But then there’s this paragraph:

As a candidate, Bachmann often criticized President Obama’s policies as “socialist.” Switzerland is ruled by a coalition including members of the Social Democratic Party.

What? Just…what? Two sentences. Each of them facts. No connection between them but what the what? Let me try:

This Fox News related website accused Obama’s Afghanistan deal of having holes. Michele Bachmann has appeared on Fox. Swiss cheese has holes. Q.E.D.

Greaber’s fable starts with a compelling first person account:

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”

“Again?” someone said.

We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.

“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”

Compelling — until you realize that one of the Occupier’s most common resistance tactics is screaming crazy accusations at the police. It’s an attempt to both get law enforcement to lose their cool and to create dramatic footage for cameras. Here’s just one example from an Occupy protest but ‘screaming at cops’ is an omnipresent tactic at every Occupy event :

After screaming at the police with an accusation of sexual assault, Greaber’s friend then makes a causal connection; “So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.” That sounds pretty serious–like she accused the officer of sexual assault and then they took her someplace and snappedher wriests to shut her up–until you keep reading and learn that that isn’t what happened at all:

Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!”

Really? Going limp isn’t resisting? Not according to the far-left National Lawyer’s Guild, who say:

What exactly is resisting an officer?

Generally, physical rather than verbal acts are considered resisting an officer.

Struggling with the police an obvious example of resisting (and can result in other more

serious charges, like “battery on a peace officer”). Even passive physical resistance, such

as going limp, is legally considered resisting an officer.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life.

For many, the thought of police officials ordering or condoning sexual assault—even if just through a nod or a wink—seems so shocking that absolute proof would be required. But is it really so out of character? As Naomi Wolf has recently reminded us, the US security apparatus has long “used sexual humiliation as a tool of control.” Any experienced activist is aware of the delight police officers so often take in explaining just how certainly they will be raped if placed in prison.

Mr. Graeber does not seem to grasp that quoting Naomi Wolf isn’t proof of a specific accusation. More troubling, Mr. Graeber’s audience of lefists won’t see that and wouldn’t care even if they did. The facts don’t matter. Proof doesn’t matter. Only the narrative matters. Like any big lie, it only needs to be repeated, re-tweeted and Liked enough.

The professors who attended also have a history of radicalism. Take Alex Vitale, the CUNY professor featured in the video. He’s not just a radical but also an activist with connections to anarchists like Lisa Fithian, who we have exposed many times as a unions paid chaos merchant.

Vitale addresses Fithian directly in an email from 2004.

From: Alex Vitale

Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 12:37 PM

To: ‘David Meieran’; Lisa Fithian

Cc: Simon; Wolsan; meddle at riseup.net; squash at riseup.net; Cory; Carwell; Lori; Civil Liberties; Starhawk; Sasha Wright; frm at panix.com

Subject: RE: [CIVIL] Sun conference call for RNC action

I have secured the Brecht Forum for a meeting on Saturday 8/28 4-6 PM to discuss the Miami Model and Police Repression. How should we proceed in publicizing this? Alex

If you’re interested, there’s a good explanation of what ‘The Miami Model’ is here but in essence, this was a meeting to try and figure out how to overcome new law enforcement tactics in protesting the 2004 RNC convention. Vitale has actively supported the Occupy movement.

Or take the stylishly attired professor Heather Gautney from Fordham University. She tells the Iranian audience that Occupy is all about effecting the 2012 election, saying in the interview “The Occupy movement is moving more into social institutions and pressure politicians or pressure leadership within those institutions to try and put money back into them and support public programs.” That’s a more accurate and honest take than what Ms. Gautney told an American audience in her Washington Post piece entitled “Why Occupy Wall Street Wants Nothing To Do With Politicians”, which attempts to portray Occupy as too good for politics.

This video features a couple of religious figures who are little known in the U.S. but who both feel that the Occupy movement is about the greed of the banksters, who the report identifies anti-Zionism. In other words, they don’t come right out and say the 1% that Occupy protests is ‘Jew controlled banks’ but you’d have to be incredibly dense to miss the implication.

Another participant is a leader of the notorious Neturei Karta fringe group, which is shunned by fellow Orthodox Jews for their participation in Iran’s Holocaust denial and anti-Israel activities. Neturei Karta believes that Israel should only have been rebuilt by the Messiah and that the present-day State of Israel is therefore apostasy. They are so extreme in their views that they routinely cooperate in demonstrations with radical Islamist organizations that support terror.

