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Armed Occupy Police Scared of Old Lady, Judge and Pregnant Teenager

By: Adalia WoodburyNov. 20th, 2011more from Adalia Woodbury

seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo

The Occupy movement’s critics would have you believe that Occupy Wall Street protesters are a bunch of dirty hippies doing terrible and unlawful things.  They don’t tell you about the infiltrators whose sole and exclusive purpose is to discredit the Occupy movement by trying to incite violence.

They don’t talk about the fact that the Occupy movement has the numbers on its side in the discussion on economic equality.  They dismiss that Americans recognize that increasing taxes on the dwindling middle class while decreasing taxes on the multi-billionaires is blatantly unfair, not to mentioning economically unsustainable.

As they seek more from the public trough for essentials like gambling, millions of Americans are struggling for luxuries like food.  Yet, if you listen to Fox, or Rush Limbaugh, you would think that most of us lie around eating chocolate all day while the 1% works their professionally manicured fingers to the bone.

Jennifer Rubin’s writing reflects the deliberate ignorance and stereotyping that the right wing continues to churn out under the adage if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.

Here’s an example:

What does this mean for the left? Well, there are plenty of liberal pundits who look foolish, after concocting a “movement” out of the filthy rabble. And there may be some really embarrassing ads featuring House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Obama, among others, cooing over OWS, which eventually showed its true colors. By the way, does the president have nothing to say about the violence, destruction and fouling of American cities? Oh, he’s in Asia, hiding from the super-committee debate.

Ms. Rubin’s solution is everyone who is part of the 99% should just stop worrying their stupid little heads about the big problems of economic inequality and go home.  After all, Congress is talking about it and Paul Ryan has some just dandy ideas.

Ryan argues that since the government achieves greater income equality through the tax code and programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, it would behoove those clamoring for greater redistribution to work to shore up those entitlement programs.

In addition, Ryan makes the point that the CBO’s findings will be misconstrued so long as we incorrectly assume that it is the same people at the top and the bottom. In fact, “people and families move up over time into higher-income groups for a variety of reasons (e.g. completing college).”

If hard core right wing propaganda is your thing, you can always rely on Rush Limbaugh, or the Murdoch media empire to satisfy your desires.  Here’s an example of their vitriol as found in the New York Post:

It was a blur of batons, beatings and blood.

Police in riot gear answered the Occupy Wall Street mobilization with a display of force that overwhelmed protesters everywhere they gathered.

“I saw somebody kick the [barricade] — and all of a sudden the police kicked in and cracked his head,” a protester named Tim, 20, said after witnessing a Zuccotti Park confrontation that left a comrade bleeding profusely before he was hauled off to a police van.

Yeah!  There’s nothing like some skull cracking to illustrate how violent the protesters are.

Combined with the propagandistic attempts to associate OWS with anti-Semitism, Anarchism, Communism, filth, laziness, violence and anything else they can make up, exaggerate or take out of context, the 1%ers wrap their Teabagger movement in the American flag, God and the ever so peaceful  2nd amendment remedies.  Sometimes the propaganda gets a bit confusing, even for those who really want to embrace it.  For example, Fox has tried to suggest someone who shoots at the White House because he hates Obama is linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement, while simultaneously claiming the Occupy movement is tied to Obama and the Democrats.

Here is what Fox and others, like bigjournalism.com, are hanging their hats on:

“U.S. Park police say Ortega may have spent time blending in with Occupy D.C. protesters.”

Fox took the same sentence, which was originally in an ABC article and turned it into the following headline: Man Linked to ‘Occupy’ Protest Charged With Attempted Assassination of Obama.

When the negative and scary stereotypes of the protesters don’t work, then it’s time to turn to violence, combined with rhetoric that paints the Occupy Wall Street protesters as hairy, scary monsters.

For example, an 84 year old woman just scares the bejeezus out of the strapping cops armed with assault rifles.

Or how about the women who got pepper sprayed in the face because the police forcing their friend to the ground scared them, as reported by Sarah Jones last month?

Nothing calms a scared person down more effectively than a face full of pepper spray.

Pregnant teenagers also scare the police to the point that call for pepper spray.  Hey, the girl shouldn’t have been there anyway.  After all she is “with child” and should only leave the house to go to Church, or a Tea Party Rally where the protesters are the ones carrying the guns.

seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo

Then there are the protesters who show a great threat while sitting on the ground and refusing to move. So it appears that people who are sitting also scare the police.

The video

shows the police officer in question pepper spraying each and every person sitting on the ground, then repeating the process two more times before several more officers join in.

