Monday, December 5, 2011

Vermin?


Mayors and police around the country have pretended public health is the reason for shutting down Occupy protests, but their actions belie their words.
Read it at AlterNet
Hazmat Suits to Break Up Occupations? How Mayors Feign Concern for Health to Trash a Growing Movement
By Sarah Jaffe

Stretching the bounds of credulity to suppress constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and redress?

Is this part of a coordinated program to paint protestors as dirty? Looks like it. This tactic is right out of Dr. Goebbels playbook to portray "enemies of society" as vermin, the obvious next step being extermination.

What especially gives the lie to this lame excuse is that the police do not allow those they round up and confine accesses to toilets with predictable results.

Hundreds of OccupyLA Demonstrators Held for Days Without Charges on $5,000 Bail in Often Deplorable, Illegal, and Unconstitutional Conditions by  Ernest A. Canning at The Brad Blog
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

6 comments:

Dan said...

Don't you get tired of the Nazi references? Especially considering they're unconfirmed reports?

Tom Hickey said...

Unconfirmed reports? Google "police" and "hazmat suits." REad the many reports of the reasons given for the need to evict the protestors over "health concerns." JUst what is unconfirmed?

Tom Hickey said...

I don't think we can overlook the past based on what has happened recently. Not only is current propaganda reminiscent of Goebbles, but SERE training reverse-engineered totalitarian techniques for the GWOT. That is one thing that got me thinking, and now I am sensitive what I see developing. The parallels are too close and coordinated to pass off as merely coincidental. Godwin's Law shouldn't be applied so indiscriminately that we miss developing patterns.

Torture, Rendition, and other Abuses against Captives in US Custody Techniques Used in SERE Training

Dan said...

The stuff about taking swaths of DNA from the protestors is unconfirmed (which they admit in the alternet piece). And the assumption you are making is that there were no legitimate health concerns whatsoever (your piece says it was an excuse even though the piece itself seems to have a clear agenda, and many news sources differ).

Many reports that I have read (including this piece from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/30/us-usa-protests-idUSTRE7AT0FO20111130 and this from ABC news:http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/la-begins-park-cleanup-as-occupy-pledges-to-move-forward/) have mentioned that there were large amounts of debris and human waste products covering the park (as well as a noticeable stench when police entered and reports from the AP that the park will take weeks to clean).

Jumping to the Nazi line so often, especially when you are going off the assumption in spite of many reports indicating there may be legitimate public health concerns, degrades the crimes actually carried out by the Nazis. It hurts your cause, your credibility, and hurts OWS in general. I think Godwin's law does apply here and think there are other ways of getting your point across without resorting to offensive language.

Tom Hickey said...

Dan, I call 'em as I see them. You are welcome to your opinion, too.

Tom Hickey said...

I should clarify what I mean, however. I don't think that all the mayors involved are reading Goebbles or imitating Nazi propaganda, and I certainly hope they are not. However, there is a correlation that can be seen without imputing causality.

If that correlation is accidental, then someone should point it out to them, because it is pretty obvious and whether an effect is intended or not, it follows its cause. This is a type of propaganda, even if only implicit. Certainly, police actions after having rounded up the protestors show that they have little concern with basic health and safety standards, but use degradation and pain to the point of borderline torture to "make a point." This is nothing new. Police have routinely done this in the US and in the US military and I have witnessed it personally.

The larger question is whether the crack down was coordinated, and if so, to what degree. Was there a playbook and who wrote it.

We know from SERE that the US government and military has used the methods of former enemies, who were prosecuted for using these methods.

To what degree if any is are central agencies like DHS doing something similar wrt to the protests.

If there is nothing behind this other an "accident," then the people in charge should still be removed from their positions for professional malfeasance and stupidity for allowing such a horrendous correlation to develop, fostering the perception of causality and implicitly producing the same result as former foes aimed at explicitly.

This is simply unacceptable behavior on the part of professional law enforcement agencies and the elected officials that are supposed to have control over them and thus the people through them.

I am hardly alone is seeing the development of a police state in the US, so I don't think I am being either overly conspiratorial or imaginative.