Wall Street: "Sleep Now in the Fire" (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, Democracy Now!, Michael Moore, Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine once hired Michael Moore to produce their video for the song "Sleep Now in the Fire" eleven years ago. They chose Wall Street, shutting the stock exchange in the process as police overreacted to a music video.

Moore was arrested while everyone else ran away. But the story lives on because just today, he was banned from filming a news piece for a cable news agency. Apparently, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) now owns the street outside the exchange and determines who can be interviewed on the street.

Moore was interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning recounting the story to Amy Goodman. While he could have gone down to Occupy Wall Street a block or two away, Moore said he was going to Wall St. whether or not the news crew was coming. More than a decade later, one sign in this video says it all: "I CAN'T BELIEVE WE STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS CR*P."

Plaza renamed for man murdered by BART police

• Occupy Oakland [brutally] raided by police
  

Rioting is exactly what Police want (DK "Riot")

Wisdom Quarterly

(Chastrie) Police riot (provoking by strategy, brutality, and with undercover provocateurs) because they can't beat peace. All they need is an excuse. Rioting is what they train for with the help of consultants, lawyers, the FBI, and PR firms. Police want rioting.

"Riot" (Dead Kennedys)
Rioting, the unbeatable high
Adrenaline shoots your nerves to the sky
Everyone knows this town is gonna blow
And it's all gonna blow right now

Now you can smash all the windows that you want
All you really need are some friends and a rock
Throwing a brick never felt so [darn] good
Smash more glass
Scream with a laugh
And wallow with the crowds
Watch them kicking peoples' ass

But you get to the place
Where the real slave drivers live
It's walled off by the riot squad
Aiming guns right at your head

So you turn right around
And play right into their hands

And set your own neighborhood
Burning to the ground instead

Riot: the unbeatable high
Riot: shoots your nerves to the sky
Riot: playing into their hands
Tomorrow you're homeless
Tonight it's a blast!

Get your kicks in quick
They're callin' the National Guard
Now could be your only chance
To torch a police car

Climb the roof, kick the siren in
And jump and yelp for joy
Quickly, dive back in the crowd
Slip away, now don't get caught

Let's loot the spiffy hi-fi store
Grab as much as you can hold
Pray your full arms don't fall off
Here comes the owner with a gun

CHORUS

The barricades spring up from nowhere
Cops in helmets line the lines
Shotguns prod into your bellies
The trigger fingers want an excuse, NOW

The raging mob has lost its nerve
There's more of us but who goes first
No one dares to cross the line
The cops know that they've won

It's all over but not quite
The p[olice] have just begun to fight
They club your heads, kick your teeth
Police can riot all that they please

CHORUS

Tomorrow you're homeless
Tonight it's a blast

• Living in an American Police State
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• Only through direct action will change come
• LIVESTREAM: Global Peaceful Revolution
  

All the "change" we got

London Falling (rioters respond to police abuse)

Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: Explicit lyrics ("Killing in the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine)

• Wave of violent rebellion rages across London
• US Police execute Katrina victims (Reuters)
• New Orleans police convicted in Katrina killings (CNN)
  
  

The number of UK police, whose abuse brought on the rioting, is tripled to deal with the country's worst unrest since the 1980s, adding gasoline to the fire. More



Meanwhile, in the US, Orange County begins to brew.



Protect and Serve (Themselves)

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Good thing our police do not abuse us in America. Our officers may be racist, sexist, and poorly educated, but they would never harm the most vulnerable members of our affluent society. Oh wait, unless such members are mentally disabled and helpless. Police can break laws, commit felonies on a routine basis, murder, execute, assault, and rape -- all under "color of law"?



But if abuse were ever the answer, the police would be right. And rioters should join the police force. The answer to all questions is compassion.



The wrongs police do are doubly wrong because they are done under color of law. A criminal act of mayhem is more reprehensible when six "officers" beat and electrocute a homeless and disabled man than when two sports fans beat a rival fan. The police were not satisfied to beat the face, Taser, and torment their victim; they thought it would be a good idea to kill him and then lie about it on official reports (a serious crime unto itself). But all of Los Angeles was in an uproar to find the assailant in the horrible Dodger Stadium beating. Now the same sort of crime that has sparked England, which twice before set off mass rioting in Los Angeles (most recently due to the abuse of Rodney King), threatens Southern California again.



It's good to "know your enemy." Most Americans watching riot footage on TV mistakenly assume that police protect citizens. The fact is they criminally abuse some of them.



But where will peace of mind and a serene heart be found? In a war zone? On the streets? During a riot? These things are of course found within and nowhere else. Paramilitary police forces cannot take them away even if they concentrate us in FEMA camps.



Having returned from the horrors of Afghanistan and Iraq, where do most soldiers want to show off their savage training? In police agencies around the country. It's the new world order -- force fighting force until nothing but force consumes the country.

• Fires blaze in London
• PHOTOS: Images of the UK violence
• Turkey presses Syria to end crackdown on protests
• [CIA's] social media used to spread Britain's riots
• Brazil fears Lost Tribe overrun by drug traffickers
• Fresh rioting touched off northwest England
• Farmers reject Paraguayan president's proposed tax
• Kenya burdened by famine refugees; Rape attacks up
• British police face public anger as riots rage
• 4 police officers found slain in western Mexico
• Germany at center of storm as stockmarkets dive

"Bulls on Parade" (RATM)