech and corporations are people have now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats.

Such millionaires and billionaires aren’t contributing their money out of sheer love of country. They have a more self-interested motive. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.

Wall Street is punishing Democrats for enacting the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (weak as it is) by shifting its money to Republicans. The Koch brothers’ petrochemical empire has financed, among many other things, candidates who will vote against environmental protection.

This tsunami of big money into politics is the real public nuisance. It’s making it almost impossible for the voices of average Americans to be heard because most of us don’t have the dough to break through. By granting First Amendment rights to money and corporations, the First Amendment rights of the rest of us are being trampled on.

This is where the Occupiers come in. If there’s a core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy.

Yet when Occupiers seek to make their voices heard — in one of the few ways average people can still be heard — they’re told their First Amendment rights are limited.

The New York State Court of Appeals along with many mayors and other officials say Occupiers can picket — but they can’t encamp. Yet it’s the encampments themselves that have drawn media attention (along with the police efforts to remove them).

A bunch of people carrying pickets isn’t news. When it comes to making views known, picketing is no competition for big money .

Yet if Occupiers now shift tactics from passive resistance to violence, it would spell the end of the movement. The vast American middle class that now empathizes with the Occupiers would promptly desert them.

I may be wrong, but if you refuse to give political rights to people, then they will organize and seize those rights by bloody revolution. The words of Thomas Jefferson are prophetic: The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

What the Elite Offers When You Ask for Democracy

The ultra-rich don't like the bottom 99% "demonstrating". It is just too messy. Those 99% don't have a clear agenda. They don't have polished spokesmen who can step forth with a program.

The elite just don't like the messiness of "democracy". There are too many loose ends. It can't easily be controlled from one centre. So here is what the ultra-rich offer:



The rich like to leave running things to themselves. They have the money, so they can afford to buy the politicians, the police, the judges, the lawyers, the bureaucracy. The above video shows the elite of Egypt beating "good sense" into the heads of recalcitrant Egyptians, foolish people in the bottom 99% who don't understand that their "job" is to serve the rich. The military and police are simply on the street to remind the bottom 99% where their place is in society.

Picture of the Day

Why is democracy messy? Why does it take such a large amount of insult and injury to arouse the populace? Just look at what this woman will soon discover as she attempts to voice her viewpoint.

The state loves to tell you about your "rights" but don't you dare try to exercise them. People are smart enough to know that, so it takes a hell of a lot to arouse the populace. But when it gets outraged, it tends to take down not just the worst of the worst, but most of the worst and even a fair amount of the innocent. A social change is a messy affair. It is so much nicer to use the instruments of democracy to effect change, but when the elites refuse to listen, then you get blood in the streets.

The "Bug Spray" Approach to Policing

When protesters peacefully attempt to make a point, the police at UC Davis bring out the pepper spray and douse them like you would use bug spray to kill noxious insects. Then they knee them on the ground and cuff them. Yep... that's how you handle "violent" student protest...



It is pretty obvious that these goons would happily shake the canister of Zyklon-B onto the "subhuman rats" in the Nazi extermination camps. This is the same kind of mindless robotic "policing" that allowed the police in the the US in 1942 to brutally round up Japanese Americans, forcing them to abandon their property, and put them onto "reservations" in badlands in remote America. This was a blatant disregard for Constitutional rights. It is the same "policing" that turned dogs loose on young black demonstrators in the deep South in the early 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the use of high pressure fire hoses that peeled the skin right off kids, the use of trunchions to "crack skulls" to ensure that blacks in the Deep South would give up their fight for a right to vote, a right to share public facilities in Jim Crow racist America.

Obviously none of the lessons of the past have been learned. The police in America today carry out the same bullying and beatings and pepper-spraying. We are lucky that they haven't yet pulled a Ludlow Massacre where they set up the machine guns and then deliberately fire machine gun belt of bullets after machine gun belt. This is "justice" in America. This is the America where you have a "right" to free speech except when it is done in public or on the street or at an inconvenient time or in a manner that is considered "unsanitary" or "unsightly" by the powers that be.

And here's a bit from the UK... This is what you get when you protest there. This is a young girl's face after a "rubber bullet" has left its mark...


Get more details here.

Update 2011nov20: Here is a video of students at UC Davis shaming the chancellor of the university for the vicious "bug spraying" incident:



Here is a link to an outraged assistant professor of English, Nathan Brown, of the UC Davis faculty demanding the resignation of Katehi. It outlines the case against her for brutalizing the peaceful and legitimate protestors.

My personal view is that "ethical demonstrating" only works when those who have harmed you have a conscience and are moved by ethics. I'm not convinced that many of the elites have much of a conscience. I would like to think that they do, but I find precious little evidence of it. I find it profoundly sad that the bottom 99% have to take police abuse, beatings, and killings while those on top are only asked to "show regret" for their actions. Regret doesn't cut it for me. If Chancellor Katehi had any moral integrity, she would resign immediately and go about personally apologizing to the students of the university. Instead, the above video shows her walking past the powerless and not acknowledging them. Why should she? She is powerful. She is paid big bucks. She had a golden parachute. They are simply students who will suffer 10% unemployment when the graduate. They will be forced to "conform" to the dictates of an elitist society that believes that 0.1% should get 20% of the income and wealth of the society.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. led non-violent protests. They make great video and wonderful stories, but I remember the frustration of the youth of the 1960s in the pitiful "fruits" of a massive effort at attempting to change the powers that be. The Jim Crow laws disappeared slowly, but there were literally hundreds of deaths by truly wonderful and noble people. A sacrifice that wasn't shared by the vicious thugs who beat protesters or the brutal cops who turn dogs loose on them.

The only effective tool for change is democracy. The use of a ballot instead of a bullet. But sitting peacefully as a powerful person walks by doesn't strike me as an effective technique. I would have much preferred the crowd repeating "shame, shame, shame" or something more harsh that simply sitting and letting the symbol of power walk unmolested to her car. I suspect she laughed herself silly on the drive home in that car. She had just experiences the sharp end of Obama-style "change you can believe in". In short, a worthless, useless "peaceful" demonstration. That effort would be better spent organizing ordinary people to vote their interests in elections at all levels in society.

Update 2011nov22: Here is a bit from a post by Matt Taibbi on his Rolling Stone blog:

Glenn Greenwald’s post at Salon says this far better than I can, but I think there are undeniable conclusions one can draw from this incident. The main thing is that the frenzied dissolution of due process and individual rights that took place under George Bush’s watch, and continued uncorrected even when supposed liberal constitutional lawyer Barack Obama took office, has now come full circle and become an important element to the newer political controversy involving domestic corruption and economic injustice.

As Glenn points out, when we militarized our society in response to the global terrorist threat, we created a new psychological atmosphere in which the use of force and military technology became a favored method for dealing with dissent of any kind. As Glenn writes:

The U.S. Government — in the name of Terrorism — has aggressively para-militarized the nation’s domestic police forces by lavishing them with countless military-style weapons and other war-like technologies, training them in war-zone military tactics, and generally imposing a war mentality on them. Arming domestic police forces with para-military weaponry will ensure their systematic use even in the absence of a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil… It’s a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one’s fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters.

