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

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 11:13 schreef PalmRoyale het volgende:
Het heeft idd fascistische trekken. Als de politie zo doorgaat dan kunnen ze als een binnenlandse agressor gezien worden en dan hebben de betogers het grondwettelijke recht om wapens tegen hen op te nemen.

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 17:08 schreef PalmRoyale het volgende:
Ik hoop het ook niet maar het zou me niks verbazen dat gewapende milities zich bij de beweging aansluiten als de politie zo doorgaat. Ze slaan nu nog op vreedzame betogers in maar als dat gebeurd en ze goed getrainde gewapende milities tegenover zich hebben dan piepen ze wel anders.

Het is in ieder geval wel duidelijk dat het politieke en sociale landschap aan het veranderen is. De gevestigde orde voelt zich langzaam maar zeker in het nauw gedreven en zal nog hele rare sprongen maken in een poging hun macht te behouden.

Gingrich on OWS

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 18:59 schreef PalmRoyale het volgende:
Het is bekend dat vele milities in de VS een grote afkeer hebben van de overheid en sommige van de meer extreme milities zijn bereid de grondwet met hun leven te verdedigen. Als het georganiseerde geweld tegen de beweging door blijft gaan zou dat het excuus zijn wat ze nodig hebben om met wapens tegen de overheid te vechten.

Ik hoop en denk niet dat het zal gebeuren maar het is wel degelijk een reeël gevaar.

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Occupy wall street Oakland neemt bezit van een nieuwe locatie

Anti-Wall Street protesters in Oakland pushed down a chain-link fence surrounding a city-owned vacant lot where they planned a new encampment.

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 19:07 schreef Barbusse het volgende:

[..]

Denk je dat de gewone mensen van Occupy, arbeiders en studenten, daar wat tegen zouden kunnen doen? Want zoiets kan natuurlijk nooit de bedoeling zijn.

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 15:05 schreef J0kkebr0k het volgende:

Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis

Wat een smeerlappen om die jongeren zo te pepperen.

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Op zondag 20 november 2011 19:07 schreef Barbusse het volgende:

[..]

Denk je dat de gewone mensen van Occupy, arbeiders en studenten, daar wat tegen zouden kunnen doen? Want zoiets kan natuurlijk nooit de bedoeling zijn.

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US Occupy: officers in pepper spray incident placed on leave

YouTube footage from University of California, Davis protest sparks investigation as Occupy protests spread across state

Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in pepper spraying seated protesters are being placed on administrative leave as the chancellor of the school accelerates the investigation into the incident.

Chancellor Linda Katehi said she has been inundated with reaction over the incident, in which an officer dispassionately fired pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators.

Video of the incident was circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, and the university's faculty association called on Katehi to resign, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership".

Katehi said she takes "full responsibility for the incident" but has resisted calls for her resignation, instead pledging to take actions to make sure "that this does not happen again".However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force "fairly standard police procedure".

In the video, an officer dispassionately pepper-sprays a line of sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed with batons by police on 9 November.

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques, Kelly said.

Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq war veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Oregon.

Some of the most notorious instances went viral online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of women in New York. Seattle's mayor apologised to the activist, and the New York Police Department official shown using pepper spray on the group of women lost 10 vacation days after an internal review.

In the video of this week's UC Davis protest, the officer, a member of the university police force, displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but several are hit directly in the face. Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, "Shame on you," as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.

Ten people were arrested at the protest. Nine students hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene, two were taken to hospitals and later released, university officials said.Elsewhere in California, police arrested six Occupy San Francisco protesters early on Sunday and dismantled a tent encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Officer Albie Esparza said police and city crews took down about 12 tents. The six were arrested on charges of interfering with officers.

The raid came several hours after police and public works crews removed dozens of tents from the nearby Occupy camp at Justin Herman Plaza.

Earlier, several hundred protesters in Oakland tore down a chain-link fence surrounding a city-owned vacant lot and set up a new encampment five days after their main camp near City Hall was torn down.

"They obviously don't want us at the plaza downtown. We might as well make this space useful," Chris Skantz, 23, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Occupy Oakland protesters breached the fence and poured into the lot next to the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue, police said in a statement.

