#OWS Update: UC-Davis Pepper Spray Attack on Occupy Protesters-Democracy Now! & NATO Kills 100,000 Libyans ???

A song for #OWS / Occupy Movement about the 99% Versus 1%
We Surround Them

Phil Ochs - The Ringing of Revolution

Uploaded by farmboy10001 on Nov 8, 2010

Democracy Now! Amy Goodmann

UC-Davis Student Describes Pepper Spray Attack on Occupy Campus Protesters
democracynow

Uploaded by democracynow on Nov 21, 2011
www.democracynow.org - A video that spread rapidly online shows University of California, Davis campus police officers pepper-spraying student protesters at close range on Friday at point blank range as they sat together to protest the dismantling of the "Occupy UC-Davis" encampment. The two officers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave, and the incident has sparked calls for the resignation of UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who initially defended the actions of the campus police. Katehi has since said she wants an outside, independent panel to review what happened.

Democracy Now! speaks with Elli Pearson, one of the students pepper sprayed on Friday. "All I could see was people telling me to cover my head, protect myself, and put my head down. And the next thing I know, I was pepper sprayed," says Pearson, who notes she was protesting in solidarity with students at UC-Berkeley who were beaten by police, and against tuition hikes at universities across the country. Also interviewed is Nathan Brown, assistant professor of English at UC-Davis, who wrote an open letter calling for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi following the pepper-spraying incident Friday. "In my opinion, the best way to go about these things as a junior faculty member is to speak up openly," says Brown, who is not tenured. "In that way, you draw a lot of support, and I think that will be very helpful in protecting me and other people who speak out, if there is any effort of retribution by the administration."

Libya just another country to be plundered by the 1%
Destroying much of Libya in order to save it??? or is this just part of the Western Nations plans to further the plundering of African Nations and the Middle East .
NATO now in the business of taking out any regime which is not friendly enough with the Western Nations and Western Multinational Corporations.
Over 100,000 Libyans May Have been killed by NATO dropping 40,000 bombs on Libya

Pepe Escobar: NATO is the global Robocop

Uploaded by RTAmerica on Oct 26, 2011
According to some reports NATO dropped approximately 40 thousand bombs in the pasted seven months. This played a big part in capture and death of Gaddafi. Many believe showing the lifeless body of Gaddafi was tasteless and the media has ignored the real issues. Who's to gain from the fall of Gaddafi? Pepe Escobar, correspondent for the Asia Times, gives us his take on the media coverage and much more.

and so it goes,
GORD.

#OWS More Police Brutality -The Militarization of police & Denying US Citizens Their Right To Peacefully Protest

" The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis (details here) shows a police state in its pure form. It’s easy to be outraged by this incident as though it’s some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta adeptly demonstrates with an assemblage of video how common such excessive police force has been in response to the Occupy protests."  Glenn Greenwald at Salon. com November 20, 2011

Video of Police Mercilessly Pepper Spraying  Students at DavisUC Occupy Protest Followed By Beatings and arrests

Non-violent protesters eventually force Police to retreat

Police Forces in America Becoming Robocops working For The Big Corporations and the 1%  while Being Armed As If America Itself Was a War Zone

And another song for the Occupy Movement

Bruce Springsteen sings Bob Dylan's Protest Song

 " Chimes Of Freedom "

radcla

Video of War Veteran being beaten by police at Oakland
also note the police officer cursing and swearing at the peaceful protester-odd since so many in the media are upset when Occupy protesters use such language.

Note: #ows protests still growing and gaining support around the world.

It is gaining support in large part because the proiests are a model for the most part of non-violence non-cooperation tactics and have condemned any violence by protesters or police.
Violent acts by protesters can only hurt the Occupy movement.
As Joan Walsh points out locking arms sitting on the ground is a non-violent action.

All Occupy protesters should borrow a lesson from these students who were pepper sprayed and yet did not resort to violence who kept as still as possible while being pepper sprayed. Unable to start a physical violent confrontation the police were forced to retreat. If a few students threw things or even hit police officers then the police would have had an excuse for beating and arresting students.

Forcing police to drag you away is also non-violent and non-cooperation.Not helping the polcie arrest you or to facilitate the arrest is OK as long as itt is non-violent.
As for shouting at the police phrases such as shame on you or stop the violence etc is non-violent and is better than giving in and either committing acts of violence or loudly mindlessly swearing at the police or calling police officers names. Doing so just ratchets up the tension and confrontation and is seen by many members of our socity as not just bad manners but an excuse for police to use excessive force.

This is a longer video version of the pepper spraying incident at UC Davis
After vicious non-proked pepper spraing of students sitting on the ground the police are forced to retreat as the protesters chant to the police "shame on you" and "you can leave" .



and according to eyewitnesses things got worse after the initial pepper spraying as pointed out in an article at The Atlantic.

Too Much Violence and Pepper Spray at the OWS Protests: The Videos and Pictures by Garance Franke-Ruta at The Atlantic , November 19, 2011

Junior faculty member Nathan Brown, an assistant professor of English at Davis, says what actually happened was even worse than what's shown on the videos, and has called on U.C. Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign -- a call that has since last night become a petition. His description:

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

The face of police cruelty
UC Davis cops casually pepper-spray non-violent protesters, but watch how the students win by Joan Wash at Salon.com , November 19, 2011

I’ve seen so many shocking photos and videos of police brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters and their far-flung supporters around the country. But there’s something about this now-viral video, of a UC Davis police officer casually and cruelly pepper-spraying a line of non-violent protesters, and the way the students responded, that symbolizes both what the movement is up against – and how it ultimately wins. It’s below. Be sure to watch the whole thing, because as sickening as it is to see the red pepper-spray hit students directly in their faces, it’s as inspiring to see how they react, and how it ends – at least for now.

