Demonstraties VS #3: Wanneer valt 'the wall'?

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/new-york-cops-defy-order-to-arrest-hundreds-of-occupy-protesters/

Occupy Albany protesters in New York’s capital city received an unexpected ally over the week: The state and local authorities.

According to the Albany Times Union, New York state troopers and Albany police did not adhere to a curfew crackdown on protesters urged by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Albany mayor Gerald Jennings.

Mass arrests seemed to be in the cards once Jennings directed officers to enforce the curfew on roughly 700 protesters occupying the city owned park. But as state police joined the local cops, moved past the property line dividing city and state land.

With protesters acting peacefully, local and state police agreed that low level arrests could cause a riot, so they decided instead to defy Cuomo and Jennings.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” a state official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

Occupy Albany, an offspring of Occupy Wall Street, has seen its protesters remain as committed as those located at its parent site. At least 30 tents have remained in the park over the weekend.

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Police, Wall Street protesters fall into uneasy truce

(Reuters) - After a rough start marked by mass arrests and allegations of heavy-handed behavior, the New York Police Department has settled into an uneasy standoff with the protesters of Occupy Wall Street.

Officers say they are frustrated by people they think are willfully flouting the law -- protesters marching without permits, erecting tents, breaking noise and curfew regulations, publicly defecating and so on. Meanwhile, protesters say the cops should be with them, not against them, in their fight.

Five weeks after the first protest in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, a nervous stalemate has evolved as the movement mushroomed and drew the world's scrutiny.

Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association of the NYPD and a 30-year veteran of the force, finds the mixed messages from above frustrating. "At times we don't have to - or they don't want us to - do things, and at times they do want us to do things. There's no real clear message as to what right and wrong is," he said. "In many ways we are almost the pawns in this situation."

The early days of the protest, which routinely draws at least a few hundred people, were marked by more contentious relations. There was a high-profile incident of an occupier being pepper-sprayed by a senior officer, who has since been disciplined. On October 1, more than 700 people were arrested after a march on the Brooklyn Bridge; many accused the police of entrapping them.

Paul Browne, the NYPD's chief spokesman, was widely quoted after those arrests saying the protesters had been given ample warning to get off the bridge's roadway before being detained.

Browne did not return phone calls or emails over the course of a week seeking comment on the police's relations with the protesters or its tactics in dealing with the movement.

But as the Occupy Wall Street protests have grown larger and drawn more attention, the tone of relations has changed.

When a group of protesters was arrested in Washington Square Park in Manhattan early on October 16 for an act of civil disobedience - failing to obey a midnight curfew - the atmosphere, by all accounts, was relatively calm.

A branch movement has even popped up - OccupyPolice - to try and convince officers to join the protests. Its website lists contact information for police departments and attorneys general nationwide to further the effort.

CAUGHT ON FILM

The police are also under pressure because they know they are potentially on film at all times. The overwhelming majority of demonstrators have smartphones, and many have handheld cameras as well, such that anything the police do, day or night, can be captured from multiple angles.

One expert on policing policy said the constant scrutiny by protesters and the media had a clear effect.

"Police departments around the country and the world, and that includes the NYPD ... are very much concerned with visible accountability," said Maki Haberfeld, the chairwoman of the department of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Still, she said that despite the presence of cameras "you cannot demand of police officers that they perform their duties in an emotionless manner."

One officer who has become something of a media darling over the course of the protests said there was an unease between the sides but behind that there was also dialogue.

"There's mistrust on their end, there's mistrust on our end, but we're trying to maintain a relationship," said Detective Rick Lee, a non-uniformed officer who has been dubbed the "hipster cop" by a number of websites for his trendy dress and ongoing dialogue with the protesters.

Some protesters are willing to concede that not all the police guarding them are against them.

"They're asking people questions, they're intrigued, they want to know," said protester Andrew Carbone of Brooklyn. "The cops, you see them a lot of times smiling, laughing at stuff."

