September 17, 2012

RALLIES PLANNED FOR OCCUPY WALL STREET ANNIVERSARY

[As the Occupy Wall Street protests reach their first anniversary on Monday, numerous activities have been planned to highlight issues like the presence of corporate money in politics, the foreclosure of homes and the type of risky speculation that caused JPMorgan Chase to lose as much as $9 billion this year betting on credit derivatives.]

By 

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times 
Protesters at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, one day 
before the Occupy Wall Street movement's anniversary.     
            
The crowd sat in a circle at the edge of Battery Park on Friday, as two young women held up a large map of the financial district that had been divided into sectors and marked with assembly points. They explained the plan for early Monday: protesters will gather at those points, then converge in an attempt to surround the New York Stock Exchange.
“We want to to block all the access points leading to the stock exchange by linking arms and sitting,” said one of the women displaying the map.
Over the next hour or so, those in the meeting discussed plans for the surrounding tactic, called the People’s Wall. One man announced that he represented a group of 30 to 40 people willing to stand in an intersection near the stock exchange. Another said he was part of a group that intended to hold a “roving birthday party” near Wall Street replete with confetti, cake and streamers.
As the Occupy Wall Street protests reach their first anniversary on Monday, numerous activities have been planned to highlight issues like the presence of corporate money in politics, the foreclosure of homes and the type of risky speculation that caused JPMorgan Chase to lose as much as $9 billion this year betting on credit derivatives.
“The issues that brought us together a year ago haven’t gone away,” said Amin Husain, an organizer of the recent meeting. “Things have only gotten worse.”
Over the last few months, protesters have planned three days of events, using the title “All Roads Lead to Wall Street,” including marches, a Rosh Hashana service near Zuccotti Park and a concert in Foley Square featuring members of the Dead Kennedys, Sonic Youth and Rage Against the Machine. In a reprise of a tactic used in the spring, some protesters said they were sleeping at night on sidewalks outside of banks.
As the protesters began gathering on Saturday, the police were present, too. When a crowd embarked upon a sidewalk march from Washington Square to Zuccotti Park on Saturday night, the police arrested about 15 people. Susan Howard of the National Lawyers Guild said that she had reports of an additional 22 arrests on Saturday, including 17 near Trinity Church, where protesters have been sleeping. She added that there were reports of 13 arrests near City Hall early Sunday morning.
Later Sunday morning, witnesses said, the police arrested a small number of people during a march to protest the construction of a natural gas pipeline on the West Side of Manhattan. Just after the marchers arrived at Foley Square, police arrested an organizer, Aaron Black.
Planning for what became the Occupy protests began in the summer of 2011 when a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, called for people to “flood into Lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street.”
The police sealed off the heart of Wall Street last Sept. 17 and a few hundred protesters were able to set foot there only briefly. But the tents and kitchens eventually appeared nearby, in Zuccotti Park, and that camp was followed by more than 100 others across the country and overseas.
In the weeks that followed, a signature phrase used by the protesters to refer to themselves, “the 99 percent,” became part of the political lexicon, and the topic of financial inequity became popular nationally. And Zuccotti Park, with its library, kitchen, clothing dispensary and bicycle-provided energy, became the center point of a populist movement that steered clear of both major political parties.
The police sometimes arrested protesters in large numbers and in controversial circumstances. Then, in mid-November, hundreds of officers cleared Zuccotti Park, arresting about 200 people in the process and preventing many journalists from observing the operation clearly.
Without a central gathering spot to draw participants and attention, the Occupy movement became less visible. Some people drifted away, exhausted by the effort of organizing.
Some used connections formed at Occupy gatherings to join other projects, disrupting the auctions of foreclosed homes, participating in protests opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline under the Hudson River that would terminate in the West Village, or planning a campaign to unify people affected by debt.
While such undertakings continue, organizers said the anniversary presented a chance to reinvigorate participants who had not gathered for a large-scale public demonstration since May Day.
“We want to show the world we are still here,” said Brendan Burke, an organizer. “And we still have momentum.”
@ The NewYork Times

PROTESTS OVER CONTENTIOUS FILM SPREAD TO AFGHANISTAN, INDONESIA

[The outburst followed demonstrations and violence in more than 20 countries since last Tuesday, when the American ambassador in Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in an attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi as protests spread from neighboring Egypt.] 