...What the UC Davis protesters did Friday was non-violent. What the cops did in response was brutality. The video is very hard to watch. But if you watch the whole thing, you’ll see the remaining students begin to chant “Shame on you!” and slowly move toward the police. And you’ll see the cops begin to retreat, maybe because their work is done, but maybe because they’re feeling the moral and political power of that non-violent crowd. Some of the cops really do look ashamed, including Pike himself (in my opinion; you might see it differently.)

This is how we win. Imagine how different it would look if some self-appointed “revolutionary” decided it was time for a “diversity of tactics” that included violence in Davis on Friday.

also see commentary from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com.who also points how the brutality of non-violent protesters by police is fueling the widening of the movement in the USA and elsewhere.
Greenwald also points out how since the 9/11 attacks the local police forces in America have been militarized and that their resorting to violence has become all too common across the USA.
The acceptance of violence by the police is the trickle down effect of the American government , the media and a large segment of the population who approve of the abuse and torture of so called "detainees" that is those who are considered terrorist suspects.
The argument goes that since America is at war the people are not permitted to voice their grievances against the government or American institutions such as the Big Corporations or the military or police forces because any such anti-government protests are seen as being acts of treason. Odd though this did not apply to the Tea Party protesters or to the verbal attacks on President Obama .


The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.comNovember 20, 2011

...Pervasive police abuses and intimidation tactics applied to peaceful protesters — pepper-spray, assault rifles, tasers, tear gas and the rest — not only harm their victims but also the relationship of the citizenry to the government and the set of core political rights. Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights. That’s exactly what incidents like this are intended to achieve. Overzealous prosecution of those who engage in peaceful political protest (which we’ve seen more and more of over the last several years) as well as rampant secrecy and the sprawling Surveillance State are the close cousins of excessive police force in both intent and effect: they are all about deterring meaningful challenges to those in power through the exercise of basic rights. Rights are so much more effectively destroyed by bullying a citizenry out of wanting to exercise them than any other means. These two short video clips — regarding the openly abusive treatment of Bradley Manning and the extra-judicial attempt to destroy WikiLeaks...

and ...The second exacerbating development is more subtle but more important: the authoritarian mentality that has been nourished in the name of Terrorism. It’s a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one’s fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters. It’s an even smaller step to go from supporting the power of the President to imprison or kill anyone he wants (including one’s fellow citizens and even their teenaged children) with no transparency, checks or due process to supporting the power of the police and the authorities who command them to punish with force anyone who commits the “crime” of non-compliance. At the root of all of those views is the classic authoritarian mindset: reflexive support for authority, contempt for those who challenge them, and a blind faith in their unilateral, unchecked decisions regarding who is Bad and deserves state-issued punishment.

...This is the most important effect of the Occupy movement: acts of defiance, courage and conscience are contagious. Just as the Arab Spring clearly played some significant role in spawning, sustaining and growing the American Occupy movement, so too have the Occupy protesters emboldened one another and their fellow citizens. The protest movement is driving the proliferation of new forms of activism, citizen passion and courage, and — most important of all — a sense of possibility. For the first time in a long time, the use of force and other forms of state intimidation are not achieving their intended outcome of deterring meaningful (i.e., unsanctioned and unwanted) citizen activism, but are, instead, spurring it even more. The state reactions to these protests are both highlighting pervasive abuses of power and generating the antidote: citizen resolve to no longer accept and tolerate it. This is why I hope to see the Occupy movement — even if it adopts specific demands — remain an outsider force rather than reduce itself into garden-variety partisan electioneering: in its current form, it is demanding and re-establishing the indispensable right of dissent, defiance of unjust authority, and sustained protest.

also see: The Cops We Deserve by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic ,Nov. 20, 2011

and so it goes,
GORD.

NYPD Media Blackout ! #OWS Going Global ! Arundhati Roy " The Right To Dream We Are Fighting For Justice "

UPDATE #OWS: 6:55PM , November 19, 2011.
NY mayor and NYPD  police commissioner treat the press/media as the enemy -
So much for  America's freedom of the press is President Obama Watching or hiding out at Fox News Channel
From NBC: New York -Media Blackout

VIDEO: Media Pushed Back from Occupy Wall Street Raid
Police and mayor said it was for their protection.

By Jonathan Dienst and Shimon Prokupecz

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Video of macing students as they sit on the ground -in what Universe are the police in that these students are a threat to the police ??? Insane.

Police mace peaceful California students at an OWS protest

Uploaded by RTAmerica on Nov 19, 2011
Police in the U.S. have used pepper spray against peaceful students taking part in an 'Occupy' campaign in front of the University of California. Demonstrators had been ordered to remove their camp, but after refusing, officers showed up and and tore their tents down, using force against unarmed people. 10 protesters have been arrested.
Courtesy http://www.youtube.com/terrydatiger

Occupy Wall Street 99% Spotlight Signal #N17 #OWS #OccupyEverything
AnonOps1337

Uploaded by AnonOps1337 on Nov 17, 2011
11/17/2011 - Verizon Building in Lower Manhattan. The beam rolled through a series of words: "99% / MIC CHECK! / LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / #OCCUPY MOVEMENT / OCCUPY WALL," then a long list of cities, states and countries and then "OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE."

Not only are police cracking down on the Occupy movement protesters but also on journalist According to some reporters police have denied them access
12160info



Because of the importance of the following speech by the articulate and electrifying writer and scholar Arundhati Roy it is necessary to republish it in it's entirety with the video of her speaking followed by the text of her speech ( but not the text of the Q & A) .

The Right To Dream We Are Fighting For Justice

“Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds… Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.” - Arundhati Roy

By Arundhati Roy

November 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- "The People’s University" - Held at Judson Memorial Church 11/16/11 -

Tuesday morning, the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We're not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.

What you have achieved since September 17th, when the Occupy movement began in the United States, is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerized into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfillment.

As a writer, let me tell you, this is an immense achievement. And I cannot thank you enough.

We were talking about justice. Today, as we speak, the army of the United States is waging a war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. US drones are killing civilians in Pakistan and beyond. Tens of thousands of US troops and death squads are moving into Africa. If spending trillions of dollars of your money to administer occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not enough, a war against Iran is being talked up.

