by Nicole Powers

SuicideGirls is utterly shocked and appalled by the brutality used by police against protesters at #OccupyOakland last night. Authorities used the charge of “unlawful assembly” as a weak excuse to wage all out war against US citizens, who were doing nothing more than exercising their democratic right – and, at this point, responsibility – to protest against the wholesale looting and pillaging of our economy and the vandalism of our democracy as perpetrated by members of the 1%. Watching the livestream and video footage of police pitted against peaceful protester on the streets of Oakland, one has to wonder who they are there to protect and serve.

Here, friend of SG JackalAnon, who is still suffering from the after effects of the tear gas used, gives us his own first person account of what went down:

I saw use of tear gas three times, the sound canon, bean bags, uncountable amount of flashbangs and rubber bullets being used. I saw 1 kid passed out, a few people bleeding, puking and everyone screaming and crying. I was affected by tear gas [which] was [used] at least 3 times. Eyes / skin burning, couldn’t breath due to coughing. And got hit by a bean bag (wish I would’ve kept it). Cops where in full riot gear with shield and gas mask…

Moving moments was when a protester threw $$$ at the police line yelling “will you protect us now?” After the first attack of tear gas we chanted “we’re still here” though our unbelievably burning crying. I was never close enough to see any badge numbers, and although I didn’t see it I herd of quite a few times of people getting hit with the baton.

Tonight started off as a protest, but was turned into a full out war for no reason. The crowd I was with was always peaceful. We yelled, protested, yes, but that is fully in our rights. We are the people to protect, not the people to be denied our rights as citizens of the United States. Our forefathers and our military personal fought hard for these rights, and for what? For us to be suppressed? I think not… it’s our turn to not ask, beg, or vote our rights back, but to take them as they are ours. — @JackalAnon

Among those who were injured at the hands of the police (see video) was Veteran For Peace member Scott Olsen, who sustained a fractured skull.

Today, Veterans for Peace, released the following statement:

Veteran For Peace member, Scott Olsen, a Marine Corps veteran twice deployed to Iraq, is in hospital now in stable but serious condition with a fractured skull, struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland, California in the early morning hours of today. Other people were injured in the assault and many were arrested after Oakland police in riot gear were ordered to evict people encamped in the ongoing “Occupy Oakland” movement. Olsen is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

VFP members are involved with dozens of these local “occupy movement” encampments and we support them fully. In Boston, for example, our members, wearing VFP shirts and carrying VFP flags, stood between a line of police and the encampment, urging police to “join the 99%” and not evict the protesters. In that case, several of our members were banged and bruised when the police decided instead to carry out their eviction orders.

In Oakland, last night, a similar thing happened, according to VFP Chapter 69 member and Navy veteran, Joshua Sheperd, who said he went to downtown Oakland “to see if, as a VFP member, I could help still the anger…to be between the police and the protesters…it seemed unconscionable to me that the police use the cover of darkness like that to do what they were doing.” Fortunately, he was not injured in the police assault that left Olsen with a fractured skull

As with virtually every example of the occupy movement across the country, those encamped were conducting themselves peacefully beforehand, protesting current economic, social and environmental conditions in the U.S. brought about by decades of corporate control, a criminal financial industry and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are driving the U.S. global empire into bankruptcy. These “occupy movement” participants are telling us something we need very desperately to hear. They should be listened to, not arrested and brutalized.

Police in the majority of cities are acting with restraint and humanity towards the encampments, but Veterans For Peace will not be deterred by police who choose to use brutal tactics. In fact, as happens with repression everywhere, more people join the cause. We do believe that the rank and file police officers are part of the 99%, the overwhelming majority of Americans who are suffering at the hands of an intolerable system. Layoffs and cutbacks in city after city prove that we must join together to demand justice for all.

We send our very best to Scott Olsen and his family and wish him a speedy recovery to health.

We shall not be moved.

@OccupyOakland will reconvene tonight. They have announced via Twitter that they will hold a General Assembly at 6 PM in the vicinity of Oscar Grant Plaza / 14th & Broadway. If a GA is not possible in that area, a second location, the Library on 14th & Madison, has been designated as the fallback meeting place.

