Yesterday, October 5th, another large demonstration of the occupy wall st movement developed into even more police aggression. As some trade unions (such as the local faction of the Transport Union of America) urged their members to participate the march swelled to around 20,000 people, according to organizers. Many other organizations took part in the protest, proving initial predictions that they would swell rapidly.
Most reports agree that even though initially peaceful, some tension started around 9:00 PM, after police barricaded Liberty Square, closing off Broadway and Liberty. Witnesses have confirmed that about 200 people tried to push, or were pushed, through these barricades and police responded with pepper spray, as well as penning them in with orange netting. These events can be seen in the video below. Also, OccupyWallSt twitter confirmed that 18 people were arrested.
It never rains in Southern California but it is raining today, another test for Occupy Los Angeles. It rained off and on all night and is expected to be rainy for the next few days with tomorrow being the worst. It should be clearing up about the same time the permit for amplified sound and full use of the city hall park comes into effect. Also by then, the film shoot on the larger south lawn will be over and they can move back there. That will be good. They need the space, protesters keep arriving and Occupy LA is already outgrowing the smaller north lawn. Soon they will need both.
The whole occupation movement is growing here in Southern California as it is elsewhere. Visitors from the new Occupy Orange County came here yesterday, as did some people planning Occupy Longbeach and at noon today, students walked out of classes to begin Occupy USC.
Although Vancouver’s Adbusters has been credited with providing the name and one of the catalysts for the current Occupy Wall Street movement, Canada's attempts to initiate any reform action of its own are just now gaining attention. Copycat Occupy Wall Street type Twitter accounts and sites are springing up for most major cities, scheduling a demonstration as part of the October 15 democracy movement. These accounts have mostly appeared in the last couple weeks, and copy Occupy Wall Street’s model of concentration in major cities and no agenda outside of communication. Occupy Canada simply has a message of solidarity with the other Occupy movements.
An earlier site with a very clear agenda is Take the Square Canada, which asks for the creation of a true participatory democracy by:
Take the Square Canada also strongly supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a 63 year old document generally agreed to be the foundation of international human rights law and many constitutions, was first drafted by Canadian John Peters Humphrey and Canada was one of the original signatories. Canadian law and policies should never deny the rights we are entitled to under the UDHR.
After the struggle following the first Occupy LA General Assembly in which a small group of protesters balked at the police demand, insisted upon by the Occupy LA Security Committee, that all tents be moved to the sidewalk after 10:30pm, this group congealed into what they begin calling themselves the “Police Brutality Committee.” They did this without seeking or receiving approval of the GA.
On Sunday, the 2nd day of the occupation, this group met together the better part of the day in preparation for the evening GA. When they met as the Police Brutality Committee, they resolved to call for the disbanding of the Security Committee, which they said acted like police and took orders from the police.
Rain is promised later in the week but today is a another beautiful Southern California day. Today should be especially interesting because it is the first regular week day for Occupy Los Angeles. City hall will be working, downtown will be bustling and the banks will be open.
The trial of Micheal Jackson's doctor also resumes today with all the international media coverage that befits a Hollywood show trial. Satellite trucks are parked all up and down the street just a few blocks from city hall and Monday's first action, at 6:00am was a march and rally in front of the courthouse. It was very effective. The Occupy Los Angeles story stole the lead from Jackson in the local morning news cycle.
328 people spent their first night camped out at Los Angeles City Hall last night. At the General Assembly on Saturday evening there was a long discussion, that got quite heated at times, about whether to camp out on the grass or to move to the sidewalk as requested, under threat of arrest by the police. In the end almost everyone moved to the sidewalk last night but they are back in the City Hall park today.
In the end, the threatened police crackdown never materialized. As it turned out, the LAPD had bigger fish to fry. The entire department was put on a citywide tactical alert Saturday night but that had nothing to do with Occupy Los Angeles. Two undercover narcotics cops got shot in a drug deal gone bad in Korea Town. As of this afternoon, the suspects were still at large so the police presence at city hall has been relatively light.