Ever since the Great Depression, the manufacture of weapons and the export of war have been key ways in which the United States has stimulated its economy. Just recently, under President Obama, the United States made a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia - moderate Muslims, right? It hopes to sell thousands of bunker busters to the UAE. It has sold $5 billion-worth of military aircraft to my country, India, which has more poor people than all the poorest countries of Africa put together. All these wars, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, have claimed millions of lives – all of them fought to secure the "American way of life".

Today, we know that the "American way of life" – the model that the rest of the world is meant to aspire towards – has resulted in 400 people owning the wealth of half of the population of the United States. It has meant thousands of people being turned out of their homes and their jobs while the US government bailed out banks and corporations – American International Group (AIG) alone was given $182 billion.

The Indian government worships US economic policy. As a result of 20 years of the free market economy, today, 100 of India's richest people own assets worth one-quarter of the country's GDP while more than 80% of the people live on less than 50 cents a day; 250,000 farmers, driven into a spiral of death, have committed suicide. We call this progress, and now think of ourselves as a superpower. Like you, we are well-qualified: we have nuclear bombs and obscene inequality.

The good news is that people have had enough and are not going to take it any more. The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don't know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.

They (the 1%) say that we don't have demands… perhaps they don't know, that our anger alone would be enough to destroy them. But here are some things – a few "pre-revolutionary" thoughts I had – for us to think about together:

We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As "cap-ists" and "lid-ites", we demand:

• An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example, weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health funds.

• Two, natural resources and essential infrastructure – water supply, electricity, health, and education – cannot be privatized.

• Three, everybody must have the right to shelter, education and healthcare.

• Four, the children of the rich cannot inherit their parents' wealth.

This struggle has re-awakened our imagination. Somewhere along the way, capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights", and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to just tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.

As a cap-ist and a lid-ite, I salute your struggle.

Salaam and Zindabad.

Arundhati Roy won the Booker prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things. Her non-fiction work includes An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, and Broken Republic. An impassioned critic of neo-imperialism, military occupations, and violent models of economic ‘development’, Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004. Her consistent exposure of the Indian state’s repressive policies has led to her being variously labelled a seditionist, secessionist, Maoist and unpatriotic troublemaker.

and so it goes,
GORD.

#OWS Occupy Versus Arab Spring, Kent State Redux & WorldNetDaily Wants Police to Use Flame Throwers on Occupy Protesters

UPDATE: 11:33 PM, November 18, 2011.

The quote below was made by Vice President Spiro Agnew in April 1970 just before the Killing of four students by the National Guard on May 4 of 1970 at Kent State University.
(Qoute taken from From essay " HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE EVENT" 1997 by J. Gregory Payne Ph.D.at May 4 Arcive.org.)

Vice-President Spiro Agnew, the spokesman for many Americans, suggested that police-and authorities treat student demonstrators as enemies. In a speech made in April of 1970, Agnew advised police to ". . . just imagine they (students) are wearing brown shirts or white sheets and act accordingly." 



In 1970 President Nixon announced the widening of the war in Vietnam to include its neighbor Cambodia . Nixon inherited the war from the previous administrations of President Johnson and President John F. Kennedy but he took the war to a new level of by increasing high altitude carpet bombing of parts of Vietnam and Cambodia.This new scorched earth policy led immediately to intensifying the opposition to the Vietnam War especially on university campuses across the US.
At Kent State university the National Guard were brought in to crush anti-war demonstrations.
This led to the infamous killing of four students at Kent State.


Kent State Massacre- Nixon Widening the War & Neil Young 4 Dead in Ohio
Ohureo



That was then this is now!
The elites which rule America only have so much tolerance for real dissent .

Police start arrests at OWS Day of Action protest

NYPD arrest retired Philly police captain Raymond Lewis at OWS protests

Uploaded by RTAmerica on Nov 17, 2011
As NYPD arrested Philly police retired captain Raymond Lewis at OWS protest, crowds were cheering. It comes as peaceful Occupy Wall Street protest has turned violent yet again. RT correspondents on the ground report that police have begun to arrest people brutally in Manhattan. RT producer Lucy Kafanov, who is on site in New York, is reporting clashes between police and protesters.

More Press targeted -
Militarized Zone downtown New York
No distinction made by police  between Media and protesters
NYPD blast LRAD Sonic weapon against OWS protest



WorldNetDaily Columnist: Turn "Flame-Throwers" On Occupy Protesters, Prepare To "Beat [Them] With Truncheons" by Media Matters staff November 17, 2011

WorldNetDaily's Phil Elmore used his November 16 column to call for the violent removal of the Occupy Wall Street protesters from their encampments. Elmore wrote that law enforcement should "[b]ring flame-throwers" and be "prepared to beat with truncheons and shoot with rubber bullets every last filthy hippie." He also called the Occupy movement a "cancer" and warned that it "will infect us all if we do not sterilize it now."


The right-wing media have been conducting a relentless smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street, calling protesters "lunatics" and "parasites" and comparing them to the Unabomber.


This call for violent action against the protesters does not come in a vacuum. On November 15, police in Seattle used pepper spray on an 84-year-old, a pregnant woman, and other participants in Occupy Seattle. Last month, an Iraq war veteran suffered a skull fracture after he was hit by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland.


From the WorldNetDaily column:

This is no longer a question of freedom of speech. This has long ago ceased to be an issue of the right to assemble. No American citizen has the right to terrorize and threaten his fellow Americans in this way. No mob of Americans should be permitted to endanger and to harass the public the way these hateful "Occupy" hippies have done for months.
Call out the National Guard. Turn on the fire hoses. Send bulldozers. Bring flame-throwers, for pity's sake. Men and women who give a damn about their country, wearing Hazmat suits and respiratory gear, empowered by the lawful government of this nation, should be marching in ranks on every Obamaville this very moment, prepared to beat with truncheons and shoot with rubber bullets every last filthy hippie. Put a stop to this miserable army of miscreants before they are permitted to rape, infect, or ruin one more person.
The "Occupy" movement is a cancer. The "occupiers" are criminals and terrorists. The Obamaville is a creeping death made of Nylon, placards and human waste. This movement is a third-world rot that will infect us all if we do not sterilize it now.

