A few days ago, the glossy-haired fourth estate of the Occupy Movement, Naomi Wolf, joined other activist/journalists in accusing police, federal law enforcement, and “big banks” of committing “totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent” over Occupy protesters last year. According to Wolf, Occupy was totally subjected to torturous police crackdowns of their peaceful, non-violent, property-respecting protests, for no reason whatsoever.
Wolf’s description of this “corporate-state repression” is, to be kind, histrionic. She sees herself and other protesters as deeply and dramatically victimized freedom fighters and visualizes Occupy’s many enemies as some sort of highly coordinated giant squid, or maybe a huge fascist octopus. I thought it was more like code enforcement, myself. The main concern of most taxpayers, after all, was the scabies and the defecating in the streets.
Though, I would happily draft the biggest fascist octopus available to silence the round-the-clock drumming circles.
In an editorial in The Guardian, Wolf vividly describes:
a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council [try not to scream as punctuation gets tortured]. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
Elsewhere, just yesterday, police busted yet another peace-loving armed-to-the-teeth political activist. Aaron Greene, reportedly of Harvard University and Kennedy School of Government, had ironically stuffed the Greenwich Village apartment he shares with his very pregnant socialite girlfriend with enough grenade launchers, shotguns, and unstable explosive powder to totally recreate the famous 1970 Weather Underground Greenwich Village Townhouse explosion that killed socialite Diana Oughton and two other Weather Underground terrorists. The three accidentally blew themselves up as they assembled nail bombs that were to be used to kill scores of servicemen and their girlfriends at a dance at Fort Dix later that night (see here and here for other recent bomb-related arrests of “peaceful” Occupy protesters).
The cynical way of describing this confluence of events would go something like this:
Naomi Wolf/Occupy Movement Peaceful: 0 — Police: 1
But, why be cynical? It’s the most magical time of the year. And thanks to a “totally integrated” police response to Aaron Greene and Morgan Gliedman’s little home-made lab, Ms. Gliedman is safe and sound and reportedly giving birth in a hospital as I write this, rather than possibly having what’s left of her fingertips peeled off the remains of a smoldering pile of rubble, which was the fate Diana Oughton met in 1970. Contrary to what Naomi Wolf seems to believe, police possibly saved these two, and a newborn, and who knows who else, today. The explosives they were messing with were not for amateurs: more than one building reportedly had to be evacuated to deal with their venal stupidity.
1970 Greenwich Bomb Factory Explosion
Morgan Gliedman, 2013: New Mommy
Diana Oughton, 1970: Dead
Yeah, I know. The resemblance between these two women is downright creepy. You would think that Ms. Gliedman was trying to look like Diana Oughton. She certainly appears to have been working on turning out like her. Hopefully, she will someday have the decency to thank the cops who risked their lives and their own families’ future holiday memories in order to save her from the stupidity of trying to hatch a baby in a retro hippy bomb factory.
Just Doing My Job, Ma’am
But if I were the police, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an apology. Gratitude for being rescued from their own stupidity has never been a virtue of the radical Left.
Naomi Wolf, for example, is shown at the top of this post being arrested at an Occupy protest last year. By her own description, she apparently believes that the arrest arose merely from her vigorous efforts to educate ignorant police about protesters’ rights by citing a chapter about sidewalk permits from some book she once wrote. I’m just going to say it: no matter how much we all wish we lived in a world where it was illegal for Naomi Wolf to write book chapters, that’s not what really happened. Yet, here is just one portion of the breathless, hair-tousled, cop-loathing Patrick Henry-inspired facebook entry she penned to memorialize her arrest:
The [Occupy] protesters were being told that they needed to leave the sidewalk outside of the Huffington Post event because “Huffington Post had a permit” to control the use of the sidewalk. I have a chapter in Give Me Liberty on NYC permits so I knew that could not be accurate. Sidewalks are public spaces and can’t be leased by private entities. I asked for a copy of the permit . . . Some press reports say that I was arrested because I ignored police warnings to get off the sidewalk or that I was arrested for using a megaphone without a permit. Both of these are untrue. I told the protesters that the NYC permit requirement that states that using a megaphone is illegal. . .
And so on. And so on.
Is anybody else itching to gnaw off their arm to escape this? Remember, the cops have to be there.
