The Guardian has an article hereabout the Occupy movement that is taking place in the United States. It has some rather inflammatory comments regarding the genesis of the response municipalities have had regarding the OWS demonstrations. It is also the first time I have seen goals of the protesters clearly articulated.
I am interested in Dopers’ take on this article. Do you believe that Homeland Security has coordinated crackdowns across the nation? If so, is this some evil thing or is it simply a Federal department advising local governments? Is this how the rest of the world sees us right now?
An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear;
I happen to live in central California, near enough to Davis that I can testify that this is entirely bogus.
I think maybe you misread the sentence. It does not say all those things happened at UC Davis. It says all those things happened, which they did. The only quibble I have with the author’s statement is that the students were not “supine”- they were sitting, and the phrase “seemingly targeted” in regards to women. I do think women have been/were targeted many times, but I don’t know how you can prove that.
Not that it makes much difference but that article is from the Guardian’s comment is free online only pages, they also had this article by Grover Norquist at the same time.
The idea is to get wider viewpoints then just the Guardian’s staff which sometimes backfires - i.e. they had someone prominent write about how Bradley Manning deserved to be imprisoned for what he did which really pissed off Wikileaks.
Say about what? I’m on record in at least one thread decrying the strong-arm tactics of the police in places like Davis. That doesn’t change the fact that the author of this article is reaching (to put it kindly) when she “connects the dots” in her conspiracy theory. That is the purpose of her article. Instances of police over-reaction are all over the news, and nothing in her story hasn’t been reported elsewhere. What is “news” is her claim that Congress and Obama are behind it all, and that is what my first post commented on.