World News, possible History in the making. this is almost an actual battle.

[Hash Zeppelin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg
Occupy Oakland January 28, 2012 - Police Brutality

My camera was continuously rolling, I missed some things but got a lot. I edited it down to try and show all that is necessary to see. The action to take the Henry J Kaiser building started peaceful. The police diverted our route but the march continued toward the building. A fence was torn down in an attempt to take the building and the police fired tear gas. I did not leave out parts where protesters threw things (including the tear gas canisters that were fired upon them). The point was that the police responded with violence to the destruction of a fence. The protesters naturally reacted to this. Since the ability to take the building was stopped by the police, the march moved on (there was chatter of taking other buildings or approaching the building from the other side. I am not clear as to what the plan was). The police stopped the march in its tracks. I was filming the two sides in between them and had the first flash bang grenade shot at me which can be seen exploding at my feet in the video. It put me into a state of shock basically and I was pretty jumpy filming the rest (not to mention all of the tear gas I was breathing). The police responded with violence first in this standoff again. Rubber bullets, tear gas, smoke bombs and flash bang grenades were shot, the protesters retreated. Then the protesters approached again and the process basically repeated itself. During the second approach a young woman was being protected by the crowd and more flash bang grenades were shot at the protesters. From there, the march moved (maybe more accurately forced by the police. I missed another standoff involving clubbing with batons and more tear gas) to Oscar Grant Plaza. A lot more happened at night but since I was not there, you can consult other sources to get the rest of the story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ouse-lock-down-after-Washington-DC-march.html

Occupy protesters force White House lock-down after Washington DC march
"Occupy DC" protesters demonstrating against income inequality gathered at the Capitol building in Washington DC before marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, with a brief stop at the Supreme Court before arriving at the White House.
More than 1,000 protesters then held a rally outside the White House where a smoke bomb was propelled over a fence on the north side of the building.
George Ogilvie, a spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the suspected smoke bomb was thrown after the majority of demonstrators had left.
A small amount of smoke is believed to have been dispersed and police pushed protesters back so they could perform a thorough sweep of the area.
People inside the White House were initially prevented from leaving but were later released through a side exit.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...kland-Is-Occupy-movement-back-or-broken-video
Weekend violence in Oakland: Is Occupy movement back, or broken? (+video)

As Oakland, Calif., puts the Occupy movement back in the national spotlight with TV images of flag-burning and violent police clashes, a media war is under war to define the very nature of the Occupy movement itself, with Oakland as its potential flag-bearer.

Competing narratives as to what transpired over the weekend have been emerging in the digisphere and on YouTube. Depending on whose press releases or tweets you believe – which alternately portray the police or protesters as the violent instigators – this weekend could either be the black eye that becomes the Waterloo of the four-month-old global protest movement or the signal bell of its reawakening.

The struggle to define the group’s actions is already playing out in an escalating rhetorical war. On Monday, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan told the local CBS affiliate she planned to call “some of the national leadership of Occupy this week to say that the Oakland group is not nonviolent,” with the hope that the larger group will distance itself.

IN PICTURES: Occupy Wall Street protests

At the same time, Occupy Oakland media team member Shake Anderson dismisses Mayor Quan’s charge, saying simply, “We did not attack the police, they attacked us.”

On Saturday, according to an Occupy Oakland statement, protesters began a series of actions attempting to put “a vacant building to better use,” which Mr. Anderson acknowledges can be seen as trespassing. The site in question has been vacant for six years, according to the statement, which asserts that the Occupy group had voted to mount a nonviolent action to turn the space into a social center and headquarters of Occupy Oakland.

The crowd was met with an overwhelming police force, says Anderson, a force buttressed by mutual aid from 13 surrounding cities.

“We did not throw anything," says Anderson.

However, the Oakland Police Department (OPD), which describes the events in its own release, said that as activists began to march, “the first dispersal order was given as the crowd began destroying construction equipment and fencing.”

“Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares,” the OPD release said, adding that police “deployed smoke and tear gas.”

Anderson says simply, “This is a lie.” By the end of the evening, some 400 protesters had been arrested and several police officers treated for injuries. The OPD has not returned calls for comment. Its official statements say the protesters initiated the violent actions.