Why is that such a small step? Because of the countless decisions we made in years past to undermine our own attitudes toward the rule of law and individual rights.

...

The UC Davis instant crystallized all of this in one horrifying image. Anyone who commits violence against a defenseless person is lost. And the powers that be in this country are lost. They’ve been going down this road for years now, and they no longer stand for anything.

All that tricked-up military gear, with that corny, faux-menacing, over-the-top Spaceballs stormtrooper look that police everywhere seem to favor more and more, it’s a symbol of the increasingly total lack of ideas behind all that force.

It was bad enough when we made police defend the use of torture and extrajudicial detention; now they’re being asked to defend mass theft, Lloyd Blankfein’s bailout-paid bonus, the principle of Angelo Mozilo not doing jail time.

How strong can anyone defending those causes be? These people are weak and pathetic, and they’re getting weaker. And boy, are they showing it. Way to gear up with combat helmets and the submachine guns, fellas, to take on a bunch of co-eds sitting Indian-style. Maybe after work you can go break up a game of Duck-Duck-Goose at the local Chuck E Cheese. I’d bring the APC for that one.

Bravo to those kids who hung in there and took it. And bravo for standing up and showing everyone what real strength is. There is no strength without principle. You have it. They lost it. It’s as simple as that.

Go read the whole post by Matt Taibbi.

And make sure you go read the Glenn Greenwald article at Salon that Matt Taibbi points at:

Despite all the rights of free speech and assembly flamboyantly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the reality is that punishing the exercise of those rights with police force and state violence has been the reflexive response in America for quite some time. As Franke-Ruta put it, “America has a very long history of protests that meet with excessive or violent response, most vividly recorded in the second half of the 20th century.” Digby yesterday recounted a similar though even worse incident aimed at environmental protesters.

The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.

The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been “persuaded” — through fear and intimidation — to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put it: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it’s only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest.

...

Pervasive police abuses and intimidation tactics applied to peaceful protesters — pepper-spray, assault rifles, tasers, tear gas and the rest — not only harm their victims but also the relationship of the citizenry to the government and the set of core political rights. Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights.

Here is a bit from a talk entitled "With Liberty and Justice for Some" given by Glenn Greenwald that focuses on the abuse of Bradley Manning:



Update 2011nov23: Here is a bit from an article by Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post:

Pepper spray, which in many countries is defined as a weapon and is often illegal for civilians to possess, can cause tissue damage, respiratory attacks and, in rare cases, death. It is considered far superior during crowd control to more violent forms of self-defense. But, like Tasers, which can also cause severe injury and death, there is increasing concern than it is being used by law enforcement without discretion or proper understanding of its dangers. The UC-Davis video will only amplify those concerns.

The police officer emerges from the margins of the scene, walks in front of a line of students on the ground with arms interlaced, and brandishes the can briefly in a gesture that feels both bored and theatrical, like someone on a low-budget television commercial displaying a miracle product or a magician holding the flowers he is about make disappear. He then proceeds to spray a thick stream of orange liquid into their faces. The crowd surrounding the students erupts in cries of “shame, shame,” questioning the police about whom they are protecting.

The spraying is slow and deliberate, one face after another, down the line. It is the multiple victims that makes it so chilling, recalling the mechanization of violence during the 20th century. Pepper spray, of course, isn’t meant to be lethal, and it was deployed during an effort to enforce university policy rather than a state-sanctioned campaign of violence. But the apparent absence of empathy from the police officer, applying a toxic chemical to humans as if they were garden pests, is shocking. Even more so because it is a university police officer.

University police generally operate under a more benignly paternalistic understanding of the law than other police. They are there to ensure the safety of the students, to help with the messier details of the in loco parentis function of the university.

A half-century ago, many parents told their children to ask a cop for help in case of trouble. With police forces now defining their role as more military than civilian, viewing citizens with suspicion and often treating them with hostility, that has changed. Saying the wrong thing to a cop, asking for a warrant before a search, throwing a snowball at an unmarked cop car, legally taking a picture of an official building, questioning a Capitol police officer about why a public area has been closed can lead to threats of arrest, or worse. But on university campuses, the police are often seen as they generally once were: your friend.

The UC-Davis police force has defended the use of pepper spray. An independent police expert quoted by the Associated Press calls pepper spray a “compliance technique,” in language eerily reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration’s euphemisms for torture.

Even if it is determined that the police followed proper procedures, the video might have lasting power for outrage, tapping into growing concerns not that police are abusing standard policies, but that our policies might need to be revised. Indeed, the disjunction between how the UC-Davis police read this video (they see an officer doing his job) and how many others read this video (they see a man in a uniform causing great and unnecessary pain to unresisting students) indicates that we have reached a kind of intellectual impasse about what kind of police we want and what limits should be placed on their power.

...

UC-Davis has announced an investigation into the officer’s action and whether it was merited and legal. It is a familiar pattern — the video is uploaded, it spreads, outrage develops and then the institution issues a seemingly reluctant and reactive plea for caution. We don’t know the context. We don’t know what really happened.

That kind of caution grew out of an age of skepticism in response to the manipulation of photographs by unscrupulous agents, including totalitarian governments. It was an appropriate skepticism, engendering a valuable resistance to the extraordinary power of images to seem transparently truthful.

The times may be changing. Video can be as easily manipulated as photography, but multiple videos from multiple perspectives, arriving within hours or minutes after an event, require a different kind of skepticism. The repeated claims by officials that our eyes are lying begin to seem more and more incredible.

Update 2011nov24: Here is a bit from a post by Judy Stone on the Scientific American blog:

There are reports of the efficacy of capsaicin in crowd control, but little regarding trials of exposures. Perhaps this is because pepper spray is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, as a pesticide and not by the FDA.

The concentration of capsaicin in bear spray is 1-2%; it is 10-30% in “personal defense sprays.”

While the police might feel reassured by the study, “The effect of oleoresin capsicum “pepper” spray inhalation on respiratory function,” I was not. This study met the “gold standard” of clinical trials, in that it was a “randomized, cross-over controlled trial to assess the effect of Oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray inhalation on respiratory function by itself and combined with restraint.” However, while the OC exposure showed no ill effect, only 34 volunteers were exposed to only 1 sec of Cap-Stun 5.5% OC spray by inhalation “from 5 ft away as they might in the field setting (as recommended by both manufacturer and local police policies).”

By contrast, an ACLU report, “Pepper Spray Update: More Fatalities, More Questions” found, in just two years, 26 deaths after OC spraying, noting that death was more likely if the victim was also restrained. This translated to 1 death per 600 times police used spray. (The cause of death was not firmly linked to the OC). According to the ACLU, “an internal memorandum produced by the largest supplier of pepper spray to the California police and civilian markets” concludes that there may be serious risks with more than a 1 sec spray. A subsequent Department of Justice study examined another 63 deaths after pepper spray during arrests; the spray was felt to be a “contributing factor” in several.

A review in 1996 by the Division of Epidemiology of the NC DHHS and OSHA concluded that exposure to OC spray during police training constituted an unacceptable health risk.

