Fight & Chaos: First video of ‘Occupy Rome’ rally turning violent – YouTube.
Pedro Passos Coelho, the Portuguese prime minister. Photograph: Miguel A Lopes/EPA
New York City
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ROME – Anti-greed protesters rallied globally Saturday, denouncing bankers and politicians over the international economic crisis, with violence rocking Rome where cars were torched and bank windows smashed.
Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests began in New Zealand, touched parts of Asia, spread to Europe, and resumed at their starting point in New York with 5,000 marchers decrying corporate greed and economic inequality.
After weeks of intense media coverage, U.S. protests have still been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions have yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.
The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has gathered steam for a month, culminating with the global day of action. It remains unclear what momentum the movement, which has been driven by social media, has beyond Saturday.
While most rallies were relatively small and barely held up traffic, the Rome event drew tens of thousands of people and snaked through the city center for miles.
Hundreds of hooded, masked demonstrators rampaged in some of the worst violence seen in the Italian capital in years, setting cars ablaze, breaking bank and shop windows and destroying traffic lights and signposts.
Police fired volleys of tear gas and used water cannon to try to disperse militant protesters who were hurling rocks, bottles and fireworks, but clashes went on into the evening.
Smoke bombs set off by protesters cast a pall over a sea of red flags and banners bearing slogans denouncing economic policies the protesters say are hurting the poor.
The violence sent many peaceful demonstrators and local residents near the Colosseum and St John’s Basilica running into hotels and churches for safety.
NOT AS LARGE AS HOPED
American protesters are angry that U.S. banks are enjoying booming profits after getting massive bailouts in 2008 while average people are struggling in a tough economy with more than 9 per cent unemployment and little help from Washington.
In New York, where the movement began when protesters set up a makeshift camp in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 17, organizers said the protest grew to at least 5,000 people as they marched to Times Square in midtown Manhattan.
Some were disappointed the crowd was not larger.
“People don’t want to get involved. They’d rather watch on TV,” said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. “The protesters could have done better today. . . . People from the whole region should be here and it didn’t happen.”
The Times Square mood was akin to New Year’s Eve, when the famed “ball drop” occurs. In a festive mood, protesters were joined by throngs of tourists snapping pictures, together counting back from 10 and shouting, “Happy New Year.”
Police said three people were arrested in Times Square after pushing down police barriers and five men were arrested earlier for wearing masks. Police also arrested 24 people at a Citibank branch in Manhattan, mostly for trespassing.
At about 8 p.m., police arrested another 42 people for blocking the sidewalk. Protesters complained they had no place to go with a wall of police in riot gear in front of them and thousands of demonstrators behind them leaving Times Square.
Small and peaceful rallies got the ball rolling across the Asia-Pacific region Saturday. In Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, 3,000 people chanted and banged drums.
In Sydney, about 2,000 people, including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists, protested outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia.
Hundreds marched in Tokyo. Over 100 people gathered at the Taipei stock exchange, chanting “we are Taiwan’s 99 per cent” and saying economic growth had only benefited companies while middle-class salaries barely covered basic costs.
In Hong Kong, home to the Asian headquarters of investment banks including Goldman Sachs, over 100 people gathered at Exchange Square in the Central district. Students joined with retirees, holding banners that called banks a cancer.
Portugal was the scene of the biggest reported protest action, with more than 20,000 marching in Lisbon and a similar number in the country’s second city Oporto, two days after the government announced a new batch of austerity measures.
Hundreds broke through a police cordon around the parliament in Lisbon to occupy its broad marble staircase.
“This debt is not ours!” and “IMF, get out of here now!,” demonstrators chanted. Banners read: “We are not merchandise in bankers’ hands!” or “No more rescue loans for banks!”
Around 4,000 Greeks with banners bearing slogans like “Greece is not for sale” staged an anti-austerity rally in Athens’ Syntagma Square, the scene of violent clashes between riot police and stone-throwing youths in June.
Many were furious at how austerity imposed by the government to reduce debt incurred by profligate spending and corruption had undermined the lives of ordinary Greeks.
In Paris, around 1,000 protesters rallied in front of city hall, coinciding with the G20 finance chiefs’ meeting, after coming in from the working class neighborhood of Belleville where drummers, trumpeters and a tuba revved up the crowd.
“This is potentially the start of a strong movement,” said Olivier Milleron, a doctor whose group of trumpeters played the classic American folk song “This land is your land.”
“THE INDIGNANT ONES”
The Rome protesters, who called themselves “the indignant ones,” included unemployed, students and pensioners.
“I am here to show support for those don’t have enough money to make it to the next pay check while the ECB (European Central Bank) keeps feeding the banks and killing workers and families,” said Danila Cucunia, a 43-year-old teacher.
“We can’t carry on any more with public debt that wasn’t created by us but by thieving governments, corrupt banks and speculators who don’t give a damn about us,” said Nicla Crippa, 49. “They caused this international crisis and are still profiting from it. They should pay for it.”