Actually so far, the LAPD has been very accommodating to the march. Although they had no permit for the march Saturday and they marched on the sidewalk, the police stopped traffic at every intersection so that the eight minute procession could be out of everyone's way as much as possible. They could have made them bunch up at every red light and written tickets for anyone that missed the cue. A single police car was posted on the street across from the protest all day Sunday but apart from the fact that it happened to be parked in front of the LAPD headquarters, which is also across the street from the city hall, there wasn't much of a police presence. No cops were even seen to be patrolling the grounds surrounding city hall. Those familiar with the LAPD's response to mass protests in the past knows that this has not always been the case.
Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg stated in a recent interview with Polish public TV that he has evidence on a CIA prison on Polish soil, and that he is positive that this material is also in the possession of the Polish prosecutor investigating the case.
He also said that he knew who was held in this prison. Insofar, publicly known evidence only proved that CIA planes landed in Szymany. All other conclusions were based on circumstantial evidence. As a source for this information Hammarberg quoted leaks from various sources, including the CIA itself, and official documents.
Hammarberg has already briefed Polish MFA Radosław Sikorski about his findings, and expects the investigation to proceed very soon.
Currently, there are two separate legal cases underway, an investigation in Poland, and a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights, amongst others for a failure to investigate. WL Central recently reported on a newly released Wikileaks document, which proves a complicity between the US and Poland to cover up the issue of the CIA prison. This document was strangely overlooked by various media partners who had access to this material for several months.
For our previous coverage please see this link.
Based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is America’s secret army. Members of this clandestine team have recently made news for assassinating alleged al Qaeda operatives Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; reportedly, they were also responsible for the killings of hundreds of civilians in the 2002 "wedding party" incident in Afghanistan.
In 2009 the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh spoke publicly about this elite military agency. Hersh stated:
"After 9/11 ... the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it ... the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. ... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially ... Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries ... and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. ...
Thousands of people marched from Pershing Sq to the Los Angeles City Hall this afternoon. The shear numbers have forced the LAPD to backoff of their hardline attitude and allow us to occupy both the lawn and the sidewalk on all sides of city hall. Even the march was made without a city permit, the police stopped traffic so that the march could move efficiently through the downtown city streets. At the General Assembly last night the decision had been made to march down Broadway, normally filled with shoppers on a Saturday, rather than the normally empty financial district. The reception of the shoppers on Broadway was fantastic and the honking of passing cars has never stopped since we arrive at city hall hours ago.
Since the marchers arrived at city hall, it has been one grand celebration. Many more have joined their ranks. Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic spoke and so did Marcy Winograd and many others. Dozens of pizzas where delivered and passed around as many ate their first meal of the occupation. Water was declared the official soft drink of the revolution. Anons in Guy Fawkes masks carried a sign with saying “No Wat but Class War.” Now folks are gathering on the South lawn listening to poetry readings as a trumpet plays softly in the background. Soon they will be having the first General Assembly.
The city council is now said to be “99%” in support of Occupy Los Angeles but it remains to be seen how the LAPD responses after scheduled activities end at 10:30pm and people begin to bed down because nothing has been set for sleeping arrangements.
So stay tuned for updates.
Saturday morning, people gather in Pershing Sq.
There was a spirited 3 hour meeting Thursday evening in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles that was attended by about 200 activist to plan Occupy Los Angeles which will begin 10:00am Saturday morning, October 1st with a peaceful occupation at the Los Angeles City Hall. This was the latest in a series of planning General Assemblies that have been meeting in the park regularly at 7:00PM to plan the Los Angeles movement in solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. action against corporate greed and the many other occupations that are taking place around the world that also include Occupy Boston, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Denver and dozens of others right here in the United States. Minutes for the four previous GAs can be read here. The last pre-occupation General Assembly will take place at Pershing Sq. Friday, September 30th and all who are interested are invited to attend.
This is the official Occupy Los Angeles website. Look here for all kinds of info about the protest in LA. Staring Saturday morning you will be able to see streaming video of the protest at City Hall here also. You may follow Occupy Los Angeles on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Delicious.
This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
05:00 PM The case of a mentally ill Canadian-Egyptian man, Khaled Samy Abdallah Ismail, mistakenly held in a U.S.-run Afghanistan prison for more than 18 months has been uncovered by WikiLeaks.