Note in the above article the use of  " eliminationist " style language such as characterizing the occupy movement as a "cancer" which needs to be removed . Similar language has been used especially by the right in the US when referring to  Illegal Immigrants or Muslims or Liberals and secular humanists.
This is also the rhetoric used by racists such as Anti-semites; it is the language of the White Supremacists and of  the terrorist organization the  Ku Klux Klan .


So we get the spectacle of the Neocons, uberconservatives as represented on Fox News and CNN in agreement with pseudo-liberals calling for the shut down of the Occupy Movement by any and all means necessary.

These uberconservatives supported the Tea Party movement and made excuses for their uncivilized behavior but the Tea Party was not against the Rich and powerful and were in favor of even less regulations on the various financial institutions, Corporations, CEOs , or the Wall Street gambling organizations who even make out like bandits when supposedly the country is on the brink of bankruptcy.



So it is no surprise that the likes of Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity and the FOX Channel gang are using the Occupy Movement to attack president Obama.
Firstly they erroneously suggest that the Occupy protesters are all fans of Obama and the Democratic Party. This is not so.
They also claim Obama is ratcheting up Class Warfare rhetoric in the hope of bringing about more disorder and anarchy further his own agenda.
This would be funny but the situation is more serious than that.
Why should corporations and individuals be rewarded for downsizing their companies and moving the work as it were to other countries where there are fewer regulations ,lower taxes, corporation friendly or non-existent labor laws or to just invest their money in foreign countries or hide money in off shore accounts or Swiss bank accounts.

Most of those in the Occupy movement are just as upset with Obama as they would be with Bush Jr. and Bill Clinton and Bush Senior and Ronald Reagan for their economic and social and political policies which always favor the rich and powerful over the rest of the citizens of America.

The Occupy Protesters are upset that Obama also gave out billions to bail out various corporations, banks , Wall Street , economic institutions and did little for the average American.
They are also critical of Obama's widening of the War on Terror which is another part of the economic puzzle which is rarely addressed.
While wanting to go on an austerity plan cutting the budgets of various government agencies not substantial cuts are being made to the US military or CIA and the the Intelligence and policing agencies make work program.
We see this everyday as the police departments across the US bring out their newest toys or weapons to crush a mostly peaceful protest movement.
Note for instance Sean Hannity only points out the injuries to police officers and not the injuries to the protesters. He appears to believe that the protesters are an ignorant uncivilized out of control mob who are out to destroy America .
Hannity's solution is the arresting of  thousands more and maybe kill a few to send an uncompromising message to the protesters.
When the Tea Party held protests one did not see the same sort of police presence but at Occupy protests hundreds or even a couple of thousand police show up.



Sarah Palin: Obama Is Using Occupy Movement To "Perpetuate" Class Warfare Via Media Matters ,November 17, 2011
From the November 17 edition of Fox News' Hannity:





 And so here we are in 2011 with President Obama who inherited the Global War on Terror which included the unwarranted immoral War of Aggression and occupation of Iraq.

The hope had been that the new President would at least begin ratcheting down this war and its rhetoric instead Obama ratcheted up the war in Pakistan and Afghanistan and in countries such as Yemen and decided to bomb the crap out of Libya for some six months or more as he widened the War on Terror .
One of the stated reasons for taking on Qaddafi at this time was to defend the human and civil rights of the people of Libya.
Another stated reason for taking on Qaddafi was that he was supporting various terrorists organization even though there is little proof of such activity in the last 5 or 6 years.
The US and NATO also accused Qaddafi as developing Weapons of Mass Destruction which he in fact ended long before being bombed by the US and NATO.
The real reason for taking on Qaddafi was in more likely to do with the US and NATO plan to encircle Iran and to deter other nations from doing anything which does not fit into America's extension of its Empire into the Middle East and Northern and Western Africa.
After taking Libya and defeating Qadaffi and leaving the country in the hands of rebels who may end up as bad if not worse than the Qaddafi Regime.

Meanwhile President Obama is being pressured into a possible bombing and invasion of Syria and or Iran.
Iran as President Bush argued is part of what he called the Axis of Evil even though Iran was not an imminent threat to its neighbors or to the US.
So the public once again is being drowned in US Government and Mainstream Media propaganda to manufacture consent for a war against Iran and/ or Syria and other sovereign nations that are depicted as imminent threats to US and Western interests.

If the US and NATO were so concerned about human rights and the spread of democracy then they should have been also involved in putting pressure on other governments in the region such as Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Behran and not just keeping these regimes well armed with American and European weapons which are then used to crush any moves on the part of their respective citizens for justice, fairness and freedoms such as freedom of the press, the freedom to assembly the freedom of association and freedom of speech and more involvement in policy making in these nations.

In Bahrain for instance the protesters initially wanted the government to listen to their grievances and to bring about some changes leading to more economic, political and social justice. They were not even calling for a regime change. The Western Media Propaganda Mchine used the narrative given to them by Bahrain's leaders and the Saudis and the Obama administration in which they erroneously led the public to believe that the uprising in Bahrain was engineered by Iranian government . They pointed to the fact that a large portion of those protesting were Shia Muslims and that Iran is ruled by Shia Muslims . The reality is that the Shia in Bahrain are treated as second class citizens and so have been seeking justice and fairness from the government.

But then again that's not quite what these wars, invasions, interventions by the US and its sidekick NATO  are all about. They are about ensuring that these governments are American and European friendly as for the public that's not really an issue except when the US and NATO can use to get more support from their own citizens in the US and Europe.
Having citizens line up to vote and getting their thumbs painted purple might be a nice photo-op but it does not mean that the elections have any real substantive meaning and out come.

