The Occupation of Wall Street Spreads

[weemadando]

Wait, where are the WHORESWHORESWHORES?

It must be an imposter.

[Simon_Jester]

He likes whores so much he's decided to become one.

Either that, or he just dislikes unruly people because he's the goddamned Batman.

[Lord Zentei]

Of all the people to pull the "protesting the government while we're bombing brown people is ANARCHY AND TREASON!" card, I wasn't expecting it to be Frank Miller.

This is the guy who made "300". Remember the reception it received among certain pundits for the "Rawrr! Defend Democracy against the evil Middle East!" vibe it sent off.

If anyone had said to me "a well-known cartoonist has criticized the OWS movement for protesting during wartime, seeing as we're in a War on Terror; can you guess who it is?", then I would immediately have replied "who else but Frank Miller".

[Terralthra]

Of all the people to pull the "protesting the government while we're bombing brown people is ANARCHY AND TREASON!" card, I wasn't expecting it to be Frank Miller.

This is the guy who made "300". Remember the reception it received among certain pundits for the "Rawrr! Defend Democracy against the evil Middle East!" vibe it sent off.

If anyone had said to me "a well-known cartoonist has criticized the OWS movement for protesting during wartime, seeing as we're in a War on Terror; can you guess who it is?", then I would immediately have replied "who else but Frank Miller".

I haven't read the comic, only seen most of the movie. Does the comic give off the same vibes as the movie?

[Lord Zentei]

Not really, no. But the comic was produced in 1998, before the "war on terror", and the hysteria surrounding it.

BTW, Miller was also involved in the making of the movie (as producer).

[The Yosemite Bear]

jut feeling glad that so far no one has broken out the anti-social bar mixing skills (Molotov Cocktails)

[CaptainChewbacca]

When I started reading Miller's bit, I thought it was a satirical post in the voice of Rorshach.

[Alkaloid]

Yeah, I read shit like that and have to wonder how people who think like that actually function in society?

I mean, Miller actually seems to think that a movement that has as at least one of its primary goals, a de facto increase in regulation of the financial sector, is in someway an "poorly expressed attempt at anarchy." How the hell does he rationalis that?

Or this gem.

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like Al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

I mean, OK, maybe he is just a racist and is choosing to throw all the problems the west is having at the feet of Muslims who are out to get him, but what the fuck has Al-Qaeda got to do with the occupy movement. He can clearly write at least a full sentence, and given that he has written more than one story, I assume he has a basic grasp of concepts like cause and effect and motivation, but then he still comes up with this crap. It's baffling.

[Simon_Jester]

It's a worldview thing:

"Scruffy hippies are anarchists because if they really understood the way The Establishment (of which I am a proud member) works, they would work their asses off like I do and be all right. OWS is full of scruffy hippies. Ergo, OWS is anarchist."

"OWS wants to change things, a lot. The TV says what they want isn't clear. I'm too damn busy to worry more about the news than five minutes a day of overhearing what TV news tells me. Ergo, OWS is probably just a bunch of radicals including anarchists."

"I saw one of those funny A with a ring around it symbols on an OWS guy's T-shirt. Ergo, OWS is full of anarchists."

People really think that way. Real, breathing human beings apply these lines of thought on a day to day basis. If you try, you can find the reverse line of thinking in the way some people look at the Tea Party- the tendency to cherry-pick the worst and dumbest of the crowd, to make the least charitable assumptions possible about their motives and intentions, to try and "fill in the blanks" of what the rest of a person's life looks like from the fact that they participate in a given political movement, and so on.

And of course, all this gets compounded and multiplied in times of national crisis, when to the superpatriot the act of being wrong isn't just wrong; it's treason and sabotage. These crises are exactly when the true believer expects the worst among us to reveal their true colors and stab us all in the back, like they've been predicting all along... or as Moore nailed the worldview, and maybe Miller really does think like this:

They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father, or president Truman. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipe until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth talkers...and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.

It's mostly a question of who you choose to blame for the world going to hell- the people who are now living like archdevils, or the people now living like the damned.

[Shroom Man 777]

Comments made by SDN users:
I've noticed a lot of sarcastic "those protesters must have posed a huge threat...blah blah blah." Again, they don't have to be a threat. If your resistance can't be defeated by lesser force options then it will escalate. That's why I say...don't resist or if you're going to don't carry on to long if you find that you're able to stand your ground.