Update 2011nov25: Here is an interview with Nathan Brown, professor of English at UC Davis, who has written a letter calling for chancellor Katehi to resign. He appears at 2:45 into the video:

Use of "Appropriate Force"

The police in the US are a power unto themselves and have gone beyond reasonable. They are brutes and bullies working to keep the billionaries safely ensconced in their ultra-rich homes looking down on the impoverished and starving. The police work to make blood flow to keep the ultra-rich happy.

From the UK's Guardian newspaper, protester and three-tour American veteran Kayvan Sabehgi was beaten by Oakland police during the Occupy protest's general strike on 2 November. Sabehgi, who was 'completely peaceful', according to witnesses, was left with a lacerated spleen...



And here is just one of many videos of US veterans being arrested for attempting to exercise their 1st Amendment Rights. So much for all the lip service about "honouring their service". When it comes to money, these poor suckers were cannon fodder to win the wars that the rich wanted, not the wars of the people, by the people, and for the people...

Public Enemy #1

US police have gone after an 84 year-old-woman, arresting her, pepper spraying her, at an Occupy Seattle demonstration. This is "justice" in America...



It is incredible that the police would become violent just when the group was very publicly deciding to go home. It shows that the police are not "forced" into brutal behaviour. This is gratuitous brutality just to "prove" that the cops are "in control". This is what the top 1% want. They want to keep the bottom 99% scared and disorganized. So they intimidate and brutalize.

As everybody knows... it is the 84 year old grannies who are the real threat to America. Not the trillion dollar crimes of Wall Street that have created 25 million unemployed and 10 million families losing their homes.

It is interesting that she ties the violence and repression from on top with the kind of violent repression used by Nazi Germany. She's lived the politics and she can testify to reality on the ground. And as she points out, the media don't carry any stories about real popular protest. Big corporations can "buy" the news coverage they want. The poor and middle class have to fight via protests in the street to get any coverage.

I don't buy all the "issues" of the left and political activists, but most of the time they are speaking the truth. They need to be heard. Democracy is the only tool to achieve a true civil society in which all interests get represented fairly. A real civil society needs an uncorrupted politics and a free media and a citizenry who pay attention and get out to vote. This combination is hard to achieve. That is why democracy so often is dysfunctional. But ultimately democracy is the only political system that can assure a fair society. Anything else leads, in the long run, to repression and collapse.

Update 2011nov18: Here's a photo of the woman being helped after being pepper-sprayed:

Click to Enlarge

Higher Education in America

The government has decided that classroom professors are not getting "the message" across to students and have unleashed the police with batons to club and spear peacefully protesting students. This is a very important lesson about "power" in America:



More details from Berkleyside.

The top 0.01% control the politicians, the courts, and the police. So when students don't respect the right of the rich to plunder the middle class and impoverish the poor, then a little "school lesson" is needed with billy clubs to "beat some sense" into students.

Sadly, that is America. Land of the "free to be beaten up". Gone are the days of free speech and the right to assemble. These are they days when you need to buy your political rights just like the billionaires have so successfully done.

Update 2011nov13: Here is a bit from the student newspaper The Daily Californian:

For UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Barnard, the most disempowering moment of Wednesday night was not when he was repeatedly hit with a police baton, cracking one of his ribs. Instead, the most disturbing moment of his experience came afterward, when he says an officer told him he had “no rights.”

According to Barnard, who was arrested along 31 others as part of Wednesday night’s Occupy Cal demonstration, after he was handcuffed with a zip tie and taken into Sproul Hall, a police officer asked him for identifying information. Rather than immediately answering, Barnard said he asked the officer about his rights and when he would be allowed to speak to a lawyer. It was then that the officer told him he had no rights and, after Barnard disputed the statement, said he would be recorded as “uncooperative” on his police forms, according to Barnard.

“You didn’t have a voice,” Barnard said.

The experience described by Barnard and his fellow protesters’ violent treatment at the hands of the police — supported by video footage taken at the demonstration — has led to wide-spread condemnation of the police response. Critics ranging from campus student groups to members of the UC Berkeley faculty and even the national media have spoken out against the police officers’ use of force.

According to a campus-wide email sent by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other top campus administrators, the campus Police Review Board will investigate whether police used excessive force given the circumstances.

Go read the original news story to get all the details and the embedded links.

I love it when the official have "an official investigation". It is just a way to bury the item. These students were assaulted by the police. No policeman was arrested for assault. The "investigation" will find "extenuating circumstances" and the whole thing will be buried. That is how the elites make sure that nobody rocks the boat. You have no rights. Sure you have lots of "paper" rights, but money in America owns all the "rights". Until the people change that, the standard of living in the US will continue to decline and the government will continue on its path to banana republic.

Update2011nov14: Here is a bit from a well thought out analysis of the hypocrisy of the UC Berkeley authorities by Aaron Bady on his blog zunguzungu. It also has more video and some detailed comments and specifics. But the key point is this:

I feel a lot of déjà vu in reading about these events. According to the UC administration, who have offered a lot of empty words in support of Occupy Wall Street in past emails, it wasn’t the aims of the protesters they opposed but their tactics. As they go on to elaborate:

This decision is largely governed by practical, not philosophical, considerations. We are not equipped to manage the hygiene, safety, space, and conflict issues that emerge when an encampment takes hold and the more intransigent individuals gain control. Our intention in sending out our message early was to alert everyone that these activities would not be permitted. We regret that, in spite of forewarnings, we encountered a situation where, to uphold our policy, we were required to forcibly remove tents and arrest people.

Allow me to retort: what they really mean is that the University of California is not, in fact, governed by “a philosophy,” but by the reverse: an active refusal to require a philosophy in justifying its choices. That way he can write that “UC Berkeley as an institution shares many of the highest principles associated with the OWS movement,” but also actively work in opposition to people’s attempts to put those principles into practice. This is an arbitrary line in the sand, drawn by an administration that is unflinchingly willing to use whatever means necessary to maintain their ability to draw arbitrary lines. Your philosophy is not wanted here, they are saying; in the name of practical considerations — which they define — you will be governed by government. And so the fact that students are trying to “democratize the regents,” as a popular chant puts it, is exactly the threat. A sentence like this one:

We are not equipped to manage the hygiene, safety, space, and conflict issues that emerge when an encampment takes hold and the more intransigent individuals gain control.

is just another way of saying that when “intransigent” individuals refuse to acknowledge the university’s authority, the administration won’t be able to exercise its authority, so it will therefore need to exercise its authority. This is exactly as tautological and contradictory a line of “reasoning” as it sounds, a rhetorical snake eating its own tail. To maintain hygiene, the students cannot use tents to keep themselves warm; to manage the space, students must be kept out; to address “conflict issues,” students had to be attacked; and to keep the students safe, they will be beaten.

The language falls apart at this point, because it’s not “philosophy” that’s driving any of this, but the question of who has the right to speak and be heard about what the university is for. Which is why the next paragraph truly descends into absurdity, the one where you realize you are not dealing with an educator, but with a university Ministry of Truth:

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers’ efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them.