In imitation of the occupation of Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in Manhattan, protesters have been camped out across the street from the headquarters of the Bank of Italy for days.
The global protests were a response to calls by New York demonstrators for others to join them. Their example has prompted similar occupations in dozens of U.S. cities.
At a small protest in Dublin, Ireland, Gordon Lucas, an unemployed software developer said “We don’t have economic democracy anymore. . . . I don’t feel I am being represented.”
In Madrid, around 2,000 people gathered for a march to the central Puerta del Sol. Placards read: “Put the bankers on the bench” and “Enough painkillers — euthanasia for the banks.”
“It’s not fair that they take your house away from you if you can’t pay your mortgage, but give billions to the banks for unclear reasons,” said 44-year-old telecom company employee Fabia, who declined to give her surname.
In Germany, thousands gathered in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig and outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
Demonstrators gathered peacefully in Paradeplatz, the main square in the Swiss financial center of Zurich.
In London, around 2,000 people assembled outside St Paul’s Cathedral, near the City financial district, for a rally dubbed “Occupy the London Stock Exchange.”
Joe Dawson, 31, who lost his job as a product developer at Barclays Bank, said he had taken his two children aged 10 and 8 to the rally to show them people had a voice.
“I’m not passive anymore and I don’t want them to be. This is their future too,” Dawson said. “I work four jobs part-time, I take whatever I can get.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told the crowd: “I hope this protest will result in a similar process to what we saw in New York, Cairo and Tunisia,” he said, referring to revolutions in the Arab world.
Outside of New York, similar protests were held in other U.S. cities and Canada. Hundreds turned out in Washington, D.C., while a couple of thousand people gathered near Toronto’s financial district as well as in Portland, Oregon.
A protest in Los Angeles drew about 5,000 people.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Hornby in Rome, Naomi O’Leary and Michael Holden in London, Natalia Drozdiak in Berlin, Alexandria Sage and Gus Trompiz in Paris, Iciar Reinlein, Jonathan Gleave and Carlos Ruano in Madrid, Cameron French in Toronto, Edith Honan, Ray Sanchez and Ed McAllister in New York, Carmel Crimins in Dublin; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Egan and Todd Eastham)
Wall Street protests go global; riots in Rome.
© Copyright (c) Reuters
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Occupy protest comes to Victoria.
By Cindy E. Harnett, timescolonist.com October 14, 2011 12:04 AM
The Occupy Wall Street protests are due to spread to Victoria Saturday, with two separate events.
A University of Victoria professor believes this global protest — to take place in hundreds of locations in more than 70 countries — could surpass, in number, the largest political demonstration in history. And likely, it “won’t be a flash in the pan,” predicted social sciences Prof. William Carroll.
A climactic anti-Iraq-war protest on Feb. 15, 2003, according to BBC News, drew as many as 10 million people for protests in about 60 countries. But after that, although the issue remained red-hot, the protests lost steam.
Carroll, a UVic professor who has tracked social movements and analyzed corporate power structures since the 1970s, sees Saturday’s protest as “possibly bigger” than the 2003 global protest and believes: “It just might be the beginning … of a kind of global movement for social justice.”
Critics have targeted the movement’s unfocused and multi-pronged messages: Issues range from corporate greed to the environment. But Carroll said the protest’s diversity could be its biggest strength.
Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin views the global protest “as a great piece of democracy in action.”
“It certainly reflects that a group of people is feeling disenfranchised, feeling left out,” Fortin said. The mayor won’t be attending, but he will be listening, he said.
In Victoria, two Occupies, as they are called, will be held on Saturday.
One will take place in Centennial Square, starting at noon. That protest is called the People’s Assembly of Victoria (Occupy Victoria). It is not known how long the occupation will last — hours, a full day, weeks or months.
The Occupy Wall Street people’s assembly that sparked the Occupy movement started Sept. 17, when 1,500 people gathered in a Manhattan park to occupy New York City’s financial district.
The objective of the People’s Assembly of Victoria, according to its website, is to “exercise our right to peacefully assemble. To openly involve the community at large (the 99 per cent) in preparing for the local and global change starting Oct. 15.”
The one per cent represents the wealthiest Americans who receive nearly one-quarter of the country’s income. The 99 per cent refers to everyone else.
The second Occupy Victoria protest takes place on the front steps of the B.C. Legislature from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m..
This protest will feature Christopher Porter, the leader of the Canadian Action Party.
Organizers describe the event as: “Concerned individuals are publicly protesting corruption within government and financial institutions in capital cities … the tidal wave of activism is aimed at exposing the fraudulent banking cartels and institutions which plague humanity.”
More information on the events can be found at wearechangevictoria.org/
2011 and http://www.paov.ca.