The protesters passed a line of police surrounding the lot without a struggle, used wire cutters to take down the fence and pulled down "no trespassing" signs, the Chronicle reported.

Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said surrounding streets had been closed and officers were protecting nearby buildings

Watson said there had been no arrests or citations, but the city's position remains that no camping will be allowed and protesters cannot stay overnight.

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NYPD cops block Occupy Wall Street protestors from drumming outside Mayor Bloomberg’s townhouse

Occupy Wall Street protesters who were kicked out of their downtown “home” last week moved uptown Sunday, to lay siege to Mayor Bloomberg’s swank Upper East Side townhouse with drumming and chanting.

But cops closed down the block, one of the city’s most exclusive, forcing Bloomberg’s neighbors on E. 79th St. between Fifth and Madison to show ID to get past barricades.

City Hall officials did not say if the billionaire mayor was home to hear the commotion.

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‘Anonymous’ targets pepper-spraying policeman

The online “hacktivist” group Anonymous published the personal contact details on Monday of a California university policeman who used pepper spray on protesters, and it urged supporters to flood him with phone calls and emails.

YouTube videos of Friday’s incident on the campus of theUniversity of California, Davis have gone viral and led to the suspension of the college police chief, two police officers and calls for the chancellor to step down.

In the YouTube videos, one of which has received 1.44 million views, two university police officers in riot gear are seen spraying an orange mist on protesters sitting peacefully on the ground.

Following the spraying, the crowd begins chanting “Shame on you!”

A YouTube video on Monday purportedly from Anonymous published the home address, the home telephone number, the cellphone number and the email address of one of the policeman who allegedly used the pepper spray on protestors.

In the video, an artificially altered voice tells the “police forces of the world” that “brutalization of our citizens is both unjust and uncalled for.”

Specifically addressing the officer involved in the Davis incident, it said: “You are a coward, and a bully.”

“Flood his phones, email and mailbox to voice your anger,” it said.

A call to the cellphone number listed identified it as that of the police officer involved and said his voicemail box was full.

Anonymous has been involved in scores of hacking exploits including the recent defacing of a website of Syria’s Ministry of Defense to protest a bloody crackdown on anti-government protestors.

Last year, the shadowy group launched retaliatory attacks on companies perceived to be enemies of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

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Op woensdag 19 oktober 2011 21:35 schreef arucard het volgende:
Ik bedoel, het is toch logisch dat er arrestaties plaatsvinden, als je duizenden mensen op een kluitje hebt voor 3 weken.

twitter:

allisonkilkenny twitterde op dinsdag 22-11-2011 om 17:07:39 RT @JeffSharlet: Egyptian activists ask Americans to go to Zuccotti Park for solidarity Tahrir Square at 3 pm today. #ows reageer retweet

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/22/pregnant-seattle-protester-miscarries-after-being-kicked-pepper-sprayed/

A woman who was pepper sprayed during during a raid on Occupy Seattle last week is blaming police after she miscarried Sunday.

Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.

“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’”

She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.

“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.

Seattle fire department spokesman Kyle Moore told The Washington Post that a 19-year-old pregnant woman was among those that were examined by paramedics.

While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.

“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.

When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.

“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.

“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”

The Scoville heat chart indicates that U.S. grade pepper spray is ten times more painful than the blistering hot habanero pepper, according to Scientific American. While law enforcement officials regulary claim that the spray is safe, researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University found that it could “produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.”

Seattle Police Attack Pregnant Jennifer Fox Aftermath

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Bill O'Reilly On UC Davis Pepper Spray: We Shouldn't Second-Guess Police (VIDEO)

First Posted: 11/22/11 08:27 AM ET Updated: 11/22/11 11:01 AM ET

Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly discussed the shocking pepper-spray incident that rocked the UC Davis campus on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor."

Kelly called the pepper spray "a food product, essentially," but both wondered whether the particular mix the campus police used to repeatedly spray student protesters had been diluted. "A lot of experts are looking at that and saying, is this the real deal?" Kelly said, though she added that the spray was "obviously abrasive and intrusive."