Sure, the first thing someone will do after getting a face full of pepper spray is to go home and forget why they joined the Occupy protest.

And of course, cameras are very threatening, making it necessary to pepper spray them.

Anyone want to bet the threatening camera went home after being doused with pepper spray?

This is all justified if you believe that old ladies, young women who are scared or pregnant, and cameras constitute a serious threat to a police officer in riot gear and armed with an assault rifle.

But hey, these are anarchists, right?  They have a history of violence and they want government to take over every facet of our lives. Of course, this overlooks the fact that Anarchism is a philosophy that pretty much hates anything to do with government.

They’ll tell you that Occupy Wall Street is anti-American, anti-capitalist and hey, they just want something for nothing. Kid you not, rhetoric like this is resonating with some people and they are willing to advocate police violence to anyone who will listen to them, like this person writing in response to a NY Post rant about OWS.

 Jason Barker works at Federal Reserve Bank of New York:

NYPD: feel free to crack some hyppie skulls for me! I work downtown and I want this crap to stop ASAP.

The violence keeps escalating.  A friend was informed that someone actively involved in Occupy Denver has had their life threatened.

Among the people who have been attacked include a former State Supreme Court Judge. As reported by Democracy Now:  Judge Karen Smith was a legal observer at the New York protest, last Tuesday.  Here is how she was treated when she went to aid a woman who was pushed to the ground.

I walk over, and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, ‘Lady, do you want to get arrested?’ And I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘You want to get arrested?’ And he pushed me up against the wall.

Judge Smith Holding Legal Observer Hat on Democracy Now

Then there’s retired Policy Captain Ray Lewis, who actually was arrested.  Full Story can be read here.

So much for the lie that the people involved with Occupy Wall street are a bunch of lazy hippies and young people who don’t know how the world works.

The bottom line is there will be people who are so busy with their three jobs to provide luxuries like shelter and food at the same time for their families.  The one percent counts on their lack of time to actually question how one can be an Anarchist and yet support absolute government control over everything one says or does.  They hope that people stressing over whether they’ll have a job tomorrow won’t have time to think about the Republican Party’s resistance to job creation, desire to dismantle all things public be it education, postal delivery or the oops Agency Rick Perry wants to get rid of.

The corporate controlled media would have you think that the Occupy Movement is the radical arm of the Democratic Party or at the very least, the Democratic Party is “in bed” with the Occupy Movement.

The Occupy movement has officially become a liability for the Democrats. The New York Post reported: “Thousands of anti-Wall Street protesters clashed with cops [Thursday] across lower Manhattan, starting with a march on the New York Stock Exchange [in the] morning and ending with a crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge that snarled traffic. Cops responded in force, at one point [in the] afternoon sweeping into Zuccotti Park and arresting anyone inside. In total, at least 275 people were busted by cops; five of whom were charged with assault.

This overlooks the reality that the Occupy Wall Street Movement is non-partisan, but facts never get in the way of propaganda.

But if negative propaganda, violence and threatening people’s lives doesn’t work, some of the 1% minions can, and have, tried protests of their own. As noted by Salon’s Justin Elliot, the Tabacco brothers tried to stage an anti-Occupy wall street protest, complete with insulting signs suggesting that the protestors occupy a job. They claimed to be speaking for the real America and got quite a bit of attention.

Here’s the reality.

But it turns out the Tabacco brothers have a long and sometimes checkered history of publicity-seeking and relentless self-promotion — and their claim that 50 local businessmen are supporting the anti-Occupy protest is entirely unsubstantiated.

The conservatives within the 1% financial bracket, along with their minions, count on the fact that people who are working more for a lot less and therefore simply lack the time and energy to question anything they are told.  The Koch brothers and like-minded individuals count on this to break down the resistance to a system that is rigged to subsidize the rich and punish the people who are not a part of that Orwellian sounding group: “The Job Creators.”

Lies become truth, while the truth becomes lies in their world.  They use the police who used to serve and protect to implement orders of  violence in the name of “keeping the peace.”  They claim to believe in freedom as they utilize the sort of tactics we associate with the Soviet Union or Maoist China.

They make the economy scream, while claiming that they bring prosperity. They claim the rich are poor and the poor are rich.  They claim those who own our congress lack representation, while they try to silence the 99%.  Much of this sounds like an Orwell novel. 

If only it was.


Image: Photo by Louise Macabitas

Armed Occupy Police Scared of Old Lady, Judge and Pregnant Teenager was written by Adalia Woodbury for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Nov. 20th, 2011. All Rights Reserved

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