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"Video footage published to YouTube shows Olsen lying prone in front of a line of police. Around 10 people gather around him in an apparent attempt to provide aid, before a police officer throws an explosive device into their midst, scattering the group."Meanwhile, from Google:
"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."There has been a call for a GENERAL STRIKE by ALL #Occupiers Starting November 2 with the Oakland General Assembly showing 1,484 in favor, 77 abstentions, 46 disagrees meaning 96.9% approval in response to this tragedy and the police violence in Oakland.
Occupy Oakland: Iraq war veteran in critical condition after police clashesScott Olsen, 24, in hospital with fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile in OaklandAdam Gabbatt
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 26 October 2011
An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.
Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.
Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Jay Finneburgh, a photographer who was covering the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying on the ground.
"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.
Olsen was taken to Highland by fellow protesters.
The Guardian spoke to people with Olsen at the hospital. Adele Carpenter, who knows Olsen through his involvement with anti-war groups, said she arrived at the hospital at 11pm on Tuesday night.
Carpenter said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Olsen had a skull fracture and was in a "serious but stable" condition. She said he had been sedated and was unconscious.
"I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," Carpenter said.
Olsen had only moved to Oakland in July, Carpenter said. He is a member of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and met Carpenter through her work with the civilian soldier alliance.
Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq, arrived at the hospital after protesters contacted him through Facebook. He confirmed Olsen had a fractured skull, and said he had been told by a doctor Olsen also had brain swelling.
A neurosurgeon was due to assess Olsen to determine if he needed surgery, Shannon said.
"It's really hard," Shannon said. "I really wish I had gone out with him instead of staying home last night."
Shannon, who is also 24, said he had seen the video footage showing Olsen lying on the floor as a police officer throws an explosive device near him.
"It's terrible to go over to Iraq twice and come back injured, and then get injured by the police that are supposed to be protecting us," he said.
He said Olsen had served two tours of Iraq, in 2006 and 2007. Olsen was in 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines with Shannon before leaving the military in 2010.
He moved to the San Francisco area in July and works for Opswat, a software company, living with Shannon in Daly City, just south of San Francisco.
Shannon said Olsen was hit in the head by a tear gas canister or smoke canister shot by a police officer. He said Olsen had a curved scar on his forehead consistent with a canister.
Protesters who had accompanied Olsen to Highland hospital got in touch with Shannon through Facebook, after Olsen said he lived with someone called "Keith". Shannon said he was told Olsen was unable to say his surname.
Olsen is originally from Wisconsin and some of his family were planning to fly out to California to be with him, Shannon said.
Video footage published to YouTube shows Olsen lying prone in front of a line of police. Around 10 people gather around him in an apparent attempt to provide aid, before a police officer throws an explosive device into their midst, scattering the group.
Footage captured after the explosion, which appears to be from a flash bang grenade, shows Olsen being carried away by a group of people.
Oakland police confirmed at a press conference that they used tear gas and baton rounds, but said they did not use flash bang grenades. Police could not be immediately reached for comment. [Source, Guardian UK]
The Only Job a War Industry CEO Cares About: His OwnWhile Frank Rich @ NYMag Gets it right about #Occupy and what comes after:
In their attempt to protect pay packages that would shame a Goldman Sachs executive, the CEOs of the biggest military contractors are again releasing bogus "analysis" on job creation related to massive military budgets. Don't be fooled: the spin coming out of the Second To None lobbying front is about one job, and one job only: the job of the guy at the top of the war corporation, along with its massive salary.
Let's dispense with the war profiteers' so-called economic analysis (.pdf). The study released today at a war-contractor-convened press conference tries to obscure the massive jobs cost of military spending by citing all the jobs that are tied to the current Pentagon budget. This "analysis," though, is completely context-free, rendering it useless in determining the best course of action for the deficit committee and in making predictions about the economy in general.
The study ignores the jobs cost we're already suffering from big military budgets, both in terms of... [In Full]
The Class War Has Begun
And the very classlessness of our society makes the conflict more volatile, not less.
By Frank Rich
Oct 23, 2011
During the death throes of Herbert Hoover’s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over—alone, in groups, with families—until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River’s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army—for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn’t want to wait any longer for their pre–New Deal entitlement—especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest” who became a phenomenon for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers,” framed Washington’s double standard this way: “If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?”