#OWS #ThisIsWhatDemocracyLooksLike #TheWholeWorldIsWatching

*Update*

Al Jazeera is reporting that an already injured activist has been severely mistreated in jail:

One activist told Al Jazeera that her boyfriend was beaten by police and hospitalised before being jailed and beaten again. Asking only to go by ‘Anne’, she asked that her partner not be named for safety reasons.

When he was first arrested around 6pm on Tuesday, she said: “The police thought that he was Latino and started calling him Poncho and making racial slurs and sexual gestures. He said the fire department people and paramedics were doing this along with the cops.”

Once hospitalised, the man filed a police brutality report, after which the officer recording the complaint told him he would “go to jail for assault or battery of a police officer and resisting arrest,” Anne said. He was then moved from the hospital to the local county jail.

“I talked to him twice now since he’s been in Santa Rita [County Jail] and he said they were basically torturing him there. They beat him in front of a bunch of people including a nurse, and then they took him to another room and they put his head in a toilet, put his hands in a toilet, threw him against a wall.” The allegations could not be independently verified.

Besides his being in a crowd of protesters, Anne said that her partner’s arrest was completely unprovoked.

by Jensen

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.

This week, Jensen Suicide gives us the skinny on her healthy relationship with SG’s Online Dating Group.

Members: 924 / Comments: 4,938

• WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: I’ve been doing the online dating thing for the latter part of this year, and it’s cool to chat about it with fellow SG internerds!


• DISCUSSION TIP: Don’t whine about never getting messages [unless you’re looking for profile help].
• BEST RANDOM QUOTE: 
: “hi since you’re horny will you have sex with me? We can get to know each other after!” And basically anything else in the “I fought the LOL and the LOL won” thread.


• MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: Things You Hate in Profiles.
• WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: Everyone!

[..]

by Darrah de jour

Just last week, New Jersey state senate candidate Phil Mitsch got in hot water for relegating his Tweet Deck to a Rules-esque motherboard. Forking up some much-needed dating advice to us ladies, he tweeted: “Women, you increase your odds of keeping your men by being faithful, a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom.”

Now, people take to their social networks for a plethora of non-job-related things, including break-up announcements, play-by-plays of their nightly bar-hopping, or the new celeb fave –– the topless back shot. (Because I was having trouble sleeping before I knew that Demi Moore’s spine was, in fact, perfectly aligned.) So, in this post-Weiner world of penis-shaped chirps and pep talks like ex-IBM manager Joe Acuri’s alleged “get your boobies out and get sales” good-natured goad, is it surprising that a Republican runner uses his God-given patriarchal right to tweet to remind women that, at the end of the day, we are glorified school girls, maids, and hookers?

Unfortunately, the good girl/bad girl scenario, along with all of its glorious limitations, is still a pervasive tool used to denigrate the fairer sex and control women’s sexual prowess, and essentially, put us on mute.

In his defense, he did give men a similar maxim, offering them advice on how to keep their women by “being faithful, a gentleman in the living room and a stud in the bedroom.” Here’s the issue many women have raised: there really are no male equivalents to the word whore. And here’s why: men’s sexuality is celebrated. Women’s is not.

We are constantly convinced –– by media images, by social banter, by office politics, by government politics, by social politics, by gender politics –– that we are pleasurable tools for the male orgasm. We are pushed around, pleaded with, spread thin, paraded, scrutinized, insulted, disrespected, hushed, ignored, manipulated, blamed and won over because we simply don’t understand what it’s like to be “so horny” all of the time.

Here’s my question: if men have this ridiculous, unquenchable, non-stop, life-assaulting, all-consuming, never-ending sensual drive, need and extra energy –– why isn’t it being spent trying to make our lives easier? Why isn’t it used to arouse us to the level of desire they are living with? Why isn’t it lavished on us so that we can reach daily orgasm? Instead, women are society’s geishas.

For example, if I had an insane day of never-ending phone calls, job assignments, housework, personal preening, fires to put out, etc. and then came home to find that my partner had had a breezier day, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to coddle me versus the other way around? The same can be said of this seemingly invisible sex drive that women are supposedly inflicted with.

