I recently found this video on YouTube. Check it out:
Occupy Oakland: Police Standoff & Brutal Assault, Tear Gas
Aren’t they wonderful? Don’t they look so evil and dumb that remind you of some Hollywood flick based on Orwell’s 1984?
I love the big guy whacking his baton on the barrier to scare off some poor women.
Fascism is already here, folks, make no mistake about it.
I’ll bet more than half the police standing in the line were thinking, ‘sheet, i do not want to be here’.
@Jag Pop: I am not so sure. Yep, one of them, looks Hispanic, looked frightened, but the bulk of them are pumped-up with aggression, that is pretty clear. I know the type, they hate demonstrators. They are like dogs who are told “get’some!” and they brutally charge ahead. Frankly, cops are a very specific type of individual. One which hates having his authority challenged, one who has pretty set ideas about mankind in general (everybody is a potential perp), and one with a very strong sense of “us versus them”. Also, it is my observation that the younger the cop, the worst (that is a oversimplification, a general rule). Add to this that more and more cops are former combat veterans (which makes them *really* dangerous), and you get a toxic brew, IMHO.
Of course, I realize that being a cop, a prison screw or joining the military are pretty much the only ways to avoid poverty in the modern USA, and that some good but desperate people join these institutions, but if anything the Stanford Prison Experiment or the work of Milgram have shown how easy it is to take rather decent folks and turn them into violent and outright vicious goons very, very rapidly indeed.
I don’t see much shame or conscience in this cops. Only a dumb and dull determination to strike as soon as ordered…
Perhaps I was projecting.
I detect that my mood is better than yours today.
I know lots of police officers personally (am not one myself). People are people, and yes, power does not bring out the best in people (Stanford Prison Experiment). I do not know what preceded the events being recorded but if I had been there I would have reminded my fellow protestors that police are part of the 99% too, and antagonising them is not a good way to communicate solidarity.
(That and a cup of coffee would have earned me a batton across the head, I know.)
It seems the 99% will ever struggle against each other and the 1% will continue winning.
As I type, am watching, with half interest, a Sigourney Weaver comedy (and with Jennifer Love Hewitt in fine figure). It is a 2001 comedy; an early scene in the movie has the WTC towers in the background.
The towers are like apparitions (*always* I hear when I see them, “the country will never be the same”) haunting reminders of what we only thought we were. Appropriate props to this 2001 comedy (Heartbreakers) about con artists projecting a scam, fighting to maintain illusions.
Excuse the diggressions and support the troops, the movie also includes one of my all time favorites Anne Bancroft.