The echoes of our own Great Recession do not end there. Both parties were alarmed by this motley assemblage and its political rallies; the Secret Service infiltrated its ranks to root out radicals. But a good Communist was hard to find. The men were mostly middle-class, patriotic Americans. They kept their improvised hovels clean and maintained small gardens. Even so, good behavior by the Bonus Army did not prevent the U.S. Army’s hotheaded chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, from summoning an overwhelming force to evict it from Pennsylvania Avenue late that July. After assaulting the veterans and thousands of onlookers with tear gas, MacArthur’s troops crossed the bridge and burned down the encampment. The general had acted against Hoover’s wishes, but the president expressed satisfaction afterward that the government had dispatched “a mob”—albeit at the cost of killing two of the demonstrators. The public had another take. When graphic newsreels of the riotous mêlée fanned out to the nation’s movie theaters, audiences booed MacArthur and his troops, not the men down on their luck. Even the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond and wife of the proprietor of the Washington Post, professed solidarity with the “mob” that had occupied the nation’s capital.
The Great Depression was then nearly three years old, with FDR still in the wings and some of the worst deprivation and unrest yet to come. Three years after our own crash, we do not have the benefit of historical omniscience to know where 2011 is on the time line of America’s deepest bout of economic distress since that era. (The White House, you may recall, rolled out “recovery summer” sixteen months ago.) We don’t know if our current president will end up being viewed more like Hoover or FDR. We don’t know whether Occupy Wall Street and its proliferating satellites will spiral into larger and more violent confrontations, disperse in cold weather, prove a footnote to our narrative, or be the seeds of something big.
[In Full]
The Activist’s Handbook: 1000 Ways to Politically and Socially Activate Your Life
It is time for people to become more active politically, socially and culturally. It is not enough to spend your entire life waiting to be entertained by the political rhetoric.
These are 1000 ways in which you can politically and socially activate your life:
The next time you’re with family or friends, discuss a particular cause, instead of letting the conversation drift to celebrity gossip.
Be mindful of the fact that the news channels synthesize events in ways which make the individual feel as if activism is hopeless.
Try to make friends that are politically involved, instead of maintaining the same old school friends.
Stay focused on one particular cause, it’s fine to take up many causes, but always recognize your main cause.
Call a big bank that was bailed out in 2008 by the people and ask them if they would be willing to bail out poor families.
Go to a protest, do not let the stigma propagated by the mass media keep you away from protests.
When your friends talk to you about new consumer products, change the topic to political causes instead.
If you’re going to a protest, try to bring as many of your friends as you can.
When friends say that protestors are ‘crazy’, explain to them exhilarating feeling of being part of a large politically conscious group.
Being an activist requires sacrifice, you will lose many brainwashed friends along the way, but who needs them anyway!
Write an open letter to the CEO of a certain company that you dislike and publish the letter online.
Write an anonymous letter to anyone who abuses their power, boss, CEO, professor, manager etc.
When people use the word consumer to describe human beings, correct them and tell them that human beings are more than consumers.
Organize meetings where you can discuss political matters with others who share the same interest.
Always persuade people, avoid antagonizing them or their social/corporate defense mechanisms will kick in.
Instead of going to watch a mind numbing Hollywood film, look up protests in your area and go to one.
Talking to people is the most effective way of short-circuiting the mass media’s control over people’s minds.
Learn from the experiences of others, ask a homeless person how and why they became homeless.
Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer! Volunteering teaches you that human actions do not have to always be about financial rewards.
Instead of going to a nightclub or a party to meet other people, go to a protest.
Parents will always question political activism, do not let it bother you.
Try seeing how long you can go without purchasing anything barring food of course, to test your consumerist drive.
Do not get ahead of yourself with thoughts of changing the world, change your life first and the lives of those around you.
Avoid feelings of apathy that follow political disappointments, instead, set a new goal and work on it.
Organize a group of four or five people and help each other go to protests.
Do not antagonize the police, that’s counterintuitive, and it allows the capitalist force to activate its violent drive.
Ask a police officer if he or she are part of the upper class, the ruling elites.
Ask a police officer why they protect the bankers and capitalists which keep all of our children in debt.
Write an open letter to a billionaire asking them why they love money to the point of forgetting about starving human beings.
Find a political magazine or blog and write for them.
The next time you visit a store like Wal-Mart, ask a worker how they feel about lacking a union and basic worker rights.
Go to the shopping mall and buy absolutely nothing, instead go there with the purpose of talking to workers about their exploitation.
The next time you see a friend with a brand name item, ask them how much the workers who made it get paid?
Start a blog to fight against a particular injustice.
Change the way you think, do not think in terms of me me me and stuff stuff stuff, but in terms of we, us, all, the world, humanity. [The Other 965 Ways]
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