She then said that it was not clear that the police had overstepped their boundaries, since they were trying to disperse a crowd practicing civil disobedience.

"I know that the tape looks bad," she said. "I agree it looks bad. All I'm saying is from a legal standpoint, I don't know that the cops did anything wrong."

O'Reilly was a tad less nuanced in his comments. "I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," he said.

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Reporters For Right-Wing Publication Daily Caller Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters

The right-wing Daily Caller website has been anything but kind to Occupy Wall Street, even going so far as to condemn the protest movement as generating riots, murder, and arson.

But when a couple of Daily Caller employees were at Occupy Wall Street this morning, it was the very protesters they had been demonizing who ended up helping them out. Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields — who faced off with actor Matt Damon earlier this year over education policy — and videographer Direna Cousins both claim they were attacked by the New York Police Department (NYPD) while covering the raucous protests in the Financial District today. Fields added that Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately came up to her to offer their help:

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Op dinsdag 22 november 2011 20:19 schreef Chooselife het volgende:
Nog even en pepperspray is groente. Let maar op.

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Politie New York moet media ongestoord laten werken

De politie in New York mag vertegenwoordigers van de media niet op onredelijke wijze lastigvallen tijdens hun werk. Die boodschap van hoofdcommissaris Raymond Kelly is gisteren voorgelezen op alle politiebureaus in de Amerikaanse stad.

De mededeling volgt op de arrestatie van verschillende journalisten die de protesten versloegen van de beweging Occupy Wall Street. Sommigen waren, samen met betogers, opgepakt terwijl ze zich bevonden op privéterrein. Dat is volgens Kelly voortaan uitdrukkelijk verboden, tenzij de eigenaar van het perceel de politie vraagt in te grijpen.

Protestbrief
Na de arrestatie van ten minste zes journalisten ontving de politie vorige week een gemeenschappelijke protestbrief van verschillende mediabedrijven, waaronder het persbureau AP, dat een verslaggever en een fotograaf opgepakt zag worden. 'Het politieoptreden was vijandiger tegenover de pers dan bij elke andere gebeurtenis uit het recente verleden', stond onder meer in de brief.

Vertegenwoordigers van onder meer AP, de New York Times, de New York Post en de Daily News hebben gisteren een gesprek gevoerd met hoofdcommissaris Kelly. In de dienstmededeling die op de bureaus is voorgelezen, staat onder meer dat de politie in haar omgang met de media 'de principes van een vrije pers en een geïnformeerde burgerij' moet respecteren.

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Occupy Seattle occupies Wal-Mart

On Friday, November 25th, Occupy Seattle will join Occupy Tacoma, Occupy Bellingham and Occupy Everett in a statewide protest at Wal-Mart in Renton at 2:00pm.

With its long history of mistreating workers and suppliers, its recent announcement of significant cutbacks on employee health care, and its obscene profits, Wal-Mart is a prime example of how the 99% are suffering at the hands of the 1%.

Wal-Mart is the largest corporation in the world and proof positive of how big business is destructive to our democracy. While Americans are shopping at Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart is buying Congress. Last year, Wal-Mart paid over $4.3 million in campaign contributions (not to mention the monies funneled through donations to lobbying organizations) to protect its interests.

Unfortunately, its interests are not those of its employees. With $14.3 billion in profits in 2010, Wal-Mart still saw fit to eliminate health insurance coverage for part time employees, cut company contributions to employee health savings accounts by 50% and increase health care premiums 17% to 61% for over 2.1 million employees worldwide. According to an article in the Huffington Post, the average Wal-Mart worker makes $8.81 per hour, while the CEO makes $8990.00 per hour.

The Walton family (the largest shareholders of Wal-Mart stock and descendants of its founder) is the wealthiest family in the United States with an estimated net worth of $92 billion (according to Forbes’ latest ranking). That’s more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined. They directly gave $7,000,000 in political contributions in 2010 and billions more through their family foundations in an effort to buy our legislative process.

twitter:

Anon_Central twitterde op vrijdag 25-11-2011 om 09:59:56 #DirectAction call to all #Occupy Movements on Twitter || Lets trend #OccupyBlackFriday! ty @OWS_Live Full support from #Anonymous! reageer retweet

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The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

_{Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 17.25 GMT
Article history}

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

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Dear Michael: Shut Down The Protests Now (An Email From Goldman Sachs’ CEO to Bloomberg)

Dear Michael Bloomberg:

You must shut down these protests, they are creating a negative psychology. We need the people to remain submissive to the financial doctrine and I am sure you understand this. Our business has been suffering from the political pressures abroad and now political pressures at home are making the future seem very bleak.