In her recent Guardian editorial, Wolf breathlessly tells the whole world that’s watching (or at least the part of it that reads The Guardian) about a nefarious plot by police, the FBI, and “big banks” located in different cities to use actual cellphones to communicate with each other about completely non-violent Occupy protesters who pacifistically announced in writing in advance their intentions to invade banks, destroy property, and physically attack police officers.
Here’s how Wolf describes this mysterious law enforcement plot to talk with each other on the telephone:
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
Mystifying group disruptions? Canister missiles to the skulls? Faceless banks wanting protesters to wet their pants? Bondage?
Now I’m just going to say this: would it be at all possible for modern feminists to at least try get through an essay about ANYTHING WHATSOEVER without mentioning “bondage”? Please.
Also, having spent a very stinky week in August tramping around after Occupy protesters who were trying to shut down the Republican Convention in Tampa by creating pure physical revulsion through the wearing of giant sweaty pink vulva costumes, I think I speak with a frisson of authority when I say that there was absolutely no need for anyone to “coordinate” with “big banks” in order to get that crew to soil themselves.
Anyone who has ever failed to properly clean their pet gerbil’s cage knows exactly what the Occupy encampments in downtown Tampa smelled like, all on their own, with no pressure from Wachovia.
Really, do we have to do this Occupy/Sixties nostalgia thing all over again? Because somebody’s going to get hurt. It was the cops in Tampa who were being pummeled with abuse as they handed out bottled water to masked “anarchists” wandering around looking for trouble while being trailed by their own personal ACLU attorneys and gaggles of argumentative middle-aged women dressed like vaginas.
Yet, Naomi Wolf apparently still feels that when lit.crit. majors with nary a mouse-pelt of common sense between them announce portentously in AdBusters that they are going to arrive by the tens of thousands to smash bank windows and meaningfully blockade Staples stores in order to transform reality itself with their ideas, police and federal agents should just stick their fingers in their ears and let them do it.
Let me try to explain this is language that can be understood: the police have the right to pick up the phone and trade hippy-punch notes with Sgt. Friday out there on the Left Coast. OK?
~~~
Speaking of radical chic, it was sort of a Weather Underground thing to mix babies with bomb making, from Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers to Eleanor Raskin and Jeff Jones. Make that Judge Raskin. The future judge and her future labor lobbyist spouse were busted in yet another apartment/bomb factory with baby in tow in 1981.
Robert Redford is about to release a film that actually romanticizes all those toddlers-n-TNT moments. You know, the terrorists will be the good guys.
Remember 1981? Here are just a few of the police officers who didn’t get to go home to their own children around that time because of the murder campaigns against cops waged by the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, and others. Always remember that cop-killers are revered by the peace-loving Occupy Movement:
Murdered in Brinks Robbery: Officer Waverly “Chipper” Brown
Murdered in Brinks Robbery: Sgt. Edward O’Grady
Murdered in Brinks Robbery: Brinks Security Guard Peter Paige
Murdered in the San Francisco Police Station Bombing: Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell
Murdered during the Assata Shakur escape: Trooper Werner Foerster
It’s only a matter of time — and the sort of self-indulgent cop-hating rhetoric Wolf and many others are spewing — before something ends in tears.
Radical chic never goes out of style for those who can afford it. Sadly, it’s not a pose for police officers, and we need to be reminded of that. And thanks for the memories from last summer.
It’s like the weatherman have returned. Redfords movie ‘ the conpamy you keep” will ensure that more will be drawn to the call of destruction, of terrorism, of bombings and other forms of attaching the establishment. Important to also note the strong ties between Bill Ayers/Bernardine Dorhn and the occupy movement. More is coming and it won’t be nice so keep your heads down lest you be a victim of some revolutionary bent on the total distruction of our way of life.
Commentators seem to feel that the information that these two people are drug addicts “explains” the guns and means they aren’t political. I’m astonished by this — the idea that drug culture had nothing to do with the mess these people made and isn’t connected to the politics.
I’ve heard people comment that “it was only 7 grams of explosive powder.”
That’s not how the nyc justice system is going to react. This couple screwed up big time.
They also sound like real losers, although losers with support. They’ve had previous charges for heroin, theft, illegal rifle in nyc, and credit card fraud. And now she gave birth to a baby addicted to drugs.
And, most drug users wouldn’t have a need for guns. It’s only dealers who need that kind of protection, as they are prone to being robbed of the cash and drugs they have.
These two must have thought they needed the guns for some purpose since they’re illegal to posses in nyc.
