The Shocking Truth Behind the Crackdown on Occupy

[jiggeryqua]

Ad Hom.

Like I said, I was engaging with you against my better judgement. Now you start your latest post by calling 'Ad Hom'. Earlier, you say I'm doing something and, for comedy effect, I say I am, because you are. When I say you are, that's apparantly an ad hom. When you said I was, what was it then?

I'm not going to follow you down the rabbit hole of nitpicking stacked quotes where you quibble over semantics to avoid addressing either the relevant issues raised in the OP or any other substantial argument.

Instead, I'm popping you on ignore. If it helps, you win! Yes, you're the winner! Well done.

ETA: I've just spotted you later refer to me as 'Jiggy'. No need for those demeaning playground tactics, you won already! Hurrah!

 

[000063]

Like I said, I was engaging with you against my better judgement. Now you start your latest post by calling 'Ad Hom'. Earlier, you say I'm doing something and, for comedy effect, I say I am, because you are. When I say you are, that's apparantly an ad hom. When you said I was, what was it then?

I'm not going to follow you down the rabbit hole of nitpicking stacked quotes where you quibble over semantics to avoid addressing either the relevant issues raised in the OP or any other substantial argument.

Instead, I'm popping you on ignore. If it helps, you win! Yes, you're the winner! Well done.

ETA: I've just spotted you later refer to me as 'Jiggy'. No need for those demeaning playground tactics, you won already! Hurrah!

I already summarized my position in the post directly above yours, including my numerous problems with the article.

My first post in this thread addressed the article. You were the one who suggested I was making things up, as well as that the use of the term was a metaphor and not literal. Oh, and I forgot; just because something is social change does not mean it is good, nor does it necessarily require lawbreaking. You equivocated social change, good, and law-breaking in your first post which responded to me.

I called you "Jiggy" because I dd not feel like typing your entire name out.

 

[Skepticemea]

Erm... yeah... You do realise that at no point was I stating that you were doing any of those things, 000063, don't you? You're so quick to retaliate you don't realise you're akchewilly attacking (or perhaps you do).

And it's "Tahrir Square" btw.

 

[000063]

Erm... yeah... You do realise that at no point was I stating that you were doing any of those things, 000063, don't you?

Well, now I do. The fact that you responded to my post saying something that looked a lot like my claim was an "exaggeration" looked exactly like someone who was disagreeing with me.

You're so quick to retaliate you don't realise you're akchewilly attacking (or perhaps you do).

Let me ask: were you saying that the perceived crime increase could only be from those within OWS or those without? Because I think the lines between the two are quite blurry.

And it's "Tahrir Square" btw.

Whoops.

 

[GreyArea]

Naomi Wolf’s ‘Shocking Truth’ About the ‘Occupy Crackdowns’ Offers Anything but the Truth

That was a link to the comments on Joshua Holland's article that challenges Wolf's claims. Holland's actual article is here, which is what Joey McGee quoted.

And I thank him for doing so, since that was the first thing that I thought of when I saw Axiom_Blade's opening post.

 

[000063]

Ironically, that website also has this post on it, which makes several of the same mistakes Wolfe does. Equating police to the military and so on (I had no idea the police had the power to call in air strikes and artillery barrages). Notably, the tagline or whatever it's is calls the police force with a national-level tool, one of "the state". Except police doing the enforcing are almost overwhelmingly local forces, not those of The Man In Washington. At least it mentions the possibility a protest may be illegal, briefly, and at arms length.

But where protest is peaceful -- maybe loud, maybe deliberately annoying, combative in its rhetoric, even possibly illegal, yet not actually violent or dangerous -- treating it the way a state normally treats an outside military threat will give many Americans, across a broad political spectrum, a gut problem.

Again, factually incorrect on the nature of both the police and the military.

I saw a post on another website saying tear gas and pepper spray were "paramilitary weapons" and thought "aren't paramilitary weapons usually more along the lines of rape, forced conscription of children, and AK-47s?"