What he describes — occupying space in a way that nonviolently prevents the police from doing what they want — is actually the very definition of “non-violent civil disobedience.” On the one hand, it is utterly non-violent: linking arms and holding on to each other as the police try to knock you apart is not “violent” but is precisely the opposite. It is the endurance of violence. And second, it is civil disobedience, again, precisely by definition. They were disobeying civil authorities, obeying the authority of their own consciences and solidarity instead

I want to skim past this sentence on to the next part, however which is in some ways the most remarkable part: he argues that the “tradition of peaceful civil disobedience,” which deserves honor, is a tradition of obedience to civil authorities. He says that “we honor” those who do not obstruct the administration’s decisions, and that those who are “acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” are, it turns out, those who obey authority.

This is not even ideology. This is simply nonsense. UCI professor Rei Terada has a great piece on what the administrator’s language might mean, but for me the important point to make is a much simpler one: they aren’t defending what they did — which would require admitting what they did — but only obfuscating it in language so bad that I can’t decide whether to call it vapid or actively dishonest. “Civil Disobedience” has always been, manifestly and unmistakably, a tradition of disobeying the civil authorities. I feel silly even needing to spell that out. And I feel embarrassed to work as an educator in the employ of anyone who would stand behind such specious stupidity. Linking arms and occupying the space between the police and their objective is a tactic used by just about every example of civil disobedience I can think of. It is, quite frankly the single best and most iconic example of the thing he says it is not. He is chewing up these words until they have become meaningless. Calling this language “Orwellian” is not hyperbole or exaggeration.

If he wants, Chancellor Birgeneau can approve of what the police did on Wednesday. If he wants to believe and argue that it is justifiable to try to break the bodies of students in hope of breaking their spirits, then let him believe it and argue it and then try to justify it. Let him tell us that when students put up tents on Sproul Plaza, the police will beat them until they take those tents down. Let him declare forthrightly that when students stand on grass at the wrong time and place — a time that is subject to the capricious and arbitrary decrees of the police and those who call them in — the administration believes its authority and responsibility is to beat them until they comply.

They have not said this. Birgeneau and his executive administrators are hiding behind meaningless language rather than talk openly and honestly about what everyone who was there or has seen those videos knows to be true: the UC will hurt you if you obstruct them or challenge their authority, even nonviolently. Free speech is a function of free thinking, and on the campus of free speech, Birgeneau should be free to say and think what he pleases, even if what he says is that those who do not obey will be beaten into submission. But let us hear him say that, if that’s what he believes. Let him admit and stand behind the decision he has made.

Oakland Police at Beating Up People... Again

I'm pissed at the small group of idiots who broke off from the Occupy Oakland demonstration and trashed an area of downtown Oakland, but that doesn't justify the police going beserk, yet again, and severely injuring another military vet.

From Reuters:

A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.

The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.

Highland General Hospital confirmed that Sabeghi was a patient in the intensive care unit there.

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."

The Oakland Police Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Sabeghi's name was listed by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office as one of more than 100 people arrested that night.

The veterans group said in a statement that police struck Sabeghi with nightsticks on his hands, shoulders, ribs and back, and that in addition to a lacerated spleen he suffered from internal bleeding.

Clashes between police and demonstrators broke out in the early morning hours of Thursday in downtown Oakland following a day of mostly peaceful rallies and marches citywide against economic inequality and police brutality.

The Port of Oakland was forced to shut down during those demonstrations, sparked in part by the severe injury of another former serviceman, ex-Marine Scott Olsen, during a confrontation with police last week.

Olsen's injury became a rallying cry for the anti-Wall Street protest movement nationwide.

When crazies start to trash things, all honest protesters should immediately leave the scene and desist from protesting to give police free rein to go after the violent idiots who are intent on trashing things and not on legitimate protest. But police have got to stop illegally attacking honest protesters and beating them to within an inch of death. Those police officers need to be identified and charged with attempted murder.

Social change is ugly. The only truly successful technique requires determination and patience. You have to push for change and not be tempted by violence of idiotic "press coverage". The media will distort the message and tempt you into short-cutting the process of education and legitimate social change. The media wants to see the "protest" as a product. They have no interest in real change. So honest and dedicated demonstrators have to ignore the lure of the press and "instant fame". Real change is anonymous and done one-by-one. The glory hounds and the self-appointed "leaders" are mostly sociopaths interested in manipulating things for their benefit. You have to avoid them. You have to find like-minded friends who will join in for the long haul.

Rogue Police

In theory the police are agents of the people, their job is to "serve and protect" their community. But for some, the rogue elements among the police, those with a pathological thuggish personality, this becomes a "license to kill". Here is an example:



And this:



Sadly, the police argue that this was "justified force" and the responsible thugs were given only the lightest of wrist slaps. Why?

The violence of white collar crime, the Wall Street banks have thrown 25 million people out of work and foreclosed on 10 million home owners as part of a fraudulent crime spree. The violence of these perpetrators has not resulted in a single arrest or the thuggish police assaulting any of the "suits" of Wall Street. But if you stand in the streets to protest that your country has gone off the rails and that authorities are not doing their sworn duty to uphold the law, you are pepper sprayed and targeted by canisters of exploding tear gas. Go figure.

Keith Olbermann Takes Oakland's Mayor to Task

Olbermann starts out by praising Mayor Jean Quan's previous service to Oakland. It is an impressive list. But then he gets down to the horror that she unleashed by turning her police loose on peaceful protesters and makes it utterly, utterly clear the crime she has perpetrated by her actions. You must watch this video:



For a first person narrative by somebody on the ground in Oakland, read this article by Mike Godwin in reason.com:

If you've been following the mainstream media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, odds are that you've heard about events at Occupy Oakland. What you can't tell from the news clips is how the situation has played out for those of us who live here. I can't speak for everyone, but I do know that my reaction, both to the protestors and to the violent police interventions against them, is hardly an uncommon one.

...

The vibe where I was standing was tense. Occasionally an individual shouted at the arrayed police, “This is America! What are you doing here?” Or, “I can't believe you're doing this! We love you guys but what you're doing is wrong!” I didn't think it was a great idea to shout at the (silent but intent) array of police—it wasn't likely they were going to suddenly relent, and I knew they had been wearing heavy riot gear and carrying weapons (including astonishingly large batons) for six or more hours. My instinct was that it was not particularly safe to shout at tired men and women with weapons, no matter how righteous one's outrage is.

...

One guy passing me on the way downtown warned about tear gas. I spotted New York Times reporter Malia Wollan talking into her mobile—as she walked past I heard her describing the apparent effects of the gas on individuals exposed to it. Her account is available here.

Of the people headed toward me, I first thought a disproportionate number were bicyclists—only a few minutes later did I realize, embarrassingly, that there were other reasons for wearing a bicycle helmet that night. The tension in the crowd was palpably building so I decided it was time to head home. Keeping my distance turned out to have been wise, because this is what I missed getting caught up in:



I was also standing 50-100 feet south from where a police officer appears to have thrown a flash grenade into a crowd of people gathered to help 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who suffered massive head injuries after allegedly being struck by a tear gas canister.



I confess that it breaks my heart to watch this clip. If I had seen someone collapsed in the street, I'd have tried to help that person too. These people were apparently punished for their impulse to help.

...

I don’t know how to interpret everything I saw, and I can’t state with any authority what Occupy Oakland or any of the other protests ultimately mean. But I do know this: The millions of dollars California just spent on this crackdown did nothing to dispel or discourage the protestors. In fact, the police intervention has echoed around the world. Occupy Wall Street committed to sending $20,000 to Occupy Oakland and protestors as far away as Tahrir Square in Egypt have expressed their solidarity with the Oakland protestors.

