Mass rallies and muzzled media: 2 months of OWS

16.11, 02:52

You could say Occupy Wall Street started with a whisper - a call by Canadian activist group Adbusters that spread on Facebook to gather on September 17, 2011.

Occupy Wall Street 16.11, 01:51

Anger and disappointment is erupting from New York City this afternoon, after a judge ruled that Occupy Wall Street protesters must discontinue camping at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.

Occupy Wall Street 14.11, 20:58

Nearly 60 days after the Occupy Wall Street movement began, cops across the country cracked down on encampments in Oakland, Albany and cities in-between over the weekend, in a series of events perhaps the most detrimental to the movement so far.

Occupy Wall Street 11.11, 01:12

While Republican attitudes towards Occupy Wall Street protesters have been largely negative, GOP hopeful Ron Paul aligned himself with those participating in the movement during last night’s televised presidential debate.

US Election 2012 Occupy Wall Street 08.11, 22:37

The Occupy Wall Street protests may have already spread to cities across the world, but the movement’s next major migration will be easy to see if you're on the East Coast anytime soon. Protesters are taking the movement on the road — literally.

Occupy Wall Street //

Published: 17 November, 2011, 10:37

A nearly empty Zuccotti Park November 16, 2011 as some Occupy Wall Street protesters return to the park in New York after being evicted early November 15 (AFP Photo / Stan HONDA)

(34.4Mb) embed video
To include this chart in your web page, paste the following HTML tag into your web page HTML:

TAGS: Scandal, Protest, Politics, Human rights, Law, Mass media, USA, Cary Johnston, Economy, Lucy Kafanov

Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York have returned to the epicenter of the movement, Zuccotti Park, but without their tents and sleeping bags. Massive rallies are expected to resume throughout the United States.

­They were told they could stay, but they cannot camp, after police in riot gear evicted protesters on Tuesday night, citing health and safety issues.

It was part of a country-wide wave of raids on protesters, which activists say was a move to stifle their activities before the movement's two-month mark.

Radio host Alex Jones believes the apparent “health hazard” reasons given for the evictions was a set-up from the start, and an effort to demonize the very idea of protests in the US.

“I’ve discovered in Austin and in Detroit – as well as New York, we’ve confirmed – that when they let homeless people out, who’ve been arrested for being drunk in public or sleeping on the sidewalk, or they release people from prison or homeless shelters, or mental institutions, they tell them: ‘Go to Austin Occupy, go to New York Occupy – we won’t arrest you there’,” he told RT.

“So for the last month they’ve been sending all the homeless people and mentally ill people and prisoners there, so they can then demonize it and say: ‘Look, people are going to the bathroom on the ground, fights are breaking out, there are robberies,” Jones went on to explain. “Now, they are in the business of demonizing it, infiltrating it, to try to manufacture on dig up dirt on them as a way to generally demonize all forms of protest in the country.”

It is not yet clear whether protesters will be able to turn out in massive numbers across the country, given all the recent police raids. If they do, however, that would mean that the US authorities have to deal with a much stronger force than they might have expected.

RT’s producer Lucy Kafanov has spoken to several protesters in New York City, who said that they were prepared and even expecting to get arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. They are going to try to take over Wall Street around the New York Stock Exchange area and stage a mass sit-in.

More actions are planned throughout the day. By 5 pm local time (22:00 GMT), a massive rally with unions is expected to take place in the area, culminating in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge – the scene of last month’s dramatic events, when 700 protesters were arrested by police.

­The level of media clampdown related to the OWS protests seems to remain as high as it has been. The raid in Zuccotti Park saw several journalists arrested. Police reportedly ripped off the credentials of one NBC reporter and asked the CBS news helicopter to clear the airspace so that journalists would not capture images of the events.

RT’s Lucy Kafanov has witnessed personally or was told by fellow journalists about various incidents in which reporters were practically kicked off the scene, prevented from filming and deliberately targeted in some places in various cities throughout the country where OWS protests took place.

An RT crew has also managed to capture images of police officers using in certain instances high-power strobe lights in order to blind video-cameras and prevent journalists from fulfilling their professional duties.

Today: 07:09

Russian lawmaker and foreign policy architect Konstantin Kosachev thinks that Russia is “probably one of the very few, or maybe the only country, which maintains dialogue both with Assad and with the opposition.”

Syria unrest Today: 11:43

Its hour has struck and the eurozone's second-most stable economy, the Netherlands, is beginning to feel the first hand effects of contagion, with the previous apathy among its taxpayers quickly giving way to animosity.

