As reported by Huffpo, an Iraq veteran who was protesting as part of #Occupy Oakland was injured by the Oakland Police:
Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Oakland’s Highland Hospital after being hit in the head with a police projectile.
According to the article Olsen served two tours of duty in Iraq, which he eventually announced that he opposed. He did not suffer any injuries while serving in Iraq.
Everyone should see the videos. It’s clear from the ones that the police action here was not proportional to the (alleged) threat.
Not only that, but watch this and feel sickened for the state of our nation:
Of course, this is the Oakland PD, who shot an unarmed and already-restrained Oscar Grant in the back a few years ago, killing him.
Mysteriously, many of the mainstream news organizations covering the occupation cut their live feeds minutes before the police action.
How about this image? Veteran, and member of Veterans for Peace standing between the occupiers and the police, holding a copy of the constitution. Interesting times we live in.
Yes, these ARE interesting times.
It seems like the “1%” is losing the main war here: The attempt to vilify the protesters, to get most Americans to see #Occupy protesters as a threat, to paint them with the label “THEM.” These are dangerous times, because some of the protesters will be tempted to strike back with violence, and the media will be there to cover it, because violence by the protesters would solve a big problem for the media. It is so deeply rooted in the American psyche that in all conflict there are bad guys and good guys. If the protesters are good guys, it means that much of what we’ve heard from our leaders for many years has been false. There was no need for the long wars, Wall Street “reform” wasn’t meaningful, our leaders have been blatantly dishonest with the citizens, and America consists of the haves doing their damned best to get some of the have-nots hate other have-nots, and to get many of the have-nots to engage in self-loathing (for starters, because they are have-nots). And, contrary to all of these lies, we could still have a great country, if only we could take the money out of politics so that we could have meaningful conversations.
In the meantime, one of George Carlin’s quotes keeps haunting me:
“My first rule: never believe anything anyone in authority says. None of them. Government, police, clergy, the corporate criminals. None of them. And neither do I believe anything I am told by the media, who, in the case of the Gulf War, function as little more than unpaid employees of the Defense Department, and who, most of the time, operate as the unofficial public-relations agency for government and industry. I don’t believe in any of them. And I have to tell you, folks, I don’t really believe very much in my country either. I don’t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I see them as symbols, and I leave them to the symbol-minded.”
http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/09/17/george-carlins-brutally-patriotic-criticism/
But, once again, here’s the kicker: It doesn’t need to be this way. The fact that we are currently being forced to beg, scrape and get shot in the head in order to seek our Constitutional rights is truly the crime of the century.
And now, Oakland PD denies(pdf) the use of rubber bullets or flash-bangs such as seen in the video above.
In addition to the flashbang clearly deployed by the PD in the video above, in this video (same incident, different angle) you can clearly hear the rubber bullets whistling by, very near the protestors.
I’m just going to leave this here:
Excellent video. It really drives the point home. It probably bears saying that American leaders are not “bad,” but rather they are sick. They need to throw off their own shackles and join the rest of the 99%. We can do a better job of having a country that is run by the citizens. After all, that is the central tenet of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. For those who are not yet part of the excitement and the potential, today is a great day to join the rest of us.
Another thing that concerns me about this incident is that when the person who gets hurt previously served as a soldier, it becomes a much bigger deal than when any other civilian gets hurt. I do think that this story will help the #Occupy cause, but it shouldn’t. Every human being out there should be an important story. It shouldn’t matter who got hurt other than the fact that the person hurt was protesting governmental corruption. Patriots come in many forms, some of them being former soldiers, others being journalists, teachers, doctors, people who work at Wal-Mart and people who are unemployed. It shouldn’t matter that the man recently hurt was a soldier, but it will. That there is a difference points to the extent to which America is a warmongering nation.
And the battle goes on to paint the protesters as “THEM,” though that will now be harder to do for the media and their keepers, given that it is now better known that some of the protesters served in the military.
Yesterday in Nashville, the Tennessee General Services Administration , enacted new rules designed to outlaw the peaceful Occupy Nashville protest by specifically banning overnight camping and restricting protests to the hours between 8 AM and 5 PM.
About 3 AM this morning (Oct 28, 2011) state police began arresting protesters for violation of the new rule. A judge has already dismissed the charges.
WZTV, the local FOX affiliate has been crowing over the arrests every ten minutes, declaring the end of the Occupy Nashville protest.
This is dollar democracy in action, When the public assembles to peacefully protest the sale of their government to the highest bidder, rather than address their grievances, the reaction by politically appointer commissioners is to create a new ordinance arbitrarily ad specifically to deny the protesters their first amendment rights. Spread the word. everyone should voice their opinion by sending an email to the Tn general service commission.
http://www.tennessee.gov/generalserv/administration.shtml
Occupy Nashville has taken an interesting turn. Since Tennessee governor Bill Haslam (R) and the Tn government services administration instituted a curfew for the legislative plaza, the occupiers have held their ground, allowing them selves to be arrested every night by the state police on charges of criminal trespass, taken to the Nashville Criminal Justice Center, where they are promptly released after the night court judge dismisses the warrants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQX_Id6kkI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5UtHx93isQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbHdHOqVOyU
It should also be noted that Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam Is a businessman who campaigned on the claim that government should be run like a business. In this clip from WBIR TV in Knoxville TN (Haslam’s home town where he previously served as Mayor) It appears that the governor thinks the occupiers are a threat to other people in the area late at night. (The Tennessee Performing arts center and the Nashville Municipal Autitorium are nearby, but with the exception of event nights, those other people in the wee hours of the morning are the homeless, prostitutes with their johns and third shift security and custodial workers from the surrounding office buildings.
http://www.wbir.com/news/article/189258/2/TN-Governor-Bill-Haslam-defends-actions-Occupy-Nashville-situation-had-deteriorated
Niklaus: Thank you for the update from Nashville. I’m hearing conservative talk radio paint all of the Occupy protesters as violent given one report (by a conservative talk radio host) that one person near one protest was said to be carrying a weapon. Those who oppose the protesters are trying their best to deny that these protests are really protests about a serious topic: that private corporations have bought Congress.
Have you ever seen the damage done by a rubber bullet. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/10/IMG_4482-e1319834293160.jpg
And keep in mind that most of these bullets are striking people who are exercising their Constitution rights to assemble and speak.
Look like the neocons are calling in the first wave of their ground troops. The Vanderbilt College Republicans (VCR) have announced a counter protest to the occupy Nashville protest.
http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/node/18421
So a bunch of snobby rich kids are who seem to think we should remove government from the equation and let corporations run the country vs a bunch of working class people who patriotically believe our democracy can be fixed and our economy will only be restored by holding the wall street pirates and their purchased officials accountable for their misdeeds.
How long before the jackboots of the corporate mercs (Xe) to over the peasants and the government?