History tends to happen when you least expect it, and my new neighbors have taken their first steps into its pages.

Go read the full article.

If you want to see the sympathy protest in Tahrir Square Egypt for the Occupy Oakland violence, here is a post on BoingBoing with pictures.

Here is political commentary in Wired magazine on the fallout from the police violence at Occupy Oakland:

But the police forces’ violent tactics worked only temporarily, and have, for the moment at least, handed the Occupy movement a moral and political victory so big that not even Occupy protestors seem to recognize it.

The nation, and even much of the world, seemed to recoil in shock from the images coming out of Oakland Tuesday night, where police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse unarmed protestors, who built a camp in the city as part of the nationwide protest against an unfair political and economic system.

Critically wounded Marine veteran Scott Olsen became a rallying point for Occupy, following widely seen footage of protestors trying to carry him to safety in the midst of a tear gas assault. There were other pictures and videos: streets littered with rubber bullets, people in wheelchairs trapped in the tear gas, and bloodied faces and bruised bodies of unarmed protestors.

On Wednesday, OccupyOakland’s fortunes reversed.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan announced that people could reoccupy Frank Ogawa plaza, renamed Oscar Grant plaza by the occupiers in honor of a black Oakland man shot to death by transit police in 2009. When people arrived for the General Assembly, the occupation’s standard open meeting, the grassy area of the plaza was fenced off. But through the course of the evening, and not without violent conflict among the occupiers, the fences came down.

People fought each other over the fences, pulling at each other, some linking arms to protect the fence, and screaming, all while the GA went on in the distance. Despite the fears of those attempting to protect the fence, no police moved in after it went down. The GA proceeded through the evening undisturbed by anything but news choppers overhead and a turn-out too big for the sound system to cover.

But word came in that an attack was imminent on OccupySF across the bay, and a large contingent moved to get on the BART transit to join San Francisco’s Occupiers in Justin Herman Plaza. But when they arrived at the station they found it closed; BART wasn’t letting the occupation on in Oakland, or letting people off at Embarcadero, the station closest to OccupySF.

The roused crowd took to the streets, marching down Broadway towards the police station. They met no resistance. The police stayed a block away on all sides, and melted back in front of the path of the crowd, directing traffic away from the protestor-filled streets of Downtown Oakland. Many protestors were looking for a confrontation with police, but found none — staying peaceful and well behaved, if boisterous and peripatetic. The only property damage I observed were a couple incidents of graffiti-tagging, of which only one was definitely attributable to the OccupyOakland march. There were no broken windows or even overturned trash bins, and police stayed largely out of sight for the evening.

...

During the slow, tweeted protestor pursuit of police, OccupySF drilled for a police raid, practicing locking arms around their camp and removing vital gear from the site. As the hours wore on, many tired occupiers became paranoid, and every bus or van that went by startled people and sent them into conspiratorial speculations. Some occupiers went around writing the National Lawyer’s guild phone number on the arms of occupiers who didn’t already have a lawyer.

Five members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, several running for mayor, arrived and used the people’s mic to address the occupiers. They stayed put for hours, and many occupiers credited them for preventing the police raid.

On Thursday, the SFPD stretched credulity by telling ABC Channel 7 that the whole thing was a training exercise, resulting in a sarcastic local news report regarding the whole event. At the same time, OccupySF posted a picture of a notice given to businesses around the occupation warning of “…increased activity by the SFPD in the immediate vicinity of One Market Plaza starting around this evening’s commute.”

In Oakland the occupation was returning Thursday, growing from one tent in the reclaimed area Wednesday night to eight tents. OccupyOakland is rebuilding against the background of a campaign to recall Mayor Quan, calls for OPD to be disciplined, solidarity marches around the country and the world, and the New York City GA’s consensus to devote 100 sleeping bags and $20,000 for legal and medical expenses to OccupyOakland.

...

Sheamus Collins, a bartender from Dublin, showed off his rubber bullet wound.

Click to Enlarge
...

No one seemed aware of how crushing their political victory in the last 24 hours had really been.

The Right to Peacefully Assemble for the Redress of Grievances

Here is a video that gives more "context" to the Occupy Oakland incident. It is fairly clear that the police were not threatened. Instead, you hear them reading the riot act to citizens peacefully assembled seeking a redress of grievances. Then all hell breaks loose...



Here is the specific event:



It is obvious that a government has the right to control crowds, but the legal and police authorities have to be lenient with crowds with a political grievance. Otherwise you turn a democracy into a police state where the only "right" you have is to ask "how high?" when the state tells you to "jump". That isn't freedom. That is tyranny.

The police have no right to use force in a situation where the crowd is peaceful. Even suiting up in full riot gear is provocative. It shouldn't be done. And you certainly shouldn't be carrying out "street clearing" actions under the cover of dark and a fusilade of grenades and tear gas. That is war, not policing.

Update 2011nov12: Here is an update from Veterans for Peace on the condition of Scott Olsen, the injured ex-Marine who served in Iraq and was shot by trigger-happy cops at the Occupy Oakland protests:

Adele Carpenter Updates VFP on Scott Olsen

Hi, all.

I had a chance to visit Scott this evening. He is very present, alert, and has a lot of energy. He is still struggling with speech, but is attempting conversations without having the writing instrument out. He also is doing an amazing job of staying patient with himself and didn't seem to get frustrated with himself or need to rush when trying to work out thoughts in speech. Personally, it was a huge relief to see him after last having seen him while he was sedated and in critical condition.

We did talk some business and I wanted to give an update on that.

Housing: His parents are coming tomorrow and they will be looking for a place in the South Bay near where he will be accessing outpatient treatment. He said he doesn't know if they need help looking and I agreed to call his mom tomorrow to check about how their settling here might go. He said that he and Keith will look for a place in Berkeley after his parents leave in November.

Visiting and Support: He said he doesn't want or need any formal plans for visitation, like making a schedule of folks to keep him company when he is out, and that informally scheduling visits has been fine and he will let people know if he needs something else. He doesn't have any big wishes or desires for when he gets out of the hospital. He already got to go out for Thai food, but other than that, he is just focused on getting better.

Legal: Scott is aware that allies have offered legal contacts trained in police accountability and veteran issues. I also told him that several lawyers have expressed urgency around his case and investigation being taken up. He said he is already taking care of this and that if he wants bios or contacts for those lawyers, he will let me know.

Media: Scott would like to shoot to put out a statement for Vet's day, but doesn't want to rush himself because he doesn't know how much energy its going to take when his parents arrive and also with transitioning out of inpatient over this week. If he does write something, he would like someone to look it over. I also assume he'd rely on us to disseminate any statement to press contacts. I really wanted to respect that he not push himself since there will be a lot going on the next few days. If he does write something or want help composing something, he knows that we are more than willing to line up support.

Hope that covers the business end. My overall impression was that he is both trying to take it easy, but is also able to start taking care of his affairs and knows that he can ask for support if he needs it. I'm really happy he's doing so well and seems both accepting and determined. All good news for today.