Police will have a presence at both events, said Victoria Sgt. Jamie Pearce, who anticipates, having talked to organizers, that they will be peaceful.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Occupy+protest+comes+Victoria/5547772/story.html#ixzz1akq4ecPn
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Portugal’s credit binge hangover | World news | The Guardian.
In Lisbon these days, they’re so strapped for cash they’re selling the metro stations. Not literally, of course. But Baixa-Chiado station in the heart of the city, pretty much the Portuguese capital’s equivalent to Piccadilly Circus, has just been branded by Portuguese Telecom, and now rejoices in the name of PT Blue Station.
It doesn’t half anger the locals. “It really symbolises what’s going on in this country,” says Frederico Duarte, 32, a design critic and teacher. “Public transport should be a public good by definition, for citizens, not for customers, and here it is getting the full corporate treatment. It’s sad.”
Duarte’s sensibilities are upset. The station, built after a catastrophic fire in 1988, was conceived as a gleaming, white-walled temple to an ideal of transit for the people. Its architect, Álvaro Siza, fought a lengthy battle to keep all advertising off the walls. But it has now succumbed to ugly blue lighting and PT logos everywhere you look.
There’s also an irony, his friend Vera Sachetti points out, in the fact that PT was Portugal‘s most complained-about company last year, and the Portuguese pay, on average, twice the European average for broadband. To cap it all, metro fares have just gone up by 15%.
But issues of station sponsorship, while symbolically neat, are among the least of Portugal’s worries at present.
Saddled with the terms of a €78bn (£68bn) EU/IMF bailout plan, the centre-right government of Pedro Passos Coelho is exceeding requirements: in an “unprecedented” attempt to cut the country’s budget deficit to almost zero in less than five years, it announced last month the biggest cuts to public spending in more than 50 years.
Public sector wages have been frozen until 2013, pensions and welfare payments slashed, planned layoffs of state workers accelerated. “And here, in Lisbon, we’re the lucky ones,” says Carla Cardoso, who works for the city’s EXD’11 design biennale. “This station issue – it’s an urban luxury, really. It’s outside that people are really hurting.”
For years, Portugal thrived on its low labour costs: the minimum wage remains around €485 a month, far less than most western European nations. But it suffered from the eastward expansion of the EU and growing trade with Asia, and its economy has wilted in the past decade. Then an influx of cheap money during the credit boom years encouraged people to spend cash they really didn’t have. While the government was spending EU millions on spanking new infrastructure that now seems extravagant, households were treating themselves to “new cars, new televisions, new phones, new homes”, says Ana Abrantes, Cardoso’s colleague.
“Everyone moved out of town into new estates,” says Cardoso. “Old was bad. It reminded us of how horribly poor we were, back in the distant past. When I first came here, in 1994, central Lisbon had a population of 950,000. Now it’s more like 450,000.”
So the whole country is suffering a monumental credit binge hangover. It’s not helped, says Duarte, who studied in New York, by “a weak entrepreneurial culture. We’re not big business creators. Here people tend to think the best job, the most secure, is with the state.”
Cardoso rails against a “hopelessly dysfunctional” justice system (“nothing’s ever enforced, ever. No debts, no unpaid invoices, nothing”) that does more harm to the economy than any number of tax hikes. She says inequalities between rich and poor – the CEO of a big Portuguese company can earn 25 times his basic-rate employees, a recent survey showed – may have cracked Portuguese society open to a dangerous degree.
“Most young people here,” says Abrantes, “have to hold down two jobs to survive. As for the elderly – pensions were never very generous, and now they’re even less. The poorest are going to get poorer, the middle class will just be poor. We’re going to have to learn again, like in our past, just how little we can actually live on.”
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40 Signs That America Is Rotting From The Inside Out | Before It’s News.
Michael Synder
It would be easy to know how to defend America if enemy forces were invading our shores. But how do you defend a nation that is rotting from the inside out? How do you eradicate the internal decay that is eating away at the heart and soul of this nation a little bit more every single day? Just like we saw happen with the Roman Empire, the internal rot that is eating its way to the surface threatens to bring us down as a nation. Greed, corruption, gluttony, lust and pride have become national pastimes. We are addicted to debt, food, entertainment and pleasure. We have been taught to hate those that look different from us or that believe different things than we do. Society is literally coming apart at the seams and the federal government is increasingly implementing “Big Brother” security measures in an attempt to maintain control and keep us “safe”. We have far more people in prison than any other nation on the planet and yet things just keep getting worse and worse. So how can we fix America? How do we rescue a nation that is rotting from the inside?
It is absolutely crucial that we acknowledge just how bad things have gotten. Simply getting the right political party into power will not save America. Neither will implementing a new political system or a new economic system. America’s problems are deeper than that. The very core of America is deeply sick, and once we admit that, then perhaps we will start focusing on some real solutions.
The following are 40 signs that America is rotting from the inside out….
#1 A secret panel of government officials can now put American citizens on a “kill list”. A recent Reuters article explained that no law established this secret panel and that there are no laws which govern it….