Only, we actually have a similar drive for sex. We just happen to be more discerning in wielding it. Plus, we are so sick of religion, patriarchy and men’s judgments that sometimes it’s hard to get it up. (Not to mention, some of us are actually still brain-washed by these factors.) We are so up in our heads about it that sex has become this suppressed, twisty, confusing, numbing, crazy manipulation that we sometimes use against y’all. Or each other. Women –– I’m not counting us out. I’ve never been so judged by anyone than I have been by other women; because really, by society’s standards –– I’m a nymphomaniac. (And proud of it.)

I love sex and sensuality and porn and by-products of estrogen, testosterone, aphrodisiacs and sex-related endorphins so much that, really, some days, it’s all I friggin’ think about. I masturbate three times a day some days. I use dating sites like Facebook. I have at least five guys I can call on any given night to hitch a ride on my shooting star, and leave promptly after. Plus, I’m in my early-30s, and supposedly at my sexual peak. This is my excuse for a high-sex drive. Because, here’s the thing – apparently, I need one.

I need an excuse because I have a vagina.

A few tid-bits about me: I began masturbating at age 9. I realized I was bisexual at 12. I began having fantasies about older men, leather-clad women and bondage and dominance before I took my SAT’s. I have more lingerie and sex toys than a Manhattan hooker.

But, I’m also picky as fuck. I have had half the sex partners of any New York Magazine Sex Diarist. My imagination is my greatest weapon against pregnancy and a loose vag.

And my girl friends? They are amazing. Open-minded, lovely, sexual, fun and cool as long as I don’t talk too loud or too much about being a single, sexy, smart L.A. gal. It’s OK as long as it’s in the front room closet.

Shit I Don’t Understand

While I love the altruism in Mitsch’s age-old adage (who, according to his website, is a “mortgage expert” not Dr. Ruth), the problem herein lies with the complexity of the human condition. Men’s sexuality to be more exact.

While it’s a fact that both women and men cheat, for the sake of this argument, let’s keep the focus on the chaste woman and the free man. Men cheat and oft times it has less to do with how warm his meal is when he gets home. I’m gonna go out on a limb here (and reel me in if I’m bein’ overly-ambitious), but somehow, in our outdated, presumptuous, old-world existence where monogamy is king and keeping women on a string is the norm, I don’t think that men who cheat are doing so in direct response to their wife offering or not offering up an additional hole or a Hot Toddy when he’s sick –– as Mitsch’s idiom suggests.

Is it possible, that he’s doing so because he fucking wants to? Because our puritanical view of sex is something that even he is sick and tired of? That he felt pressured into marriage and a single partner by the same dictating forces that we succumb to daily? That he’s a victim of his own Frankenstein?

Read more next week, when I delve into the other side of the coin –– women proselytizing to other women about whom they should be in the bedroom. And what we sluts can do about it.

[..]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Jonathan Katz is the brilliantly funny deadpan comedian that the animated show Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was built around. Dr. Katz was Comedy Central’’s first big hit and was on for five years. It’’s taken another six years for the first season to come out on DVD. But it’s here and it has commentaries by Katz, collaborator H. Jon Benjamin and many of the comedians who sat on the couch.

Read our exclusive interview with Jonathan Katz on SuicideGirls.com.

Aisline Suicide in Four Letter Word

• INTO: Girls, movies, night time, awkwardness, saying inappropriate things, the beach, sunsets and sunrises, dancing, dancing around in my underwear, laughing at my own jokes, being the only one laughing at my own jokes, boobs, ruining everything I try to cook and making people pretend they enjoyed eating it, heavily tattooed girls and boys.
• NOT INTO: Big crowds, people I don’t know touching me, mirrors, drugs, being cold.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Warm weather, music, driving around aimlessly, late nights, early mornings.
• MAKES ME SAD: People with no morals, people with no common sense, people who can’t act in public, disrespect, greed, poverty and John Mayer.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: IPod, Blackberry, laptop, a steady internet connection, and my family/cats.
• VICES: Sour candies.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Trying to take over the world.

Get to know Aisline better over at SuicideGirls.com!