'They're sending a message': harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns

[PatrickforB]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/04/police-tactics-us-campus-protest-crackdowns

The only comment is these kids are our children and grandchildren.

Having come of age in the early 70s, I cannot help but wonder if the right wing is not paying provocateurs to go in and foment violence so police have an excuse to put down the protests with excessive force. Is this a new face of the old COINTELPRO? There's just no easy way to be free, is there?

Slip Kid, by the Who:
I've got my clipboard, text books
Lead me to the station
Yeah, I'm off to the civil war
I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots
I'm runnin' in the rain
Gonna run till my feet are raw

Slip kid, slip kid, second generation
And I'm a soldier at thirteen
Slip kid, slip kid, realization
There's no easy way to be free
No easy way to be free

It's a hard, hard world

I left my doctor's prescription bungalow behind me
I left the door ajar
I left my vacuum flask
Full of hot tea and sugar
Left the keys right in my car

Slip kid, slip kid, second generation
Only half way up the tree
Slip kid, slip kid, I'm a relation
I'm a soldier at sixty-three
No easy way to be free
Slip kid, slip kid

Keep away old man, you won't fool me
You and your history won't rule me
You might have been a fighter, but admit you failed
I'm not affected by your blackmail
You won't blackmail me

I've got my clipboard, text books
Lead me to the station
Yeah, I'm off to the civil war
I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots
I'm runnin' in the rain
Gonna run till my feet are raw

Slip kid, slip kid, slip out of trouble
Slip over here and set me free
Slip kid, slip kid, second generation
You're slidin' down the hill like me
No easy way to be free
No easy way to be free
No easy way to be free

[Voltaire2]

1. You mean the rightwing idiots who attacked peaceful demonstrators at UCLA?

Yeah they definitively went there to foment violence.

The cops on the other hand have never needed an excuse to beat the crap out of left wing protestors.

[PatrickforB]

2. No, it could in fact be more sinister than that, Voltaire.

You may remember COINTELPRO, which was an effort by Nixon and Hoover to plant provocateurs among peaceful protesters to foment violence with the objective of demonizing the protesters, of alienating people from their actual message.

That is what I am talking about. Sure, the nut-job right wingers who show up at some of these protests are fomenting violence. But the idea these Wall-Street-backed libertarian greed lizards always have is to drive wedges so they can keep raking in profits.

It is always, always, always about profits. Greed. The bronze bull of Wall Street has become the idol of this nation.

Hey, as long as they can keep us at each other's throats, hating and mistrusting each other, demonizing each other, they can keep picking our pockets, peeing down our backs and telling us it is raining.

[Hekate]

3. KnR