I'm gonna go with what that previous poster said. If the problem is a bunch of shmucks sitting on a street and farting around, and the solution is beating them with sticks or spraying them with tear gas, I think the solution that involves pain and harm and such is actually worse than the problem of guys loitering or littering. Course, it's more of a moralistic than legalistic problem. And I'm from a place where people regularly urinate on sidewalks all the time, and naked oily people who look like Jesus sleep and/or jerk off in the sidewalks all the time, along with street children huffing glue. So, eh.

[Alkaloid]

No no, I get it being a worldview thing, I just don't understand how people that think like that can operate without suffering a complete mental collapse. I mean, his reaction to people protesting is similar to what my reaction to a government proposal to mandate forced labour for minorities in an attempt to stop the recession, and he operates like that the whole time. I can't imagine what he thinks countries with prevalent socialist policies must look like, it must be similar to how I imaging hell, but I can take comfort in knowing that hell doesn't really exist, while he has to live with the fact that his flight might one day be diverted to Norway.

It's funny. I'm not really into comics, so all I really know about Millers work is the movies based on it, and that whole "I'm the goddamn Batman" thing, because that's really funny, but I'd always been led to believe that Rorschach was meant to be a parody of extreme libertarianism and why it's a bad thing. The more I hear about him the more I think he was dead serious about it and Rorschach is what he sees a good and noble hero as being.

[Metahive]

Rohrschach isn't a Miller character though, he was conceived of by Allan Moore and intended to be an expy of Steve Ditko's The Question, a strongly objectivist hero. That's not to say that Rohrschach doesn't embody qualities that Miller himself adores in his superheroes, like an uncompromising, childish black and white view of the world and a rejection of society's supposedly "degenerate" morality in favor of one's own.

[Alkaloid]

Well, that explains a lot. Yeah, like I said, not huge into comics.

[Raw Shark]

It's funny. I'm not really into comics, so all I really know about Millers work is the movies based on it, and that whole "I'm the goddamn Batman" thing, because that's really funny, but I'd always been led to believe that Rorschach was meant to be a parody of extreme libertarianism and why it's a bad thing. The more I hear about him the more I think he was dead serious about it and Rorschach is what he sees a good and noble hero as being.

I've even seen some Libertarians proudly claim Rorschach, which I find utterly baffling. The man's entire being cries out for an Authoritarian regime that he can trust and that shares his principles - He just hasn't found one, yet. He's a Lawful Neutral man who believes himself to be lost in a world with no laws.

Meanwhile, on the Denver front:

Denver police force Occupy Denver to move their property in Civic Center
By Jordan Steffen and Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 11/12/2011 01:44:53 PM MST
Updated: 11/12/2011 10:29:10 PM MST

Denver police in riot gear forced stubborn protestors out of Civic Center park early this evening, tearing down illegally pitched tents.

A cloud of smoke rose — not from tear gas, but from wood smoke as the protesters' cooking fire was extinquished.

A total of 17 people were arrested, according to Sonny Jackson, spokesman for the Denver Police Department​. Five of those arrests were made on the 16th Street Mall, where some protesters headed after the encampment was cleared.

The confrontation came about five hours after Occupy Denver demonstrators marched through downtown for the sixth straight Saturday.

Beginning Thursday night, officers have been speaking with protesters at Civic Center, many of whom have been camping overnight, warning them about ordinances against blocking sidewalks with personal property. Thursday night, about 25 protesters voluntarily left.

Several of the items blocking the sidewalk were in the food area, including a grill in which protesters burned large pieces of wood.

Around 4:30 p.m., officers invited two protesters to come speak with them at a command post near Lincoln and East 14th Avenue. Police told the protesters they needed to remove anything that was blocking the sidewalk.

At least half of the protesters started to leave Lincoln Park and Civic Center after a 4:30 p.m. parlay with police, but many voted to stay and some of them blocked Broadway about 5:15 p.m.

Police moved quickly to clear Broadway. At 5:30 p.m., Broadway was closed by police between Colfax and 14th avenues.

A city garbage truck pulled up as some protesters continued to chant anti-police slogans: "You look stupid in your helmets and with your clubs .... This a peaceful assembly — no weapons allowed."

Any property that looks like it belongs to someone, such as furniture, backpacks or sleeping bags, will be logged by police and will eventually become available for people to Denver claim, Jackson said. Trash will be discarded.

"This isn't safe and it's not sanitary," Jackson said as he pointed to a pile of blankets and boxes with stream of stale food and sticky liquid running underneath it.

