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#18
03-08-2011, 03:05 PM
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It is not the rubber bullets that are new, it is military vehicles with mounted machine guns fireing these things at a crowd, potentially without good aim and potentially misusing it as police are just known to misuse their power on many occasions (all of them of course "unusual individual cases").
And when it comes to who is opressive and who not think about a situation with two developments and what your judgement is about this: There is a standoff between riot police and protesters who have the opinion that capitalism has to go. A valid opinion according to free speech, right. So a protester and a policeman stand face to face, pushing each other and being bushed by the crowd, four letter words are exchanged, the usual works. 1) the protester draws a shoe of his foot and hits the cop on the head. 1a) the police beat the crap out of the protester as a response 1b) the policeman withdraws and nothing else happens 2) the policeman takes a rubber stick and hits the protester on the head 2a) other protesters rush in and defend the beaten one, getting into a fight with the police 2b) the protester drops down and is taken away without any other action. What is the likelihood of each of these scenarios and what is the and what are the emotional responses in terms of justification and acceptance of each of these situations by you or others? My observation is, that many time situation 2 occurs and usually it is much more accepted for the police to react with violence and force than the protesters. The protesters are expected to take the beating and withdraw or stay nonviolent at all times while the police is not expected to do so. I can see a clear hierarchy here in what is acceptable and what not regarding two sides who theoretically should be equals as "all humans are equal". And this then is oppression, if one side has the allowance to use force and violence while the other has no such allowance. In any case, my point is that in Germany if you face the police at a protest, they already turned from normal cops with green uniforms and shields into black riotcops with padded clothing. But up to now they do not have machine guns fireing - that is an immense tool of intimidation, of creating fear. The US is very good in creating fear and intimidate its public to avoid protests (and still there are some happening). And that again is oppression.
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" 
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#19
03-08-2011, 08:24 PM
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Quote:
 The number of protests is not about to decline anytime soon. There are numerous protests all over my state right now about government worker pension cuts and I have yet to hear of any incident of riot police or anything. I've also been to Washington D.C. a fews year back and witnessed a massive immigration protest. Again no riot police or anything. Not to mention that with the current state of polarized politics over here, protests have been happening right and left. Last edited by Banefull; 03-08-2011 at 10:41 PM.
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