Then there’s Imam Abdul Alim Musa, the Arkansas born antisemite and former convicted drug dealer who has been a good friend to Iran since he expressed support for the country holding U.S. citizens during the Iranian Hostage crisis in 1979. As he says in the video, “I believe that (Occupy) Wall Street is fighting the monster of the day. The monster is not the Shah, the monster today is global Zionism.” and “The tool they (the 1%) use to control the world is debt.”

The Iman was also featured speaking in this video from New York City a few weeks ago, shot by accused cop assaulting attorney Alex Penley. Musa mentions a number of anti-Israel groups in solidarity with Occupy.

Illegal Immigrant Birth : Cost To You

DOJ Civil Rights Letter To Alabama

Illegal Tax Refunds

Fast & Furious

So — here’s a depressing game. Half of these pictures are Detroit. Half are communist East Germany. You decide which is which.

Photos 1,3,5 : Detroit under nearly 100 years of Democratic party rule

Barbed Wire By GollyGforce | Tires  from Bob Jagendorf  | TROY from 416style

Photos 2,4,6 — East Germany under communism by Stefan Koppelkamm

Fisher, a Compton native, was elected to the Compton Unified board of trustees in November 2011. His CUSD profile touts Fisher as a Compton native who is also “a product of the Compton educational system.”

In the past, he’s been a representative for the American Federation of Teachers and a union organizer for SEIU. Fisher has also served as Assembly District Delegation chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party from the 52nd Assembly District and as and a delegate for the state democratic party.

In a recent podcast interview, Skyy said the following about the Trayvon Martin shooting (quoting HuffPo again):

“We’re meeting this Tuesday at 7 o’clock. Oh! You’ve got to definitely come. There’s solidarity with this Trayvon Martin bitch, and I’m trying to get on news so I’m wearing the hoodies at the whole board meeting… It’s the perfect publicity stunt. I’m going to wear a hoodie, the news is going to come out, and I’m going to announce my candidacy for City Council, goddammit.”

“If you all see that George Zimmerman bitch, tell him I’m looking for him.”

“that white dude that killed that faggot black dude in Florida. I’m going to go out and try to search for this [inaudible].”

And said the following about school Superintendent Karen Frison:

“That bitch superintendent wouldn’t give me a fucking district car, and I told that bitch that I was going to get her.

Here’s the interview — it starts seven minutes in:

Teacher’s union. SEIU. Democratic party leadership. Yeah.

Look at lists of “100 Things to Do Before You Die,” and you’ll find them dominated by exotic sensations of one kind or another (“Skydive”; “Shower in a waterfall”; “Eat jellied eels from a stall in London”).

Really? This is the best we can do? This is what it’s all about? These are the things that make our lives worth living? When I think about what really makes me happy, what I really crave, I come up with a very different list: concentrated, purposeful work, especially creative work; being with people I love; feeling like I’m part of something larger. Meaning, connectedness, doing strenuously what you do well: not sights, not thrills, and not even pleasures, as welcome as they are. Not passivity, not letting the world come in and tickle you, but creativity, curiosity, altruism, engagement, craft. Raising children, or teaching students, or hanging out with friends. Playing music, not listening to it. Making things, or making them happen. Thinking hard and feeling deeply.

h/t Sullivan

Millions of illegal immigrants are getting a bigger tax refund than you. Eyewitness News shows a massive tax loophole that provides billions of dollars in tax credits to undocumented workers and, in many cases, people who have never stepped foot in the United States. And you are paying for it.

Yes, there ARE illegal people.

The work is by photographer Stefan Koppelkamm and were featured in an article in Der Speigel called A Massive Facelift for Eastern Germany. The before pictures show the scenery from the communist days and were taken in the early 1990s. The after pictures are today after unification.

As the article says:

Although fascinated by his time travelling, Koppelkamm realized in the early 1990s that no one but him was interested in the sights of the unspoilt East. Looked at in the cold light of day, his photos depict buildings with gray facades, broken windows, tattered blinds and bricked-up entrances. In front, temporary scaffolding protects pedestrians and parked cars from falling bricks and bits of masonry.

The widespread decay of East German buildings in the 1980s was clearly visible. Hardly anyone wanted to live in the gray buildings with moldy entranceways, where when it rained the water would pour out of the broken drain pipes and pummel against the outside wall. No one wanted apartments without a functioning bathroom, with coal heating and damp in the walls. People preferred the large residential complexes, which despite being rather bleak and cramped, were at least solid and came equipped with “full comfort,” as it was known in the GDR — central heating and a hot water supply.

Go look at the whole stunning gallery.

All photos copyright Stefan Koppelkamm