RUNNING COUNT

In keeping with the core role social media plays in the Occupy movement, a Twitter account has popped up, @OccupyArrests, to keep a running count of those who have been arrested for participating in some capacity. As of Monday afternoon, the account tallied 2,382 arrests worldwide, though that figure is not independently verified.

Fears of a crackdown have spawned parody. A Facebook page called "Occupy Lego Land," urging peaceful protests by the popular children's' toys, carried pictures of toy police roughing up toy protesters during a "demonstration."

Joke or not, cops chafe at such images.

"If anything rankles a police officer it's that kind of stuff, it's the kind of stuff that makes the cops look like they're out of control," said one retired police official now involved with an association of officers.

The protesters tell police they too are "the 99 percent" -- working and middle-class Americans who struggle to pay bills and chafe at the inequities in the financial system.

For the dozens of cops circling the park, who spend most days doing little more than standing cross-armed and staring at the crowd, there is some financial upside.

"There's so much of this stuff going on, our guys tend to look at it as 'great I'll get some overtime,'" the retired official said.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz, editing by Martin Howell)

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:06 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Occupy Phoenix with AR-15's

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Bloomberg says Occupy Wall Street is good for tourism

It's not easy to describe Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attitude towards the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

On October 17, Bloomberg said they were trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city" and that the demonstrations were "not good for tourism."

On October 21, Bloomberg said, in response to a caller on his weekly radio show who wanted to know why the mayor couldn't just force the protesters out of Zuccotti Park, "It's a tourist attraction."

Today, when a reporter asked the mayor about these two comments, the mayor said, "In some sense it is good for tourism."

He then went on to repeat a point he's made before: complaining about a problem isn't the same as coming up with a solution to the problem.

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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Goldman Sachs v. Occupy Wall Street: A Greg Palast Investigation

A controversy in the banking community has arisen around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Greg Palast investigates the story behind Goldman Sachs’ recent decision to pull out of a fundraiser for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. Was the $5,000 a Goldman Sachs donation or actually American taxpayer bailout money Goldman set aside for community banks?

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GREG PALAST: Its not about $5,000 donation. First of all, its not a donation. The issue is about a multi-billion-dollar battle over TARP money and the finance community. Back in 2008, Goldman Sachs, which is an investment bankthat meant that all their losses were therewas turned into a commercial bank, within 24 hours, so they could qualify for $10 billion in bailout funds. But as part of the dealas part of the deal, Amy

AMY GOODMAN: And explain commercial bank.

GREG PALAST: OK, commercial bank is the types where you put in your savings, and we, the taxpayers, and the government guarantees the profits, or guarantees the solvency of that bank. So, for Goldman to get into the $10 billionto get their $10 billion check for bailout, they had to becomego from a gambling house, an investment bank, into a nice commercial bank. But they had to agree that they would then be subject to whats called the Community Reinvestment Act and return some of that money, a chunk of itmost banks put in a billion dollarsreturn a chunk of it back into low-income communities. Well, Goldman doesnt have any branches, so they gave money to the designated low-income bank of New York, Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union, andbut theyve been giving out the money in eyedroppers, like this $5,000. Now remember, its not a donation. Its a required payment under the law that they got in return for our $10 billion, OK? So its not a donation. This is mischaracterized. Its a payment required by law, with an eyedropper.

But what they are doing is starting off something very dangerous and new, which is to saythere are literally tens of billions of dollars in these funds for community reinvestment, boosted by the bailout funds. They see this as a political weapon, as a hammer to control the political discussion. These community development credit unions have been joining the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide. Its about moving your money from the big banks to the small banks. And theyre not worried about losing little deposits. What they are worried about is losing political control of the discussion. Right now, people like Paul Volcker are calling for removing the rights of banks like Goldman, now a commercial bank, to stay in the gambling trading business. Well, Goldman is very much afraid of that. So the Occupy Wall Street movement has put back on the table these issues of bank deregulation, these issues of community reinvestment.