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
#2 It is on record that the federal government facilitated the sale of thousands upon thousands of very powerful guns to Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican government was never told about this operation. U.S. border agents have been shot with these guns, and these guns have been involved in dozens of murders already in Mexico. Mexican drug cartels will continue to kill people with these guns for many years to come. The Obama administration is working incredibly hard to cover up this scandal and the mainstream media is mostly ignoring the story.
#3 The other day, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson shared with radio show host Laura Ingraham that Obama administration officials have yelled at her and cussed at her for aggressively investigating Operation Fast and Furious. This must have created a lot of waves, because now CBS News has now put her on lockdown and http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbs-news-silencing-fast-and-furious-reporter-due-white-house-pressure_595068.html” target=”_blank”>has made her unavailable for interviews.
#4 A host of other recent examples show that if you are associated with the mainstream media in any way and you make a “politically incorrect” comment, you will be given the boot so fast that it will make your head swim. For example, Hank Williams Jr. was recently booted off Monday Night Football simply because he compared Barack Obama to Hitler.
#5 At the current protests in New York City, police are beating people with clubs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA&feature=related” target=”_blank”>shooting pepper spray in their faces. As the economic crisis gets even worse and protests spread and become more intense in future years, will all of America soon look like this?
#6 The United States has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States” target=”_blank”>the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
#7 The other day, a group of thieves stole a 50 foot long bridge in Pennsylvania. Yes, you read that correctly. They stole the entire bridge.
#8 Criminals seem willing to steal just about anything that is not bolted down these days. For example, a group of thieves has stolen more than 1,000 pigs from farms in Minnesota and Iowa in recent months.
#9 Class warfare is certainly rising to a new level in this nation. Recently, Roseanne Barr said that it would be a good idea for some bankers to “http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/01/roseanne_barr_behead_bankers_rich_who_wont_give_up_wealth.html” target=”_blank”>go to the reeducation camps“.
#10 Michael Moore http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/09/22/michael_moore_threatens_the_rich_lets_deal_with_it_nonviolently_now.html” target=”_blank”>is warning that the economic riots that we are starting to see around the country could potentially become violent in the future….
“The smart rich know they can only build the gate so high. And, and, sooner or later history proves that people when they’ve had enough aren’t going to take it anymore. And much better to deal with it nonviolently now, through the political system, than what could possibly happen in the future, which nobody wants to see”
#11 Have we become a socialist nation? At this point, nearly half of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.
#12 From the time George Washington became president until January 1993, the United States government accumulated a national debt of $4.16 trillion. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, more than $4.2 trillion has been added to the national debt.
#13 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently warned Congress not to cut “too much” from the federal budget right now.
#14 According to one recent report, the EPA wants to hire 230,000 more bureaucrats that will help enforce all of the new greenhouse gas regulations that the EPA plans to implement.
#15 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
#16 Horrifying brawls involving groups of young people are breaking out all over the nation. For example, check out this disturbing footage of a brawl that recently broke out during a football game in California.
#17 All over the nation, little children are being publicly arrested by police in their own classrooms and are being marched out of their schools in handcuffs.
#18 In some areas of the country, law enforcement officials are now using “extraction devices” to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over.
#19 In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.
#20 Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson recently declared that it if your spouse develops Alzheimer’s disease, it is okay to divorce them.
#21 The United States has http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate” target=”_blank”>the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#22 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
#23 Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently stated that “http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/877087-donald-rumsfeld-warns-of-religious-extremist-threat#ixzz1ZWhlAQLC” target=”_blank”>extremism in Christianity” is a significant danger to the United States.
#24 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
#25 Vanderbilt University has ruled that five on-campus Christian groups http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=1445834″ target=”_blank”>have violated Vanderbilt’s non-discrimination policy because they will not allow people that do not believe in Christianity to become leaders in the groups.
#26 Globally, the United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.
#27 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
#28 The federal government recently sued a company down in Texas for firing a 600 pound worker.
#29 Are American students getting dumber? This year, the average score on the verbal portion of the SAT was the lowest ever recorded.
#30 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.
#31 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#32 One out of every four teen girls in the United States now has an STD.
#33 Law enforcement officials estimate that about 600,000 Americans and about 65,000 Canadians http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09020610.html” target=”_blank”>are trading dirty child pictures online.
#34 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#35 Totalitarian police states used to be ridiculed in this country, but now that has all changed. In fact, the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of an East German security handbook.
#36 According to a shocking FBI document obtained by Oath Keepers, the FBI definition of “suspicious activity” now includes making “extreme religious statements” and believing in “radical theology“.
#37 It is estimated that 500,000 babies that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.
#38 In airports all over the country, the federal government is forcing large numbers of women and children to endure very offensive “enhanced pat-downs” during which http://www.infowars.com/another-day-another-child-molested-by-tsa/” target=”_blank”>their private parts are touched before they are allowed to get on to their flights.
