Dr. Who's Reading Room

If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights.

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—	Frank La Rue, U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression “U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn’t Protecting Occupy Protesters’ Rights” HuffPost 12/2/11

Prof. Marc Bousquet who teaches English at Santa Clara University wrote an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education “Sympathy for Eichmann,” in response to an article in The Atlantic by Alexis Madrigal about the evolution of police tactics in various kinds of demonstrations.

That’s the sense I was looking to convey Lt. John Pike’s attitude was not merely casual. His actions were banal.

CONAN: The - some might say that the comparison to Bull Connor and cattle prods took it to another level. You, though, go even further. You cite Adolf Eichmann, the Nazis, by reference to Hannah Arendt in her famous essay on the banality of evil. But when we’re going from, OK, an outrage, somebody spraying students in the eyes from three feet away to the Nazis?

BOUSQUET: Well, that’s, you know, I’m so glad you raised that point because most people get Hannah Arendt exactly backwards. I mean, the point of Hannah Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann, which not everyone agrees with, but what is most persuasive and what is most enduring about Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann in Jerusalem is not that Eichmann is a master villain but quite the opposite, that Eichmann is an ordinary person, that Eichmann is very much more like Baldwin’s Alabama trooper or very much more like Davis’s own Lt. John Pike, that he’s an ordinary person, that not particularly bright, not a master villain, not horrendously ideological, although certainly ideological but not horrendously so, and someone who, in other circumstances, might actually have simply been an Alabama State trooper and not the architect of the Final Solution.

The point of individual responsibility is salient as this caller, aformer police officer and current campus police officer points out.

[KEITH from Gainesville] …Obviously, with my background, I’m going to tend to want to side with the officers, but I was - somebody came up to me who knows my background last night and said it’s not about whether they can legally use the force because law enforcement policies make it so they can legally do what they did, but was it a humane thing to do? And having been sprayed with this stuff, it’s inhumane. And having been placed in the position of making that difficult choice, do I conduct a search - my particular case was a search - or do I refuse and take the consequences? That, in certain circumstances as a law enforcement officer, you may have to choose to place your job at risk in order to do what’s right. That’s not fair, but it’s what you signed up for. [emphasis added]

But the last point is the best.

BOUSQUET: Personally, I think that the issues here are ultimately much larger than those of the officer. I think we have to hold the University of California system responsible, and I think we have to hold administrations across the country responsible for the larger clampdown on the Santa Cross(ph) campuses, both for faculty and students.

Ultimately we need to have a conversation in our colleges and universities, and on the national state about how and with what goals are protests policed.

(Source: chuckkallenbach)

somepolitics:

cartoonpolitics:

“Very few protest movements enjoy perfect clarity about tactics or command widespread support when they begin; they’re designed to spark conversation, raise awareness, attract others to the cause, and build those structural planks as they grow and develop. Dismissing these incipient protests because they lack fully developed, sophisticated professionalization is akin to pronouncing a three-year-old child worthless because he can’t read Schopenhauer: those who are actually interested in helping it develop will work toward improving those deficiencies, not harp on them in order to belittle its worth.” ~ Glenn Greenwald

This quote is perfect.

Documentally speculates about the need to Occupy the Internet. He also talks about Diaspora, which he thinks G+ copied.

So welcome to the War on Terror. Your first lesson, if your views happen to counter the established narrative, expect to be dehumanised, then treated like a terrorist.

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—	Ayesha Kazmi, blogger,who recently wrote to Occupy movement participants ”Tested on Palestinians, Perfected on #OWS Protesters: Introducing the LRAD Sound Cannon” \| Al Akhbar English Max Blumenthal - Fri, 2011-11-18

housingworksbookstore:

The People’s Library takes Mayor Bloomberg to task: Irony of What Bloomberg’s Done, Threw out Fahrenheit 451 | Occupy Wall Street Library

Tee-hee.

