Reasons behind violent crackdown on OWS

The brutal US police crackdown on the Occupy movement is “no coincidence,” since the protests touch upon “the third rail of US political class’s venality,” a The Guardian editorial reads.

“US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparalleled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS (Occupy Wall Street) protesters in cities across the nation this past week ,” Naomi Wolf wrote in an editorial titled The Shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy on Friday.

Wolf then evoked some of the many instances of heartless US police brutality on protesters, such as an elderly woman being pepper-sprayed in the face; unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police; young screaming women being dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and a young man being stunned and bleeding profusely from the head as a result of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

She further quoted The New York Times as reporting that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering the protests.

She added that what darkens an already dark picture of the event is the admission of the Mayor of Oakland that “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had participated in an ”18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on how to suppress Occupy protests.”

Wolf then cited Journalist Chris Hayes as having reported on a leaked memo that revealed “lobbyists vying for an USD 850,000 contract to smear Occupy,” and concluded that the crackdown on Occupy protests “was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers.”

“As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels,” Wolf asserted.

While the mainstream media continually claims that the “OWS has no message,” Wolf said the results of an online poll, she undertook to understand the real motives behind the demonstrations, “were truly eye-opening.”

Wolf catalogued three post popular demands of the US protesters; namely, first, to get the money out of politics and, second, to reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation.

She added that the third demand is the “most clarifying” of all; to “draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows the members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.”

Wolf contend that it is this third demand that has primarily prompted the congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, to tell the DHS to authorize mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

“DHS does not freelance,” Wolf said, adding, “DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).”

“The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies’ profits is less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum,” Wolf said.

“Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams,” she added.

Wolf went on to describe the US crackdown on Occupy protests as a “civil war” in which the “members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent.”

The editorial was closed by drawing parallels between the US protests and the ongoing unrest in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

“Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us,” she said.