#39 It was bad enough when the TSA was just abusing our families at the airports. Now, TSA “VIPR teams” are conducting approximately http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/tsa-swarms-8000-bus-stations-public-transit-systems-yearly” target=”_blank”>8,000 “unannounced security screenings” a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.
#40 Since 1973, http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=32127″ target=”_blank”>approximately 50 million babies have been slaughtered in the United States before they were even born.
Some of the examples above may seem unrelated at first glance, but they really are not. The truth is that all of those examples illustrate the deep decay that has taken hold in this nation.
Sadly, hundreds more examples could easily be listed. This country is deeply sick, and “tweaking” a couple of things or electing the right politician is not going to cure us.
America is dying and time is running out.
So what do all of you think? Do you believe that America is rotting from the inside out? Please feel free to leave your thoughts below….
endoftheamericandream.com/archives/40-signs-that-america-is-rotting-from-the-inside-out
Copyright © 2011 The American Dream
Activist Post: Rise Up and Support the Real Revolution.
Josh Vick
Activist Post
“Promise, promise, lie (making money, making money, making money), lie, lie, lie, lie, promise.”
Sound familiar? It should — that’s the sound of your elected politicians. Between all the false promises there is nothing more than lies and profit. It’s a truth and its verification only requires the fundamental ability to read and the problem-solving skills of a 3rd grader. Let me explain.
The system that your politicians work for is no longer your system. It is their system. It is planned, modified, and controlled by them. It benefits their own interests and their own interests only. To realize this truth is very simple — all you have to do is look at the legislation. They create it, present it, pass it, and it’s written on paper for all to decipher.
So, let’s look at this legislation. What does it do?
Well, for the people, it creates restrictions. It decides what you as an individual cannot do. It decides what is considered to be wrong. It decides what you can be reprimanded, penalized, fined or incarcerated for. To the people, legislation is nothing more than the continual loss of our freedoms.
How, let’s take a look at the corporate side of legislation. What does it do? It creates “regulations”, not restrictions. Regulations enable corporations instead of restrict them. Regulation is nothing more than a cute word that allows corporate entities to be exempt from the very same laws that apply to the individual. Basically, regulations set standards on how much crime can be committed by corporations.
It requires a very limited amount of thinking to understand almost immediately that this situation alone is a recipe for disaster. I need not delve any further for one to realize that restrictions for consumers, but freedom for profiteers, equals a fascist system. You don’t have to look into the specifics of the laws, or any law specifically to see that we lose freedom as corporations gain it. Nearly every piece of legislation that is created by the federal government serves to directly benefit either big business or the government itself.
Meanwhile, they use our tax monies to run rampant across the global landscape as they leverage their political powers to maximize the profits for corporations (which in turn reward them with commissions). They rape, rob, pillage, destroy, corrupt, and pollute in the name of profits. They deface the earth while simultaneously committing genocides which they then contort and present to us as either an act of liberation for oppressed peoples, or the elimination of a terror threat.
I’m not sure about you, but I want absolutely nothing to do with a system that operates in this fashion. It’s 110% absolutely and completely ludicrous for anyone to obey the laws of murderous dictators who repeatedly commit high-crime against humanity on a global level.
If you knew that somebody was going to rape a 12-year-old girl before blowing her brains out and lighting her body on fire in front of her family, would you give them 20% of your paycheck to do so? I don’t think you would, and it’s for that same reason that I don’t believe you should pay income tax.
Our system is completely defunct, both financially and morally. It’s not only insufficient for our best interests as a society, it’s downright destructive. It suffers an absolute lack of reasoning and has no room whatsoever for even an ounce of human compassion.
The flags, the fake debates, the false promises, the “god bless our nation” — it’s nothing more than pure deception. It’s proven to be so convincing that although its creators don’t deserve the title of Human, one could easily say it’s a masterpiece worthy of the title of genius. This picture of America — a magical fairyland with freedom and prosperity for all — is painted with blood on the dead flesh of freedom.
Do not stand up for it. Do not represent your government, just as they don’t represent you. Denounce your association with them. Refuse to participate in a system that wreaks havoc on innocent human life. Refuse to play their game any longer. Refuse to believe their lies and refuse to let anyone else tell you otherwise. We are humans, living beings, individuals with souls who are born free. Refuse to be tied down by authority.
Do not be dumb. Do not be like the battered woman with broken arms who says she’s in love. Do not remain loyal to a hand that doesn’t feed you. Do not believe that you have to do what everyone else does, or that it’s right simply because they do it. Rise above the scum who run this system, let them know that you know the truth, that you’re not afraid and that you refuse to participate. Do it with your family, your friends, whoever you care about.