Thanks,
Adele.
Civilian-Soldier Alliance

Applying the Law One Foot at a Time

The police at Occupy Wall Street have become tired of pepper spraying and swinging batons, so now they just run over people with their motorcycles. Then park the motorcycle on top of the body to ensure that the "miscreant" won't wander away. This is bringing "policing" to a new high. Maybe the US is seeking to achieve the efficiencies of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, just mow the people down. Bring in the tanks and drive over them. Everybody knows that "rule of law" means give the police a free hand to be as thuggish as they want to be...



And there is this:



And this:



And this:



Of course the police and media present it as "rioting" and "unruly behaviour" by people and that the police are "just doing their duty". The fact that "their duty" included roughing up people, macing/pepper straying them, grabbing anybody with a camera and throwing them hard to the ground taking away the camera is just "standard police procedure" for the NY police.



When was the last time you saw a drunk billionaire screaming obscenities and making a "scene" at a bar or on the sidewalk manhandled like this. Never? Oh, but that is because the police have one set of rules for the bottom 99% and another for the "important" people who are in the 1%.

This is why if you are the offspring of a billionaire you can happily rape innocent people and kill them and the police never seem to connect the dots and find you guilty of anything. Here's

• an Anheuser-Busch billionaire who has left two dead people and wild car chase and has never been charged


• Ted Kennedy who left a woman to drown in his car and got away with no charges


• a Kennedy that literally got away with murder for 25 years

... America has one very lenient law for the rich and one brutal law for the bottom 99%.

Here's the best explanation I've seen yet for the behaviour of the police. Here is comic Andy Borowitz applying his keen eye to the situation:

NYPD spokesman Frank Hannefy explained the controversial decision to arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters while leaving the people who had brought the nation’s economy to the brink of Armageddon unmolested.

“As far as soulless individuals pillaging the country for their personal gain, that’s none of our business,” he said. “But we’ll be damned if we’re going to let people march on newly seeded grass.”

Right on! Get those miscreants who would trample grass and show no respect for THE LAW!

The late 19th century writer Anatole France nailed the sublimity of THE LAW:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

The Wall Street billionaires didn't trample any grass. All they did was implode the economy, destroyed $10 trillion, caused 25 million people to be unemployed, forced 10 million people to lose their homes. No reason for the cops to show any concern there. It is those Occupy Wall Street types who think they can lounge on park benches and hang out 24x7 in public parks trampling on the grass. Now there is the real danger to society!

How to Successfully Live in a Police State

Here is yet another example of the West's descent into a police state under the "War on Criminality" (or was that a "War on Terrorism"?) initiated by George Bush but vigorously prosecuted under Barack Obama. From a post by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing:

Scottish mall-cop: it's illegal to take pictures in the mall; Scottish cop: photographers can have their devices confiscated under terrorism laws

by Cory Doctorow

A security guard in Braehead shopping centre near Glasgow questioned a man who was taking pictures of his young daughter looking cute while eating an ice-cream. The guard told him that photography in the mall was "illegal" and demanded that he delete any photos he'd taken while there. When the man told him he'd already posted the photos to Facebook, the guard summoned a policeman, who said that he could confiscate the phone under the UK's terrorism laws. The policeman took his details and "he was eventually allowed to leave."

The official statements from the mall and the police are maddeningly bureaucratic and every bit as stupid as the original incident: "a full review of the circumstances surrounding the incident and the allegations made is under way" say the police; "Our priority is always to maintain a safe and enjoyable environment for all of our shoppers and retailers," says the mall.

Just a reminder: pretty much everything that's legal on the public street is legal in a private store. A store or mall can have a policy saying "You can't wear purple here" or "You must enter the premises backwards" or "No photography allowed," but those are policies, not laws. A store's representatives can ask you to leave for violating their policies, but that's pretty much it (of course, if you refuse to leave, that's a different matter).

The "War on Terrorism" is like America's "War on Drugs". It has no end. There will always be drugs. There will always be terrorists. To start a war that has no end is very George Orwellian and reminds us that governments are not our friends. They are power mad crazies who will use any excuse to aggrandize power to themselves and ever more tightly circumscribe out lives to turn us into mindless robots "in service to the nation". Nuts!

Al Qaeda was a "police action". If Clinton had had the guts to do the right thing in the late 1990s Bin Laden would have been dead and there would have been no 9/11. If Bush had had the guts to do the right thing and put American boots on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001 they could have killed Bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. One good thing I can say: Obama has the guts to use special ops to get the job done. He has taken out a fair amount of Al Qaeda leadership. Good for him. But Obama is no friend of liberty. He has clamped down on whistle-blowers. He has extended the hopeless "war" in Afghanistan. He has kept the torturers going in Guantanamo. He only meekly supported the Arab Spring.

Update... and here is more by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing about the German government ignoring its own laws to spy on its citizens and insert malware that makes their computers vulnerable to attack by anybody.

Chaos Computer Club cracks Germany's illegal government malware, a trojan that spies on your PC and lets anyone off the street hijack it

By Cory Doctorow at 10:11 pm Monday, Oct 10

Germany's Chaos Computer Club published the sourcecode for a piece of malware used by the German government to spy on citizens. The software was discovered in the wild and reverse engineered. It can be used to spy on or control remote PCs. Because of flaws in the software, anyone who was infected with this by German police was vulnerable to spying by "anyone on the street." The German supreme court banned the use of trojans to spy on German citizens in 2008.

The analysis also revealed serious security holes that the trojan is tearing into infected systems. The screenshots and audio files it sends out are encrypted in an incompetent way, the commands from the control software to the trojan are even completely unencrypted. Neither the commands to the trojan nor its replies are authenticated or have their integrity protected. Not only can unauthorized third parties assume control of the infected system, but even attackers of mediocre skill level can connect to the authorities, claim to be a specific instance of the trojan, and upload fake data. It is even conceivable that the law enforcement agencies's IT infrastructure could be attacked through this channel. The CCC has not yet performed a penetration test on the server side of the trojan infrastructure.

"We were surprised and shocked by the lack of even elementary security in the code. Any attacker could assume control of a computer infiltrated by the German law enforcement authorities", commented a speaker of the CCC. "The security level this trojan leaves the infected systems in is comparable to it setting all passwords to '1234'".

To avoid revealing the location of the command and control server, all data is redirected through a rented dedicated server in a data center in the USA. The control of this malware is only partially within the borders of its jurisdiction. The instrument could therefore violate the fundamental principle of national sovereignty. Considering the incompetent encryption and the missing digital signatures on the command channel, this poses an unacceptable and incalculable risk. It also poses the question how a citizen is supposed to get their right of legal redress in the case the wiretapping data get lost outside Germany, or the command channel is misused.

Electronic Surveillance Scandal Hits Germany [spiegel.de]

Go read the original post to get the embedded links.

I love anything by Cory Doctorow. He is a smart dude and he is concerned about issues that are close to my heart: intellectual property rights, human rights, technology. I confess I've only read a couple of his fiction pieces. I know that's his "day job". But I love the hobbyist Doctorow more than the career Doctorow.

How a Revolution can be Derailed

Here is a story from CBS's Sixty Minutes that shows how the Egyptian military has squashed the "people's revolution".