11:00 AM US State Department employee Peter Van Buren is currently under investigation after linking to widely-available WikiLeaks content in his personal blog.
Read his testimony: For State Department Employees, Freedom Isn't Free.
07:00 AM Once this Free Bradley Manning petition reaches 5.000 signatures, the White House is due to issue an official response to his indefinite pre-trial detention.
Please take the time to sign it - signature goal has to be reached by the end of the month of October.
Bradley Manning, it was made public this week, is currently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Julian Assange / WikiLeaks are also among the 241 candidates.
As some predicted, the popular uprising known as Occupy Wall St. is already producing echoes all around the USA. The volunteer based website Occupy Together , whose aim is to create “a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country”, counts over 70 registered protests in U.S. citie. Apart from the main occupations, currently on-going in New York, Chicago and Denver, many will start in the following weeks to coincide with the global protest day of October 15th. In the following days, parks and squares in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Houston, among others, will be occupied.
Yesterday, market trader Alessio Rastani gave the BBC a eerily candid analysis of where we stand: “the euro market is gonna crash, and it’s gonna crash pretty hard. [Investors] know the market is toast; they know the stock market is finished; the euro, as far as they’re concerned, they don’t really care, they’re moving their money to safer assets.”
Rastani then goes on to frankly admit that he’s actually excited about this prospect. “If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that … Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I have a confession, which is, I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.”
The popular occupation of Wall Street is now into it’s ninth day of camp in Zucotti Park, renamed as “Liberty Square”. The protesters have formed a General Assembly, which meets regularly in nearby Tompkins Park to discuss solutions, and exchange ideas on organization and goals, imitating the method used in similar actions worldwide (Spain, Egypt or Greece, for example). They claim to represent the forgotten 99% of the population, neglected by the ruling 1%. The amount of protesters has risen steadily peaking on Saturday as thousands marched on the streets. The local authorities reacted violently, with NYPD officers repeatedly using an excessive force against peaceful people. According to the New York Daily News at least 50 arrests were made, over 80, according to the protesters. Paul Browne, a police spokesman assured that "those arrested were engaged in disorderly conduct, namely impeding vehicular and/or pedestrian traffic, and in some instances resisting arrest, inciting to riot, obstructing governmental administration, and assaulting a police officer". This, however, seems to contradict many of the videos that appeared on the Internet. For example, the one below contains a slow motion analysis of a senior police officer using a spray canister (it is not known whether it is pepper or mace) against a group of women already kettled-in with police lines.
Resuming daily WikiLeaks notes after a two-week interruption, with Cablegate and WikiLeaks-related news published within the last two weeks having received significant coverage, ordered by date ; followed by a list of links to other Cablegate stories.
25/9 Canada paid ransom to free diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay from al-Qaeda in 2009, cables show.
24/9 An unrevised draft of Julian Assange’s memoirs, ghost-written by Andrew O’Hagan, is being distributed without Julian Assange’s consent by Canongate.
In a statement Julian describes the circumstances that lead to the unauthorized publication:
...I am not “the writer” of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript, which was written by Andrew O’Hagan. By publishing this draft against my wishes Canongate has acted in breach of contract, in breach of confidence, in breach of my creative rights and in breach of personal assurances. The US publisher, Knopf, withdrew from the deal when it learned of Canongate’s intentions to publish without my consent. This book was meant to be about my life’s struggle for justice through access to knowledge. It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information — they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity—screwing people over to make a buck.
Note: This is a press release from anonops@cyber-rights.net not a report by WL Central. WL Central does not condone or condemn this action.
On September 17, 2011 approximately 15,000 peaceful demonstrators in dozens of cities around the USA gathered, marched - and occupied public space to protest the unjust policies of the US government and the corruption in our financial institutions. The central protest site was in the financial district of New York City, where peaceful protesters faced phalanxes of heavily armed paramilitary police officers from local and federal jurisdictions. The arrests began almost immediately, many for violating the 1845 so called "mask" laws.
