No one is going after Olsen because he was injured by the police. People were going after the police because they injured a marine, including a number of marines, and now it comes out that this guy hates the Marine Corps. He was a poster child to rally around, but you want to do a little background before you make someone the face of a movement. The left really should have learned after the whole Jesse Macbeth debacle.
That is exactly why they are going after him, because he has become a symbol and people want to tarnish that symbol. He served and did it extraordinarily well. He's a true patriot and made this country safe. However, his views - the views he has a right to have as an America - all of a sudden make it ok that he was hit and injured and make it ok to discredit him. That's b.s. We don't even know if the report is true yet. Right wing blogs are not a credible source of information or news. It's absolutely disgusting how you are ready to jump on a guy who is a soldier because his political views differ from yours while he sits in a hospital unable to speak. Maybe you should wait until all the facts are out before tarring the guy. And then in other instances yall will say how horrible the left is for not supporting the troops. I love it how people tell these protesters to go get jobs. 1. These guys have jobs. 2. They are protesting because they struggle to find work. and 3. No body told the Tea Party protestors to go back to work!. Instead, the right wing trys to find some homeless guy who has nothing better to do than join the movement and then use that one person to define the entire movement. This is hypocrisy at its worse. Shame on you man.
Cops to sue occupy wall st protestors? <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wRyZxhtQBtk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The problem is using his military service as absolute moral authority. He hates the military by his own admission. Yet he is willing to associate himself with that institution when convenient to his own ends. His personal background should be irrelevant to the incident in question.
If you did it and have an honorable discharge, your opinion is valid and protected. The service is the service, it stands it's own respect because we we don't function without it. Why do we give credence to, and elect some grunt who marched and took orders? Because he did it. Try again.
Right, so when someone is unemployed or looks like a hippie, it's ok to use them to dismiss the whole movement, but it's not ok to use them if they are someone legitimate. You are totally full of it.
Try to protest peacefully - Hippy Try to protest violently - terrorist/anarchist What gives? Damned if you do, damned if you don't
Yes I noticed that but its impossible to tell if that smoke / tear gas is from the smoking object that is seen flying at the police just before Scott Olsen is shot. Don't get me wrong, I think the police overreacted but I think there is very strong evidence that the police were provoked.
Good point. Whether he hates the military now doesn't diminish the fact he volunteered and did his duty. He's out of the military now and under no obligation to uphold that institution.
I am not sure what the significance of saying the police were provoked is. Well, first of all, the police didn't seem to be phased by the tear gas canister coming back at them. Why should they be? They are in protective gear. But even if it was provoking, they are suppose to be trained to act on orders based on a situation, not react based on being provoked. The irony of all of this is that OWS depends on Police overreaction to fuel the movement. Had the police never over-reacted here in the early days of the movement - then it probably would have died quickly. Pepper spraying those girls in NYC and then the 700 arrests are what made this movement go forward. They try to dismiss it as hippies or criminal types but that is not the truth, and the Police actions only serve to make people even more angry and spread the movement.
The significance is that it shows that the protestors were not absolutely peaceful. True they are but we can't forget they are people and they have a right to defend themselves and a duty to uphold public order. Also riot gear doesn't make them invulnerable. As I said I think in this particular confrontation they overreacted. Scott Olsen or those who came to his aid definitely didn't represent a threat, but that doesn't mean that even though they are in riot gear we should expect police to just stand there and take it. I hold police accountable having trained with police and I have frequently criticized a fairly lax use of tazers and pepper spray but at the same time I can appreciate the difficult situations that they are put in.
