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October 15, 2011 | 5:21 pm
Getting deep at Occupy L.A.
Posted by Ryan Torok
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Yesterday, I was at Occupy L.A., asking people what that they were doing there, why’d they come – and I got the predictable responses: corporate greed, the income gap between the rich and the poor, rising unemployment, the endless, fruitless bickering between the right and left.
Late in the day, I met Jeff, a former New Yorker in his fifties with a penchant for quoting Talmud. What’s this all about? Why are people here?
Do you know the story of Aw-dawm and Ḥawwāh, he said, referring to Adam and Eve of the Book of Genesis.
Of course. Who doesn’t?
Okay, he said. If you know the story of Adam and Eve, what happened after they ate the apple?
They lose their innocence. I felt good about this response. If only my father, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Jewish education for me, could hear me.
Wrong, Jeff said.
Wrong?
Yes, wrong. That’s an analysis. But that’s not what happened. What happened afterwards?
They were suddenly aware of their nakedness.
And then?
I thought of ‘Dude, Where’s My Car,’ the scene when Ashton Kutcher and Stiffler are trying to order food in the drive-thru.. And then? And then? And then?
Refocusing my attention on Jeff, What did they do after they became aware of their nakedness? They covered up with clothes, I said.
Clothes? Jeff said. What clothes? They didn’t have clothes then.
Leaves. They covered up with leaves.
No.
Okay, this was becoming annoying. I thought hard, tapped into the inner depths, trying to remember. Remember, remember, remember.
Oh, I know, I exclaimed. After Adam and Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, God told Adam that he would now have to work for a living, and He told Eve that she would have to feel pain when she conceived.
You said you went to Jewish school? Jeff said.
I was about to punch him.
They hide, Jeff said. After they eat the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve hide. They hide from God.
That’s right. I’d completely forgotten.
And God says, ‘Ey-foh.’
A few people had walked over to us and were listening, including a skinny anarchist-looking guy with a mohawk and torn skinny jeans. I’d seen him earlier lightly playing drums with brush-sticks next to a group of about twenty people, a committee of indigenous rights, convening next to a large fountain in the center of Occupy L.A., where dozens and dozens of shanty camp tents had been set up.
The anarchist guy was holding a tape recorder, toward Jeff’s mouth, recording what Jeff was saying.
God says, ‘Ey-foh,’ which is Hebrew for ‘where.’ He says to Adam and Eve, ‘where are you?’
Why would God say ‘where are you?’ God knows everything, Jeff said. God sees everything. God has a GPS system for the entire universe. God knew where Adam and Eve were hiding, so why would he say ‘ey-foh.’
I was stumped.
God says ‘ey-foh’ because he wants to know where Adam and Eve think they are. He isn’t asking where they are physically. He wants Adam and Eve to reflect on where they are in relationship to the world that is changed forever, now that they have this knowledge, now that they have this consciousness of all things. He’s asking where do they think they are and how do they expect to return to paradise.
Everybody here at Occupy L.A. is aware of the good and evil in the world, Jeff said. They’ve eaten the fruit, and they’re here trying to figure out their place in the world. Trying to return to paradise.
Deep stuff, the anarchist said. I agreed. It was the best answer I’d gotten all day.
Watch my interview with Jeff below.
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GOVERNMENT IS THE POBLEM BY NOT STANDING BY THE CONSTITUTION, THEY TAKE BRIBES / CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS AND THEY EITHER GIVE HUGE BAILOUTS OR THEY GRANT RETRO ACTIVE IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION,
SBX211 Retro Active Immunity given to California judges for openly taking bribes. Judges are employees of the state they receive their pay and benefits from the state. The Los Angeles Superior court judges are currently receiving an additional $57.688,00 from the county of Los Angeles. there is no bigger user of the court than L.A. County.(A party to the case and has a financial interest in most cases in the courts) Those payments were found to be unconstitutional / illegal in Sturgeon vs L.A. County. After that decision the judges paid a lobbyist to pass SBX211 ( RETRO ACTIVE IMMUNITY )
SBX211 does not restore due process
SBX211 violates Article 1 section 9
SBX211 violates the 14th amendment (no equal protections)
SBX211 violate checks and balances between legislative and Judicial powers.
Judges do not disclose the county payments at the onset of any trial where the county is either a party to the case or has a financial interest. (Judges violate Judicial codes of ethics)
Judges refuse to recuse themselves when requested under CCP170
Judges find themselves unbiased and then file an order striking statement.
In the year of 2010 alone $57,688.00 per year per judge X 460 judges = $26,709.544.00 paid to judges from L.A. County from tax payer money to only have the judges rule against the tax payer in favor of L.A. County or the County’s interest. THE BRIBES WORK.
HISTORY OF RETRO ACTIVE IMMUNITY IN THE UNITED STATES
1. given for unconstitutional use of torture
2. given for illegal merger of banks (we can see the effects of that now)
3. given to telecom company for illegal wire taps. (Fisa bill that led to the patriot act)
4. SBX211 given to Judges for taking bribes.
SBX211 is evidence of conspiracy of the California legislative branch of government to cover up the multiple felony’s committed by the Judicial branch of government. By an act of Legislation, California’s judicial branch has admitted to be corrupt.
SECTION FROM SBX211
This bill would provide that no governmental entity, or officer or employee of a governmental entity, shall incur any liability or be subject to prosecution or disciplinary action because of benefits provided to a judge under the official action of a governmental entity prior to the effective date of this bill on the ground that those benefits were not authorized under law.
judges get paid a state salary of $178789 a year with medical and retirement benefits up to 75% of their salary with the additional $57,688,00 bribe from the county that makes them the highest paid judges in the nation.
Hey Ryan, did you miss all the signs and shouts by the anti Semites and anti Israelis in the crowd? They were all over the place, any group with amount of anti semitic scum doesn’t deserve a hearing about anything.
George, unlike the Tea Party events which were highly organized and highly scripted in a top-down way, the “Occupy” gathering in Los Angeles and in other cities have no formal leadership structure at all, and an absolute minimum amount of organization of any sort. What decision making there is takes the form of a loose consensus based direct democracy process in daily assemblies open to all who choose to participate (including any fringe characters hanging around). Even if they could get everyone in an assembly to unanimously agree to exclude certain noxious individuals they would have no way to enforce their decision. The occupation is in a public park which is by law open to all, and like it or not, anyone who shows up has a right to speak freely whatever toxic nonsense they believe. I went down there a couple days ago to see for myself what was going on and it is true that there were a small handful of people (perhaps a dozen at most) who took issue with some of Israel’s policies, and of this handful some, but not all, were clearly motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. As an individual, I took issue with these fringe characters when I encountered them, just as I did with the other handfuls of fringe cause fanatics that I encountered (LaRoucheies, Maoist, Trotskyist, Black Bloc, etc.). The fact that a small number of idiots show up to take their turn on a common soap-box does not mean that their ideas carry any weight with the vast majority of those present. The day I was there the Occupy gathering saw a turn out of about five thousand or so. If you gathered together all the far out nut-jobs who were present that day, the anti-Semites, the LaRoucheies and all the rest you would be talking about somewhere around fifty or sixty people. That works out to about one in one hundred - which means that about 99% of the 99ers at Occupy LA were people of good will expressing their legitimate concerns. It is easy to mistake one mangled tree for the forest when you are looking through the distorting lens of a corporate news media intent on misrepresentation. As someone who went to see things for myself, that’s something I would urge you to consider before you break out that broad brush of yours.