Perp Walk

 The video is of Linda P.B. Katehi walking to her car after her press conference yesterday after trying to defend the actions of the University of California in the brutal pepper spraying and violence used by the police against non violent demonstrators. A pretty remarkable thing just happened. The press conference, scheduled for 2:00pm between the UC Davis Chancellor and police on campus, did not end at 2:30. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage. A group of highly organized students formed large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms. 

This is from an open letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi (a name to remember) from Prof Nathan Brown, UC Davis:                                                                                                                                When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood 
Here's a link to a compelling eye witness account by a victim of the pepper spray attack!
  Torture. There's no other word for this behavior. 
You can talk about one cop, or provocation (if they can find it), or cop behavior, but that's small-bore analysis. 
This is the Bush–Obama torture regime come home. When a nation tortures, forgives torture, justifies torture, glories in torture — it corrupts itself from the core. This nation, my nation, is rotting from the core. 
No defender of torture will be able to take a clean position on this incident. Watch them. They'll twist themselves into knots with their too-bad's and their yes-but's and their "Sorry Mrs White, I know that cruelty was meant for other people; we'll do better next time." 
Did I say Torture? Add Sadism. The purpose of torture is to give pleasure to the torturer. The rest is just the cover story. 
Who's the torturer? The man with his hand on the pepper-spray gun. The one who put a sadist on the front line. The one who, from his couch, wants cops to deliver "Second Amendment justice" to all those he leads himself to hate. And the one who cheers on as "Justice" Jack Bauer separates the testicles of another of America's many enemies.Yes, the delight they took in torture watching the "fictional" 24 is the true black heart of America. 

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer's stunning "The Dark Side," and Philippe Sands's "Torture Team," it quickly becomes plain that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television's "24," Jack Bauer.

Torture and sadism. This is America's black heart, America's Bush–Obama torture policy come home. 
 Only the torture-free will make sense when they speak. Less than two months ago, it seemed shocking when one NYPD officer cavalierly walked up to a group of female protestors and pepper-sprayed them in the eyes. The UC Davis pepper-sprayer doesn't slink away, as his NYPD counterpart did, but in every other way this is more coldly brutal. And by the way, when did we accept the idea that local police forces would always dress up in riot gear that used to be associated with storm troopers and dystopian sci-fi movies?
In case you haven't seen the videos, and if you have, they haven't been shown enough.
 Remember, this is not Syria, this is not Tahreer Square, this is not a group of unruly Palestinians being disciplined by the Israeli Occupation Forces, This is America!