The Oakland Police Department went on another massive tear this weekend. On Saturday, they used rubber bullets, pepper flash-bang grenades, tear gas and batons to violently crush an attempt by Occupy activists to take over a vacant convention center in downtown Oakland and turn it into a community center/local Occupy HQ. Scores of people were injured, including a 19-year-old woman rushed to the hospital and treated for internal bleeding after a cop thrashed her kidneys with his truncheon. Yesterday, I got second-hand info that a man was shot in the face with a rubber bullet, and had his tooth/teeth knocked out. Using the same sort of kettling techniques extensively employed by the NYPD to trap and net protesters like fish, the OPD arrested over 400 people.
The sheer number of arrests, the brutal overreaction, only shows just how paranoid the 1%ers are getting. The Occupy protesters must be something right if they’re provoking such a heavy-handed disproportionate response merely for hanging out. Someone should remind them that the 1st Amendment explicitly guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble“… (more…)
Late last week, as I was reading a story by the Family Guy writer who had been brutally arrested and mistreated at the Occupy LA crackdown, I suddenly realized, “Holy shit, I remember that guy!” I didn’t catch his name…
When I worked in Russia, there were two sets of laws–one for Kremlin favorites and oligarchs, who never worried about paying for their crimes; and laws for everyone else, who paid no matter what. Here, it’s starting to get even…
Listen to eXiled editors Yasha Levine and Mark Ames on KPFK Radio’s “Beneath the Surface” with Suzi Weissman, as they discuss Yasha Levine’s arrest at the LAPD raid on Occupy LA and the appalling treatment of peaceful protesters he witnessed…
There were cops everywhere. Some stood in packs around their police cars, others patrolled the fenced-off perimeter on foot while motorcycle cops circled the block in pairs. There were reinforcements outside LAPD’s massive headquarters, conveniently located across the street from City Hall…
An investigation by eXiled Editor Yasha Levine helped The New York Press snag an award in the 2010 Better Newspaper Contest for “Coverage of Business, Financial & Economic News” by exposing how wealthy Manhattanites, Wall St. traders and the Rockefellers milk taxpayers for billions in farm subsidies and tax breaks.
The biggest story of the past year—the takeover of America by the billionaire Koch brothers—was first reported by eXiled Online editors Mark Ames and Yasha Levine over two years ago, in a controversial article for Playboy. Dylan Ratigan sets the…
I’ve been living in Venice Beach for the past few months, convalescing after almost two years of immersion-reporting out of Victorville, California–the front lines of California’s real estate meltdown. Life out in Victorville, a remote exburb on the edge of…
Note: This letter, printed in The Nation on November 24, 2010, is a response to Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute‘s attack on an article we published, titled “TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal.” *** Normally…
See that trophy above, the one that looks like an upside-down bottle of VOSS designer water? That’s what the Western Publishers Association, a trade group for magazine publishers operating out in the wild west, wants to hand eXile Editor Yasha Levine…
Exiled editor Yasha Levine has officially hit the Big Time. The front page of Victorville’s Daily Press newspaper featured a profile of our fearless Domestic War Correspondent, his life, his wisdom, and his work, as well as a Q&A sidebar to…
ST. PETERSBURG — The morning air was icy and the mood tense as people gathered for Other Russia’s pre-protest press conference outside the Yabloko office and it was obvious that something was going to go down, and soon…
