28 Replies to “"Occupy’s Phase II: Changing the Subject to Salvage the Scheme"”

1. Pablo says:

   November 21, 2011 at 11:31 am

   Tin soldiers and Obama coming
   We’re finally on our own
   This winter I smell them coming
   12 crying in…

   Nah. that doesn’t work.

2. DarthLevin says:

   November 21, 2011 at 11:37 am

   The Enemy is trying to play their equivalence game again. Only instead of “ogling” = “raping with your eyes”, it’s “pepper spray” = “bullets”.

   The correct answer is to deny the validity of the Enemy Media’s assumption, not defend against their idiotic correlation. But of course the Establicans and pragmatists will play prevent, lose ground, and get run over. Again.

3. Lost My Cookies says:

   November 21, 2011 at 11:50 am

   I was wonderfully sick this weekend and spent Saturday night sitting up in front of the TV watching anything that didn’t threaten to make me think. I got stuck on a documentary about the history of Heavy Metal when I caught sight of the MC5, who have always been a favorite. They were interviewing Wayne Kramer who went on an extended rant about how their generation had to rebel because they were firmly convinced that the preceding generations had no idea what they were doing and had completely screwed up the world.

   I’ll see that fucker and raise him.

4. happyfeet says:

   November 21, 2011 at 11:50 am

   do real people in real life give a crap about the whole occupy farce? The whole thing seems really a lot overblown I think.

5. LBascom says:

   November 21, 2011 at 11:56 am

   I thought pepper spray was the humane alternative to water canons and police dogs.

   I guess the police were supposed to use dandelions and limp noodles to restore order.

6. geoffb says:

   November 21, 2011 at 12:18 pm

   Newspaper Guild comes out in support of OWS. Forms an online forum “Occupied Journalists” “to share survival strategies and anecdotes”

   “The Occupy movement is about justice,” explained Bernie Lunzer, president of the Guild, in Washington, D.C. “Our effort is to ensure just treatment for all journalists and media workers as they cover this story that’s playing out in the streets.”

   The new Facebook page follows a letter-writing protest the union aimed at Oakland authorities after rough treatment of media covering a police action intended to clear out the Occupy Oakland encampment.

   “Clearly, by all accounts I have seen and read, the police leadership on the ground lost both perspective and control,” Jim Weitkamp, a regional vice president for CWA and the union’s top officer in California and Hawaii, wrote in a letter to Mayor Jean Quan and interim Police Chief Howard Jordan.

7. dicentra says:

   November 21, 2011 at 12:30 pm

   I thought pepper spray was the humane alternative to water canons and police dogs.

   It is if you’re dealing with subhuman teabaggers.

   But for The Revolution, cops shouldn’t even think about interfering unless they can produce a good photo-op.

8. dicentra says:

   November 21, 2011 at 12:32 pm

   Zombie provides some needed insight into what OWS means by “Kent State Moment” and also provides a photo that s/he thinks should become the emblem of the whole movement.

9. geoffb says:

   November 21, 2011 at 12:38 pm

   Cops = Union, Journalists = Union. Solidarity for the narrative insured.

10. leigh says:

    November 21, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    Granted, I have no experience with pepper sprays, either on the giving or receiving end of said spray. However, the alleged pepper spray I have seen shown on the newz appears to be very orange and has a wide arc to the spray. Further, it is being sprayed at sitting people from an officer in a standing position some three or more feet away. The sprayees are not shown writhing, screaming, rubbing at their eyes or clutching their throats while coughing and retching. Using my spidey sense of deduction, I am calling bullshit on it being pepper spray of a police grade and more like a bbq spray.

    The campus police are victims of a rush to judgement in pursuit of a Kent State moment, as said above. That “iconic” photo is staged, btw.

    Same as it ever was.

11. Carin says:

    November 21, 2011 at 1:04 pm

    I think I need help because that video makes me laugh and laugh laugh.

12. leigh says:

    November 21, 2011 at 1:06 pm

    Come sit by me, Carin. I thought it was hilarious.

13. Swen says:

    November 21, 2011 at 2:07 pm

    @ 5. Do you know why they use so many German shepherds as police dogs? Because black and tan look good on hippies..

14. George Turner says:

    November 21, 2011 at 3:19 pm

    If campus police are using pepper spray, it must be Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. They do that all the time to break up student parties that get too loud, and they even do it at off-campus parties.

    Often they just walk through spritzing the floor, but if anyone gets confrontational they get a blast in the face. It’s become a common and effective way for a few officers to control a packed apartment full of drunk students.

    Many times my college housemates have come back from a wild party with “and then the cops showed up and started spraying, so we bailed.”

    What’s odd is that older folks (including hippies) probably don’t realize that this is now normal, but all the college students that the OWS crowd might look to for sympathy will be less than impressed by their suffering. “Yeah, that happened to me at a frat party last Friday. Get over it.”

15. Seth says:

    November 21, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    Yeah, that video is pretty damning for the occupiers. They posted it to YouTube to garner sympathy…but frankly I washed away any lingering doubts I had about the rectitude of the police actions.

16. geoffb says:

    November 21, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    Phase 2 at Ace. From a piece about the Canadian founders of the OWS in “The New Yorker.”

