Krister Axel

Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) had a presence even in the WeHo Halloween parade this year, it made me happy. Times they are a-changing.

pictures courtesy of @schuyler and the police brutality of Occupy Oakland.

And here’s the tear gas grenade:

and a bean bag bullet:

You may have heard now about Officer Cardona the punchy NYPD officer.

On October 14th occupy.uslaw.com posted this:

Officer Cardona— known to Occupy Wall Street legal observers as the officer whose violent reach across a police line to grab a demonstrator by the neck is thought to have precipitated officer Anthony Bologna’s infamous Pepper Spray attack — is reported to have punched another demonstrator in the face this morning.

They also posted this picture:

You can see it online, there are plenty of Youtube versions. It’s amazing how documented this movement is. Just this week, we heard that mobile devices now outnumber people in the US. I’m sure most of these devices have something resembling a camera and of course many of them probably also have some way to record video. No wonder many states are enacting laws that make taking video, photos, or audio of a police officer a crime. I would bet a lot of money that New York is trying pretty hard right now to ratchet up their existing law shielding police officers from video recordings. I have been saying it for years: this is quickly becoming a police state. Does anyone remember the ongoing Posse Comitatus violation that started in 2008? They announced it in the Army Times, after all. This is a systemic problem and I think it is absolutely a corollary to the problems that we have now with the big banks. Any successful kleptocracy needs henchmen. There is a culture in media and government (both wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporations) that protests like OccupyWallStreet are just full of hippies and ‘left-wing nutbars’ but somehow the Tea Party has nothing but legitimate concerns.

It’s enough to make you feel a little crazy, like it’s all slipping away and there is nothing to be done about it. I think that’s why OccupyWallStreet is enjoying such widespread support – something the Tea Party never had. Ever since Obama turned out to be such a disappointment, people have been waiting for somewhere to invest a little hope.

I have made donations at occupywallst.org and you should too. Anyone in the 99% – which is everyone, knowing how invisible the super-rich really are – should get behind this movement. OccupyWallStreet is about putting some of the power back in the hands of the people, where it belongs. It’s as simple as that.

For good info on the movement worldwide, I suggest following these people on Twitter:

Josh Harkinson
Allison Kilkenny
Mother Jones

I saw a tweet about it from @ClaudeSuper and I thought it was interesting. I’ve been seeing this quote moving around Facebook today and I should have realized it was becoming a national news item. The story is from Mashable:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition…. The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

- Martin Luther King

A modified version of this quote has been going around Facebook:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

The first sentence (in italics, added by me) was written by Jessica Dovey, and came to be included in a tweet by @pennjillete that quickly went viral. It was incorrectly attributed to MLK in it’s entirety, although the first sentence was not his. I think the message is still an important one and I agree with the premise of both the entire quote from MLK as well as the modified one. The world needs love that is for sure.

UPDATE: interesting follow-up piece by @ggreenwald on the media’s role in spinning the story of bin Laden’s killing – while possibly NOT holding a gun (he was unarmed), which is what the White House had said previously.

UPDATE: I tweeted a link to this story to both of these journalists that were once people I looked up to, and was roundly ignored. For so-called progressives they were decidedly closed-minded. This, to me, is the main part of why our country is so sick. Despite the ‘myth of the liberal media’ perpetuated by Fox and others, the truth is that what passes as liberal journalism is barely centrist from a historical perspective. The fact that our government got away with the greatest feat of public deception of perhaps all time is a great source of shame for me and the discussion about 9/11 is non-existent. The only thing we know for sure is that were lied to about everything.

Here is the original post:

Dear Matt and Adam (two journalists that I respect very much) -

Both of you have shown me this week that you find it all right to ridicule ‘truthers’ on the basis of what could be called blood-in-the-water syndrome. I don’t defend all or even most of what has been lumped together under this umbrella of the ‘truther’ movement, but I would expect the two of you to keep your critical thinking juices flowing for a little longer than you have. The fact is, although there is a real confluence of tinfoil-hat thinking within this group of ‘truthers’, there remains a core of people just like me who do not really pay much attention to people like Alex Jones, but who do have a problem with being lied to.

Now Matt, you of all people should know how disingenuous it can be for someone in a position like yours to make it seem like all that is similar is the same – in your blog piece for Rolling Stone, you refer to ’9/11 Truthers’ in a very insulting way:

Okay, so, predictably, the 9/11 Truthers came out of the woodwork kicking and screaming, after I compared them to my friend’s brain-damaged dog. I know I said I would leave this stuff alone, but… I can’t! It’s just too maddening!

First of all, in referring to all ‘truthers’ collectively, you might as well call all Christians Catholics. I know for a satirist like you, a big part of your stylistic approach to writing is precisely this sort of aggression, and frankly, when it is applied to Wall Street or the Tea Party I find it endearing. What bothers me about this is that these are your people, at least in some sense – there is some truth here, whether or not you want to see it. Again, there are some real fringe views that have unfortunately come under the ‘truther’ umbrella that I can’t and will not vouch for – but the fact remains, we have clearly been lied to, and that should interest you. By your callous cheap-shot at an underappreciated quest by the few for political closure, you are undermining the causes that you purport to hold dear – namely the protection of the few against the many and the debunking of propaganda at all costs.

Adam – I saw this tweet of yours:

Will I unfollow you for RTing some Alex Jones 9/11 truther bullshit? Why yes, yes I will. #EveryTime

and I would make very much the same contention – that Alex Jones does not by any stretch of the imagination speak for the large group of people in this country that know that there is a story within the events of 9/11 that has not been told. You and Matt are by no means the only people that have made this mistake – but I single you out because you should know better. You have both been duped in some way into thinking negatively about something that should interest you – that’s the only explanation I can come up with. That’s what I mean by blood in the water – this meme that ‘all truthers are crazy and have no salient point to make’ is so prevalent that you have allowed yourselves to stop thinking critically. Please allow me to make a simple argument.

1 – Tower 7.

FEMA, in the World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Chapter 5, Section 6.2, referring to the “Probable Collapse Sequence” discussed in NPH 22 says that it’s own explanation for how WTC7 fell has only a “low probability of occurrence”.

There is still no credible official explanation for why Tower 7 fell.

2 – Nano-thermite

Traces of nano-thermite have been found in 100% of the dust samples taken from ground zero. This is a smoking gun in terms of evidence of demolition at the site. These are not conspiracy-theory armchair historians muddying the water, this a respectable coalition of academics and scientists who have come this conclusion, and it deserves to be taken seriously. I copied the report pdf from www.benthamscience.com – link

The simplest explanation is that we are being lied to. I make no claims about anything else – I don’t know why they wanted Tower 7 to fall. I only know that we didn’t get a credible explanation for how it happened.

I only ask that the two of you ask yourselves this question – do you ridicule ‘truthers’ because you have actually looked at this evidence and have deemed it baseless, or is there another explanation?

respectfully

Krister Axel