Nighttime police raids on Occupy movement part of pattern

In both New York and in Portland, to my knowledge, the police chose the middle of the night to break up the Occupy movement encampments. Now, there may be argument abouts the propriety etc. of these encampments (personally I support them), but what was the reason for the nighttime raids?

The only reason I can think of was to make it more difficult for onlookers to videotape or capture photographs of the process. Lord Bloomberg practically said so when he claimed journalists were excluded "for their own protection."

TSA de facto does the same thing, no matter what they say on their website. Again this is part of the strategy behind the security state, which is to operate in the dark, literally so in the case of the Occupy raids. In TSA's case, of course they can't actually turn out the lights in the checkpoints (now that's a creepy thought!) but instead we see multiple examples of retaliation, such as deliberate withholding of complaint forms, blocking videos from being made, intimidation of persons making videos etc.

The point that the security state is endangered media attention cannot have made more graphically than in the images of the brutality inflicted on 11 UC Davis students who were committing the terrorist act sitting on a sidewalk with their heads bowed and their arms linked. On the other side of the coin, the extent to which the security state feels it is immune to challenge is shown by the open carrying out of the chemical attack by the officer in question before numerous witnesses.

 

CP, I cannot second everything you say strongly enough.

And the more the powers-that-be feel threatened by the Occupy movement, the more they will come down hard and brutal. Ditto, as you point out, for the TSA.

This is the way all oppression proceeds, everywhere, throughout time.

 

You're right - they didn't want a record made of what was taking place.

 

Media, civil liberties groups look at 'legislative options' to address NYPD actions during protests

 

Super cool thanks for posting this.

 

More nighttime raids ...

Police in LA, Philly raid Occupy camps

Gotta get those cameras first, so the rest of what they do can't be documented.

 

When I saw the Polish security forces do this to their people in the '80's, it was almost funny to watch them waste their time doing that. As if it were the camera causing the people to assemble. Now, our security apparatus is doing this to us.

 

Comment over at Ian Welsh's blog:

 

Treating camping as terrorism. Par for the course. What about moving in some portable showers and toilet facilities, a job bank for the unemployed among them, and a daily liaison with the mayor's office? That would be a (expletive deleted) of a lot cheaper, and actually might make everyone a lot happier.

 

• • From the Washington Peace Center newsletter:
    
    Amidst a new surge of violence against Egyptian protesters last week, staff at Suez Port refused to sign for a shipment of tear gas. That tear gas was coming from Combined Systems Industries, a US factory headquartered in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, that manufactures chemical weapons like those police across the country have been recklessly using on protesters, from Zuccotti Park to UC Davis to Cairo.
    
    Five separate staff members at the Egyptian port stood strong and refused to sign for the shipment of this key weapon used against protesters. Unlike John Pike, the police officer who was photographed pepper-spraying nonviolent student protesters at UC Davis, those port workers realize that tear gas is a violent weapon used to suppress the growth of real democracy. And as an Egyptian demonstrator in Cairo explains: "They are sponsoring terror against the Egyptian people. The army shot at them while the people were praying... the US is partly responsible for this."

http://washingtonpeacecenter.net/node/6318​

 

I blogged about this over at Daily Kos. This Combined Systems Industries is a one-stop shop for suppressing protests. They have a bunch of high=placed ex-Congressmen etc. to help them get export licenses to dictatorships all over the world.

 

I was over in SF tonight, watching the Occupy SF folks (or end the fed folks) over on Market street, San Fran, right across from the Federal Reserve bank located there. The bank has had police barricades around it for weeks, while the end the fed'ers bullhorn from outside. Lots and Lots of Polizei in riot gear, no violence in the crowd. I wonder if things will go down tonight.

 

I went down to Occupy Portland this afternoon for two hours, there were a number of veterans in the crowd, a few of the tattoo crew, but basically a pretty ordinary crowd, including at least three people carrying American flags.

 

This is the kind of firm stand people all over the world should be making. Zero cooperation with fascism and terrorism - period, full stop.

 

Washington Times: Police, SWAT team move into Occupy D.C. camp

 

A note of clarification: this was at McPherson Square, not Freedom Plaza. There are two different occupations in DC, and that happened at McPherson Square. We at Freedom Plaza are still, so far, okay, though I imagine our time will come.

 

By the way, here's what's happening in London. How long before it happens here?

 

12/5, Robert Johnson, Business Insider, The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US

 

Hundreds of OccupyLA Demonstrators Held for Days Without Charges on $5,000 Bail in Often Deplorable, Illegal, and Unconstitutional Conditions

Mike Prysner was also in Freedom Plaza for the first 4 days of our occupation:

 

The private sector is keeping up though. On Black Friday, the number of firearms purchases overwhelmed the FBI systems that do the NICS background checks...