And Goldman, I think theyre actually quite smart. They figured out, "Well, weve gottheres like a hundred billion dollars on the table here. Why dont we start saying, Youre not going to get any of it unless you dance to our tune?" And I have to tell you, from inside, it wasnt minor. It wasnt just, "Oh, takegive us back our donation money." It was legal threats saying, if youyou cannotif youre going to get our money, you may not back Occupy Wall Street and the "move your money" movement, without getting approval from us at Goldman Sachs. Thats a whole new business. So, its very dangerous, because it involves billions of dollars in public money. Its not Goldmans money. Its our money. And thats what theyre doing with it.

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Bill O’Reilly Admits That Fox News Is Waging A War Against Occupy Wall Street

By trying to defend the Fox News smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street as self-defense, Bill O’Reilly accidentally admitted that Fox is waging war on the 99%.

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Occupy Phoenix with AR-15's

J.T. Ready A Confirmed Neo Nazi Raw & Unedited

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 18:49 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:

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En AEGON.... de grootste criminelen van de lage landen

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The OccupyUSA Blog for Wednesday (Oct. 26), With Frequent Updates

1:10 Atlanta newspaper report on arrests there a few minutes ago -- including a state senator. Now they are searching tents for more. "Some of the people waiting to be arrested waved small American flags. About 40 to 50 people remained inside the park after midnight, including Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), former Atlanta city councilman Derrick Boazman and Joe Beasley, the southern regional director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Several hundred others were in the street, chanting and carrying signs. Fort was arrested around 1 a.m."

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How the Rich Subverted the Legal System and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land

..that catches the mood of America in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality—acts that destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world—without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1 percent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.

It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place.”

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OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating

Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.

Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?

The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.

Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.

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Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds

WASHINGTON — The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt.

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In its report, the budget office found that from 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income. For others in the top 20 percent of the population, average real after-tax household income grew by 65 percent.

By contrast, the budget office said, for the poorest fifth of the population, average real after-tax household income rose 18 percent.

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Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters in Oakland, Calif.


8:38 a.m. | Updated Riot police in Oakland dispersed hundreds of protesters with tear gas on Tuesday night as crowds tried to re-enter a plaza outside of City Hall that the authorities had cleared of an encampment earlier in the day.

The forceful response by the police to protesters in Oakland came as the police in Atlanta moved in early Wednesday morning to clear an encampment from the city’s central Woodruff Park. At least 53 people connected to the protest group Occupy Atlanta were arrested, and the park was cleared by 2 a.m. Eastern time, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

By Wednesday morning in downtown Oakland, a dim cloud of gas still hung in the air over Frank Ogawa Plaza, according to images broadcast on CNN. A small number of police in riot gear stood by barricades around the plaza and a handful of protesters held signs nearby.

“It sounded like bombs,” said Joaquin Jutt, 24, a digital animator who was among the protesters on Tuesday night. “There was a stinging and burning in my throat, eyes and nostrils. My eyes burned like there was hot sauce in them.”

Protesters, many affiliated with the group Occupy Oakland, can be seen scurrying away from billowing clouds of gas and what appear to be flash grenades in video recorded from a high vantage point in a nearby office building:

Occupy Oakland Protest

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 15:17 schreef popolon het volgende:
Ah, een linkdump topic is het geworden.

Maar goed, niet zo raar dat ze er wat opgepakt hebben: Hele parken werden ondergescheten, tentenkampen in openbare parken met enorm veel troep wat men dus niet netjes wist op te ruimen met als gevolg een plaag van ongedierte (raccoons, eekhoorns, ratten), verfbommen gooien naar de politie etc. Ja, zo kweek je veel sympathie!

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 16:00 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Ik ben blij dat je de drogredenen even opsomt die gebruikt worden om democratie af te schaffen.

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 16:17 schreef Bananenman het volgende:

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Wat zijn precies de drogredenen volgens jou en wat heeft dit met democratie te maken?