Goldman Sachs needs political stability and we count on you to bring back this stability to the city of New York. I am sure you understand the consequences of a prolonged people’s movement: less shopping, less consumption, less submission, less control. You and I know that protests kill the consumerist drive because they give the common people a new outlet for their emotions, shut this new outlet before it’s too late.

You need to squash these protestors, you need to wipe them out by any means necessary. Change the laws if you must, change the rules, change the platform. The longer the protestors stay in the streets, the bigger the dent will be in the common people’s consumption habits.

I have full confidence in you Michael as a prominent businessman, I am sure you know what will happen if consumption goes down, we will lose massive amounts of capital.

We know you understand this and we put our trust and confidence in you you. Let’s get rid of these street urchins, let’s bring back business as usual. Let’s create harmony and passive peace so that our businesses can grow, yours and ours.



Lloyd Blankfein

Goldman Sachs’ CEO

November 12th, 2011

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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Propose A National Convention, Release Potential Demands

WASHINGTON -- While an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters flooded into Times Square on Saturday, there was still a regular New York general assembly at 7 p.m. During that meeting, according to sources who contacted The Huffington Post, the Zuccotti Park General Assembly -- though at a reduced presence due to the Times Square march -- saw the formation of a new working group.

This “Demands Working Group” then immediately “established a website and fairly educated/articulated list of solutions.” A separate group out of Zuccotti Park has also been working on a list of possible proposals, but a member of the Education and Empowerment Working Group said he suspects the Demands Working Group’s list might become the national platform.

They’ve posted the list online but they’ve also made this announcement under the radar -- a national convention to be held July 4, 2012:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

Their plan includes to elect delegates by direct vote, one male and one female per each of the 435 Congressional Districts. The office would be open to any United States citizen over the age of 18. The 870 delegates would then compose a petition of grievances that would be non-partisan.

The posted “demands” are only a working list of “suggestions,” however. Number one and two are a ban on private contributions to politicians seeking or holding federal office and instead public financing for campaigns, and a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.

The list then goes on to suggest single-payer national health care, immediate passage of the DREAM Act, a jobs plan, a deficit reduction plan and recalling military personnel at all non-essential bases.

The movement would also reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, increase regulation and increase taxes by way of eliminating corporate tax loopholes.

The idea of coming up with a list of demands has been controversial among protesters.

David Sauvage, who directs videos for the Occupy Wall Street protests and supports the movement, said he viewed demands as being too similar to talking points.

But Daniel Lerner, a physicist and member of the Demands Working Group, argued to Mother Jones that their demands would have wide appeal.

In their list, however, they close with one last warning: if Congress, the President and the Supreme Court do not act on the settled grievances the movement eventually comes up with, its members are prepared to form a third, independent political party to run in every Congressional seat in 2014 and 2016.

Update at 10:50 a.m.: As mentioned above, the working group's suggestions and website have not been adopted by the movement as a whole, or approved by the NYC General Assembly as a whole. The debate over whether or not to even have "demands" within the Occupy Wall Street movement has continued.

One person involved, Andy Stepanian, told HuffPost that this particular declaration has not been approved by the General Assembly in New York and so it can't be said this reflects the movement's feelings as a whole.

"Everyone is entitled to make their own blog or website to post their opinions about how OWS should operate or what they think the OWS demands should be, this 99% group is no different," Stepanian said in an email. "However, all of OWS's official statements are agreed upon by way of consensus-based general assemblies. This matter was not submitted or agreed upon by the NYC general assembly, and therefore by-passed the process all OWS plans have been made through."

So far, the General Assembly has accepted a "Declaration of the Occupation" back on Sept. 29.

