Law enforcement has a duty to commit to non-violent handling of demonstrators which can be done with proper training. Siding with sadistic police actions, beatings, macing, clubbing is analogous to what the people of Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, and especially now Syria have gone through and to justify the use of this type of force on non-violent protesters is siding with dictatorial policies and authoritarian anti-democratic regimes.

As to the smashing of windows, property destruction and the like, I need to remind the critics here that much of this is caused by agent provocateurs who are deployed by certain police departments and governmental groups to deliberately disrupt peaceful demonstrations. Most of the people, including the young, are instructed in techniques of non-violent behavior before demonstrating and the idea that these people are deserving of the heavy handed sadistic treatment at the hands of the police is denying the rights of citizens to air their grievances peacefully. This is true anywhere in the world.

Ultimately, the young people in the Wall Street demonstrations will win as they are doing in the Arab Spring and siding with brutality is ignorant, impotent and unproductive.

Remember the police dogs, the fire hoses, the clubbing and beating of civil rights demonstrators in the South USA during voting rights issues and you see a repeat of this approach in today's handling of Wall Street demonstrators, all this begs the question that they are absolutely right in what they are doing as Americans attempting to preserve a fading democracy.