On NPR on Occupy Oakland

NPR's reporting of the protester smack-down in Oakland has been infuriating. NPR chose to describe the brutally disproportionate reaction of the OPD to peaceful protesters as a "clash between protesters and police". The use of this phrase is a blatant attempt to repackage reality as to absolve the OPD of their unwarranted aggression by creating a sense of equanimity of violent intent between both parties. And it gets worse from there.

Here we have a situation where a group of people LEGALLY exercising their constitutional right to free speech and assembly, responds to police attempts to unjustly and forcibly remove them by (stupidly, admittedly) throwing water bottles, paint and a few rocks and being met by hundreds of police dispensing teargas, beanbag projectiles, flash grenades and rubber bullets from within the protection of riot gear. This wasn't a "clash" this was an attack by a state ARMY against a group of unarmed civilians. To try to frame it as anything short of that is dishonest at best and dishonest for the purpose of misinformation and manipulation of public sentiment to advance the ends of NPR's corporate sponsors at worst, to say nothing of the irony of assaulting the public to maintain pubic safety. Or are protesters no longer considered 'the public' due police protection in the same way that US citizens deemed 'terrorists' are no longer due their rights as citizens?

"There is no threat to the public when the public uses a public space. To suggest otherwise is authoritarian absurdity. Rather, the purpose of the police attack was to break the will of the protesters by causing them physical harm…Tear gas and nightstick blows disperse a crowd, but they also leave a memory of violence that deters future assembly"

It is worth mentioning that the pretext for this attack was trumped up sanitation and public safety concerns that could have easily been addressed by communication with the group's leadership. Although the professed lack of leadership within Occupy Oakland competent enough to resolve the alleged issues was used as a justification for the attack, these leaders magically materialized the moment Mayor P.O.S. decided she wanted to keep the peace/her job.

A later NPR segment featured this gem: "If Occupy Wall Street had an agenda, it might be able to bring grass-roots energy to the Democrats the way the Tea Party did for the GOP." To the first point: has NPR had its head up its ass for the past 6 weeks? How else could the #OWS agenda have evaded their notice? To the second: I just answered my own question, yes it does, because anyone who looks at #OWS and says "oh my, the democraptastic sell-out "thanks for inviting us, we just so happy to still be here" half of our oligarchic political duopoly will surely be able to benefit from this movement that TOTALLY rejects everything said craptastic party truly stands for." Later in the same segment, from Matt Bennett of the group Third Way: "Bennett wants to avoid having Democrats tied to the excesses of the fringe of the Occupy Wall Street protests the way the party was tied for decades to the excesses of the anti-war movement." We were all told just last week, when Obama pretended to end the war in Iraq, that the Iraq war has cost us all $3-5 trillion dollars, all of it debt. In this time of austerity hysteria where everyone and their grandma is pledging to root out waste, fraud, inefficiency, gremlins and couch change to stave off the default of the entire US economy, where we are spending $300 million A DAY in Afghanistan and just blew a another billion (and counting) to liberate Libya from The Man Who Knew Too Much, here is a self labeled liberal saying that candidates should shy away from the anti-war movement with NPR dutifully reporting this utter nonsense.

NPR: This is propaganda not journalism. Drop your sugar daddies Walmart and ADM, raid that sweet endowment of yours and do your freakin' job.