"Demands have come up before," wrote Ryan Hoffman in another email to HuffPost. "They were shot down vociferously under the argument that demands are for terrorists and that is not who we are. From that debate however, another proposal was passed: that we table all talk of demands until future notice! Therefore, any talk about demands, posts of demands, etc. are null and void. We already tabled those discussions using consensus."

Hoffman said the Declaration took a while to edit and revise with everyone putting in their own contributions and ideas before they could arrive at a final product the group agreed on. He explained that the General Assemblies have set up an entire process by which something like these "demands" could be agreed to, but the way this working group bypassed the process has caused some frustration.

"There is a 'demands working group' out there right now," Hoffman said, adding that the way they met in secret with The New York Times infuriated many members of the General Assembly. "There is a lot of internal dissent due to the manner in which this group was created and conducted its meetings."

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Op zondag 27 november 2011 11:10 schreef deelnemer het volgende:
Dat briefje is niet echt Papierversnipperaar .

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Op zondag 27 november 2011 18:39 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Het zou echt moeten zijn

bill maher on The Wealth Gap in America and the World 12-03-2011

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Occupy L.A.: More than 200 arrested in peaceful sweep

Without resorting to large-scale violence, Los Angeles police successfully cleared out the Occupy L.A. camp at City Hall early Wednesday, managing to avoid fierce confrontations that marred sweeps in Oakland and New York.

Hundreds of police officers swarmed the large camp at City Hall’s south lawn shortly after midnight, encircling the demonstrators in less than 10 minutes. By quickly establishing a perimeter, police managed to take control of the scene in the first moments of engagement.

No tear gas was used in the shutdown of what was the nation's largest remaining Occupy camp. More than 200 people were arrested in the operation that involved 1,400 officers.

“They were like storm troopers. They encircled us,” said protester Cheryl Aichele, who was sitting in the middle of the south lawn in a circle with other protesters when police first entered the camp.

The protesters largely kept to their promise of confronting the police peacefully. While some taunted police verbally and a few rocks were thrown, most protesters either left on their own or nonviolently submitted to arrest, with many going limp and forcing the police to carry them out.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck was satisfied in the first few moments after the raid.

“That was the hardest part,” Beck said of the first rush of officers into the park. “That first contact: You learn if your officers are going to break ranks and if people are going to get physical. It went as well as we could have expected.”

In a matter of minutes, officers poured out of City Hall and from streets in all directions, encircling the park as protesters linked arms and chanted, "We are peaceful" and "We are the 99%."
It was a stark departure from old LAPD crowd control techniques, Beck said. In years past, police would have used a single skirmish line to sweep through the park and push people out.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appeared proud and relieved after the eviction, and thanked officers in a brief predawn news conference.

“I said that here in L.A., we’d chart a different path. And we did,” Villaraigosa said.

Speaking with the mayor, Beck said he had established a relationship with the protesters early on in the seven-week demonstration.

Most protesters seemed to eschew violence, and downtown did not see any of the violence of the kind that erupted in Oakland last month, when protesters started fires, police used tear gas and some protesters suffered serious injuries.

By early Wednesday, the last remaining protesters had holed up in a palm tree just outside Villaraigosa's office. The protesters smoked cigars as they joked with police, at one point asking police to bring them beer.

The moment spoke to the generally light tone of the eviction. Moments before police entered the park, protesters were setting off fireworks. After they entered, a man who refused to leave told an officer: "If you give me a hug, I will leave right now."

"Are you serious?" the officer asked with a smile. He appeared for a moment ready to comply, but then moved away.

Still, there were some moments of tension. A confrontation built early in the evening on the corner of 1st Street and Broadway, where a crowd approaching from the west, seeking to join protesters at City Hall, was stopped by a line of police wearing face masks and armed with batons.

On Main Street, one protester yelled at police: "Remember your mother! You're not here to beat up citizens."

Twenty-eight-year-old Sam Gray, an Army veteran, said he is angry that the city "took its word back."

"I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and in my opinion, the police are trampling on it," he said.

Toward the end of the operation, a large group of protesters that had locked arms in the middle of the south lawn chanted to police making arrests: “You’re sexy. You’re cute. Take off your riot suit.”