Rise above this oppressive regime of global control freaks. They are nothing. They are mental, physical and spiritual slumlords. They have nothing to hide behind except an illusion. They are weak, insecure and miserable. As the days pass by, their time to remain in charge grows shorter. It’s happening around the world — people are revolting. There is a knowledge being consumed and it is empowering the people.
The biggest myth that they ever created is that “freedom isn’t free”.
It is free, take it. Participate. Occupy. Denounce support for politics and corruption once and for all.
Josh Vick is a freelance human being who is against all authority. He can be contacted via Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/josh.vick1
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Chávez condemns Wall Street protest ‘crackdown’ | World news | guardian.co.uk.
Venezuela‘s President Hugo Chávez has attacked the ‘US crackdown’ on anti-Wall Street protests. Photograph: Ho/REUTERS
Hugo Chávez has condemned the “horrible repression” of anti-Wall Street protesters and described a US Republican presidential candidate as “crazy” for his criticism of Cuba and Venezuela.
Although still convalescing from cancer surgery in June followed by four rounds of chemotherapy, the 57-year-old Venezuelan president is quickly returning to his tough rhetoric and strong views.
Not surprisingly, Chávez expressed solidarity with American activists who have been staging rallies and marches against what they view as corporate greed on Wall Street.
The US protests, which began last month in New York City and have spread to Tampa, Seattle, Chicago and other cities, have mostly been peaceful but sometimes resulted in confrontations. Dozens were arrested and police used pepper spray in New York earlier this week.
“This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don’t know how many are in prison now,” Chávez said in comments at a political meeting in his presidential palace shown on state TV.
“Poverty’s growing, the misery is getting worse,” he said, referring to the causes of the US protests. “But that empire is still there, still a threat … [President Barack] Obama is on his way down, for lots of reasons. He was a big fraud.”
Chávez, who runs for re-election in a year’s time and traditionally ramps up his anti-capitalist rhetoric to try and rally supporters before a vote, also let rip at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who referred to the “malign socialism” of Cuba and Venezuela on Friday.
“He’s been attacking Venezuela and Cuba, and talking about the malign government of Hugo Chávez. And he has the arrogance to say that God created the United States so the United States can rule the world,” Chávez said.
“And that crazy man might be the president of the United States, in elections that are just after ours.”
Venezuela’s presidential vote is in October 2012, with the US vote in November.
Chávez said again he was sure he would be given a clean bill of health in time to run a vigorous campaign for re-election.
He would return to Cuba, where he was operated on in June to remove a malignant tumour, in a few days for final checks, he said. “We’re going to do all the examinations to confirm what we think up to now, that there are no malignant cells left in my body,” he told the meeting.
The generation that opposed Vietnam has joined Facebook anarchists amid anger at tax breaks for the rich while ordinary folk tighten their belts
Garth Carroll, who calls himself Professor Gizmo, wears the American flag as he demonstrates at Occupy Seattle at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle, Washington. Photograph: Marcus Donner/REUTERS
The Wall Street protests against economic inequality and corporate greed that targeted the nerve centre of American capitalism are no longer merely a New York phenomenon. This weekend, from Seattle and Los Angeles on the west coast to Providence, Rhode Island, and Tampa, Florida, on the east, as many as 70 major cities and more than 600 communities have joined the swelling wave of civil dissent. The slogan “Occupy Wall Street” has been suitably abbreviated to a single word: “Occupy”
“This could be the tipping point,” said Dick Steinkamp, 63, a retired Silicon Valley executive at the Occupy Seattle protest being held in the heart of the city’s shopping and restaurant district . He and his wife had driven two hours from their home in Bellingham, north of Seattle, specifically to join the rally and give it support from more conventional professionals.
“I marched against the Vietnam war before I was drafted into the army and this movement is now getting towards that critical mass,” he said.
One of the favourite messages of the protesters is that almost 40% of US wealth is held in the hands of 1% of the population, who are taxed more lightly than the majority of Americans. Steinkamp was holding a sign saying “I am the 99%”. And there is widespread anger that ordinary people have born the brunt of the financial crisis with dire job losses and house repossessions.
“I came here because I wanted to show it wasn’t just young anarchists,” said Deb Steinkamp, also 63 and a retired marriage counsellor, wearing a green cagoule and sensible shoes against the damp, chilly Seattle weather.
Protests broke out last week in Chicago, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Austin, Louisville, Atlanta and dozens of other cities. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary are set to add themselves to the ranks next weekend.
Motorists honked their support as they passed the Seattle demonstration, which was around 500 strong on Friday and likely to swell as the weekend progressed. Earlier in the week the police forced protestors to clear away tents that had been multiplying across the square. Seattle’s liberal mayor Mike McGinn supports the protesters – but drew the line once they started camping in the middle of downtown.
In New York more than 700 people have been arrested while marching on the stock exchange and over the Brooklyn Bridge in the name of Occupy Wall Street and 20,000 marched in lower Manhattan last Wednesday.