Later that day, and according to plan - many of these protests ended with a peaceful occupation of public space. Again, the central occupation occurred in NYC. More arrests continued to take place. All of this was expected, it is part of progressive activism. Anonymous was content to challenge these "mask" laws in court. Not only is the Guy Fawkes mask covered under freedom expression as a symbol of our movement, but we believe that everyone has a right to protest anonymously using bandanas, masks - etc.
But then on Tuesday - September 20, 2011 everything changed in a flash of police instigated violence. As rain began to fall on the NYC encampment, heavily armed police moved in; Removing tarps used to cover media equipment, arresting independent journalists, confiscating media equipment - and using excessive force against and arresting innocent peaceful protesters, several of whom were abused and injured.
This article was originally published in the South Korean national newspaper, Hankyoreh, in September 20th, 2011. This is an English translation of the article.
‘Korean-translated version of WikiLeaks’ launches as a project
by Jongchan Park
Websites sharing Korean-translated versions of the U.S. embassy cables which were leaked through the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks are bursting out around the country.
The most well known one is ‘WikiLeaks Korea’. The main page of this website informs that it is “A project which accepts voluntary Korean-translation of cables related with South Korea”. It also presents the goal of “shedding light on the Truth rapidly, with the united power of Internet users.” It emphasized that “To assure volunteers in protecting their translated cables, this website provides not only privacy protection but also a secure system that can block any attempt of random deletion.” If some groups getting embarrassed by the ongoing translation project try deletion or attacks, it plans to instantly release the IPs publicly and block them, and the archive is constructed in a way that it can be swiftly restored by its real-time backup system.
WikiLeaks Korea has currently posted 25 translated cables and 12 cables which are in the process of translation. Among the 25 cables, raw materials of issues which had been reported partially in national press exist as follows: ‘Republic of Korea: 1987 Annual Terrorism Report’, ‘Lee Myung-bak Dreams Up A Canal Project’, ‘Senior KBS Correspondents See GNP's Victory Inevitable’.
In an interview with press agency PAP, Adam Bodnar (Helsinki Foundation) called on Polish president Bronisław Komorowski to veto a proposed law that will prevent access to public records, if a release would have a negative impact on the economic interests of the government. Such a law would in effect prevent access to data on international negotiations.
He stated that NGOs might form a coalition to join forces in protesting against such a law. Based on discussion he read on the internet, he also predicts a mass protest, should this serious infringement of civil liberties be in fact be ratified.
As recent months have shown, this is not an unrealistic scenario; an online protest has recently led to increased press coverage of the investigation into a CIA prison in Masovia.
The Helsinki Foundation, which also runs the Observatory of the Dealings of the CIA on the Territory of the Republic of Poland, opposes the new legislation.
This Saturday, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people will take to the streets in a global day of action against the banks. Here is why we march.
A New Season of Protest
The fall of discontent has begun. This Saturday, September 17th, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people will take to the streets and squares of financial districts in dozens of cities around the world in a global day of action against the excessive power of the banking sector -- and for a more just, more stable, and more sustainable global financial system.
On this exciting day, we will march, squat, block and occupy the physical domain of the financial terrorists who got us into this mess in the first place, and who have since kept the world enthralled to their self-interested prescription of brutally anti-social austerity measures. On this day, we will agitate against the giant vampire squid that, as Matt Taibbi so powerfully illustrated, continues to live parasitically off our economy, blatantly undermining the most basic principles of our democracy and social welfare system.
At least 40 injured and Rome left billowing in smoke after anti-austerity protesters clash with riot police in front of Parliament for over two hours tonight.
After weeks of dithering on the precipice of his own downfall, Silvio Berlusconi tonight survived a crucial vote of confidence, by one of the narrowest possible margins, allowing his government it to push through its proposed package of deeply unpopular austerity measures.
The cutbacks and tax hikes had been demanded by the European Central Bank in exchange for its buy-up of Italian bonds on secondary markets, after markets turned their sights on Italy last month, pushing the government’s borrowing costs close to the level where Greece had previously required an EU bailout.
But as Parliament prepared to vote on the austerity measures, violent clashes broke out between protesters and riot police. Downtown Rome was left billowing in smoke and littered with debris as at least 40 protesters were injured by random rounds of police baton charges.
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