From now on, officers will strictly enforce the ordinance and remove any items that block the sidewalk. People are still allowed to sleep on the sidewalk but they are "not allowed to set up homestead," Jackson said.

At 6 p.m., several dozen protesters crossed East Colfax Avenue, headed north toward the 16th Street Mall. Once there, they began to disperse into smaller groups, one of which moved to the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway where protesters tried to block traffic.

Things did not go well from there, it would appear. Nothing in the news after the above yet, but Civic Center Park is completely empty as of 3:00am, except for about a dozen cop cars positioned around it in a rough circle facing outward. No protesters in sight, except one guy playing a trumpet in front of the Capitol Building.

[SpaceMarine93]

So how is the protests doing overall? I mean, here in Britain, we only got around two hundred people camping outside St Paul Cathedral.

Two Hundred.

Not a single shred of news at BBC about the rest of the movement worldwide is doing.

To be honest, I don't know if this movement could last any longer without fading into obscurity. And is not like the only other important sources, websites, newspaper etc. are outlets that not many people will ever read. And they don't give enough attention or detail either.

Wikipedia only give me statistics on numbers. I had learned from that the number of participants in the Tea Party Movement in its first month would outnumbner the OWS movement worldwide today.

Anyways, can anyone here give me some reliable updates?

[Tanasinn]

It's hard to say what impact the movement is having. Overtly - I've seen little, if any, effect. There may be effects going on unseen, however: voters being swayed into thinking it's not crazy to think capitalism has gone overboard, that the government needs a shakedown and some corrective legislation. This potential effect is why the plutocracy (through the medium of the media) are desperate to paint the "occupy" movement as one without goals, filled with the lazy, the stupid, and the selfish.

I had learned from that the number of participants in the Tea Party Movement in its first month would outnumbner the OWS movement worldwide today.

This shouldn't be surprising, considering that the Tea Party is an astroturf catspaw for the wealthy.

[Terralthra]

It's hard to say what impact the movement is having. Overtly - I've seen little, if any, effect. There may be effects going on unseen, however: voters being swayed into thinking it's not crazy to think capitalism has gone overboard, that the government needs a shakedown and some corrective legislation. This potential effect is why the plutocracy (through the medium of the media) are desperate to paint the "occupy" movement as one without goals, filled with the lazy, the stupid, and the selfish.

Um, you realize that "media" is the plural of "medium," right?

[Raw Shark]

Bank Executives On 15th Floor Gambling On Which Occupy Wall Street Protester Will Be Arrested Next

November 7, 2011 | ISSUE 47•45

NEW YORK—Peering down from their 15th-floor boardroom onto the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, executives at the financial services firm Wittinger Group reportedly placed bets Monday on which protester would be arrested next.

According to sources, the bankers had gathered around the large picture window in a mahogany-paneled conference room after an exhausting morning of foreclosing on more than 9,000 homes.

"Five-thousand bucks says it's V For Vendetta Guy," bank vice chairman Malcolm Grant said in reference to a protester wearing the stylized Guy Fawkes mask popularized by the 2006 film. "Look at him. He's just asking for the cuffs with that thing on his face. Come on, who's in? That stupid fuck's not gonna last out there long."

Enlarge ImageAccording to one executive, "blue hoodie guy is a sure thing."

"Georgie, take your thumb out of your dick and put some cash down," continued Grant, addressing global strategies officer George Malkin. "Pick out one of those little shits and buy me a hot tub."

Witnesses said Malkin, who has earned $21 million in salary and bonuses since the recession began in late 2007, spent several minutes weighing various options for his wager—including a man standing on the sidewalk with a dollar bill taped over his mouth, a woman sitting in a lotus position on a straw mat, and a man playing an African hand percussion instrument in the drum circle at the west end of the park—before finally settling on a woman passing out leaflets.

"She looks more normal than the others, but she's feisty," Malkin said of the clean-cut young woman in a green T-shirt and jeans who had earlier led an impassioned "We are the 99 percent" chant. "You know she's going to open her yap one too many times and get a face full of pepper spray. Yeah, no doubt in my mind. That mouthy bitch is a winner, all right."

"Don't get me wrong—it'd be a shame to see titties like those get hauled off to jail," said Malkin, 43, adding with a chuckle that if the girl really needed a job, he'd be more than happy to give her a shot in several positions. "But if she makes me 5,000 bucks, they can stick her on death row for all I care."

Over the next hour, the bankers, whose employer was kept afloat by having more than $19 billion of its toxic assets purchased by taxpayers as part of the 2008 TARP bailout, not only continued betting amongst themselves but also received calls from executives at Bank of America and J.P. Morgan who said they wanted "in on the action."