The sheer proliferation of the rallies across 45 states has drawn attention. “It expresses the frustrations the American people feel about the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression,” President Obama said. “There has been huge collateral damage all across ‘Main Street’ [from the financial crisis] and some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly are now trying to fight a crackdown on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” he added.
In Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handed out rain ponchos to demonstrators when there was a downpour. A thousand people gathered outside the city government offices for Occupy Austin, as well as similar crowds in Dallas and Houston.
After joining Occupy Wall Street, alongside a group of university professors, Obama’s former head of blog campaigns Sam Graham-Felsen pointed out that the movement was maturing. He said that although it would not have started without radical idealists taking to the streets it has gone to the next level with the inclusion of “seasoned organisers and pragmatists”.
Asher McCord, 31, a shopworker in Seattle, was at the protests before starting his shift at a department store, and was wearing a neat woollen blazer and designer jeans. “There is that saying, ‘Dissent is patriotic,’ and I agree with that. I was unemployed for a while. I just started my new job and I think lower income people are taking all the pain and the anxiety in this recession,” he said.
Protesters are complaining about tax breaks for oil companies, excessive lobbying in Washington, astronomical pay and bonuses for financiers, and the bailout of the banking sector.
The movement was sparked in part by Vancouver-based Adbusters Media Foundation, an anti-consumerism organ with a magazine, which urged people to occupy Wall Street to protest inherent inequalities in the economic system. There is no central organisation or formal co-ordination between cities but instigators use web tools such as Twitter and Facebook to pass information and now hope that the demonstrations will build towards the G20 economic summit in Cannes next month.
Detractors have mocked protesters for using social media, when those brands are increasingly corporatised. But hospital nurse Angela Silling, 41, who was staffing the first aid post in Seattle’s Westlake Park, said: “The Arab Spring demonstrators used social media very successfully and no one has criticised those rebels.”
House of Representative majority leader Eric Cantor dismissed the protesters as “mobs” who were prompting “Americans to fight Americans”. That prompted a storm of criticism, because he has praised the Tea Party as a legitimate expression of conservative grassroots anger.
Seattle demonstrator Ted Lang, 26, who has just qualified as an English teacher and is considering moving abroad, said the Occupy demonstrators had much in common with the libertarians who first started the Tea Party movement. “But it got hijacked by right-wing religious conservatives,” he said.
Who would he not want to see the Occupy movement hijacked by?
“The Democrat party,” he said.
Related articles
- Slide show: Occupy Seattle holds presence in heart of city (bizjournals.com)
Occupy Wall Street turns violent with mass arrests, police beatings.
(NaturalNews) As predicted, it was only a matter of time before protesters at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began experiencing the wrath of the new American police state which, as we wrote about previously, happened to receive a special cash infusion recently from Wall Street icon JPMorgan Chase (http://www.naturalnews.com/033779_J…).
A series of videos uploaded to YouTube show officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) storming the streets, assaulting protesters, beating them with night sticks, and even bragging and laughing about the fact that they are getting to use their weapons against citizens. In one incident, reporters from My FOX New York were even assaulted with pepper spray and beaten with batons (http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/occ…).
In the first, shorter clip posted at the following link, you will see a high-ranking NYPD officer standing in the middle of a crowd swinging his baton at protesters that were apparently trying to cross a barrier. In the second, longer clip taken from a different angle, you see the same officer swatting his baton, as well as numerous other officers assaulting other protesters: http://gothamist.com/2011/10/05/vid…
In this clip, you will see an officer laughing and telling a fellow officer that “[his] little nightstick’s going to get a workout tonight,” referencing, of course, the confrontations with protesters that would soon follow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBxP…
Though disturbing, the state’s hostile response to these OWS protests is still relatively mild, especially compared to what took place at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, for instance. At that event, cops stormed the streets in full riot gear, pushed back crowds with eery, NAZI-like street marches, trampled protesters with horses, blasted them with pepper spray and smoke bombs, and even fired long range acoustic device (LRAD) sound weapons at people on the streets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f144…).
And again in 2009, riot police and military personnel stormed the streets of Pittsburgh, Penn., during the G20 Summit. An InfoWars video shows a group of about 1,200 police state troops attacking over 300 Americans at one time, many of whom were not even part of the protests and had no idea that they was even taking place (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFYo…).
The police brutality exhibited at all these events is disturbing, and it is likely going to get worse in response to the ongoing OWS protests. But what is even more disturbing is the relative complacency of outside observers during almost every police state incident, many of whom can be seen watching police state thugs terrorizing their fellow man, but doing nothing.
If tyranny against free speech, the right to freely assemble, and all the other constitutional protections that are routinely violated is ever to cease, Americans are going to have to step forward and begin actively resist it. This includes developing a little more willingness and courage to help protect others from police attacks, especially when it is occurring right before their eyes.