The other issue here is that as we see with the Occupy Movement in the USA those in power will only tolerate so much criticism especially when it is aimed at the rich and powerful on Wall Street or the lobbyists in Washington or daring to criticize US domestic and foreign policies.
So as the members of the Obama regime praise the Arab Spring though belatedly and with much reluctance they have little patience for any such movements in the Homeland ie America.
They seem in fact to be hoping that these uprisings will only lead to some cosmetic changes and not substantive changes. For instance they don't want Egypt to significantly change its policies regarding their support for Israel's blockade of GAZA.

and so it goes,
GORD.

TYT: Cenk Uygur -Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout, Police State & We are in effect all beggars at the Rich man's feast.

Anyway here's a little tune by Phil Ochs "I Ain't Marching Anymore" dedicated to the Brutal American Empire- as long as America tramples the rights of the peoples of other nations it will remain a "Rogue Nation" the world's Current Bully .
So why should Americans expect to have more freedoms than those they oppress???


Phil Ochs "I Aint Marching More" with lyrics




 It appears that a number of Mayors in the USA and their police forces are in fact anti-democracy . And yet millions of US citizens are still refusing to act and seem content with the status quo and the moves through various legal instruments to crush freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to peacefully bring their grievances to the governments whether that of individual states or  municipalities  or the US federal government.
Odd that in contrast the Tea Party movement was given much more freedom and leeway by the various levels of government while the Occupy Movement is seen as a direct threat to those who are the ones setting policies in the USA-that is the thousands of lobbyist and big money interests.

These business interests believe that only they have the know how to run the country assisted by a large Managerial Class who have been indoctrinated by Business schools or Law Schools or Harvard and Yale and the quisling Mainstream Media etc. that Big Corporations and their interests ie  profits and such are the only important group within the US.

They believe the average American must show their loyalty to the status quo and accept whatever crumbs  which the Rich and powerful toss to them. We are in effect all beggars at the Rich man's feast.

Mayor Bloomberg arrests members of the press who try to report on Occupy Wall Street and the city's draconian measures taken against the Occupy Movement.
Maybe mayor Bloomberg will suggest that the Press should be embedded with the NYPD and only report or film according to what Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD will allow.
We have seen this with the press in Iraq and Afghanistan in which for the first time the press are not protected by US troops unless the press embeds with the US troops and subject themselves to the US military's & the White House' censorship.
Ah yes the police state like restrictions on the press in the War on Terror are now as many predicted are now being applied in the Homeland that is the USA.
Welcome to the Police State.
Now it becomes clearer why President Obama has been reluctant to criticize governments in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for their brutal crackdown on the reform movements in their respective countries why because the US government and municipal governments have the same attitude about protesters as do the governments of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or even Honduras for that matter.
So it appears the actions taken by individual mayors and municipalities and their police forces is possibly part of an experiment to see how far they can go.



While claiming to be in favor of democracy and the 1st amendment the NYPD at Mayor Bloomberg's instructions invaded Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night a typical move usually associated with 3rd world dictatorships they also destroyed personal belongings and publicly owned property ie tents, sleeping bags, clothes and a library of some 5,000 books.
After all Books like the internet are considered subversive in any sort of authoritarian or police state.
The USA is entering into its new face of Empire building in which it will not permit US citizens to gather and voice their objections to the Empire's agenda in any way shape or form.

City Attacks Information at Zuccotti: Books Dumped in the Garbage, Press Intimidated
Books dumped in the garbage. Press intimidated and shut out. These are not the signs of a functioning democracy. by Bryce Covert at New Deal 2.0 via Alternet.org, November 15, 2011

In recent weeks, one of Occupy Wall Street’s perhaps greatest victories became crystal clear: since the protests took off, the number of news stories talking about inequality has skyrocketed. This is perhaps one of the movement’s greatest strengths: the spreading of information about issues that were previously ignored, if felt viscerally by most Americans. Growing income inequality has been no secret, but few were talking about it on a national scale until the movement put it on the radar.

The discussion and dissemination of information is a hallmark of the movement. On any given trip down to Zuccotti Park, by far the most common activities I observed were teach-ins on various issues surrounded by smaller, informal conversations ranging from crony capitalism to bank bailouts to student debt. The way most illustrious thinkers got involved with the movement was to visit the encampment and share their wisdom. This love of information was also embodied in Occupy’s call for transparency. Protesters seek a government whose operations are open to the public and not just to lobbyists, one that is accountable and accessible to its citizens. Signs like this said it simply:

But perhaps no greater embodiment of this love of information and knowledge was the People’s Library. The first time I went to donate books it consisted of a dozen or so bins neatly arranged by category and title; the last time I was there it had grown to become one of the largest pieces of infrastructure in the park, insanely well organized and beautifully displayed.

It’s perhaps most chilling to me, then, that when I awoke to news of the evacuation it quickly became clear thatpolice simply threw all of those carefully donated and organized books in the trash. The symbolism of amilitarized police force piling thousands of incarnations of our country’s knowledge and history into dumpsters is hard to escape today.

To top it off, the press was barred from entry and the few who snuck their way in were treated terribly. Those who tried to reason with the police that they had media credentials and therefore should be allowed access to cover events in a public space were rebuffed. As Rosie Gray of the Village Voice

Mayor Bloomberg claims the raid was to protect people, including the protesters, from supposed dirtiness and violence. But who is protected when information is blocked or destroyed? Only those doing deeds that can’t stand up to the scrutiny of transparency. Information is one of the most powerful tools of a functioning democracy. It suffered a blow last night.

and so it goes,

GORD.

USA : From Pepper Spray to Cluster Bombs & #OWS Retake Zuccotti Park; Bill Maher's Support & Occupy's Global Reach

Occupy’s 84-year-old pepper spray victim: Is this the most iconic image of the movement? By Maura Judkis When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.

Above Photo and text from the Washington Post November 16, 2011

Iconic photo from Vietnam War -civilians became legitimate targets as large parts of the country became free-fire Zones and soldiers were told to increase their daily body count. Americans remember that some 60,000 US soldiers lost their lives in that useless wasteful war while forgetting that some two million Vietnamese lost their lives in the same period.

And my response is that the USA is a violent nation from pepper spray and tear gas  to State Sanctioned executions to torture to Cluster Bombs and Napalm / White Phosphorus .

As Ann Coulter and others suggested these protesters should be shot just like in the good old days at Kent State or in Alabama when people questioned the status quo they were met with fire hoses, attack dogs, batons , whips, tear gas and live rounds .
Of course no matter what the tea party gang did police were supposed to look the other way even if they brought a rifle to a presidential photo op or shot and killed an abortion doctor.
But when liberals and progressives march it is downright anti-American.


The news we are not meant to see?

So anyway let's see if we can put this in a bit of context. There are many people in the Occupy Movement who consider using billions of dollars to fight unnecessary wars as a crime in part because it robs the citizens of billions which could go to improving the lives of the average citizen.
The pepper spraying and the baton wielding heavily armed militarized police is really just the tip of the ice berg.
America and the West has helped to turn most of our earth into a war zone. Not just downtown Seattle or Oakland  but entire nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new Wild West where there is only rough justice handed out by US and UK and NATO soldiers who have been told to up their body counts and are informed that these nations have become free fire zones .
As the American people acquiesced to allowing their government to torture POWs to killing civilians in Iraq because they might be terrorists or insurgents or as some would claim merely people defending their own country invaded by foreigners.

This is America's  illegal immoral war of Aggression against the people of Iraq "Shock and Awe" in Baghdad 2003.
While Westerners watched this unfold in real time at home on their TVS and computer screens they acted like it was a video game-it wasn't beneath the fire works thousands of  innocent civilians were being maimed or killed in the name they say of freedom ,justice and the American Way.

For instance thisis what counts as American Moral Superiority over the rest of the nations of our world.
The use of these forms of interrogation techniques were widespread through out Iraq and Afghanistan .
They used to be called torture but in the new enlightened era they are called euphemistically  as "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" .
Language itself becomes part of the overall overarching propaganda message of the USA .
And those who dare question the state are called anti-American, UnAmerican or traitors.

The foreign invaders are in fact the Americans (and those they bully into joining them)  who have now replaced the other previous colonial powers such as Britain, France, Germany, the Dutch and Italians etc.
To those occupied it doesn't make much of a difference as tens of thousands are locked up abused and tortured or hundreds of thousands killed only to be characterized as being merely "Collateral Damage".
When four American contractors/mercenaries are killed in Falluja its front page news and the headline on CNN etc. but a million dead Iraqis is seen as nothing . The lives of non-Americans are not as precious as the lives of American citizens.
An American citizen at home in America is expected to behave and follow the laws of the land but when in a foreign country they can do as they please rape, murder, torture and they have no one to answer to.

To put it another way all non-Westerners are suspects til proven otherwise.
Is this the civilized world they want to save that metes out this horror on a daily basis to the innocent civilians of foreign countries so that they will conform to the rules of Western Multi-National Corporations and banks.

As Glenn Greenwald points out in a recent article U.S. takes the lead on behalf of cluster bombs at Salon.com, November 12, 2011

...Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack on Yemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians,including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 people alleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want Rick Perry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’s presidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a part of a covert, undeclared air war? If anything, as numerous Democratshave ecstatically celebrated, such acts show how Tough and Strong the Democrats are: after all, ponder the massive amounts of nobility and courage it takes to sit in the Oval Office and order this type of aggression on defenseless tribal regions in Yemen. As R.W. Appel put it on the front page of The New York Times back in 1989 when glorifying George H.W. Bush’s equally courageous invasion of Panama: “most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood” and doing so has become “a Presidential initiation rite.”

But one aspect of the December, 2009, attack that perhaps did merit some more critical scrutiny was the use of cluster bombs, weapons which“scatter hundreds of bomblets over a large area but with limited accuracy and high failure rates.” The inevitability of “duds” — “unexploded ordnance” — poses a great risk to civilians, often well after the conflict has ended, since — like land mines — they often detonate when stumbled into by children and other innocents long after they disperse. According tothe Cluster Munitions Coalition, cluster bombs “caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.” As Wired pointed out, while the U.S. used these weapons in both Iraq and Afghanistan, “neither the Taliban nor Saddam used cluster bombs against U.S. troops.” 

Is pepper spaying 84 year old a priest and a pregnant teenager ok now in America's  move towards being a police state???


Is it that most Americans and for that matter most Canadians are only bothered by these images being shown on TV in Newspapers and on YOUTUBE and not the acts themselves.
Most Canadians and Americans do not want to know about or see pictures of protesters being treated roughly by police. As far as most Americans and Canadians are concerned the police should just do whatever's necessary to stop these protesters they just don't want to know about the grizzly details.
The public has the same attitude about how terrorist' suspects are handled  or POWS.
Well those incarcerated on the battlefield were once called Prisoners of War now to make it easier to abuse and torture suspects we now are told to call those incarcerated "detainees" -a mild mannered word to cover up American and Western brutality.
As we have been informed most people just want to hear or see nice happy human interests stories.
When given pictures or news of stark reality they are unable to properly process it.
War for instance is a matter of bravery and triumphalism the public does not want the truth but rather purple passages about bravery under fire.
The public does not want to be forced to look at the carnage of war that civilians torn to pieces by Cluster Bombs dropped on their villages , towns or cities. Cluster Bombs are designed to do the maximum damage not on buildings but on human targets -each cluster bomb contains thousands of bomblets which rip through flesh and bone. Cluster Bombs are referred to as ' Daisy Cutters'.
Cluster Bombs which have been banned by most countries is of course a favorite type of bomb used in the Drones the US drops on villages in the mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Obama administration like the Bush administration has taken the lead in defending the use of Cluster Bombs because the US government and military actually like what Cluster Bombs do because is a weapon of terror.
The idea behind such munitions is that they kill  and or maim in such a gruesome manner that it is believed the people being bombed will stop fighting or giving aid to America's Enemy the terrorists -
But should America and the West stoop to the level of terrorists.
How far down this slippery slope are Westerners and Americans in particular ready to go.
Pretty far given the thousands of Libyan civilians who have been obliterated by NATOs carpet bombing of the country.
Or just take note of the brutal beating and torturing of Qaddafi including being sodomized by a knife and then shot in the head summary execution Mafia or Mossad /CIA style.

and now back to our regular programming on the Occupy Movement:

Occupy Protesters Evicted From Zuccotti Park
The police destroyed personal property of Occupiers loading these belongings into dumpsters
National Lawyers Guild supports the Occupy Movement-arguing the Mayor and others are denying the basic fundamental rights of American citizens who wish to express their grievances to their government .