Reports from others on the ground paint a very different picture. Dan Miskulin, a contractor from San Francisco, describes a situation that many caught up in the action tweeted, texted, and blogged – saying that the police created an impossible situation for the protesters. According to these reports, police in riot gear surrounded the protesters, repeatedly funneling them into first a park and then an area by the YMCA from which they had no exit.

“I watched people go up to the officers and ask how they could leave, and the officers told them to go to another spot where the officers would pass them on. People were panicking after the tear gas,” Mr. Miskulin says.

[Editor's note: The original versionof this article reported that Mr. Miskulin said, "People were panicking after the tear gas and rubber bullets."]

As for projectiles being hurled at the police, notes Drexel University political scientist George Ciccareillo-Maher, who has been following the events closely, “protesters tossed back the tear gas canisters that were being shot at them by the police.”

Perhaps one of the most incendiary images from the weekend’s skirmishes is the American flag in flames. But, points out Scott Kimball, secretary for the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which has worked with Occupy protesters, “burning the flag is a protected form of political speech.”

But images can take on a life of their own, says Wojtek Zarzycki, managing director and strategist for Optimal Investing, a boutique financial services firm in New York that specializes in high-net-worth individuals.

“The vandalism and arrests will be more than just a black eye for the movement as now these acts are associated with its protesting,” he says via e-mail. “The influence of its actions is now lessened and the possibility of it regaining its status as the movement of the 99 percent is less likely.”

Most of the 99 percent whom the Occupy movement claims to represent, he adds, “have nothing to do with violence, nothing to do with vandalism, and only want fairness and equality.”

Prognosticators need to be careful about glib interpretations of media images, says Ted Morgan, author of “What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy.”

“Millions of Americans will see images that they find anywhere from stimulating to frightening to repugnant,” he says via e-mail. Powerful backlash forces will do what they have been doing for 48 years now, he says, “using these images to foist on the wider public a distorted reality about the movements and their meanings.”

Professor Ciccariello-Maher suggests another scenario – that Oakland may be the start of the Occupy movement’s next phase as the election season picks up. Whatever interpretation prevails in Oakland may not matter. The weekend’s events may be just the flashpoint the movement needs to emerge from a somewhat quiet winter, he adds.

we are getting scary close to civil war. protesters are using masks and shields now. Throwing shit back. Making multiple pushes. Trying to take over government buildings multiple times in one day. Forced adaption to police violence. The people of Oakland are fucking resilient when they are angry. As the police step up their actions so will the protesters. Eventually these cops are gonna kill someone, probably a black kid, or a gay kid, or a gay black kid. why? Because that is who the pigs aim for first........ and then the shit will hit the fan. Will bacon will be served?

Did you notice half the signs had peace symbols and the other half had Anarchy symbols? This is getting crazy. By next summer when it is warm again and very close to elections there is going to be national uproar.

REMAIN PEACEFUL. getting violent is only playing into their game. They are trying to sucker you into a game that they think the citizens can not win. they can win but that is not the point. the point is the rest of the world is watching and is rooting for the U.S. citizens to get their government back from the corporatist. Leading by example here is important. The rest of the world will join in on the fight for their countries too. If the U.S. shows them that this can be done peacefully then maybe they will stay peaceful too preventing hundreds of unneeded deaths.

 

[VonBudí]

we are getting scary close to civil war.

civil war 
noun
a war between political factions or regions within the same country.



doubt those lads are going to be pulling of anything worthwhile

 

[DarthFader1]

cliffnotes?

tl;dr

 

[Bullfrog44]

I have been warning since the first OWS movement when only 20 people showed up. This is serious and civil war is a def possibility. Only difference is the war will take place in your big cities. Hope I am wrong.

 

[Siomha]

honestly i assume nothing will change
they have more breath than the ppl
when the most important states in the world
join up and do it together i could see a star in the dark

 

[Hydro-Soil]

It's exactly the same thing that our govt has done in other countries.... for the last several decades.

Their demands are complete rubbish and nobody really seems to have a clue as to the reality of why they're upset enough to protest. All it takes is what... 3% to be riled up and you get masses like this forming?