    Earlier that night, Adbusters had sent out its most recent “tactical briefing”—a mass e-mail to ninety thousand friends of the magazine—proposing that the nation’s Occupy protesters throw a party in mid-December, declare victory, and withdraw from their encampments. A few hours later, officers from the New York Police Department began handing out notices stating that the park had become dangerous and unsanitary, and ordering the protesters to leave, so that it could be cleaned.
    […]
    The police had established a strict media cordon, blocking access from nearby streets. “It was a military-style operation,” he said. These words made Lasn think of the bloody uprising in Syria. He quickly decided that the apparent end of Zuccotti was not a tragedy but the latest in a series of crisis-driven opportunities, what he calls “revolutionary moments,” akin to the slapping of a Tunisian fruit vender. “I just can’t believe how stupid Bloomberg can be!” he said to me later that day. “This means escalation. A raising of the stakes. It’s one step closer to, you know, a revolution.”

    Lasn and White quickly hammered out a post-Zuccotti plan. White would draft a new memorandum, suggesting that Phase I—signs, meetings, camps, marches—was now over. Phase II would involve a swarming strategy of “surprise attacks against business as usual,” with the potential to be “more intense and visceral, depending on how the Bloombergs of the world react.” White could hear the excitement in Lasn’s voice. Even as Lasn vented about the morning’s counterrevolution, he was doing what he could not to splash.
    

17. Seth says:

    November 21, 2011 at 7:55 pm

    Just read the article at Ace’s (and the article linked off there as well). These fuckers are calling for revolution, and mean it.

    Oh, and if they go through with the plan to occupy stores on Black Friday, innocent people are going to get hurt – financially and physically. I can’t imagine a stupid move on the Owwies part, which is why I think they’ll try it.

18. Dave in SoCal says:

    November 22, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    I really enjoyed how the off-camera woman who had been chanting “protect yourself!” before hand (i.e. knowing what was coming) is now, post-spraying, wailing “Why did you do this?”

    Critical thinking is not a part of her personal skill set I’ll wager.

19. geoffb says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    UC Davis Occupiers Agreed To Be Pepper Sprayed Before Incident

    […]

    As a Policeman bends over to tell the “Leader” of the protesters that they are going to be sprayed, the “Leader” responds (3 second mark):

    “Your shooting us specifically? No that’s fine, that’s fine.”

20. LBascom says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:12 pm

    “Your shooting us specifically? No that’s fine, that’s fine.”

    Sounds like permission to me.

    The disciplined officers need to be un-disciplined post haste.

21. Dave in SoCal says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:13 pm

    Oh, and if they go through with the plan to occupy stores on Black Friday, innocent people are going to get hurt – financially and physically.

    I strongly encourage OWS members to plant themselves in front of the entrance of the nearest Wal-Mart store on Friday. With crowds of people all desperately trying to get in to snag those $49 LG Blu-Ray players at the opening, any chanting losers locking arms and blocking the doors are going to quickly find themselves in need of either medical attention or mortuary services after being trampled by a screaming horde of holiday shoppers.

    Hell, people have gotten killed at those things when they were trying to get into the store as well. Good luck trying to stop that mob.

22. LBascom says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Dave, I think the plan is to go into the stores, and stink ’em out.

23. sdferr says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    Looking on at the policemen and their deployment of pepper-spray, I only think of my own experiences moving large inert objects around on job-sites. The cops are simply trying their best not to injure themselves or the linked-armed-protestors as they remove them from the path. The silly people who’ve decided to discipline the cops have likely never tried to physically move such objects, so don’t know the sorts of injuries which can result. So much for “perspective”.

24. leigh says:

    November 22, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    I read in the AP yesterday, that the OWS people had attacked a Police Horse. Where’s PETA on this?

25. Dave in SoCal says:

    November 22, 2011 at 3:18 pm

    Lying Fat Tub O’Lard says “UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident ‘Resonates’ With The World Like Tienanmen Square”

    “It is an iconic movement in Occupy Wall Street history,” he continued, “people will remember months and year from now that UC Davis was the moment Occupy Wall Street went to college campuses.”

    No it isn’t, idiot, and no they won’t.

    The desperation of the Left to somehow salvage the sinking credibility of the OWS movement stinks worse than the OWS protesters themselves.

26. geoffb says:

    November 22, 2011 at 5:14 pm

    One driver of the OWS is all the (call them plastic-radical) professors/celebrities who were 10 or 12 in 1968 and the little brothers/sisters of those who were at the Chicago convention and/or Woodstock now see a chance to live their dream through the young people they can convince to march and occupy in their place.

    Take Moore, please, 14 years old when Chicago & Woodstock happened, 13 during the “Summer of Love”. Years and years of “protest envy” souring his life and now, Wisconsin & OWS. The dreams of youth playing out. Gotta keep’em going cause the withdrawal is gonna be a big fat bitch.

27. sdferr says:

    November 22, 2011 at 9:17 pm

    Zombie’s follow-up report on the pepper-sprayed. Here they are giggling about their experience.

    Badly wrenched backs, on the other hand, generally result in days if not weeks of marginaly mobility, and no giggling. Frequent wincing, that’s another story.

28. What really happened at UC Davis? says:

    November 24, 2011 at 8:58 am

    […] wasn’t it. And given what’s coming, we needn’t pretend it […]

Comments are closed.