By  and Sangar Rahimi

KABUL — Hundreds of Afghans burned tires and pelted police officers and buildings with stones along a thoroughfare leading east out of Kabul on Monday, at one point nearing the high walls of a large American military base, in the first significant escalation of violence in Afghanistan over an anti-Islam film that has inflamed mobs in other parts of the Muslim world.
The outburst followed demonstrations and violence in more than 20 countries since last Tuesday, when the American ambassador in Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in an attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi as protests spread from neighboring Egypt.
In Indonesia, news reports said, police firing tear gas and water cannons on Monday moved against hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside the American Embassy in Jakarta to express opposition to the film, which many Muslims regard as blasphemous toward the Prophet Muhammad. Some protesters set fire to an American flag, while others hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails and burned tires.
The police in Karachi, Pakistan, were pelted by rocks and fired in the air to turn back a convoy of protesters in cars and on motorcycles from the American Consulate, according to Reuters. Near the American Consulate in Lahore, protesters threw rocks and burned an American flag, the news agency said, and in Islamabad, the American Embassy said it had halted public services.
In southern Beirut, Lebanon, thousands answered a call by Hezbollah to protest peacefully. They chanted “Death to America, death to Israel” and “America, hear us — don’t insult our Prophet,” Reuters said.
In Afghanistan on Monday, as in other parts of the world, most of the protesters were young men, who chanted for the death of America, Israel, Britain and President Hamid Karzai’s government.
The police here responded in force to quell the rioting. Scores of regular officers and riot police officers wearing helmets and protected by shields battled groups of young men throughout the morning, trying to keep the demonstrators from moving toward the center of Kabul.
There had been some protests in eastern Afghanistan on Friday over the video, with demonstrators burning an effigy of President Obama. But the protests on Monday were far more violent.
Mr. Karzai’s government had gone to some lengths to keep a lid on anger over the American-made movie as news of the protests spread around the world. Afghan officials across the country gathered elders and religious leaders and told them that it was fine to speak out against the movie, but that they should urge people to stay calm and avoid violence.
The government also asked Internet providers to block sites hosting video, shutting down access to Google, YouTube and Gmail in the process. Access to all the sites appeared to have been restored on Monday afternoon, hours after the protests on Jalalabad Road had subsided.
The NATO-led coalition said the base that lies along Jalalabad Road, Camp Phoenix, had not been targeted by the protesters and was unaffected by the violence.
But outside its well-fortified walls, the charred remains of shipping containers could be seen, though it was impossible to tell from the blackened steel shells whether they had been carrying supplies for the base or were being used by others not connected to the military.
Ayub Salangi, Kabul’s police chief, said about 50 police officers had suffered light wounds trying to keep the protesters in check. He, too, was left with some bruises and cuts from stones hurled by protesters at the scene.
At least two police cars were set ablaze, he said. By late morning, other smoldering vehicles could be seen along the road, as well as burning shipping containers and piles of flaming tires. Plumes of black smoke were visible from the center of the city.
For many of the people who live near Jalalabad Road or work at the shops and construction depots that line it, the protest was an unwelcome disruption that accomplished little apart from destroying property. A man in his mid-30s, who declined to be identified by name, cursed the protesters for burning tires and shouted at them, “Will your dad pay for the road’s damages?” None of the protesters seemed to hear him.
“They can express their pure Islamic emotions, but this is not the way to do it,” he said. “The government built this road with money we beg from foreigners, and now they are destroying it.”
The protests abated by noon, and by midafternoon the road was clogged with its usual workday traffic.
Most officials offered only vague estimates of the crowd’s size. Mr. Salangi said hundreds of people participated in the protest, an estimate in line with what other officials offered. But one senior police officer, Gen. Ahmad Fahim Qayam, who commands the quick reaction unit of the Kabul police, put the size of the protest at between 3,000 and 4,000 people.
Mr. Salangi described the protesters as “emotional” young men who had tried to press toward downtown Kabul in four or five separate groups.
The Afghan government has appeared eager to avoid a repeat of the violent and deadly protests that swept the country earlier this year over the inadvertent burning of Korans by American soldiers at a base north of Kabul.
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

@ The New York Times