Eurozone crisis

View the original article here

'Coordinated media attack against Syria will continue'

03.11, 17:12

The Syrian government has agreed to an Arab League peace plan to end almost eight months of unrest that has left scores dead. However, with the opposition against any initiative that would leave Assad in power, the country remains as divided as ever.

Syria unrest 31.10, 22:00

There is a conspiracy involving regional powers that is aimed at overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria, warned Beirut-based political analyst Kamel Al Wazne.

Syria unrest 28.10, 19:36

With 37 people reportedly killed by Syrian security forces in anti-government protests on Friday, opposition activists are now urging protesters to rally for a no-fly zone over the country – a move tantamount to foreign intervention.

Arab world protests 25.10, 12:22

The economic sanctions which are having a harsh impact on the Syrian population highlight a clear contradiction in the West’s approach to Syria, insists Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem.

Syria unrest 21.10, 17:26

The unrest engulfing Syria is mirrored in the internet with a PR-civil-war. While some videos show “atrocious bandits”, others opt for “atrocious army men”. And none shows what ordinary Syrians live through.

Syria unrest 19.10, 11:45

The unrest engulfing Syria is descending into all-out conflict, with the growing violence claiming lives on both sides.

Arab world protests //

Published: 03 November, 2011, 20:14

A huge Syrian flag carried by demonstrators on November 3, 2011 (AFP Photo / HO-Sana)

(51.0Mb) embed video
To include this chart in your web page, paste the following HTML tag into your web page HTML:

TAGS: Conflict, Meeting, Military, Middle East, Protest, Human rights, Mass media, Iraq, Libya, War, Syria

While the Syrian government has agreed to an Arab league proposal that could put a stop to nearly eight months of violence, independent journalist James Corbert argues a media campaign is underway to help overthrow the Syrian government.

­According to Colbert, human rights groups are being used as a front to destabilize the Syrian government. He sees a link between Syria and Libya, where a stream of unverifiable stories were used to undermine the Gaddafi regime.

“The latest example in fact is just breaking now, is that apparently they’re trying to say that the ceasefire has already been broken by Syrian troops firing on citizens,” he says.

The Syrian opposition rejected the Arab League peace plan for Syria on Thursday amid claims that some 20 people had been killed in and around the city of Homs since Tuesday.  

The opposition continued that the overthrow of the current regime was a precondition for talks with the government.    

Corbert also drew attention to one London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported last August that babies in incubators were being harmed when power was cut off in the city of Hama.  

He draws a parallel between this claim and accusations made prior to the 1991 US Invasion of Iraq, whereby Iraqi soldiers allegedly stormed a Kuwait city hospital and took babies out of incubators, leaving them to die on the floor.

The story of the babies being snatched from incubators was repeated both before the US Congress and at the UN Security Council in the run up to the Gulf War. The claim, based on the hand-written testimony of 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl allegedly volunteering in the hospital at the time, actually came from the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US.

Colbert claims the Syrian story was also fabricated, and that the video footage used as evidence had actually been shot in Egypt.

He also contends that while the Syrian government has been held responsible for all instances of violence in the country, the Western media has often ignored reports that Damascus is facing an armed insurrection.  

“One of the untold assumptions in all of this is that the protestors are somehow peacefully protesting and there is no violence coming from their side of it, which I think is categorically untrue, and has been shown to be untrue by the fact that Syrian forces themselves are being shot at so clearly there are armed protestors here, this is not just some peaceful, benign movement.”

As the United States also maintains that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had lost legitimacy and must step down regardless of the recently agreed peace deal in Cairo, Colbert says it has been Washington’s long-standing policy to remove Assad from power.  

“In Libya, where we saw the well-funded and well-supported rebels taking over…we see that happening again through covert means here with covert supplies going to the Syrian opposition and that came out earlier this year that in fact the US State Department has been funding the Syrian opposition for years so again we see the exact same pattern ramping up.”

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in April, the United States has been funding the Syrian opposition since 2005, when then-President George W. Bush effectively cut off political ties with the Syrian government.  That policy continued under President Obama, despite his administration’s policy of rapprochement with Damascus.

03.11, 18:31

Not giving up – convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout’s family are determined to continue fighting for justice until they see him out of prison. Russian authorities promise to back them.

Viktor Bout case 03.11, 20:54

Thousands of anti-globalists are mixing with anti-capitalists across the French Riviera to prompt the G20 summit for a little more action. They seem to have won an ambassador to promote the Robin Hood tax at the top gathering.

Eurozone crisis Occupy Wall Street

View the original article here