It is bad PR to have a symbol (in America) that hates the USMC. It has nothing to do with whether or not he has a right to that opinion. People have a right to think Obama (or Bush) is Hitler, but you don't want those people to be the face of your movement. I'm not jumping on him, I am pointing out why other people are jumping on him, and the fact that it has nothing to do with him being injured by the police (as you asserted). It doesn't make any sense to attack someone for being hit with a tear gas canister. I never said any of those things that I can recall. Yes, I am very ashamed that I pointed out that your post was nonsense. You should have been allowed to hold on to your delusion that this person was denigrated not for having an anti-Marine position, but for getting injured by police officers. Two rolleyes for you:
Maybe, but not as bad PR as having a police force representing the authority attack and break the skull of a peaceful protester who had served this nation in war as part of the Marines
The idea of a protest is to interrupt the "peace" so to speak. But I understand in this context you mean violence. Throwing rocks and bottles at police officers certainly is violent and the Police should be able to arrest those protesters and bring charges against them. Those actions are damaging to the movement and morally irreprehensible. That said, none of the officers were phased by that and there were no reports of a single injury to an officer. The police are human being, but so are the protesters. You have trained riot police with weapons and armour against untrained protesters. Who needs to handle the situation carefully? It's the police who must have discipline and yes, when they make a mistake it is magnified because it is their job not to make these sorts of mistakes. Lifes are at stake here - their lives and those of the people they are trying to protect. If they make a mistake, people can die, and that almost happened here. They failed at their job. Inevitably, when you put pressure on a people in a tense situation, it can devolve into violence. And it should be stated that police violence often isn't the result of provocation, but excused by it. If you look at the Civil Right's Movement or Gandhi's Quit India campaign against the British - there was often violence that was intentionally provoked even if the protesters were non-violent. But violence ensued. MLK and Gandhi were trying to show that the violence was not provoked by the movement but rather inherent to oppression. Now, what you essentially have going on with UWS is an uprising of sorts. It's challenging established institutions and laws to express unhappiness with our system. It's an important and essential part of our democracy.
Hating the Marine Corp does not equal hating our troops and is not the same as calling Obama or anyone Hitler. And you don't even know if that is true yet. Even Fox News hasn't picked up that story - why? Ask yourself why? And this is hypocrisy because the faces of the Republican party - whether it be Rick Perry or whomever - all accuse Obama of being born in Kenya. And the other Republicans tolerate that nonsense. So apparently it is ok to have idiocy be the face of a party, but not just of a movement. And again, you don't even know if this info is true about this kid. No one was attacking him before he got hit with a canister. The guy can't even defend himself - he's in a coma. It's pathetic for people to attack him while he is down. If he wasn't hit with that canister no one would care about anything he may or may not have done. And jumping on him for this site from one right-wing source is total b.s. We should all just start posting stuff from any blogger as the truth. So you are saying that you still would be attacking Scott Olsen if he never was injured? Bull shat man, you wouldn't even know his name if he never got injured. You are totally denigrating him for getting hurt. His position only came out after wards.
lol, sure you are a fan of Ghandi. You would have been cheering him on in his campaign. Of course a con/libertarian like you would have been an early hard core supporter of MLK. You would have been all the way with MLK when he spoke out stronglyh against the Vietnam War. Of course you would have been right there with him in his last actions when he went to assist a strike of garbage workers becaude they were striking to get higher wages. lol
Here's a good article explaining why the Occupy Movement is about more than the next bill submitted in Congress. I would add that eventually this crisis to be solved must have some bills made into law, but not at this time, and not with this corruption by money of our politics, not without a mass movment which this seems to be a start of --or perhaps the start of the start of. Folks have to talk first. Small actions such as the mainstream media flack proposes, like feeding the homeless who are out on the streets all the time is not a good use of the energy of the posters, though they can't be blamed for doing some of that. The line that gets me "as Obama and Romney hone their lines to express sympathy for OWS, yet assure their donors." **ck that. ****** ... As the weeks tick by, the protests at Zuccotti Park and across the nation are driving home this profound realization: this is a fight that can’t be won by voting. The crisis that most fundamentally shapes our lives cannot be solved through the legislative process. This is not because the agenda is unpopular—54 percent of Americans support OWS, with only 23 percent opposed—but because the system is