The history of popular revolts and revolution is rife with examples like this. The rich and powerful do not easily give way. They find many ways to sneak back into power.

It is truly sad to see that the people's will has been thwarted. It is especially disgusting to see that the US government (via Leon Panetta, the US Secretary of Defense giving the US's blessing to the Egyptian generals) is backing this clampdown on the people's push for real democracy. Obama claims to support democracy in the Middle East, but Obama's actions belie that claim. The US is still playing the dictator/repressive military regime card to "secure American interests" in the region. Shame!

Call me cynical, but the internecine street battles between Copts and Muslims strikes me as evidence of manipulation by the generals to get people to fight among themselves rather than to focus on the corrupt military regime. Read this news from the UK's Guardian newspaper.

The above story should be a cautionary tale for the Occupy Wall Street attempt to bring democracy back to America and out the corruption of money in politics. There is much violence and many dead ends that can await this movement. Hopefully not. But idealists need to keep a sense of realism. Getting the choke hold of the ultra-rich and big corporations off the democracy can be an ugly, ugly struggle.

NY Police Bring "Democracy" to America

The thugs in blue uniforms are trying to out-Mubarak of Egypt, out-Gadaffi of Libya, and out-Basshar al Assad of Syria. Apparently "the authorities" in NY like to put on these "show of force" by police as they beat up and pepper spray protesters. I'm guessing the US feels it can show the Middle East dictators "how it is done"...



The video is murky, but the only "disorderly conduct" and violence I see is from cops beating on protestors who are trying to stay out of the way of the batons and pepper spray. If this is supposed to be "street management" by a professional police force, this has to be the video of "how not to do it". Disgusting.

Notice how one of these cops in white (these are the "supervisors"!!!) gets both hands on his billy club so he can do some vicious imitation of a home run slugger on some poor demonstrator...



I guess if Mayor Bloomberg wants to help the demonstrators win in this struggle for democracy, he has taken one hell of a step forward. You don't "manage" crowd by this kind of violence. Instead, you add fury to protest and fuel even greater demonstrations. I have to put my head in my hands and weep because America shows itself incompetent at "managing democracy". Instead of turns loose goons and thugs to beat up people to suppress legitimate protest. That will set fire to the cause of Occupy Wall Street.

I sure looks to me that the "authorities" in the US are trying as hard as they can to re-create Mubarak and Tahrir Square in America. What they are achieving by their thuggish behaviour and their unwillingness to allow legitimate protest is a quickly mushrooming movement:



I notice that the media continues to downplay these demonstrations. A year ago, a crowd of 30 Tea Party demonstrators would get headline news in major media. On October 5th the crowds were big. The "official" estimates are 2,000 people, but you can see for yourself, there are many thousands. And still these demonstrations and their cause get only a passing mention in the news media.

Count the demonstrators for yourself. The number 2,000 is laughingly low...



This careful media management of an event into non-existence is what is "wonderful" about democracy in America... the political life is America is so well "stage managed" by the rich and powerful. The lessons the Middle East dictators have to learn from America is not to beat and kill demonstrators, but to pull a George Orwell 1984 and simply write the existence of demonstrators out of "reality". That is real democracy using the Washington approach. Quietly take money from big bankers and corporations and run the state for the top 1% while "managing the news" so that the bottom 99% never hear about their concerns and where any demonstrations become non-events.

Here is Michael Moore at the demo giving his two bits about what the movement means...

Do-Gooders and the Evil They Bring

I was watching the new Ken Burns documentary on the American Prohibition era. It was the result of "do-gooders" who wanted to legislate morality. Their efforts led to deaths from adulterated alcohol, blindness, paralysis. It also led to the rise of organized crime and a couple of thousand gangland killings. It also helped corrupt police forces, the judicial system, and government administrations all across America.

My mind wandered onto this as I was reading stories about 20,000 Ugandan farmers chased off their land by gangs what are selling "carbon credits" for this confiscated land. From the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Land tenure in Uganda is a subject of much dispute, and last year's farming evictions have left 20,000 homeless

...

Longoli and his family of six lost everything last year when, with three months notice, the Ugandan government evicted him and thousands of others from the Mubende and Kiboga districts to make way for the UK-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell the timber.

Today, the village school in Kiboga is a New Forests Company headquarters. More than 20,000 people have been made homeless and Longoli rents a small house in Lubaali village. He says he cannot go back for fear of being attacked.

And as I read the following from the UK Guardian about murders in Honduras as gangs are enforcing land seizures to earn "carbon credits":

EU carbon credits scheme tarnished by alleged murders in Honduras

...

The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations has called into question the integrity of the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS), as carbon credits from the plantations remain on sale.

The "do-gooders" never bother to ponder the possibility of "unintended consequences" from their moral pushiness. All they know is that they have a vision of a "higher morality" and they are going to beat us with sticks until we agree to worship at their twisted view of "the good and moral life". They are a menace with their militant moralizing. History is littered with deaths and injuries of innocents caused by these self-important moral campaigners.

The Horror of War

Here is the first of 20 videos from a 2001 BBC production War of the Century. It focuses on the fight between Hitler and Stalin. It is very graphic. The producers wanted to focus on how vicious the fighting was, how both sides stooped to war crimes. It is a very ugly insight into how brutal people can be. Soldiers on both sides who participated in war crimes are asked if they felt they had committed a crime (they mostly say "no" or justify it by saying "it was long ago and a different time) and they are asked if they would do it again (a few say "yes" and many beat around the bushes). The video exposes the hatred that is still there:

James Fallows on Police Abuse of their Power

Here is a bit from a post by The Atlantic editor James Fallows in his blog:

Adrian Lesher, a staff attorney with the NY Legal Aid Society, writes with the following observation about police abuses-of-power during the Wall Street protests, noting that he's speaking not for Legal Aid but for himself:

One point that I haven't seen made is that this sort of abusive behavior is reported routinely by people of color and by people of lower economic status. Yet their complaints are routinely dismissed or ignored in the media. Sometimes it takes middle and upper class white people getting hurt to get the media moving.

Of course that's true. But I think there's an additional interesting and crucial element in this case. Despite the largely white, largely educated nature of the crowd in these protests, to me it's obvious that the abuse stories would have disappeared if not for the videos. Very much like the original Rodney King police-beating video, they have the amazing property of rendering debate moot. The NYPD spokesman can talk all he wants about the pepper-spraying being "appropriate." But no reasonable person who spends a minute looking at the video, even allowing for selectivity in filming, can think that the coward-cop* behaved appropriately (or in accordance with NYPD guidelines).

And the make-or-break nature of the videos in this case not only raises the obvious questions about the other cases that are never captured. It also underscores the importance of a point another reader makes:

What disturbs me most about this incident - even more than the abuse of pepper spray - is the evident targeting of people carrying cameras and video cameras. Also, the focus on going after women. In one of the videos we see a different white-shirted cop seize a loudly-protesting dark-skinned woman by her big head of hair, drag her across the barricade and smash her head on the ground. (I think this is the attack that caused the group of women to start freaking out, just before the pepper spray attack) Yes, granted, she's being very loud and obnoxious, but she appears to be behind the netting and is not offering any physical threat to the cop.

