Juan Williams Tries to Make Sense to Chris Wallace…

Juan Williams continues in his quest to bring Faux News back somewhere in the sphere of sanity…

Good Luck with that, Juan – Chris, and the other “commentators” on Faux aren’t paid to tell the truth, or to take sane views.

Second Iraq Vet Seriously Injured By Oakland Police

There has always been a disconnect between the Oakland Police and the rest of the city. In a multicultural, progressive city, the police department remains as the oddity. So the violence in Oakland is a natural outgrowth of the schism between the police and the community.

Occupy Oakland: second Iraq war veteran injured after police clashes

A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries after clashes between police and Occupy movement protesters in Oakland.

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

On Wednesday night, police used teargas and non-lethal projectiles to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland.

Sabehgi told the Guardian from hospital he was walking alone along 14th Street in central Oakland – away from the main area of clashes – when he was injured.

“There was a group of police in front of me,” he told the Guardian from his hospital bed. “They told me to move, but I was like: ‘Move to where?’ There was nowhere to move.

“Then they lined up in front of me. I was talking to one of them, saying ‘Why are you doing this?’ when one moved forward and hit me in my arm and legs and back with his baton. Then three or four cops tackled me and arrested me.”

Sabeghi, who left the army in 2007 and now part-owns a small bar-restaurant in El Cerrito, about 10 miles north of Oakland, said he was handcuffed and placed in a police van for three hours before being taken to jail. By the time he got there he was in “unbelievable pain”.

He said: “My stomach was really hurting, and it got worse to the point where I couldn’t stand up.

“I was on my hands and knees and crawled over the cell door to call for help.”

A nurse was called and recommended Sabehgi take a suppository, but he said he “didn’t want to take it”.

He was allowed to “crawl” to another cell to use the toilet, but said it was clogged.

“I was vomiting and had diarrhoea,” Sabehgi said. “I just lay there in pain for hours.”

Sabehgi’s bail was posted in the mid-afternoon, but he said he was unable to leave his cell because of the pain. The cell door was closed, and he remained on the floor until 6pm, when an ambulance was called.

He was taken to Highland hospital – the same hospital where Olsen was originally taken after being hit in the head by a projectile apparently fired by police.

Sabehgi was due to undergo surgery on Friday afternoon to repair his spleen, which would involve using a clot or patch to prevent internal bleeding.

The MSM BTW is reporting 10,000 demonstrators. This is raw video footage from a helicopter of the march to the port…

10k? Really? Looks more like 100,000 to me.

Occupy Baltimore Gets Support of Police and Firefighters Unions

One of the things being challenged by Occupy Baltimore is the failure of the Education System…

The Occupy Movement evening meetings appear to be the only place democracy is actually working in America anymore. There certainly isn’t any democracy left in the big marble buildings just 30 miles down Interstate 95 from Baltimore.

Faux New’s Geraldo Rivera Gets Run Out of Occupy Wall Street on a Rail

What is the difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy protesters? For one thing, Occupy is not a holly owned subsidiary of Faux News.

Here Occupy protesters run Faux News talking head Geraldo Rivera out of town on a metaphorical rail…

Do Not F*&K With Our Museum!

Now – I don’t know where these morons come from – but they are way off base.

You want to protest the Iran and Iraq Wars, then you go after the folks who lied us into them in the first place. Attacking our National Museum only accomplishes that which the same folks have tried to do over and over in Republican attacks on Public Radio and Public educational facilities around the country. Ergo – an ignorant population is a safely Republican population following to war like blind sheep. The surest way to assure ignorance is to destroy the sources of information and knowledge. Message to the October 2011 clowns – You were violating sacred ground.

You want to accomplish something – go protest at the Value Voters Summit or any of the right wing conclaves funded by the beneficiaries of the Military Industrial Complex such as the Koch brothers…

But you stay the flock away from our museums, our libraries, and our publicly funded sources of information.

Go after the Koch suckers!

Wolves in sheep’s clothing…Indeed.

Thank You for Defending Our Museum!

Air and Space Museum closes after guards clash with protesters

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on the Mall was abruptly closed Saturday afternoon after a “large group of protesters” tried to push past security guards and enter the museum, a spokeswoman said.

At least one demonstrator was pepper-sprayed by a museum guard in the confrontation, said Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas. Several witnesses said that more than a dozen people were affected by the spray.

The museum was closed at about 3:15 p.m., St. Thomas said.

Some of the protesters were affiliated with the Occupy DCdemonstration that had sprung up at McPherson Square last week as an offshoot of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, said Cody Steele, 21, an American University senior who participated in the march to the museum.

Steele said the march was planned, however, by a different but like-minded group of protesters — known as the October 2011 group — who have been camped out in Freedom Plaza since Oct. 6.

“It’s a shifting movement,” said Steele, who has spent time with both protest groups this past week. “They are separate, but it’s a common set of goals.”

The two groups’ grievances span a range of issues, including corporate power, environmental destruction and American militarism. On Saturday, they were demonstrating at the museum against the U.S. military’s use of drones in overseas wars, witnesses said.

An exhibit of military unmanned aerial vehicles is currently on view at the museum.

As many as 200 people attempted to enter the museum through doors facing the National Mall, said St. Thomas, while others gathered at the museum’s Independence Avenue entrance. The demonstrators carried large signs and other items not allowed inside the museum, she said.

When a security guard told them they could not enter, demonstrators pushed the guard outside and up against a wall, St. Thomas said. Another guard approached and pepper-sprayed one protester before D.C. police and U.S. Park Police were called, she said, and one person was arrested.

No one was seriously hurt by the pepper spray, said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for D.C. Fire and EMS. Medics treated several people at the scene, Piringer said, but everyone affected by the pepper spray refused to be taken to hospitals for further evaluation.

 

Oscar Grant Verdict

Following the announcement of sentencing of BART Officer Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant, there were protests in Oakland. While most of the protest was peaceful, a group did break off and started a riot, resulting in 152 arrests.

Now it will undoubtebly be conveyed in the MSM that it was black folks protesting (and rioting) – but as you will see from the video, the people protesting came from a large cross section of the local population.

How this will be distorted in the MSM…

Is indeed part of the problem.

Now, being a sports shooter myself, owning weapons of similar capacity as the BART Police use, and having also handled a Taser – I’m not sure I buy the Defense line of confusion between the two. There are a lot of differences between the weight, grip, trigger placement, and color of the weapons – which seem to me to make confusion pretty difficult, if not impossible. Near as difficult as confusing the feel of a revolver with a semi- auto. The manufacturers of Taser weapons in fact, go out of their way to design the weapon to be distinguishable, to prevent such confusion.

While I think the full 15 years would have been excessive…

I think the 2 year sentence was a bit on the light side.