 

[Brainster]

Liberal blogger Crooks and Liars noticed that Wolf linked Washington's blog on the claim that Vichy Oakland Mayor Jean Quan "acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests."

There are several problems with this:

1. Washington's blog is a kook site, run by a 9-11 Truther named Alex Floum. He's toned down his Trooferism a bit and added a few more crackpots like Carl Herman to the blog, but he's still a fruitcake.

2. Washington's blog linked to this article at the Examiner.

And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

The official, who spoke on background to me late Monday evening, said that while local police agencies had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests ultimately rests with local law enforcement.

But later:

I have a hunch that Mayor Quan might have been referring to a conference call between a number of U.S. mayors in her interview, not one with law enforcement officials. But that's just a hunch on my part, since her office has so far declined to offer any explanation of her comments to me.

He has a "hunch"? Here's a blog which quotes Quan's statement:

I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation. . . .”

Yeah, I kinda got that hunch too.

I agree with jhunter1163 that this agenda item comes completely out of left field:

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

She sees this as hugely significant:

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the **** kicked out of them.

Hilariously, she goes on to connect the dots:

DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

That's just plain silly. King may have some oversight authority on DHS, but actual operational authority rests with Cabinet Secretary Janet Napolitano. If DHS was actually involved in the planning of raids on OWS encampments (a big if), then it was Napolitano pulling the strings, not Peter King. But Wolf needs it to be King, because without him her whole thesis, that DHS helped plan the raids because Congress didn't want that lucrative loophole closed, falls apart like a house of cards.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

Though I don't know whether the ranks of OWS is smart enough to be that particular. You know the old saw "A person is smart. People are stupid". It sounds like Wolfe talked to one of the smart ones.

It wasn't just one person. It was a survey.

 

[Checkmite]

Interesting, I think, how the "flying monkey right" flew to attack this essay so quickly.

Yes, funny how they didn't wait a few months or something.

 

[MattusMaximus]

I read the Guardian article, and in a stupid knee-jerk fashion (because it spoke to my liberal bias) I posted the damn thing to my Facebook wall. Within a few minutes, though, I started to think carefully about it, and then I found the Crooks & Liars story debunking Wolf's article, so I posted that to my Facebook wall as a mea cupla.

I think I just need to ignore any article related to politics

 

[Noztradamus]

Gentlemen, I'm afraid a colony of Hippies has been found in your town.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

1. Washington's blog is a kook site, run by a 9-11 Truther named Alex Floum. He's toned down his Trooferism a bit and added a few more crackpots like Carl Herman to the blog, but he's still a fruitcake.

He's also an anti-semite. Floum is known to use "dual citizen" as a euphemism for jew.

 

[Skepticemea]

I was murmuring to all and sundry, really.

Let me ask: were you saying that the perceived crime increase could only be from those within OWS or those without? Because I think the lines between the two are quite blurry.

I was wondering whether a perceived increase in crime (I've not seen any figures, just anecdotal "evidence") resulting in a temporary rise in population in an area can be completely down to the incoming population. For example, the Notting Hill Carnival in London increases the normal population of the area by over 1 million people over the weekend. The crime rate increase is actually lower in the area than could be expected by applying the normal rates of criminality per 1m population although a fair amount of street crime is due to "gangs" (read small groups who think they can get away with it due to the difficulties in policing such a large number of people).

I suppose what I'm trying to say, awkwardly and in a meandering fashion, is that you seem to be blaming the dog for having fleas.

 

[Vorticity]

...Vichy Oakland Mayor Jean Quan...

Really? Really?

 

[000063]

Gentlemen, I'm afraid a colony of Hippies has been found in your town.

Is there anything we can do about it? Some kind of cream?

I was murmuring to all and sundry, really.