I used to have sex with Morgan Gliedman. She is not a hardcore leftist. She is a drug addict. Her boyfriend was the political one…she just wanted the drugs.
It seems to me the endless struggle of society as a mass. No doubt most cops are respectable people with a sense of honour and justice. But I could also flood this comment section with video after video after video of all government agencies (cops, soldiers, TSA, CIA) abusing their power to ridiculous, frightening degrees. It doesn’t help your cause when police officers who deserve to be thrown in jail are protected by the DA’s and very system of ‘justice’ they are upholding. So after a TSA officer sexually assaults your mother/wife, after a cop beats the life out of your son who was merely a man on the street with mental issues, when your dad gets a 12 year sentence for possessing 4 grams of marijuana…what outlet do you have for your anger? It seems to me you have merely chosen a side to attack (the same thing Naomi Wolfe has done). The authorities that be need to be kept in check and if there is no peaceful way to do that than violence becomes inevitable. These officers you glorify (just like our soldiers abroad) become targets because of the injustice and oppression that becomes the orders from the top. I’m not a rightist or a leftist…every society needs to be governed by rules and codes – that’s any intelligent individuals given. All I’m saying is: soldiers and police should think more about the policies they are enforcing on behalf of the elite in this country – and then you will have your answer. As you spun to your advantage: “…the radical left seeks to destroy our way of life…” the radical authoritarians are doing the same thing to a lot of people who are powerless to fight back.
I think the only ones who understand the nature of Occupy are the Marxists and the cops. Marxists understand because anarchists, for the last 150 years, have been like their annoying little brothers. Cops because they’re not in a position to ignore the fact that anarchists threw bottles first.
Freedom Fascist: When the rare bad cop assaults someone, it is the opposite of ignored — it is splayed across the newspapers for months and repeated by activists for years. And that “man on the street with mental problems” you describe wasn’t violent? It’s the cops who have to deal with the violent mentally ill every day, and they do a hell of a good job of a job neither you nor I have to endure. I know a bit about that, and I’ve seen endlessly heroic and unappreciated efforts on the part of many police. You owe the profession an apology if you think “mentally ill” and “cop” and then visualize an officer gleefully beating a passive mental patient. That’s obscenely inaccurate. Try the opposite. And if you don’t believe me, spend a week in your local emergency room. You’ll change your mind, I promise you.
Meanwhile, the Left (and increasingly some in libertarian circles) have made heroes out of thugs, murderers and rapists: what do you have to say about that? That violent criminals are just acting out of hurt feelings, and the activists supporting them are providing some sort of mega-therapeutic extralegal response? Because it sounds as if you’re saying that, then you say you support rules and laws — it doesn’t make any sense.
Also, police don’t sentence anyone to anything. Yet folks like you conflate everything you don’t like about the justice system with the least powerful person in it — the beat cop. Why not go whine to the ABA? Seriously. Critics of police need to ask themselves why they don’t get mad at judges and lawyers — that would be the logical response in every case or imagined incident you describe here. And believe, me, cops aren’t specially protected by the legal profession. That’s risible. Take a look at some cop blogs to get a sense of the relationship between the DAs (young lawyers looking to move up to the exciting world of criminal defense and their politically correct bosses) and police. It’s not like on TV.
I’m “choosing” the side of radical equality: the law applies equally to everyone, be it an silly essayist who fancies herself a freedom fighter or the business owners being forced to replace their windows because anarchist junior decided to follow his comp-lit professor’s advice to fight the “man.” I’m also choosing the side of being a grown-up — rules and codes. So I’m very comfortable with the side I have chosen and you say you have chosen, too.
Jesus, what this really devolved into is a giant fight over whether someone got pepper-sprayed or handcuffed after intentionally and repeatedly breaking the law and fighting with police until police pulled out the pepper-spray to control the streets. When did protesters become such babies? They set out for this to happen; they coordinated it, and they haven’t stopped bawling over it since. It’s transparent and pathetic. The hysteria over “injustice” is mind-boggling. If THEY want to whine to anyone, they should be whining to their leaders, people like Lisa Fithian and the girl-women of Code Pink, who let others get dirty while they live well in hotels nearby.
You should get to know some cops. You seem to have a personal, yet abstract anger about them. For the record, I turned in a bad cop and testified against him in a closed meeting with a judge, which was scary, believe me, and I also helped publicize the illegal un-founding of sex crimes against minors perpetrated by the Atlanta Chief of Police. I practice what I preach, and I’m not doing this with my eyes closed.