In another one of the videos, apparently taken just prior to the pepper spray attack, a large woman with what looks to be a professional-level video camera is set upon by police, pulled into the street, thrown down and handcuffed. It doesn't appear that she did anything wrong at all, or even said anything, before being targeted. I think these elements of the story are worth going into. If the cops are intent upon preventing citizens from taking photos/video of them doing their work, there's obviously a problem.

Yes. The only time I got in trouble with the police in China, as I'll say more about in a forthcoming book, was when I made the same mistake -- that of taking pictures of cops who were roughing up someone else. At the time I thought: cops hyper-sensitive about being photographed? What do I expect: this is authoritarian China. It turns out that I could just as well have been saying: this is America. This is New York.

For the record: police have a hard job; most of them (especially the blue shirts rather than the higher-ranking white shirts) in these videos seem to be keeping their cool, often under provocation; videos could be selective or misleading; and the point is not to be anti-police. But enough people in uniform, starting with the coward, seem to have assumed that they could casually abuse people and not be called on it, that they need to be called.


* And, yes, OK I know from the Daily Show last night that the pepper sprayer, Anthony Bologna, is on the verge of being immortalized Onion-style as "Tony Baloney." There is a danger of the whole episode passing straight to oddball joke status. You can imagine this guy showing up soon on the talk shows, Joey Buttafuoco style. But there is a serious side to it -- which is why I have harped on it this long.

Police need to be held accountable. In British Columbia most policing is done by the federal police, the RCMP, and they refuse to allow any outside group to investigate complaints against them. Consequently they have a very long history of abuse from beating to killing. And they literally get away with murder. I'm all for a professional police force and I'm willing to pay to attract top quality people to the field. What I'm against is thugs in uniform getting their jollies beating up those at the bottom of the social heap because they know they can get away with it. (Click on the tag "police" to see other cases of police abuse including many by RCMP.)

Dominic Streatfeild's "A History of the World Since 9/11"

This is an excellent history of our times. I expected a typical history of events, leaders, and themes. But instead this author presents 8 chapters which introduce a policy stance then burrows down to look at a small handful of "ordinary" people affected by the policy. The author's intent is to lay bare just how badly wrong the "war on terror" has gone. Here is a nice summary of the author's view from the Epilogue:

Outspoken liberals like to display their hatred of the lead players behind the War on Terror. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair: the villains of the piece. The truth is that, with a few notable exceptions, nobody covered themselves with glory. Opposition political parties failed to intervene; the military failed to stand behind its beliefs that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan required better resourcing, manpower and planning; the intelligence community failed to insist that caveats in the products were there for a reason. The media failed to inform the public there were serious problems. Perhaps the blame should be shared? There's enough to go round.

Doubtless there is a case to be made that the world changed as a result of 9/11. But how it changed was not up to Bin Laden, al-Qaeda or the Taliban. It was up to us. We could have reacted differently. We didn't.

As a result, the situation in which we currently find ourselves is not one that has been thrust upon us. It's one that we have chosen. Al-Qaeda doesn't threaten our existence. It never did. Our reaction to it just might.

The book has some wonderfuly graphic stories of individuals and the very real effects of 9/11 on them:

• Chapter 1 looks at Bush's dictum that "the rules have changed" and that "we must take the war to them" and that pre-emptive war was necessary. It ties this with a crazy criminal character in Texas who goes unhinged after seeing the towers fall on 9/11 and decides to go after "the enemy". For him this is anybody ethnically Middle Easternish and he ends up killing an innocent immigrant from India, a Hindu. Streatfeild lays out these characters in great detail. The hard struggle by the Hindu to build a life in America and provide a business built on serving his customers. A very nice guy who worked hard but ended up killed by a madman lashing out at "enemies" to pre-empt their attack on his beloved America. A madman with a criminal past and a mind twisted by drug abuse and violence. Tragic.


• Chapter 2 looks at the "gloves are off" and "the rules have changed. It focuses on a family fleeing Iraq prior to 9/11 but who get caught at sea in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and harshly interned by Australia. The Australians tried to turn away the boat but the desperate immigrants tried everything to prevent being turned away. The brutal treatment left many deeply injured, some insane, from the years spent in limbo under vicious treatment by an anti-refugee policy by Australia. Tragic.


• Chapter 3 looks at the idea that the "war on terror" had to be fought viciously and that all deaths were the fault of al Qaeda and not of those in the West responding to having been attacked. This chapter looks at the excited and joyous planning of a wedding in Afghanistan. Unfortunately this was in the home province of Mullah Omar and the Americans with their "too little boots on the ground" incompetent intelligence decide that Mullah Omar will show up at the wedding. So they unleash the hell fire of US weapons on innocent people 48 were killed and 117 wounded. This disturbing story is only one of many, many in Afghanistan over a decade of "mistakes" by Americans in their war against a nearly invisible enemy.


• Chapter 8 looks at the "unintended consequences" of a war. In this case, it focuses on the world-wide program to eradicate polio. This program was within a year or two or three of success when 9/11 happened. Sadly, it now appears the world has utterly failed to eradicate polio and since there is now billions with no experience with the disease and many hundreds of millions of children with no immunity, the disease is poised to strike back worse than it was during the height of the great polio epidemics of the mid-20th century. This chapter focuses on the tale of a very dedicated, wonderful doctor who struggles to complete the fight against polio in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Sadly, the Muslims come to believe that the vaccine is a Western plot to sterilize them and that the drugs given to them are adulterated with female hormones and pig fat, they refuse the vaccine. Worse, they blow up the car in which the vaccine team is traveling and kill several including this doctor. Another tragic "consequence" of the war.

The other chapters focus on big policy themes and make them real by looking at the level of individual lives. It is all very tragic. But it makes this book especially powerful and poignant. Wars have consequences. How you fight them is very important. Sadly, the Bush administration was cavalier (cowboyish?) in its conduct of a war that has now killed hundreds and soon thousands more than were ever killed on 9/11.

One final quote from the book to hammer home the obscenities that have come out of "the war on terrorism":

Meanwhile, most of these nations seized on the exceptional nature of the post-9/11 threat, then used it as a justification for enacting domestic legislation that aped US policy regarding human rights: restrictions of rights for foreigners and asylum seekers; indefinite incarceration of suspects without trial; withdrawal of the right to an attorney; suspension of habeas corpus; enhanced surveillance techniques. The list went on and on.

'I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups to kill and destroy,' conceded Lord Hoffmann in a famous judgement on the incarceration of terror suspects without trial in the United Kingdom in December 2004. 'But they do not threaten the life of the nation.' The real threat to the United Kingdom, he warned, 'comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.'

Five years later, the Human Rights Council's Eminent Panel of Jurists on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights agreed. After an exhaustive three-year study of the effects of the War on Terror on human rights globally, the Panel concluded that human rights protections, assembled over the last sixty years, had been corroded to the point where the international legal order was in jeopardy. Especially worrying was that the nations that had previously argued for the primacy of human rights were the very same nations now busily opting out of them. The result was 'perhaps one of the most serious challenges ever posed to the integrity of a system carefully constructed after the Second World War.'

Everybody should read this book. It will make them sit up and pay attention to the "war" that has been conducted "on their behalf". It will change their way of viewing the world.