I was wondering whether a perceived increase in crime (I've not seen any figures, just anecdotal "evidence") resulting in a temporary rise in population in an area can be completely down to the incoming population. For example, the Notting Hill Carnival in London increases the normal population of the area by over 1 million people over the weekend. The crime rate increase is actually lower in the area than could be expected by applying the normal rates of criminality per 1m population although a fair amount of street crime is due to "gangs" (read small groups who think they can get away with it due to the difficulties in policing such a large number of people).

I suppose what I'm trying to say, awkwardly and in a meandering fashion, is that you seem to be blaming the dog for having fleas.

It probably doesn't help that Occupy doesn't seem to want police to patrol for crime among them, and that means the crime rate might be higher than it would otherwise. It's not so much blaming the dog for having fleas, but for not wanting to take a fleabath, and scratching at the fleabites, and then stopping the scratching when it realizes the owner is watching, pretending nothing's wrong so it doesn't have to take a bath.

On the other hand, the increased police presence at the actual protests may actually deter criminals there. Of course, there's plenty of vandalism committed by the protestors themselves.



Note how the video describes "Black Bloc Anarchists", not Occupiers. They couldn't possibly just be Occupiers in masks, or be both Anarchists and Occupiers.

 

[Skepticemea]

It probably doesn't help that Occupy doesn't seem to want police to patrol for crime among them, and that means the crime rate might be higher than it would otherwise. It's not so much blaming the dog for having fleas, but for not wanting to take a fleabath, and scratching at the fleabites, and then stopping the scratching when it realizes the owner is watching, pretending nothing's wrong so it doesn't have to take a bath.

On the other hand, the increased police presence at the actual protests may actually deter criminals there. Of course, there's plenty of vandalism committed by the protestors themselves.

Are you maybe positively undecidedly certain about those statements.

 

[000063]

Yes, which is why I posted a video of protestors vandalizing. For the sake of fairness, I'm distinguishing between "protestors" and "Occupiers". It is possible that non-Occupiers could be among the Occupiers. However, there is also the chance that the vandals are occupiers. I do have a problem with the usual OWS claim that any vandals at their protests have to be Other People Who Just Happened To Be There.

I think someone on this forum claimed that less people have died or been seriously injured due to "militarized police action" than in the Occupy camps themselves. They didn't source, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[000063]

Naomi Wolf: reception, responses, critics | Matt Seaton

Wow. Even other liberals are condemning Wolf, comparing her to Fox News and the right-wing. (Which is ironic, in light of how many people seemed perfectly willing to misinterpret Megyn Kelly.) The tone of the comments is rather different from the Wolf one.

I also did not realize that Wolf herself is an Occupier, and has been arrested during a protest. That should've been mentioned in the article, in the interests of disclosure.

A shining example of journalistic ethics, our Naomi.

EDIT: And here's her comparing Obama to Hitler, which she claims is different from Tea Partiers putting a moustache on him, because those are offensive!

 

[leftysergeant]

Regardless of complaints about the "militarization" of police.. (riot police have a very tough job and as noted, have goals and tactics very different from soldiers. Soldiers have been called in to handle riot situations, usually with poor results. They are not equipped or trained for crowd control.)

They are now. I have worked that lane as a role player in training scenarios. Once you have occupied an area, the soldiers become, effectively, law enforcement personnel to maintain internal security.

That fat slob Pike would never have cleared my lane.

The goals of the OWS folks do seem to be disparate, and their lack of cohesiveness may work against them. However, the Tea Party folks likewise eschewed "leadership" and portrayed themselves (rather successfully) as a grass-roots movement with a common sentiment.

That is what it looked like, but the Koch roaches had hired some very effective organizers and motivators to provide logistical and information services support.

I would add that there were enough acts of violence perpetrated by some of the extremists among the teatards that they should have been considered a real threat to public safety.

 

[000063]

And people at OccupyOakland vandalizing property and assaulting reporters and increasing the crime rate is...what? A strongly worded letter? According to the US code (federal law), that's a riot.