Earlier in the night, at the police staging area outside Dodger Stadium, a supervisor told a group of officers that they needed to be prepared for some protesters to fight back.

"They've got a bunch of concrete gravel and other [things] they're going to throw at us," he said. "Please put your face masks down and watch each other's back."

Amid fears protesters had stored urine and feces to throw at officers, some were wearing white protective body suits.

The conclusion of the raid marked the end of a two-month tent city that the City Council initially welcomed, with then-Council President Eric Garcetti telling protesters they could "stay as long as you need."

But city leaders began withdrawing their support as the demonstrators seemed determined to stay indefinitely.

By 5 a.m., the protest site was in shambles, and what was left of the tents was strewn across the ground.

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Philadelphia police force occupy protesters out, arrest dozens

Occupy Philadelphia has been cleared out of Dilworth Plaza next to City Hall. The eviction came more than two days after a city-imposed deadline for getting protesters to leave.

Civil Affairs Captain William Fisher read out the warnings shortly after 1 a.m., telling protesters they would be arrested if they refused to leave. The protesters split into two groups, one staying near City Hall, the other taking police on a two hour march through much of Center City. Eventually about 50 protesters were arrested.

Gwen Snyder of Occupy says even though they have been evicted their fight isn't over. "We'll continue to fight for economic justice in this country and this world and we will continue to do it whatever happens, that's what we've said and that's what we will continue to say," said Snyder.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey was pleased with his officers and how they handled the protesters. "We work with people the best we can but sometimes people cross the line and wind up getting arrested," said Ramsey.

Sanitation and fire department workers joined together to clean up the plaza and power wash it with fire hoses to prepare for the $50 million renovation of Dilworth Plaza.

UPDATE 8 a.m.:

The Associated Press reports that near 50 protesters have now been arrested.

More than 40 Occupy Philadelphia protesters were arrested overnight outside City Hall as police moved in to enforce the eviction notice given last week.

After reading warnings starting at 1 a.m., officers moved in to arrest people who would not leave Dilworth Plaza. Four men and two women were taken into custody about 3 a.m. The city wants the protesters out so a long-planned $50 million dollar renovation can move forward.

As officers moved in to make arrests, many Occupy protesters left and starting marching through the streets. About 5 a.m. police arrested about 40 more people near 15th and Hamilton Streets. Police still did not have exact arrest numbers.

A splinter group of Occupy Philadelphia has taken out a permit for daytime protests at Paine Plaza, across the street from the original location. But many members did not want to move to the new location since the permit bars them from camping overnight. They say without a 24 hour presence the "occupy" part of the movement would be lost.

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Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

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When a riot squad from the New York Police Department destroyed and evicted the Occupy Wall Street protest encampment at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, department leadership drew on the anti-terror tactics they had refined since the 9/11 attacks. According to the New York Times, the NYPD deployed counterterrorism measures to mobilize large numbers of cops for the lightning raid on Zuccotti. The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the country against the nationwide Occupy movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon.

Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police forces have received from Israels military-intelligence apparatus, and the profuse levels of gratitude American police chiefs have expressed to their Israeli mentors, it is worth asking how much Israeli instruction has influenced the way the police have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much it will inform police repression of future upsurges of street protest. But already, the Israelification of American law enforcement appears to have intensified police hostility towards the civilian population, blurring the lines between protesters, common criminals, and terrorists. As Dichter said, they are all just crimiterrorists.

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Farmers Join Occupy Wall Street, Calling for Food Justice

As Wall Street’s corrupt influence on the economy has grown, the corporate ownership of our food system has hurt the health and livelihood’s of some of our most vulnerable communities. This Sunday, December 4th food justice activists and occupiers will be traveling from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York to join together for the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH.Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply.

Events throughout the day will call and inspire participants to fight against the corporate manipulation of the agriculture system. An industry that is responsible for using chemical toxins tied to soaring obesity rates, heart disease and diabetes and limiting access to affordable, wholesome food to the country’s poorest citizens.

