Quote:
Originally Posted by Versus
I kind of feel like an asshole for saying this, and I'm sure I'll get flak for it, but:
All this "police brutality" crap is really annoying me. It's just fucking pepper spray.
|
I’ve also been exposed to pepper spray, and I wouldn’t call it benign.
I am aware that police are following orders and may have done what they did out of panic – but the approach was disproportionate and heavy handed. Google Occupy Melbourne and watch the videos of the forcible evictions.
I can personally vouch for the fact that Occupy Melbourne was not an angry mob. There was a first aid tent, a kitchen, a clothing swap and temporary library. There were skill-share classes, and with all the people sitting around it could have been a garage sale or a fair. Very relaxed.
I wasn't at the Friday eviction, but many of the protesters were being physically carried/dragged out or simply linking arms (I saw a photo of the girl I'd been talking to, in which she and others were doing that). Really threatening. And policemen were yanking at their heads and necks to make them let go.
I walked on the march from Trades Hall to the Treasury Gardens; and whatever you saw on TV, we were just wandering. There was a tense moment when a small amount of people went and shook the fences of the place they'd been dragged out of and there was a scuffle, but everyone else was yelling at them "Let's keep walking!" Nobody else wanted any trouble, and a common call was "This is a peaceful protest!"
I was trundling along sipping from my drink bottle, and a policeman told the guy two feet in front of me "Two more steps and you get a horse’s hoof to the head". (Police horses in front of and behind us, and officers on foot along the sides. We were completely boxed in.) Also they had police dogs, but then they took them away.
My problem isn't with police using force in situation where they may be at risk, or carrying out their jobs... It's with hitting, dragging, harassing and pepper-spraying unarmed people who are simply trying to make a point. They got carried away and really overdid it.
Also you overlook why the protesters didn’t want to move.
Basically the aim was to call attention to the fact that people are being screwed out of choices, and the violence and harassment the movement is receiving only makes that fact clearer.
What’s happening is the people in power are setting things up to their own advantage regardless of what it does to the regular people, and if anybody questions – the elite stamp it out using law enforcement and the media.
Quote:
The term police state describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.
The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement.
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state
Looks familiar. It would be so easy for Australia to become a police state, if it hasn't already.