Related articles
- PHOTOS: The Best Signs Of #OccupyWallStreet (huffingtonpost.com)
- The War Against Wall Street Fills The Streets Of Seattle! (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)
- Craig Crawford: Why Not Democracy for Corporations (huffingtonpost.com)
- Videos Show Instances Of Alleged Police Brutality On Occupy Wall Street Protesters (mediaite.com)
Occupy Yourself | BobTuskin.com.
There is a window of opportunity with the momentum of the occupy “this” protests popping up everywhere and building gaining support from diverse places. Now is the time that a general strike will be most effective and embrace the emerging spirit of resolve building amongst the people at long last. Plenty of people are willing to leave the security of their homes and engage in indefinite non violent rebellion on the streets. Shouldn’t it stand that even more would be willing to do the same in their own homes in solidarity with those brave souls that have taken to the streets in an effort to free us all from the clutches of this greedy evil machine?
No more one day strikes and protests, no more just doing this once a month. We are here to stay It’s time to gather all the fortitude that can be mustered and start “occupy yourself” and not relent until this beast falls once and for all.
There is a window of opportunity in which this will resonate with the people and it can be built upon the growing momentum of the ongoing actions adding enough fuel to the fire in which the overlords will be powerless to extinguish. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their world. The larger numbers join in, the harder and faster this scourge upon our world will be crushed. Time is of the essence. Unending resolve will be what ends this.
With the provocateurs lashing out in a pointless exercise to crush the growing spirit of rebellion, an ever present and growing “stealth” aspect to this which cannot be provoked with pepper spray or anything else for that matter, will add unmeasurable strength to the overall effort to free the people from the clutches of the corrupt. As the visible side grows so does the support in the shadows that cannot be touched. The effects will be felt. We finally can shut them down by attacking their monetary base.
Everyone needs to sacrifice to make this happen. This is certainly not what everyone wants to hear. Unfortunately freeing the people and restoring liberty comes at a price. Many times before that was paid in blood. If we act now in unity and resolve we can mitigate, maybe even eliminate that heavy price paid by blood. The more we come together and fight this crisis the less blood that will need to be spilled. What we lose by inaction is so much greater than anything we do without for a time. It’s time to whack this mole with every available hammer and in a way where it turns them against their own public opinion. Why not let them help us win the hearts and the minds? So far it’s working wonders. My hats off to all those that have been attacked and stood strong not sinking to the infantile level of behavior shown by the oppressors. It’s make or bake time.
This should have escalated to this some time ago but it’s okay because NOW the world is as ready as it’s ever going to get for an indefinite strike. It may well be outside the comfort zone for some to call for this and be this aggressive but I can say the same about the occupy everything protesters out on the streets. Also, we don’t need to discourage people from doing that. The visibility helps. Support it. We add an alternative for the stay at home people to occupy themselves. Add an additional front to the gathering collective effort. Time for resolve is now, victory is at hand.
It’s time to stop supporting these greedy megacorporations which by their very profit models seek to slowly devour us. Spend a little extra money to do business with the small locally owned enterprises.
It’s long past time to be watching anything this bought and paid for corporate controlled media has to offer. Let them sit there and spin their propaganda to themselves. The rest of us are over this entire lie to the public about everything. What was supposed to be the watchdog for corruption, such as is rampant everywhere, has become the drooling lap dog of the corrupt. They can only continue to exist in this form if we let them.
Pull your children out of the slave indoctrination centers called public schools. We no longer consent to having our children lied to and poisoned against the principles that made this nation great long ago. By going along with this we enable them to wage their psychological war upon the innocent minds of our children. This is something I find wholly unacceptable. And whatever you do, don’t let them force these vaccines unto your families. No matter how much they fear monger about pandemics and the like, realize that they’ve lied about this before. Do your homework. They don’t know how to tell the truth. In their business models truth is not profitable.
Stop using commercial air travel. The TSA is yet another fraudulent abuse of public trust for the sake of profit. The security industrial complex paints we the people as the enemy and gets us to go along with it to protect us from ourselves… It just keeps getting more ridiculous. If security is such a concern why not secure that southern border? It’s all a farce.
Move your money out of all these “too big to fail” banks and into smaller community credit unions.
Stay home from work if you can. Our first priority it to ensure the health and safety of our families, but right after that we must do everything in our collective power to bring down the machine that seeks our ruin at their profit. It is necessary for all of our families collective future for this to be stopped as quickly and decisively as possible.
When the world sees that we the people are pulling out and no longer willing to go along with the abuse the foreign investors will pull their support and further collapse this mess into the crater it so richly deserves.
Each and every one of you out there have it in your power to “occupy yourself” and be part of a quickly growing movement to end the powers that shouldn’t be.
Related articles
- Occupy Portland aims to send a message, but its goals aren’t yet certain (oregonlive.com)
- Why I’m Occupying (stillhavetoprotest.wordpress.com)
- Snippets of Updates from Occupy Dallas Oct 7: We are moving forward. (iflizwerequeen.com)
