Maybe people don't want to criticize the ones they love. People are innately political animals and they tend to rather curry favour with the powerful (even though the powerful don't give a damn about them) rather than see injustice which might then require a moral choice and moral actions.
Well, some people are just naturally authoritarian - they respect authority and expect their authority to be respected. But overall, I don't think people ignore police brutality because they love or even respect the police. It probably has more to do with their opinions of the people on the other side of the police barricade. When cops beat the crap out of natives here in Winnipeg, most people don't care but it's not because they condone police brutality. If the cops beat up a white person, they'd probably care quite a bit more. I think in these cases people see the police more as an extension of their own biased opinions. It's not all that different from people who watch planes fly into buildings and express pleasure in watching capitalism or imperialism fall. Same shit different pile. People are easily blinded by their own biased beliefs.
I think you're right about that - and the guys on the other side of the barricade almost never have the upper hand in managing how the dispute gets portrayed. ZING!!! Good one.
I'll agree with that. Back in the pre-Iraq-invasion days, one of the things the news media was saying about the anti-war protesters was that they seemed to be made up of "normal" people. How many of those broke down into riots? I don't remember any, at least not in North America. Police are probably less likely to go ape-shit on "normal" people. Likewise, the OWS group had support from normal people, but no real leadership or spokesperson (unlike the anti-war movement which did on many levels and with a very focused objective: no war). This meant that OWS had no control over their own identity and could not defend against hijacking. Once the OWS movement was discredited by it's opponents, it was much easier for the police to move in as many people just wrote them off by that point (that drug overdose in Vancouver is what I think spelled the death of OWS).
I HAVE but I am very surprised how organized labour has not (though maybe they are being kept away from acquiring media outlets like the union that tried to take over the license of a TV station that closed down in the last few years in Victoria). However, protests are a way of getting attention in the media and though the message will be corrupted, simply making the noise lets other people know that there are others who share their concerns. It's kind of like the atheist challenge they had half a decade ago (on youtube, I think it mostly happened) that suddenly blossomed into a big deal as all sorts of people from little towns suddenly discovered that there were enormous numbers of people that thought religion was bunkum. Protesting is a way of showing determination and a way of growing the numbers. People organized by an idea can overwhelm people organized by money though money organizes better. At the very least, people with an idea can cost the people with the money some of that money, but at the end of the day the people with the idea still have their idea. Power, whatever its source, only works so long as people cooperate with it. Once people figure out that they might be better off switching sides then change happens - but first you have to advertise that there IS another side.
there's only one lesson from murdoch: if you want to be a scum bag and hated by every decent human being continue to F people like he has. murdoch is going down...one way or the other...the ball rolling down the mountain has gotten too big to stop