Another wild and creative image today: Remember when the Berkeley camp got raided overnight and they were ordered not to pitch tents at Sproul Plaza? No problem. Today they got around it by floating them OFF the ground, on balloons. Our “space” indeed. (via The OccupyUSA Blog for Thursday (Nov. 17), With Frequent Updates | The Nation)

OLBERMANN: I wanted to ask you about that. Is that -- because Oakland has rolled up, Albany was rolled up, Portland was rolled up, New York has been rolled up. MOORE: And all in the same way. 
OLBERMANN: And poor Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland -- who is like a weather vane in a windstorm out there -- admitting she was on a conference call with 18 mayors. This is a plan. Whose plan is it? And who do we assign responsibility to? 
MOORE: Well, there was just a piece that came out from The Minneapolis Examiner a couple hours ago, where they quote a justice official in the Obama Justice Department who did not want to be identified, but he said that the federal government has been providing logistical and tactical advice and support. They said that it's up to the local law enforcement officers or agencies as to what, you know, what to do. But Homeland Security and the Justice Department have been coordinating the, sort of, advice and strategy and tactics of this so that -- because you have seen all of the tactics of the police have been the same in every city in terms of how they have done this in the last 48 hours. So, this is not some coincidence. This was planned. And I think that the question really has to be asked of the federal government, and of the Obama administration -- why? 
OLBERMANN: Yeah. 
MOORE: Why? Why are you participating in this, against a non-violent, mass movement of people who are upset at what Wall Street and the banks have done to their lives? 
OLBERMANN: Conveniently, the president can't be asked that question, because he was en route to Australia. On the plane -- Air Force One -- the Associated Press quoted the press secretary. And this is their story -- they don't have direct quotes from the press secretary -- but he said, in essence, "The president hopes the right balance can be reached between protecting freedom of assembly and speech," -- Okay -- "with the need to uphold order and safeguard public health and safety." Because, obviously, the bubonic plague in all the Occupy protests was beginning to get to be a problem when we lost the entire state of Minnesota, or whatever he thinks happened. And, they added this in the story, "The administration's position is that each municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle the issues." So, Mr. Obama is basically saying -- what? -- through his press secretary here? "You are on your own?" 
MOORE: Yes. But he is also saying -- he wants it both ways. 
OLBERMANN: Uh-huh.
 MOORE: You know, his administration is obviously helping them to stymie this movement, because -- look, no politician, regardless of what party they are in, wants the people to suddenly be in charge. 
OLBERMANN: Yeah. 
MOORE: For the power to shift from those who are the elected officials to the people who elected them -- which is actually the way it's supposed to be -- that's a frightening thought. 
OLBERMANN: Very much so. 
MOORE: So, I can understand why they are inclined to do that. They are no different than any other politician, but because of all of, you know, my support of President Obama -- I expect more of him. And I don't expect his Justice Department and his Homeland Security Department to be helping to coordinate the destruction of this movement, because -- first of all, you can't destroy it. So stop, because the majority of Americans want taxes raised on the rich. The majority of Americans don't believe you didn't go far enough on health care. You know, you go down the whole list and the majority is very much behind the principles of the Occupy movement. 
OLBERMANN: And the practicalities of it. There is a poll this afternoon -- New York State Public Opinion Poll -- 58 percent of New York State residents -- that's from Albany to Zuccotti Park, A to Z -- say that, no matter how they feel about what's being protested, the protesters have the right to continue to protest and they have the right to stay overnight in public parks. So, not just the, "Well, they're against Wall Street," or "They are communists," but just the idea they have the right to be there is overwhelmingly supported in the state in which this is now most recently happened. 
MOORE: That is correct. And I believe that you would find that in most states across the country. 
OLBERMANN: I think you are right. 
MOORE: Because -- because people are just happy that somebody has started this. Somebody has gotten up and, again -- thank God that it's been young people that have said, "You have stolen our future and we want it back and we are not going to settle for anything less."

Robert Reich: Occupiers Occupied: The Hijacking of the First Amendment »

It’s worth reading the whole post.

robertreich:

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated…