The brutal Oakland, California, Police Department maimed an Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, shooting him in the head with a tear gas canister. He’s in critical condition with brain damage.
Using, with unintended irony, the excuse of “health and safety concerns,” the police launched a vicious, unprovoked assault to clear protesters, in the manner of the Bahrain "king," the dictator Saleh of Yemen, and the former dictator of Egypt, Mubarak. [I assume the irony is unintentional because the police are generally too crude and stupid to be ironic, which requires subtlety.]
The police left him lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head, several feet in front of them. When fellow protesters came to his aid, they were attacked and driven off by police thugs firing "flash-bang" grenades at them. It took several attempts, through clouds of tear gas and a fusillade of police "non-lethal" projectiles, to get him out of immediate harm's way.
The victim survived Iraq, where allegedly he was “defending our freedoms,” but he didn’t survive trying to exercise those alleged “freedoms” inside the U.S.A.
Rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas were used by Oakland PD in the blitzkrieg-style assault. As always in these cases, the police claim that the protesters started it, of course. Lying state thugs claim no rubber bullets or stun grenades were used, that protesters “firecrackers” caused the explosions. BULLSHIT.
Video shows cops attacking those trying to aid the vet they maimed, viciously firing a stun grenade at them.
The chief cop says tear gas was only used to “protect officers and property.” Oh. Right. That’s always the story.
As the Israelis have demonstrated, "non-lethal" weapons are a great way to maim and kill protesters, as they have done with a number of Palestinians and international supporters in the West Bank. You just aim for the head or chest with a "rubber" (coated) bullet, a tear gas canister, etc., and voila, one less "troublemaker."
(Jews protesting with Palestinians can't expect an exemption, as a young woman artist from NYC discovered when the Israeli military put out her eye with a "rubber" bullet earlier this year. Cf. Village Voice.)
The protesters in Oakland didn’t attack the police. The police attacked the protesters, on the orders of their political masters.
The Oakland PD has a history of political repression as it is. They have long targeted activists for false arrests. Political repression is routine in Oakland.
People who risk life and limb fighting for the U.S. ruling class are always surprised by the ingratitude of that same ruling class. This happens after most every war. After the first Gulf War, poisoned veterans with Gulf War syndrome were slimed by the VA, government and media as malingerers, or as mental cases hallucinating their symptoms. After the Vietnam war, those damaged by Agent Orange were thrown in the trash heap.
World War I vets who tried to claim their promised bonuses during the Depression were forcibly dispersed by the U.S. Army troops under the command of Douglas MacArthur (second in command: Dwight D. Eisenhower). They never mention these things. The G.I. bill is all you ever hear about. That's a tad one-sided, bourgeoisie.
Then we've got the atomic veterans, servicemen deliberately exposed to bomb blast radiation to "test" if they'd obey insane orders to march into mushroom clouds. And the guinea pigs used by the military and CIA in drug experiments and other mind destruction operations. Guess how they fared?
To rephrase Santayana, Chumps who are ignorant of history are doomed to do the same dumb things again.
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