The event will kick off at 2pm at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardenwith a musical performance followed by remarks from food justice activists and occupiers. They will share their stories and listen to their peers as they highlight the role of urban-rural solidarity in building a sustainable food system as well as challenges of family-scale farmers in a culture of corporate dominance.

At 4pm, musicians will be among those leading the Farmers’ March in a colorful parade from La Plaza to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza, the site of a Solidarity Circle at 5pm. Stories of struggle, triumph and ruminations about the role OWS might assume in the food justice movement will help form the circle. The circle will close with a Seed Exchange.

Participants are encouraged to express their dissent creatively, donning fruits hats, wearing burlap sacks, carrying brightly colored signs and moving in time to the beat of the drums.

Please join us, farmers, ranchers, farm workers, urban gardeners, foodies and supporters of all kinds in the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH.

Speakers will include:

George Na ylor - Iowa farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition. Karen Washington - Founder of City Farms Market and board member at NYC based organization Just Food. Jim Gerritsen - Maine based farmer who was named one of 20 world visionaries by Utne Reader in 2011 and is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Monsanto.

Severine von Tscharner - Food advocate and producer of the film “Green Horns”, profiling young farmer entrepreneurs. Jim Goodman - Wisconson Farmer, organizer of the tractorcade to Madison to speak out against Governer Walker’s union legislation. Jalal Sabur - Founding member of the Freedom Food Alliance and advocate working on the alliance of black urban communities with black rural farmers. Mike Callicrate - Colorado cattle rancher, entrepreneur and rural advocate . Andrew Faust - World renowned permaculture expert and educator.

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Yasha Levine Released From Jail, Exposes LAPD’s Appalling Treatment of Detained Occupy LA Protesters…

I finally got home Thursday afternoon after spending two nights in jail, and have had a hard time getting my bearings. On top of severe dehydration and sleep deprivation, I’ve got one hell of pounding migraine. So I’ll have to keep this brief for now. But I wanted to write down a few things that I witnessed and heard while locked up by LA’s finest…

First off, don’t believe the PR bullshit. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD’s attack on Occupy LA–not unless you think that people peacefully protesting against the power of the financial oligarchy deserve to be treated the way I saw Russian cops treating the protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg who were demonstrating against the oligarchy under Putin and Yeltsin, before we at The eXiled all got tossed out in 2008. Back then, everyone in the West protested and criticized the way the Russian cops brutally snuffed out dissent, myself included. Now I’m in America, at a demonstration, watching exactly the same brutal crackdown…

While people are now beginning to learn that the police attack on Occupy LA was much more violent than previously reported, few actually realize that much—if not most—of the abuse happened while the protesters were in police custody, completely outside the range of the press and news media. And the disgraceful truth is that a lot of the abuse was police sadism, pure and simple:

* I heard from two different sources that at least one busload of protesters (around 40 people) was forced to spend seven excruciating hours locked in tiny cages on a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept. prison bus, denied food, water and access to bathroom facilities. Both men and women were forced to urinate in their seats. Meanwhile, the cops in charge of the bus took an extended Starbucks coffee break.

* The bus that I was shoved into didn’t move for at least an hour. The whole time we listened to the screams and crying from a young woman whom the cops locked into a tiny cage at the front of the bus. She was in agony, begging and pleading for one of the policemen to loosen her plastic handcuffs. A police officer sat a couple of feet away the entire time that she screamed–but wouldn’t lift a finger.

* Everyone on my bus felt her pain–literally felt it. That’s because the zip-tie handcuffs they use—like the ones you see on Iraq prisoners in Abu Ghraib—cut off your circulation and wedge deep through your skin, where they can do some serious nerve damage, if that’s the point. And it did seem to be the point. A couple of guys around me were writhing in agony in their hard plastic seats, hands handcuffed behind their back.

* The 100 protesters in my detainee group were kept handcuffed with their hands behind their backs for 7 hours, denied food and water and forced to sit/sleep on a concrete floor. Some were so tired they passed out face down on the cold and dirty concrete, hands tied behind their back. As a result of the tight cuffs, I wound up losing sensation in my left palm/thumb and still haven’t recovered it now, a day and a half after they finally took them off.

