I’ve been following the Occupy thing pretty closely, and as someone who has not gone to any protest but is sympathetic it would appear that bad behavior by the police has substantially outstripped bad behavior by protesters.
It appears to be a disproportionate response and really ugly.
Don’t you call out the riot police when there’s a riot?
Additionally aren’t you somewhat provoking a riot when you call riot police into a non-riot atmosphere? I think so.
Mike Gamble’s record, Loomer, is out tomorrow. I love beats and downtempo trip hop style music, but am often not satisfied with the level of musical ability you find on these records.
When I went to house party show and saw Mike playing drums, making loops on his drum machine and improvising bass loops and guitar with his dubby Memory Man thrown in at tasteful points, I definitely thought his music would fit well on my label.
You can purchase and support Mike (and my label) here:
http://mikegambleloomer.bandcamp.com
Mike Gamble: Guitar, Looper, Effects, Keybass, Memory Man, Drums, Cymbals
Loomer
Gilgamesh
Impend
Optimalist
Lovefist
Star Strider
I’m On Your Side
The Age Of Analog
Saturn’s Return
Lookahead
Inevitable Tasks At Hand
Recollectus
Cauda
Added note: If you are an open minded music listener, I would really like to add you to my email list. I promise to respect your mailbox. Send me a note at steven dot engine at gmail dot com. Thanks for finding this page.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103
Well, you know what, Mike Bloomberg? FUCK YOU. People are not protesting for their own entertainment, you asshole. They’re protesting because millions of people were robbed, by your best friends incidentally, and they want their money back. And you’re not everybody’s Dad, so stop acting like you are.
Explanation: Once you get past the idea that rich people know everything by virtue of their bank account, you realize what a toxic piece of shit Mayor Bloomberg really is.
Mayor Bloomberg is not for the people of New York City. He’s for himself and his legacy, he’s for puffing and preening in front of the masses, he’s for his big Wall Street buddies who made him rich, and if you benefit that’s cool for him too.
But if someone has to suck on it and take one for the team, it sure is shit is not gonna be him or his friends. It’s gonna be you.
Please support my lunatic populist ravings:
bandcamp album=128848996 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=venti]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/nypd-sergeants-union-oakland-violence_n_1062823.html
“The fact that the SBA would cite the violence of Oakland, in which the police viciously shot an Iraq war veteran in the head with a tear gas canister, sending him to the hospital in critical condition, and then shot at those trying to give aid to the wounded, says it all,” retorted Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the National Lawyers Guild.
“This is an old tried-and-true trick to make the criminal look like the victim and the victim look like the criminal,” she added. “NYPD officers have carried out illegal, felonious assaults on demonstrators for weeks. Who has the power and the will to arrest and prosecute them?”
Obvious statement: The police are playing an integral role in building this protest. It is difficult to see why politicians and what is now referred to as the 1% would not go out of their way to make sure police behavior does not generate sympathy for protesters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/nypd-sergeants-union-oakland-violence_n_1062823.html
NEW YORK — A union representing 5,000 New York City Police Department sergeants blasted Occupy Wall Street protesters on Thursday and threatened to sue them should they injure police.
“New York’s police officers are working around the clock as the already overburdened economy in New York is being drained by ‘occupiers’ who intentionally and maliciously instigate needless and violent confrontations with the police,” said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.
Comment: Blah blah blah blah
I released Triptet’s debut in May 2011. Their music is free, downtempo, and contemplative.
You can listen/purchase music here:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/who-really-owns-nypd-turns-out-its-no
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
Comment: Frightening and not good. It’s not even worth the time to spell out all the ways that this is just wrong and not what I thought ‘to protect and serve’ was supposed to be.
Or it gives that a very different meaning.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65892.html#ixzz1aghPRMFh
On Wednesday night, Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and told the protesters it would be cleaned on Friday after serving for four weeks as the movement’s unofficial headquarters.
He said the demonstrators could return once the park was cleaned, as long as they abide by basic park rules, such as the ban on tents and sleeping bags.
A couple brief statements:
1. Mayor Bloomberg was born a douche and he’s still at it 70 years later.
2. If he bans tents and sleeping bags he’s basically turned the protesters into homeless people and we know how much New York hates the homeless.
3. Last week he said they could stay indefinitely, and now today they can’t have tents or sleeping bags.
4. It’s a public space but he has to bust balls to get his agenda accomplished. So they can be there but they’re gonna have to freeze their asses off and risk illness to stay. Really classy.
5. The whole point of public space is so people can gather, but the folks who have run New York don’t believe that a real and true public space should exist here. You can’t protest without being netted, everybody has to have a permit, you’re gonna have to go through the cattle separating bullshit.
That’s some Grade A NYC meatball right there.
I’ve run into this kind of po po way too many times.
It’s just unbelievable that this cop is so stupid to be popping shit like that when every dirty hippie in town is sporting a little video camera in his pocket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBxPzhXFT6c&feature=player_embedded
Sheldon Silver is a powerful state politician here in New York State. His district is the downtown financial center. He is widely viewed in New York State as pretty corrupt.
This morning he was on WNYC saying that the neighborhood he represents has suffered enough from 9/11 and that the protesters should disburse and stop protesting.
Connecting 9/11 and an anti-corporate protest is sly and offensive at the same time. In doing so he’s trying to take some of the bad emotions from that event and mix them into this protest. Haven’t the people downtown suffered enough and now you’re exposing them to more suffering?
I don’t have a good grip on the demographics of the protesters, but I wouldn’t want to be a recent college graduate with a small mountain of debt and no jobs available. Aren’t some of them casualties of our economic system which is to a great extent controlled by the folks on Wall Street?
I’m opposed to saying that suffering of one set of folks is greater than the suffering of another group, and the suffering caused by 9/11 should not be used to get these folks to go away.