The Young Turks -Cenk Uygur points out Mayor's Bloomberg's excuses and lies about Zuccotti Park and what is allowed and what is not.



There Is A Jubulance In Zuccotti Park
Lawrence O'Donnell MOXNEWS.com
November 15, 2011 MSNBC
http://MOXNews.com



Bill Maher gives his support to the basic goals and agenda of the occupy movement
It is not a matter of anti-capitalism but of an accountable fair regulated form of capitalism.
Bill Maher at occupy LA interview with Clark Davis
Uploaded by littletammy20 on Nov 8, 2011



Occupy Wall Street through the eyes of the world

Occupy Movement & Heavy Handed Police Response & War Zone USA 99% Versus 1%

And here's a little video I made for the Occupy Movement.

FOR #OWS War Zone 99% Versus 1% & El Pueblo Unido
Uploaded by gothgod on Nov 14, 2011
FOR #OWS Occupy Movement -Police in Riot Gear turn Peaceful Protests into a War Zone in Portland USA. Includes War Zone, Lone Man at the barricades & We Need More People
And 100,000 protesters shut down the Port of Oakland



Global Revolution
Keith Olbermann on the duty of Citizens when the Free Press, The Media and government Fails to do their jobs to protect the Interests of All American Citizens and not just the rich elites and the powerful

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

Hillary Clinton The citizens of Iran have the right to protest to put their grievances to the government



But American citizens it appears do not have the same rights as those Hillary Clinton claimed for Iran's Citizens

Clashes follow OWS victory at Zuccotti Park
October 14, 2011 RT




Thousands Rally to Resist Occupy Portland Evictions
Nov. 13, 2011

10,000 filled the areas around the Occupy Portland encampments last night as the deadline approached for eviction. 12:01 am came and went but the cops could do nothing: too many supporters blocked their path. It was peaceful.
The cops waited it out and are clearing out the Chapman and Lownsdale Park camps this morning, tearing down the remaining tents. There is a General Assembly meeting at Pioneer Square at noon today. Occupy Portland will continue. The whole world is watching!

http://occupyportland.org/

#opdx #occupyportland

and so it goes,
GORD.

For #OWS ***** Gandhi, Martin Luther King & Thoreau :Peaceful Civil Disobedience & Non-Cooperation

Mea Culpa -some videos refuse to work -trying to fix it.GORD.


Report from Al jazeera is once again more honest than the American and Canadian Mainstream Media and their coverage of the Occupy Movements protests

Protesters shut down huge Oakland port in US
AlJazeeraEnglish

UPdate added Sam Cooke video to make up for the Mavis Staple video-

A change is gonna come By Sam Cooke



Mavis Staples-Eyes On The Prize YOUTUBE : link http://youtu.be/0ZWdDI_fkns



Gandhi & The Protesters at the Salt Plant
and here's another Example of Real Civil Disobedience & Non-Violence
putting one's body and life on the line

Gandhi salt works -An Act of peaceful Non-Cooperation
The protesters willingly approach the gate of the Salt Works as if  to enter but are beaten down in this case by fellow Indians working for the British Empire.
The protesters do not try to hide their identity because they are proud to take part in this protest.
They do not engage in name calling or trash talk .
They do not throw stuff at the soldiers
They accept the blows from these soldiers with as much  equanimity as they can muster.




This form of courage seems of higher moral value than those who drop bunker buster bombs and Napalm from the air and those who push a button a thousand miles away to silence the people with an armed "Drone" .

These brave souls did not raise a hand against their oppressors. They stayed peaceful while being beaten and even killed.
They did not swear and trash talk against those minions the soldiers and police who beat and killed them.
We must regard them as victims of this current oppressive anti-democratic system which has been grinding the people down beginning with the Ronald Reagan Regime to the Bush and Obama Regimes respectively.

So my own view is that protesters in the Occupy Movement shouldn't antagonize the police when given the current system these otherwise decent people are merely an extension of this unjust system.

I also wish there were more discipline shown at these protest by the protesters. As you see in film footage of the clashes between the police and Civil Rights protesters they organize their marches as if they were a private army just as well disciplines, just as well behaved and remaining steadfast sitting on the ground waiting to be arrested.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil-rights non-violent non-cooperation movement in the United States.
Much of what he knew about taking such a difficult though noble and righteous path came from the example of Mahatma Gandhi in India in his fight to end the British Occupation of India.
Interestingly Gandhi borrowed the basic idea of non-violent protest and civil disobedience from the 19th century American essayist, philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau.
To protest the Mexican American War which he believed to be unnecessary and immoral Thoreau simply refused to pay his taxes. He wrote the essay "On Civil Disobedience" and encourage others who believed as he did to do likewise.

Note as Martin Luther King and Gandhi realized that with an oppressive regime little changes until tens of thousands protest and are willing to fill the jails across the country .
It is al that the protesters when on an organized march should not be just look like their just wandering around -you are either on the Bus or you are not-that is if you take part in a protest march then stick with the other protesters and don't go off sight-seeing or treating the situation as some sort of casual social gathering.

The current growing Occupy Movement or #99% Movement is committed we are told to non-violent peaceful occupation and non-cooperation with authorities when it is necessary to make a point and draw attention to the movement and its central goals of economic, social and political Justice.

