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Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’ — Why Now?
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Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’

The California gang known as the Oakland Police Department is attempting to start a war with veterans. If it happens, they will lose, badly.

Naturally the M$M don’t report on the activities of the “gang” so you have to read the UK’s GuardianOccupy Oakland: second Iraq war veteran injured after police clashes

A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries after clashes between police and Occupy movement protesters in Oakland.

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

There is more information from Reuters

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

“He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him,” Kelly said. “They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours.”

Sabeghi is an Iranian-American, and given his pub ownership, I’m going to guess that he is among the large group of Ba’hai in the California Iranian community and not a Shi’ia Muslim. If his family still spoke Farsi at home, he would have been invaluable during his Afghan tour as Dari and Farsi are very close, and Dari is the most common language in Afghanistan.

As Badtux notes, if Sabeghi had decided to get hostile, there would be ‘gang’ members in the hospital with him. Army Rangers could go Rambo in a confrontation with the OPD and wouldn’t care about the outcome.

When you see pictures of violence and destruction at protests in the M$M these days you will note that the people involved are either dressed all in black with their faces covered [Anarchists, the remora of protests], wearing police footwear [agent provocateurs], or wearing their ‘gang colors’ [police uniforms].

9 comments

1 oldwhitelady { 11.05.11 at 9:56 pm }

Oh, man. That’s not good, at all…and denied him medical treatment for 18 hours?! Jeez!

2 Bryan { 11.05.11 at 11:02 pm }

OWL, the Oakland PD has been doing things like that for years, but it has generally been minority people and there has never been major reporting on it. The problem was so bad the last time there were protests in Oakland that they are supposed to be under a consent agreement with a Federal Court to clean up their act, but they obviously don’t bother.

The city of Oakland can’t afford this, as there will surely be lawsuits. It may take the US Marshals to get involved before there is real change.

3 Badtux { 11.05.11 at 11:18 pm }

This apparently was the Sheriff’s Department under “mutual aid”, not the OPD. Watching the live stream, it appeared that the OPD rank and file stayed well away from the protests and surrounding police departments were called in via “mutual aid” to handle things, though I’m sure the OPD equivalent of “white shirts” were in command. But the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is well known to be a “good ole’ boy” redneck organization that doesn’t like minorities of any kind. Kayvan woulda been almost better off with the OPD…

IVAW has apparently retained the law offices of John Burris, who is the Oakland equivalent of Johnny Cochran and who has already won prior lawsuits against the OPD and Alameda County Sheriff’s Department for major $$$. Congratulations, Mayor Quan, you just bankrupted your city.

– Badtux the Law Penguin

4 Badtux { 11.05.11 at 11:27 pm }

Regarding the Black Bloc, I’m coming to the conclusion that the Black Bloc is a COINTELPRO operation funded by ??? who are deployed to discredit leftist causes, rather than an independent movement. They show up in too many unlikely places to be there accidentally and appear to have no agenda other than to cause property destruction and general annoyance to police officers. If they are not paid provocateurs, they certainly behave like such.

— Badtux the Paranoid Penguin

5 jams o donnell { 11.06.11 at 11:35 am }

What morons do they employ n Oakland PD and or that Sheriff’s department? They must know that their every move is under the microscope. Perhaps they just know that their fellow cops will close ranks with them (as if silence = integrity).

I daresay that Breitbart and the the other human vermin will have the Right beleiving that he was an Al Qaeda mole and an heroin addict within the next day or two.

As a Ranger he would be the equivalent i terms of training and skills of say a Royal Marine ?(who are trained even today as commandos rather than as naval infantry). Just using that to give myself a British frame of reference. If s the cops who took him down are definitely very lucky they are are not in intensive care wit him!

6 Badtux { 11.06.11 at 2:53 pm }

Jams, in the same realm as a Royal Marine . Rangers are trained commandos, not infantry, who typically operate in small units for recon and special ops behind enemy lines. They are highly trained in both armed and unarmed combat and applicants who aren’t really, really good at hurting people and hurting people *swiftly*in a large variety of scenarios both armed and unarmed don’t make it into the Rangers, they wash out and get sent back to infantry. If there are no cops in the hospital or in the grave, it’s because Kayvan made the specific decision to be non-violent. Period.

7 Bryan { 11.06.11 at 3:44 pm }

Jams, part of the Ranger training is held locally in the swampy part of the Eglin Reservation. In addition to spending a lot of time up to their necks in water, they are expected to live off the land, as they aren’t allowed more than minimum rations.

The water they move through has alligators and water moccasins in it, and there are coral snakes and rattlesnakes on the dry land. The bears, foxes, and coyotes will avoid them, but the raccoons and opossums will steal anything that might be edible.

They always get to ‘play with things that go boom’ as the explosive ordnance disposal school for the Air Force and Navy are on the base, as well as an armor training center.

The course lasts for weeks, but you never see the students, as it is full time and they live in tents. The instructors don’t want their concentration to wander during the course because have died taking it, and most of those who fail end up in the base hospital with trauma injuries.

A police baton is easy to take away with a minimum of training, so he wasn’t attempting to hurt anyone, or they would have been hurt.

I think you are probably correct about the Black Bloc. Their actions are totally pointless, as they are generally directed at the property of people who are just as much victims of the system as everyone else in the 99%. They have no message to go with the destruction. All they ever do is cause problems. It isn’t hard to figure out who benefits, and it isn’t the 99%.

8 Comrade Misfit { 11.07.11 at 6:12 am }

Sabehgi co-owns a local business, which means that he is a “job-creator”. But you can bet your house that you won’t see the Party of the Rich lining up to support him.

9 Bryan { 11.07.11 at 9:02 pm }

CM, the only troops they have ever honored are those that have died. They act like surviving a war is a failure to show the proper spirit. You only have to look at the VA funding cuts to understand that.

Small business has never gotten anything more than lip service from the GOP or the Blue Dogs – everything goes to the corporations.