* One seriously injured protester, who had been shot with a shotgun beanbag round and had an oozing bloody welt the size of a grapefruit just above his elbow, was denied medical attention for five hours. Another young guy, who complained that he thought his arm had been broken, was not given medical attention for at least as long. Instead, he spent the entire pre-booking procedure handcuffed to a wall, completely spaced out and staring blankly into space like he was in shock.

* An Occupy LA demonstrator in his 50s who was in my cell block in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center told us all about when a police officer forced him to take a shit with his hands handcuffed behind his back, which made pulling down his pants and sitting down on the toilet extremely difficult and awkward. And he had to do this in sight of female police officers, all of which made him feel extremely ashamed, to say the least.

* There were two vegetarians and one vegan in my cell. When I left jail around 1:30 pm, they still had not been given food, despite the fact that they were constantly being promised that it would come.

* There were 292 people arrested at Occupy LA. About 75 of them have been released or have gotten out on bail, according the National Lawyers Guild. Most are still inside, slapped with $5,000 to $10,000 bail. According to a bail bondsman I know, this is unprecedented. Misdemeanors are almost always released on their own recognizance, which means that they don’t pay any bail at all. Or at most it’s a $100.

* That means the harsh, long detentions are meant to be are a purely punitive measure against Occupy LA protesters–an order that had to come from the very top.

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Occupy Oakland: police use teargas after protesters force port to close

Police in Oakland use teargas on three separate occasions as tensions flare after protesters occupied building during protest

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Op dinsdag 22 november 2011 19:47 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Seattle Police Attack Pregnant Jennifer Fox Aftermath

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Meer dan dertig Occupy manifestanten opgepakt in Washington.

In Washington heeft de politie 31 mensen opgepakt bij een operatie in het kamp van de protestbeweging tegen Wall Street. Het kamp zelf werd niet ontruimd.

Tientallen politieagenten trokken naar het kamp nabij het Witte Huis om een door de betogers opgetrokken houten chalet te ontmantelen. De operatie leidde tot een urenlange zenuwoorlog tussen de politie en de ongeveer 400 betogers. Daarbij pakte de politie manifestanten op die de afgezette zone betraden of weigerden te gehoorzamen aan politiebevelen.

De politie ontruimde het hoofdstedelijke kamp van de Occupy Wall Street-beweging niet. Ook de kampen in Boston en Pittsburg ontsnappen voorlopig aan ontruimingen. In New York is het kamp midden november ontmanteld en in Los Angeles en Pittsburg zijn de antikapitalistische betogers vorige week uit hun kampen verwijderd.

West Coast port shutdown announcement video.mov

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the next phase of occupy wall street: Occupy the universities

Once upon a time, our colleges and universities in the United States were forces for progressive social change. I'm not sure that's the case any longer. As someone who has been on the inside of higher education now for over 15 years, I see our universities more and more becoming tools of the corporatocracy.

Recently, my own college decided to toss 2/3s of the entire philosophy collection of our library (apparently the ability to think critically is no longer required in the United States). This compelled me to write a post about "The University as Corporation:"

http://www.michaelsrusso.(...)-as-corporation.html

Needless to say, the post didnt win me any fans among our administrators (or even among many of our faculty, for that matter).

I really do believe that the next phase of Occupy Wall Street has to involve an effort to radicalize students and reclaim the academy for what it was originally intended to provide the kind of education that actually empowers students and teaches them to think critically about our social problems. I really dont think that we are doing this any longer.

Id like to know what other people think about this. Have American colleges and universities become so corrupted by American capitalism that they are beyond hope at this point?

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Op zaterdag 3 december 2011 12:32 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

Ik heb voor mijn werk (bij een universiteit nota bene) ook wel eens meegeschreven aan een stuk waarvan de uitkomst al vooraf vast stond. De opdrachtgever wilde een bepaalde uitkomst en daar hebben wij een economisch verhaal omheen getimmerd.

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Op maandag 5 december 2011 13:21 schreef Viajero het volgende:

[..]

Leuk dilemma voor extreem rechts Amerika. Wat is belangrijker, de haat tegen hippies of het beschermen ongeboren leven?