Standard psych ops. *shrug*

The really bad thing going is.... what agenda our "inglorious bastard" leaders are planning to "fix" the issue they've so artfully created.

Stay Safe!

 

[LouDog420]

but if you look at the streets, it wasn't about rodney king...

It's this fucked up situation and these fucked up police...

It's about coming up, and staying on top...

Screaming 187 on a mutha fuckin' cop

 

[CannabisCan!]

It's not in the paper, it's on the walls!

 

[Bullfrog44]

OWS are just a bunch of anarchist, communist thugs that need to go away. As for any body still endorsing these groups........maybe they are just as crazy as the people in the streets lighting flags on fire.

 

[CLOWD11]

I wouldnt think whinging arsehats could start a civil when nothing was done about muslims after 911. Now that would have deserved some coverage unlike the no hopers that protest about other peoples wages.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I support the protesters but not the violence, vandalism and theft. A few bad apples give the whole idea a black eye.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

OWS are just a bunch of anarchist, communist thugs that need to go away. As for any body still endorsing these groups........maybe they are just as crazy as the people in the streets lighting flags on fire.

this comment is very ignorant and you do not understand the problem. Nobody is rooting for communism. They are there to combat the global corporatism that has stolen our democracy and destroyed our capitalist economy.

Corporatism is just a form of Fascism.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

 

[joe fresh]

in my very honest opinion, i support the violence, fuck the cops, if you can dish it out you damn well better be able to take it

look at the other countries where the protesting didnt go nowhere, they had to use violence, then eventualy had to go to war to get what they want....

i admire these ppl for standing up and fighting for whats worth it in their eyes...they may not get what they want but it will make a loud echo that will resonate for a long time....


im not saying to go out and start violent shit, but if the police start, i say the ppl shout finish it, fight fire with fire....

what the ppl should do is form their own neighborhood police squad, kinda like the fire houses in the move "gangs of new york"...this way you have a police that actually protects the ppl because they work for the ppl and not the gov't...

even the crips, they were first originally started as a neighborhood watch to help protect and police the comunity, but when the power and money got to their heads they changed...


what we need is police that protect us and help us, not box us in to the way the gov't wants

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

I don't support the violence because what is the point of having a sovereignty country if we are all killing each other.

However my knowledge of history does not make think violence will be avoided, even if the citizens remain peaceful.

 

[joe fresh]

thats what im talking bout right there, you either lay down and take it, or you stand up and fight for your rights


the ppl have the power, but the problem is they give that power to the gov't to do as they wish, and when you give someone else the key to your freedom...what freedom do you really have....my dogs have freedom, with in the set limits i give them...so whats the diff?

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Does the list of demands still include the delusional ideas that I saw listed a few months back? Such as:

Minimum wage raised to $20 (ROTFLMAO!!!! Seriously! ROTFLMAO!!!)
Abolishment of home schooling WTF? That's the last thing we need.

Can't remember the rest.... but those two stick out as the most delusional on first scan.


These people have NO clue what they're protesting.... they just know they're pissed and there's a group of folks that are protesting about it. Every one of these people have a different idea of why they're there and what they expect the group to accomplish.

It's a psych op. It's too sad to be anything else.

Stay Safe!

 

[MadBuddhaAbuser]

The really bad thing going is.... what agenda our "inglorious bastard" leaders are planning to "fix" the issue they've so artfully created.

umm.......indefinite detention of american citizens without trial?

You musta missed that.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath,

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

-from "They Thought they were free". a fantastic book about what it was like to live in germany leading up to WWII............fits america more and more everyday.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/facts/

Personally I think we should abolish minimum wage and let people negotiate though collective bargaining, or even individual bargaining.

 

[moresntoil]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDjObEJy-hM&feature=related

my friend you should watch and listen to this entire video, and really think about it!
we have big fuckin problems, in a year or 50 its coming.
peace and goodluck

 

[MadBuddhaAbuser]

http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/facts/

Personally I think we should abolish minimum wage and let people negotiate though collective bargaining, or even individual bargaining.

We should eliminate the tax perks for capital gains income.

Why did Romney only pay 13.9% on his 40 million he made last year, while most people are paying 30%?