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25 comments

  2. NIcole

    You’ve got it wrong. Some occupy protestors just entered City Hall – no weapons, no violence. It’s under siege by the Oakland Police Department – lots of weapons, plenty of violence.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      The headline came from Deontos who is sympathetic to Occupy Oakland and is in Oakland. I’m relying on the view of a local.

  5. Ned Ludd

    If you want to avoid arrest, commit financial fraud and crash the economy, create a worldwide torture regime and destroy evidence to cover it up, or lie the country into a war that kills hundreds of thousands of civilians. But if go out and march in the street – no civilized nation can allow that!

    1. R Foreman

      Don’t forget, you need a front-man who smiles real big, and denies that anything is wrong, ignores the rampant law-breaking, and then uses other laws like statute of limitations to get the criminals off scott free, all the while grossly enriching himself and his cronies as millions of citizens lose their life-savings.

    3. Richard Kline

      Silly Ludd, it’s all about optics. ‘Crime’ is something you have to be middle to lower class to commit. If you’re upper class, you ‘enact policy.’ Get it? Crime and punishment. Policy ‘development.’ It _pays_ to be the class who owns the [in]justice system and fills the legislature. You and your buds don’t get punished; you just get reassigned if the heat gets too much.

      This is relective of the re-enserfment of the populace, one might argue, that ‘crime’ is something related to class, not to behavior. The ‘criminal’ class must be contained for the good of social order (and the property protection of the rich). The non-criminal class cannot commit crimes, by definition, which is why no bankster is under indictment for commissions of enrichment. It’s simply ‘normal behavior’ for the non-criminal class to help themselves to the property of anyone so foolish as to leave said property available for ‘reemployment of capital.’ Normal, class behavior. Whereas the normal behavior of the ‘criminal class,’ however normative it might be is, by definition, criminal. Walk down the street and ask for justice: that’s a crime. One has to have _permission_ from the non-criminal class to walk down that street; otherwise being there is a criminal class act, and punishable by anything and everything.

      The putative non-criminal class need reeducation regarding the values of a common society. That’s coming . . . .

    2. LD

      The US military partners have arrived boys. We aim to please (and assist with no money down, if you get my drift) all ya boys fightin OUR fight for us. (vis-a-vis the Ukraine-Israeli mob “handmaids.”)

    1. LeonovaBalletRusse

      LS, since they all wear “fatigues”, the lines of demarcation between military, security, and police, are effectively eliminated.

  12. b when

    In lambert’s photo above, over 150 folks are seated and zip-tied. Another 150 were already loaded on buses. The seated were told to disperse or face arrest. They were also not permitted to stand. Go figure. (Only a breakdancer or swami levitator could leave.)

    I love and am grateful for Yves’ work here. But the rhetoric of ‘siege’ and the confusion of agency it confers is very problematic, even if the original source produced it. Some folks don’t ‘feel’ how their words go contrary to the spirit of their cause. Editorial brackets tip the reader to that issue.
    Speaking of the spirit subverted by the word, witness Mr. Jarvis of National Parks; Congresspersons Ms. Norton, Mr.Clay, Mr Cummings; and Mr. Zick at the congressional hearing on Occupy DC. Compare to chair Gowdy and congressmen Issa and Walsh. Should the law of the land subvert the constitution? Kudos Mr Jarvis your training has done your well, too bad that cannot be said of all congresspersons.

    (apology, the first 5 minutes of link is blank) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVcTcWJCOyE

  15. Nathanael

    It remains to be seen whether Oakland is an outlier or a harbinger. Even if it is an outlier, I don’t think the fascist behavior of the police in Oakland is sustainable.

    That sort of thing can be sustained against massive public opposition only under limited circumstances, and in a very very large city which is part of a metropolis full of people with civil liberties inclinations — is not one of the better places to try it. (A rural Louisiana parish, that’s where to try it, if you want to try your hand at an openly brutal police state.)

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