corrupted beyond repair... ... . The OWS turn away from the political system began with the choice of location—Wall Street rather than the National Mall. It is driven home, above all, by the refusal to encapsulate the protest in policy demands aimed at Congress. I don’t know whether the absence of specific policy proposals is intentional or accidental. But I do know that it’s part of what lends such power to the occupation and renders its targets so palpably uncomfortable. ... The protests are also in large part a response to the disappointments of the Obama administration. Indeed, almost every policy demand that OWS might possibly voice has already been proposed, debated and defeated—at a time when Democrats controlled all branches of government. Members of Congress considered but declined to enact proposals to impose a tax on Wall Street transactions; to limit executive compensation; to fund a mass WPA-style jobs program; to allow bankruptcy judges to mark underwater mortgages to market; to make it easier for Americans to form unions and bargain for better wages; to eliminate tax benefits for companies that transfer our jobs overseas; and to forswear any more NAFTA-style trade treaties. The OWS refusal to articulate policy demands reflects the conviction that any remedies that fit the scale of the problem are impossible to pass—not only in the current Congress but in any Congress we can realistically imagine. I say this as someone who at this time last year was working as senior staff on the House Labor Committee. I still believe in the importance of that work, because even modest accomplishments at that level can improve the lives of millions. But this crisis calls for more than modest accomplishments. I went to Washington in 2009 because, like many others, I believed the moment was finally ripe to make progressive changes for working people. But I discovered what we all kind of knew beforehand: if the Republicans are cheerleaders for the 1 percent, most Democrats are quiet collaborationists. I met some very dedicated and hard-working people in Congress.... . Democracy is measured not only by the fairness of elections but also by the scope of national life that is subject to popular control. When the dictates of foreign debt or trade treaties put core economic decisions beyond the control of elected representatives, “democracy” becomes a cruel joke or, worse, a spectacle designed to absorb popular frustration while the real deals go down elsewhere. Keep your eyes over here—don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain! The OWS moment seems to reflect a recognition that we have joined our neighbors to the south in being ruled by a system that, whatever its other virtues may be, is powerless to solve the most important problems plaguing the country. It is this realization, even more than the demand for economic redistribution, that makes OWS such a radicalizing experience. Policy demands aimed at Congress implicitly affirm the legitimacy of the legislative process. The refusal to submit demands is a refusal to legitimate an illegitimate system. In some ways, it’s the White House that pushed people to turn outside the system. The administration has long admonished the left not to expect too much. Former press secretary Robert Gibbs famously declared that “the professional left” needed to understand that things like “Canadian healthcare” are simply “not reality.” The president repeatedly asks that we appreciate his modest achievements as the high-water mark of what can come from such a limited system. For the OWS protesters to be coaxed back into the legislative game, they’d have to believe that Obama is lying when he says this is the best we can expect. The problem is that the protesters believe the president is telling the truth. As Barack Obama and Mitt Romney hone their lines, trying to work out a position that sympathizes with the aggrieved while reassuring their donors, the OWS message to both candidates is the same: “This isn’t about you. It’s between us and them,” pointing up to the Masters of the Universe on the executive floors—not the mouthpieces of the corporate chieftains but the actual power. ... ... OWS has resonated with millions of normally apolitical people across the country who recognize in it the crucible of their own struggles. If the movement moves beyond the occupied squares and into foreclosure defense (as has already begun in Los Angeles and New York) and student debt strikes—if it becomes not only the voice but the arm of those resisting immiseration at the hands of the 1 percent—then it may achieve by popular action what the political system is incapable of accomplishing. This is the nightmare scenario for those at the top, and the promise of a new day for the rest of us. This is something that could get out of hand. This is Shays’ Rebellion without the guns. http://www.thenation.com/article/164207/why-occupy-wall-street-has-left-washington-behind
I don't think you would be so disappointed with Obama if he didn't have to work within the established system. It looks like he's not getting anywhere because he's engaged in a tug-of-war. I'd be happy if OWS led to a a non-obstructionist congress then campaign finance reform, then bank reform, then energy policy reform , then an economic policy of sensible stasis; but you have to take a step.
Yes, good point. I would approve of those steps as well. A really meaningful campaign finance reform would do wonders to make things a lot better. The less obstructionist govt. would even be more likely with campaign finance reform.