While wagers generally revolved around who would be taken into custody next, additional side bets were reportedly made on specific aspects of the arrest, such as the amount of force police officers would apply and whether or not things would turn violent.

"It looked like the cops had my guy—some scrawny hippie with a braided beard—totally under control," dejected chief of compliance Ben Dubner said. "So I thought [risk management officer Tony] Calcagno was an idiot for betting me double-or-nothing they would tase him. Well, next thing you know, he's twitching and flopping on the grass, I'm out 15 grand, and now I'll probably have to miss the Antigua Yacht Regatta."

"It's just not fair," Dubner added.

By 2 p.m., the gambling had ended, with a reported $1.1 million having changed hands, though the executives acknowledged they might have lost track of a stray $10,000 or so. Sources said Grant, who had championed the protester in the Guy Fawkes mask, had won the largest betting pool and taken home $130,000.

"Pay up, motherfuckers!" a jubilant Grant said. "Pay the fuck up!"

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

[Kamakazie Sith]

<snip>

The use of a choke hold is something that isn't consistent among departments in the US. Some departments allow the use of a choke hold in their policy while others, like mine, do not.

A choke hold is an excellent tool for breaking resistance, if applied properly, but the dangers are quite obvious. I don't know if I'd go right to a choke hold when other options are available. If policy allowed a choke hold the only time I'd go right to it is if I were dealing with a physically violent suspect and I was by myself.

[weemadando]

Speaking as someone who practices a martial art with an emphasis on effective chokes, someone doing a "blood choke" which lowers blood flow to.the brain and causes unconsciousness in 5-10 seconds is a far safer (talking risk of injury, disability and death for the recipient) method of restraining and subduing someone than nearly every other option as the moment the choke is released, the blood flow returns to regular levels and the person is generally awake again inside of 30s.

As soon as we talk about air chokes/trachea chokes then it's a whole different ballgame.

Or when you have shithead security/police dogpiling and causing positional asphyxia.

But from my pov, give me a quick blood choke any day over a baton to the face or a taser.

[Losonti Tokash]

In Denver, the protesters came back to the park. At least in the last hour, the police have been pepper spraying anyone recording their presence and are refusing to give out badge numbers or explain why they are arresting people.

[Zinegata]

I'm sorry but how is linking arms violent protest? I thought violence had to cause actual harm to another group.

I mean by that definition wouldn't Gandhi have been committing "violent protest"

The chancellor puts it outside of the realm of "non-violent protest" which is a correct statement if you follow the original guidelines outlined by Gandhi:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

Mahatma Gandhi outlined several rules for civil resisters (or satyagrahi) in the time when he was leading India in the struggle for Independence from the British Empire. For instance, they were to express no anger, never retaliate, submit to the opponent's orders and assaults, submit to arrest by the authorities, surrender personal property when confiscated by the authorities but refuse to surrender property held in trust, refrain from swearing and insults (which are contrary to ahimsa), refrain from saluting the Union flag, and protect officials from insults and assaults even at the risk of the resister's own life.

Non-violent protest - if you're following the Gandhi rules - means that you do not resist the authorities at all. If they come to arrest you, you surrender and go to jail. You prove your conviction by sitting and jail and taking the punishment, no matter how unfair it may seem.

Arm-linking thus is not non-violent protest if we apply the original Gandhi rules for it. Especially when the protesters were on a private property and that they had been told to disperse by the owners. Technically speaking, they were already violating some rules, if not the law.

[PainRack]

Non-violent protest - if you're following the Gandhi rules - means that you do not resist the authorities at all. If they come to arrest you, you surrender and go to jail. You prove your conviction by sitting and jail and taking the punishment, no matter how unfair it may seem.

Arm-linking thus is not non-violent protest if we apply the original Gandhi rules for it. Especially when the protesters were on a private property and that they had been told to disperse by the owners. Technically speaking, they were already violating some rules, if not the law.

Somehow, the idea that anything non-gandhi= violent protest doesn't sit well with me.

Riot police are empowered to use force to disperse crowds. But that doesn't neccessarily mean that protests are violent if they resist arrest. If they use force to resist arrest, sure, but linking arms?!?!?! Where the potential harm to the police or other bystanders in that?

[Shroom Man 777]

The only canon non-violent protest is the Gandhi edition of protests? Just like how Christians say the only valid Bible is the King James Bible?

King James Gandhi!