This movement is part of an historical American tradition of "Civil Disobedience" from for instance the Boston Tea Party in which citizens of the British Colonies in protest about taxes imposed on them by the British Government went to the docks in Boston and threw a number of tons of Tea into the harbor destroying thereby "the private property "of the corporation or individuals who owned the tea.

If some American citizens took part in a similar protest today the authorities would have them clapped in irons for a number of years or to paraphrase Ann Coulter's so called reasoned response has said "They are a mob and so shoot them". She has been making similar statements for years now and now calls for discrimination , incarceration and summary executions of in her view "Demonic Liberals". These days since she can't call for killing blacks, Hispanics and other non-whites or the poor she feels safe in condemning all liberals and progressives in the US as evil and working for the Devil or Satan -she borrows a great deal from the nasty crude twisted logic of anti-Semitism as in the notorious forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Or as our learned friend David Neiwert (The Eliminationists" 2009) would point out these fanatical anti-liberals use the language of "Eliminationism" which extremely dangerous because it is a form of Hate Speech which some people will at some point act upon if it doesn't eventually become policy.

And yet the same conservatives who belittle and mock the Occupy Movement are the ones who are always going on about the War for Independence and characterize the Boston Tea Party gang as heroes rather than hooligans who wantonly destroyed private property.

The people who took part in the Civil Rights Movement were fighting for their basic human rights and civil rights not just the right to vote but also the right to education , medical care the right to sit at a lunch-counter with white people to no longer be confined to the back of the bus literally and metaphorically.
They were fighting for equality and justice and freedom which were denied to black Americans throughout the USA since the end of the American Civil War- they exchanged the chains of slavery for the chains of Jim Crow and injustice.
Black Americans could lynched by the mob and this was considered a form of White America's notion of "Rough Justice"
Martin Luther King was also a critic of the corrupt system in America in which millions of blacks and whites were doomed to lives of want and poverty.
Martin Luther King felt it was a moral imperative that he not only speak out about civil rights racial equality and poverty of whites and Blacks in America but also he spoke out against an unnecessary immoral war that is the Vietnam War.
President Obama and others who claim to admire and see themselves as taking up the same fights Dr. Martin Luther King took part in but in reality President Obama like others in positions of power and authority are too busy glad handing the wealthy elite and their toadies or quislings who for a little praise and a slice of the American economic and social and political pie as it were.
For instance those in the Mainstream Media are so in awe of the wealthy that they refuse to see the injustices that are carried out in their name.
Their allegiance is not so much to America and the American people as it is to the status quo which protects and even increases the wealth of the elite.

One should realize that given the way for instance the talking heads on Fox News continue to grovel before the rich and others whom they believe are in fact better than the mass of American citizens it is no wonder they mock those who are out in the streets trying to bring some sanity to the political and economic discourse in America.
One could easily see how these uberconservative folk if they were around in the 1950 & 1960s they would be condemning the Civil Rights movement and calling Martin Luther King and all his followers of being unAmerican or anti-America and of course hard core communists. Of course at that time conservatives in both parties were against the Civil Rights movement as was J. Edgar Hoover who headed the FBI and often during the Kennedy administration would refuse to carry out the orders of the Attorney General Robert Kennedy .
Many of these conservatives in the US even today call into question the whole Civil Rights movement as being they believe unnecessary and as the endeavor of of the Communist Fifth Column in the USA.
They further argue that Blacks in America exaggerated the extent of their oppression.
Coulter and others even erroneously argue that slavery wasn't that bad for Black Americans because they were brought to a superior civilization and were blessed by hearing the Christian Gospel and therefore might find redemption.
These uberconservatives such as Ann Coulter for instance defend Senator Joe McCarthy and his anti-Communist Witch hunt as being the actions of a true patriotic American since he was in their view engaged in exposing in their view the wide spread infiltration of all levels and all departments of the US government.
This is just a glimpse at their re-writing and re-interpreting American history.
For instance they erroneously argue that America lost the Vietnam war because of the anti-war demonstrators at home in the USA. But even after carpet bombing the country after napalming a thousand villages and killing some 2,000,000 two million Vietnamese the US was forced out of Vietnam as were the French before them.


Many of the current frothing at the mouth uberconservives in either party are represented in the media and the public by the likes of Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh ,Michelle Bachmann etc. who even now claim that the part of the downfall in their view of America was the Civil Rights Movement, The Feminists Movement to end gender discrimination and injustice and they also blame the Anti-war movement and of course Lyndon Johnson's reforms and legislation he backed and made sure were enacted as law.

Even today as we see from the Bush administration to the Obama administration there is a lack of political and moral will to help out the poor and to insist that the rich pay their fair share in taxes etc.
And both administrations have backed the notion of Perpetual unending bloody brutal war ie Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and next Syria and Iran.
President Obama like President Bush has abandoned International Law and the Geneva Conventions regaring the restrictions and obligations on nations when involved in a conflict.
The US government and the Pentagon have no regard for civilians who are wantonly killed by the US War Machine which they euphemistically refer to as "collateral damage".
In similar fashion the US has redefined the meaning of "torture " to suit their own agenda so now Torture is referred to as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.
The US has committed various war crimes and crimes against humanity in its Perpetual War .
The US for instance has refused to maintain an official "body Count" of those Iraqis and Afghans etc. who have been killed since October 2001 to the present.
Even this according to International Law is a crime since belligerents are obligated to gather up and count and to try to identify those whom they have killed.
Even  dead Iraqi citizens deserve better than this.
Shouldn't their families be notified when a relative is killed.
Don't they deserve a proper funeral .
While Americans weep over the 6,000 or so Americans killed they appear to shed few tears for the over a million Iraqis killed or to even inform the Red Cross of those Iraqis killed and their identities whenever possible.
To the American people as in all America's wars the enemy or even civilians in enemy territory are merely an abstraction or the US resorts to demonize all enemy combatants and any who dare give them aid.
The Iraqis are just a more modern replacement for Native Americans who were also demonized and then slaughtered till only a small remnant remains.





and so it goes,
GORD.